My Stepbrother Is a Demon novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Knock

The door opened before my knuckles left the wood.

He'd been standing right behind it.

Ivo's room was dark except a lamp on the floor by the bed.

Books stacked against the walls, a big bed with gray sheets, the window open on the Sound.

His iron rod lay on the dresser.

I'd come straight from the shower in my old work T-shirt with the chain's logo cut off and a pair of sleep shorts.

My hair was still wet.

He looked at all of it.

"You knocked," he said.

"Twice. In case you missed the first one."

"I didn't miss it."

He didn't reach for me.

His hands stayed at his sides, his fingers curled tight.

I stepped in and shut the door behind me.

"Ask me," I said.

"Ask you what?"

"Whatever you're scared of. I can't lie to you. So ask."

He looked at me for a long time.

The lamp put red in his eyes, or maybe it was him.

"Do you want this?" he said.

"Yes."

"Because of the contract? Because I can't lie, and you think that makes me safe?"

"Because you held the ladder at Pinecrest and glared at wasps. Because you laughed on the drive. Because you'd have died for me and then let me yell you out of it."

My wrist line was warm.

All of it was true.

"My turn," I said.

He nodded once.

"Do you want this to be one night?"

His jaw worked.

"No."

"What do you want it to be?"

"Everything," Ivo said, low and flat, like it was being pulled out of him. "I want it to be everything, and I don't know how to say that to someone I met five weeks ago without sounding insane."

"You just did."

"Yes. I heard."

I laughed.

He didn't.

He reached out finally and touched one finger to the wet ends of my hair, the layers Mom had cut.

Then he put his hand around the back of my head and kissed me.

It was nothing like the pantry.

It was slow.

I pulled his T-shirt up and over his head.

He let me.

His skin was so hot I could feel it from an inch away.

"Ramona."

"Mm."

"If you say stop, at any point, I stop. And you'll know I mean it."

"I know you mean it." I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart. "You can't say anything else."

He kissed me again, and this time his hand slid down my back and under the hem of my T-shirt.

His palm was so hot it made me gasp into his mouth.

He pulled back just enough to look at me, his eyes gone the color of embers in a grill.

"Do you want this?"

"Yes."

His fingers spread over my ribs, then higher.

"Is this good?"

"Better than good."

He pulled the T-shirt up and off over my head, and my wet hair slapped against my bare shoulders.

I reached for the waistband of his sweatpants.

"Wait," he said.

"My turn to ask a true thing."

I stopped with my fingers hooked in the fabric.

"Ask."

"What do you think about when you touch yourself?"

Ivo's breath went out of him in a flat, startled rush.

His eyes flared red.

"Ramona."

"You can't dodge it. The contract doesn't care how you say it."

"I think about you," he said, like the words were being pried out of him with pliers. "I think about your mouth, the way you say my name when you're annoyed, I think about your hands, I think about." He stopped and swallowed. "I think about you on your knees for me. I think about you saying please."

The air in the room got ten degrees hotter.

"Have you touched yourself thinking about me since we met?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"The night of the fogger test. After you left the kitchen."

"Good." I pulled his sweatpants down, and his cock sprang free, and I put my hand around it. "Now you know one of mine."

He was hard as iron and fever-hot, and he made a sound low in his chest like a furnace catching.

"Ask me," I said, stroking him once, slow, from root to tip.

"What do you think about?"

"You. On top of me. Holding my arms down. Telling me not to move until you say."

His hips bucked into my hand.

"Fuck, Ramona."

"Do you want that?"

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