The tension in the room rocketed into the red zone. She held his gaze, refusing to back down. “When you told me to decide what I wanted, you didn’t say I was giving up the right to change my mind. That’s not what I want, at all.”

He sighed and let go. “Please,” he said. “Please don’t walk out right now, not until we talk about all of this.”

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, thumbed it on, touched the Timer app icon. “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” she said, setting it to count down then dropping it on the bed. “You’d better make it good.”

“That isn’t even enough time to—”

“Then you’d better not waste it. Let me be perfectly clear here: I’m pissed, Gabriel. Fifteen minutes is a concession, because what I want to do right now is walk out and never come back. I feel misled, and I’m pissed that you’ve done this to me.”

“This isn’t my doing.”

“Then whose?” she demanded.

“Not mine,” he said. “Not intentionally. I swear to you, I didn’t know this would happen. I’ve never heard of this happening.”

“Well, you’re still one up on me, because I don’t even know what this is.” She nodded at the timer. “Start talking.”

He sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “I don’t even know where to start.”

She shook her head, reached down and picked up his pants. “Start by putting these on. Shirt, too,” she said, retrieving that as well. “You’re distracting me.”

“I’m certainly not trying to,” he said, frustration in every syllable.

She couldn’t help smiling a little. “No, I wasn’t accusing you of anything. For a change.”

He answered her small smile with one of his own, then patted the bed beside him. “Sit.”

“Sure thing—once you put on those clothes. I know you don’t mean to but you’re doing that … thing.”

He complied, and she watched with some regret as he put his clothes back on and sat on the bed again. She sat cross-legged, facing him, and waited for him to speak.

His eyes strayed to her phone, counting backward steadily to the twelve-minute mark. “Can we maybe reset—”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Cliff’s Notes, then—and please understand, I don’t know much about it myself. I know a little from things I’ve picked up here and there, but it’s not like I had a reason to really ask any questions about this.”

“Noted,” she said. “Now tell me.”

“There are … formalities.” He stole a glance at the timer again. “Contracts, if you will. Covenants. Both of the big guys are huge on covenants.”

“The big guys?” she said.

He tilted his eyes up to the ceiling, then down to the floor.

She felt her own eyes widen. “You mean—”

“Yup,” he said, but didn’t name them. For all she knew, maybe he wasn’t supposed to. “So, when two people—or entities—wish to form a permanent alliance, there’s a sort of ritual. A ceremony of binding.”

“Okay.”

“And that ceremony … it leaves this mark.”

“Leaves it for how long?”

He looked acutely uncomfortable. “Um,” he said. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him say um before. “For … always?”

“Always?”

“I’m saying it’s permanent.”

She blinked, blinked again, and didn’t even know what to say about that. So she let it go for the moment. “And it means?”

He peeked at her timer again. “It means you’ve bound yourself to a demon.”

“Bound in what sense?” she demanded. “I assume since you said mate, we’re not talking about doubles tennis.”

“Like….” He seemed to be searching for a word, shrugged. “Yes, mates. But it’s not just about the sex. It’s a relationship bond.”

“Are you talking about being, like, married or something?”

He blanched. Typical, she thought. Demon or no, he’s still a dude. Say the word “marriage” and he falls apart.

“No,” he said, quickly. “That’s not— I mean—”

“Do you have one?” she demanded. “A mark?”

“I didn’t bind myself to a demon.”

“Well, technically, neither did I,” she said, tersely. “There may have been some bonding, but I certainly wasn’t embarking on any covenants.”

“I know,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. I told you, I don’t know much about this.”

“Then who does?”

He groaned. “My mother would know.”

“Your mother?”

“She specializes in contract language for….” He paused. “For her particular specialty.”

“Contract language,” Lily said, incredulous. “Like a lawyer? For Hell?”

“That’s not far off,” he admitted. “She’s an Arbiter.”

“She has an actual job title?”

“Well, I mean….” He shrugged. “It’s not a job title. It’s more like a vocation, I guess. But that’s what she does. There are contracts, agreements, covenants. The language has to be standardized. People keep trying to find loopholes.”

“The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” she said.

To her surprise, he laughed. “Yeah. Like that. She sits on the Infernal Council and—”

“The Infernal Council?”

“Do you want me to tell this or not?”

“Sorry.” Her head was spinning. The Infernal Council, of all things. It was too much to take in. “Yes, I want you to tell me.”

“So she sits on the council and she makes decisions about … well, all manner of things. Contracts and enforcement and a few other things.”

“And you said she has a specialty?”

“Of course. She’s a succubus, so … lust. Other carnal sins.”

“Your mom’s a sex demon and a contract lawyer for Hell.”

“More of a judge, really. Or a supervisor.”

“A supervisor.”

“Kind of on par with, maybe, a vice president.”

Her eyes widened again. “And the president would be?”

Gabriel simply arched an eyebrow at her.

“Okay, then.” She swallowed. “So we won’t be going to the president to ask questions.”

“Hardly.”

“Will your mom be able to tell us what happened here tonight? Why I’ve got this mark, what we should do about it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll ask her. If she knows anything, I’ll get it out of her. But she’s never mentioned anything like this to me, so I can’t be sure she’ll have any answers.” He met her gaze, held it. “You said this was what you wanted. It matters to me that you made a choice, and if you feel this negates that choice or takes your right to choose away, then I’ll do everything in my power to fix it.”

Lily took a deep breath, held it for a moment. “Okay.”

“I’m not happy about it, either,” he said. “It makes your decision sort of moot, and that decision mattered. I would find no joy in forcing you to be with me.” He reached out and cupped her face in one hand. “But if you keep choosing to be, I promise to make you happy about that choice, every day.”

She closed her eyes against the intensity of his. Everything was happening too fast. She barely had time to incorporate some new fact before some even more unbelievable thing happened. It was exhausting.

But didn’t it come back to the decision she’d made earlier? If she believed him—and she did—that he hadn’t known this new wrinkle would develop, then what she’d already decided still held.

She wanted him.

He’d given her the chance to walk, and she hadn’t taken it. She didn’t want to take it. So why fight about this … bond, or whatever it was, when she was exactly where she wanted to be and had no intention of changing her mind?

All in, then.

She let a smile spread across her face. “You are so lucky I watch so much TV.”

He blinked at her. “Come again?”

“Maybe later.” She laughed. “What I mean is, if I didn’t watch so damn much Buffy and Supernatural, maybe you’d be carting me off to the loony bin instead of taking me home to Mother.”

He winced.

She felt her smile grow even wider. “If we’re some kind of magical, demon-style married, does that mean I literally have the mother-in-law from Hell?”

He rolled his eyes and grinned at her, and she thought, This is right. This is what I want.

It was crazy. It was completely unbelievable. But here she was—here they were—and she supposed that, in time, she would get used to it. Maybe, one day, having Gabriel for a lover would seem mundane.

Yeah, right.

He leaned over her and tapped her phone to stop the timer. “Look at that,” he said. “We did it in exactly half the time.”

There would be time later, she thought, to analyze—and, knowing her, overanalyze—the situation. Plenty of time. For now, he was right here, looking and smelling irresistible, and she was going for it.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and laid back, pulling him down on top of her. “Let’s see what we can do with the other half.”

“Getting it done as quickly as possible isn’t my usual approach.” He slid his hand under her shirt, and she felt her neurons start to misfire. “But I’m happy to try something new.”

She tilted her head as his lips got busy along the length of her neck, and sighed softly. “I think we’ll both have a lot of new things to try,” she said. “Hopefully for a long time.”

And she knew, without a doubt, that was exactly what she wanted.