Page 83 of Devil

I tell him all about the waffles, how Lilith chirruped incessantly as I made them, how I made one with butter and then gave her the tiniest smidge off my finger and was left with little bite marks on my knuckle for my kindness.

At some point, as I suspected he would, he asks to see my pussy.

I go to his office for this because I know it gets under his skin when I do, and then I work off everything but my bra and prop the phone on his desk while I sit in his chair.

He unbuckles and pulls out his cock, and while he talks me through everything he wants to see—my swollen clitoris, my fingers inside myself, my arousal glistening in the light from the office’s windows—he strokes himself with steady, patient movements. He tells me how much he misses me, all the times he’s wished I were with him so he could empty himself in my cunt or my mouth or over my tits. He tells me he’s ordered more toys for my pretty asshole, that he can’t stop thinking about the night before he left, when he took me while I had a thick plug inside. He can’t stop thinking about when I’ll be ready enough to take his dick instead.

“God, that blush on your cheeks,” he groans, working himself faster now. “It never goes away, does it? No matter what I do to you. It’s amazing. Can you get yourself off for me right now?”

“I can try,” I say softly. I’ve gotten pretty good at it since he’s helped me learn. “But can I see more of…you…while I do?”

A smug divot appears in his cheek and he tilts his camera down a little. “Want to see more of this cock, Birdie? Want to watch it go off while I’m thinking of you?”

“Yes,” I whisper. It’s the truth, whatever kind of sinner that makes me into. I can’t pretend I’m bringing myself to a joyless orgasm because the conditions of our deal demand it. Iwantto see him masturbate; I want to see his erection hard and straining; I want to see his big, capable hand wrapped tight around it. It makes me squirm, it makes my cunt heat, and soon I’m wet enough to leave clear slick on the insides of my thighs and on the seat of his chair.

When I finally cry out and come, he mutters, “Thank Christ,” and starts spurting over his fist, thick ribbons of cum that I wish I were there to touch. It fascinates me to no end, the visible proof of his orgasm, the tangibility of it, and my fascination is usually enough to make him hard all over again.

He makes me show him the chair and the slick spot on it, and I hear the noise of him taking a screenshot as a souvenir. I’ve agreed to pictures and recordings as long as they’re not shown to anyone else and they’re deleted by the time our deal concludes, and if nothing else, he’s certainly ensured I have equal power over him. The private folder on my phone has plenty of Bell that he’s sent me, of the two of us or of only himself while he’s been at work. Sometimes even from times he’s been home but in another room.

“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you wanted to call me,” he says warmly after we clean up. “That you miss me.”

“I miss you so much,” I confess again, knowing it’s so precarious, this missing him. More precarious than anything else maybe, because I’d resigned myself to staining my soul for his sake, but offering up my heart too?

Waking up alone that first morning he was away and wishing I’d been woken up by a hot tongue between my legs instead, walking past his office and thinking about all the times I’d been on my knees under his desk—all of that is something I understand, even if I’m still not sure what it means.

But to miss him watching me in the studio, sitting with a knee pulled up to his chest as he takes in every stroke of my pencil or strike of my mallet; to miss the sight of him reading on the couch with a toaster waffle in one hand, using his elbow to keep Lilith away; to know he won’t be next to me at Mass on Sunday, singing hymns to that god he’s not friendly with…

I’m an expert in loneliness, its foremost researcher. I sensed its return the moment Bell kissed me hard on the mouth before he left for the airport, and I wondered if missing him was solely about isolation, about my mammalian wiring throwing up flags of panic as I felt the void of the empty house pressing in. It’s always more piercing to return to despair when you’ve had a chance to feel anything else.

But I don’t think this keening ache is just about an empty house; I think I could still bear that. It’s something abouthim, the absence ofhim.He created a new kind of loneliness when he left, and even the video calls and constant texts don’t feel like enough to fill the breach he’s left behind.

He gets a call from his boss, and we say a quick—if reluctant—goodbye, and then I go back to the studio and my tools. I stand in front of the Lucifer statue for a long moment before reaching up to touch my finger to its outstretched finger and then go back to the piece I’m working on.

I pray as I work. I pray to God for strength, to the Virgin to intercede on my behalf. I tell the Virgin the truth that I can’t avoid facing any longer: that I can survive a deal with the devil, but I absolutely cannot survive falling in love with him.

Did you ask her?comes a text message early the following morning as I’m counting down the register before ending my shift.

I smile, even though adrenaline is still pounding through me.I did, I text back.She said yes.

Of course she did,Bell replies.Who wouldn’t want to spend time with you?

I roll my eyes. Bell sees me through a lover’s eyes, I suppose, and extrapolates his own feelings about me to the rest of the world. But I am still glad Amber said yes to getting coffee later in the week. I was terrified to ask, which is silly, I know, but in my defense, I haven’t had that kind of friend since Kaitlyn. My closest friend is probably Paxico, and when Bell had asked about my friends before he left for his trip, and I told him that my old neighbor was essentially it along with seeing Amber at work, he’d looked unhappy.

“We can’t all be popular like you,” I said in what I thought was a sufficiently light and self-deprecating tone, but he still hadn’t met my gaze, his eyes off to the side, his mouth thin.

“Do you like Amber?” he finally asked. “Enough to get coffee with her? Text her sometimes?”

“Of course,” I said, “but we’re both busy, and I—” I paused, not sure if someone like him could understand. “I’m not really friend material, Ry.”

His eyes slid back to mine, his expression genuinely puzzled. “What?”

I didn’t enjoy having to explain it, because I knew it would sound like I was feeling sorry for myself, or worse, like I was fishing for compliments. But I also didn’t want him thinking I was solitary as apreference; there were real reasons for it.

“I’m not fun,” I explained patiently. “I’m not funny. I’m not interesting. I get nervous about things normal people don’t. I’m too serious. I’m too stuck. I don’t have time for anything that isn’t work, and I’m just trying to survive.”

I meant to say that last part patiently too, lightly, but it didn’t come out lightly. It came out thick and uneven, pulled out of some pit inside my chest. It came out like a low, mindless cry from something trapped.

Bell’s lips parted, and the unhappiness shaping his mouth only drew attention to how full his lips were, especially in the middle, something so easy to forget when he was smiling wide enough to stretch lines up and down his cheeks. His eyes too were unhappy, a sudden winter, a January sky too high up to reach. I thought I could sense fury—cold fury—and also a kind of surprised grief—but I couldn’t be sure.