Once Caroline had made a huge pitcher of some fruity liquored-up punch, they all sat around the kitchen table together.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” was the first thing out of Arturo’s mouth.

“Too bad,” Thea said, swigging her drink and glaring over the rim of the cup.

“How did you come to be enslaved by the demon?” Celia asked.

“I’m not talking about it.”

“Arturo…” Martine tried. To no avail.

“No!” Arturo leaned back in his chair like a petulant child. “I owe these people nothing. Least of all my story.”

“These people,” Martine snapped back, “took you away from the demon, they severed your connection with the demon. They plugged you into their own story, they are the reason you’re the seventh soul, you ass. So whether you like it or not, you’re going to quit withdrawing every possible moment. To your detriment and theirs.”

No one at that table had ever really seen Martine lose her temper before.

Tre capitalized on the shock of the moment.

“What can you tell us about the demon? What’s his style of attack? How do we defend against him?”

Arturo turned his dark eyes on Tre and stared, his expression inscrutable. The seconds ticked away. And then, finally, “Are you scared he’s coming for you?”

Tre told himself to maintain eye contact, this was a pissing contest if he’d ever seen one. But after having spent all these nights touching Caroline, it was almost as if some part of him never stopped pulsing for her. She was sitting across the table from him but he could feel her there. The way she shifted in her chair, the rise and fall of her breath. He tried not to break eye contact with Arturo, but he couldn’t help it. His green-brown eyes flickered toward Caroline for a bare second.

Arturo’s eyes shuttered and a cold laugh wrenched out of him. “I see,” he said slowly. “You’re scared he’s coming for her.”

“Me?” Caroline asked innocently, her eyes ping-ponging between Tre and Arturo.

“You, angel.” Arturo kept his eyes on Tre but he leaned back in his chair so that he was almost shoulder to shoulder with Caroline. Tre wanted to jump across the table and rip Caroline away from this asshole. Apparently Arturo was on a tear. “Loverboy over there probably picked up on the pattern. When the demon went for Jack, he really went for Thea. When the demon went for Jean Luc, he really went for Celia. Now that he’s going for Tre, well he’s probably coming for you.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tre growled, leaning forward on the table. “There’s no reason to freak her out.”

“It’s not like it hadn’t occurred to me,” Caroline said quietly, her eyes on Tre’s. “But I didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?” Tre had to know.

Arturo laughed and it was cruel-sounding. “She didn’t realize you cared enough for that strategy to be effective.”

Tre blanched when he looked at Caroline and saw the truth of it on her face. Somehow in all this, she still hadn’t gotten the memo that Tre cared for her. Truly cared.

Tre felt an ancient insecurity rise up within him. Even when he cared this hard, he wasn’t doing it right. Every single night, he was trying to show her how he felt. How precious she was to him. And then every day, he woke up feeling vulnerable and a little freaked and all he could do was be sweet and kind and patient with her. What more could she need? He inwardly cringed at that thought. Because wasn’t that the whole problem? That he didn’t know the answer to that question. He didn’t understand what loving someone looked like. He didn’t understand the rules. He didn’t know how to show her he cared. So much so that she hadn’t even known.

He could feel her eyes on him across the table but he didn’t look at her, he kept his gaze glued on Arturo.

“Let me make this real simple for you, angel,” Arturo went on. “I noticed a few things while I was watching you all before my lovely little abduction. Loverboy does care about you. Obviously, considering he can barely keep his tongue in his mouth whenever you’re around.” Tre bristled, but said nothing. It wasn’t like it was a lie.

“But let me just explain a little more about what this man is and isn’t capable of.”

Tre felt sick.

He felt like he knew what words were going to come out of Arturo’s mouth even before the asshole said them.

“Tre is capable of love,” Caroline said, her brow furrowed in confusion, like the things Arturo was saying weren’t making sense.

Tre’s stomach swooped at her easy defense of him, but it also plummeted because what Arturo was saying did make sense. It made painfully crystal-clear sense.

“He’s capable of wanting you. Of pleasing you, sure. But of maintaining a relationship with you? Not at all. He’s not built that way. And neither was I. You all want to know how I know this?”

Arturo pierced each one of them with horrible eye contact. “Because I’ve been there. I was Tre. I had a woman. I had Amelia.”

He turned back to Caroline. “You don’t have to worry if he cares about you, Caroline. He certainly does. He cares about you so much he’d sacrifice himself for you if it came down to it.”

“What?” Caroline looked stricken.

“But don’t let that get your heart in a flutter, angel. Because that’s only half the reason he’d do that for you. You know the other half? Because at some point, you’re all going to realize that the demon is unbeatable. And one of you is going to have to go. And Tre is gonna be damned if it’s you, angel. He’s going to look at himself and decide he’s worth less than the rest of you. The way he’s been doing his whole life. The way even his daddy did. And he’s going to sacrifice himself just to save you, angel. Ain’t that sweet, Caroline? He’s going to put you through a lifetime of regret and loss and suffering all because he couldn’t see himself clearly enough to know that he should just fucking keep on living. God—FUCK. Get out of my head!”

Arturo’s face crumpled in pain as he half-rose and clutched at his head and stomach at once. His emotions were an impenetrable wall, like a mirror made of ice, but that hadn’t stopped Jack and Jean Luc from attempting to break through and read him. Understand his angle. And that probing was the only thing that could stop the tirade of words from Arturo. He crumpled in pain, his knuckles white against the table.

“Don’t hurt him,” Caroline said weakly. “Please.”

The men pulled back and Arturo took a weak, gasping breath. He rose and strode from the room, the door to his bedroom clicking closed.

“I’m sorry,” Martine said into the hands she’d pyramided over her face. “I should have known what happens when you back him into a corner. He fights to the death. Always has.”

“I can’t believe that son of a bitch is our seventh,” Thea griped, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her eyes flew open. “Martine, you can’t leave us.”

“I won’t leave,” she replied. She was realizing that she was going to have to stay and act as a chaperone of sorts. She missed the days when all she had to do was slay the fucking demon.

“What does he mean that he sacrificed himself?” Tre asked quietly.

Martine sighed deeply but figured that Arturo had opened this can of worms just wide enough that she would have to pull the cap off completely. “He means that when the demon hunted Arturo’s group, almost four hundred years ago, the demon captured the woman Arturo loved. Amelia. I was there. I couldn’t get to her fast enough. Arturo got there before I could. He knocked her away and took the blow. It was his soul that the demon took.”

“But he’s still alive,” Jack said.

“The demon had never encountered a soul as… interesting as Arturo’s. He realized he didn’t want to take him all at once. So he took only a bit and has been slowly feeding from him ever since. He’s long since realized what a valuable helper Arturo is. So he won’t kill him. He’ll never fully kill him. He’ll string him along forever. Which is why he hunts you all. For food.”

Caroline barely heard any of this. She only had eyes for Tre, who was white as a sheet across the table, his eyes downcast and his tattoos sticking out like illustrations on a page.

Jean Luc spoke in that low rumble of his. “He was just trying to get in your head.”

Tre didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge the words for a long moment. Then he lifted his head. “Yeah. Well. It worked.”

“He’s not omniscient, Tre,” Martine told him. “The story isn’t mine to tell. But he isn’t so powerful that he can just look at you and know what’s in your soul. He’s telling you what he sees in you because he knows the path you’re walking. He’s walked it himself. The two of you are actually very similar.”

Tre scoffed in disgust. “Great. So glad I have things in common with that asshole. Can’t believe I thought we should try and befriend him.”

Tre rose up and quietly stepped through the living room and through the kitchen. He was already tugging off his pants as he stepped onto the porch. Caroline rose to follow him but Jack put a hand on her arm to stop her.

Seconds later, they watched Tre’s grizzly bound through the field in the far window.

 

***

 

Tre didn’t return for hours. Caroline had several unfamiliar feelings roiling within her. It was something hot in her gut. Something tight. And not necessarily in a good way.

When she heard him return, she ducked out into the hallway to see him but he was back in his room with the door firmly latched shut.

Caroline stood outside in the hallway, staring at that closed door, her arms crossed over her chest in a very un-Caroline-like way. She marched to her room and slid into her pajamas. A button-up pajama shirt with a big floppy collar and pajama shorts. The design was sky blue with clouds all over them. She piled her hair on top of her head and flopped backwards onto the bed.

She remembered once watching a TV show where two people built cars from scratch and then raced them. Whoever won the race won a bunch of money. At one point, one of the cars was revving its engine and the back of the car was slipping and sliding, trying to race forward but it just couldn’t get purchase. That was exactly how Caroline felt at that very moment. All cylinders firing, but she just couldn’t find the traction.

The feeling in her gut multiplied.

And again.

She sat straight up, pulled two scrunchy socks on her feet and strode out of her room and down her hallway. She slammed into Tre’s room without knocking.

Jack and Jean Luc were already there and she barely saw them. She stared a hole into the side of Tre’s head where he leaned against the wall.

Jack slid off Tre’s bed and Jean Luc straightened up from his slouch on the other end of the room. Without a word, they slid past Caroline and out of the room. Jack lingered just long enough to give her a kiss on the side of the head. “Give him hell, darlin’. He needs it.”

And then the door clicked closed behind them and Caroline and Tre were left alone.

All the lights were on in the room. The lamps and the overheads. The night was a black hole out the window over Tre’s shoulder. He stared at her from across the room, his face as pale as it had been that morning after Arturo’s speech, his eyes just as unreadable.

A long minute passed with nothing more than breath between them. They stood ten feet apart in the room and it might as well have been fifty. Just that morning they’d been naked and warm and plastered all over one another. So much had changed and Caroline didn’t understand a quarter of it. She didn’t think Tre did either.

Finally, she spoke. “I’m not going to beg you to want me, Tre.”
“You don’t have to beg, love. I want you so bad it hurts. I’m gonna want you forever.” He leaned his head back and his skull clunked against the wall. He looked as if he was in some sort of unnatural pain. Like something at the heart of him was being pinned to the wall by its skin.

She wasn’t dumb. She knew a goodbye when she heard one.

“What is all this?” she asked suddenly, pushing off the wall. “Whatever is happening right now. What is it?”

Tre took a deep breath, the bright lights turning his coppery hair an unforgiving orange. He didn’t take a step toward her but Caroline was almost positive he wanted to. “What Arturo said—”

“Oh, fuck Arturo.”

Tre let out a surprised bark of laughter at the rare joy of witnessing Caroline swearing. He eyed her for a second. “You look like a princess right now.”

“What?” she asked in surprise. She could feel the irritated scrunch of her face, the pile of her hair, the dumb cuteness of her pajamas. She’d never looked less regal in her life.

“Caroline…” He squeezed his eyes closed. “If I was capable of keeping you, do you know what I would want to do for you? I’d want to draw baths for you every night. I’d want to detail your car on the weekends. I’d want to buy you a thousand pairs of those big-ass socks you wear so that your feet never get cold. I’d want to help solve any problem you had. But Caroline, Arturo is right. I’m not capable of taking care of you the way you deserve. The only thing I’m good for is—”

“You’re an idiot.”

“What?”

“Tre, do you really think I want any of the crap you just described?” He blinked at her and she plowed right on. “I mean, sure, the sentiment of it sounds really nice. But a bath every night is a waste of water. I don’t even own a car for you to detail. I already have enough of these socks. I can solve most of my problems by myself. Sweetheart,” she stepped forward. “I’m afraid you have absolutely no idea how to be with someone. And you’re telling yourself you can’t play the game before you even know the rules.”

He blinked some more. She didn’t know it, but the word sweetheart clanked down through him like a wedding ring clacking its way down the drain at the bottom of a kitchen sink. He was stunned by her.

“You want me?” she asked, and then stunned him further by whipping off her pajamas over her head and scuffing the shorts down her legs. She stood before him completely naked in the stark, unforgiving light, her hair messy and flopping to the side, her breasts standing at attention, pink and pointing at the tips, her legs slightly spread, one hand on her hip. “Then come over here and fuck me.”

Tre kind of felt like his brain was re-booting. He could almost see the rainbow thinking wheel in his line of vision. The most beautiful woman in the world was naked as all hell in front of him and telling him to fuck her. He tried desperately to get his brain back online. He needed to sort through the moral implications of either course of action. Did he get her clothes back on and shoo her out? Spoon her sweetly? Did he sleep with her and deal with his morality later? What was the play here? He had no idea.

But apparently his body had other ideas because suddenly he was standing dead in front of her and Caroline was not the one who’d crossed the distance between them.

He breathed heavily and stared into her honey eyes. His breath caught when he felt her hands at his belt and then the zipper of his pants. She pushed him backwards and he stumbled. She gripped his shoulders and straight up dragged him to the ground.

They landed in a pile on the ground with Tre on his back and Caroline straddled over top of him. He’d never seen this sweet woman look quite so fierce. He felt like she’d gone off the deep end and was dragging him with her. And God, he wanted to be dragged. He so badly needed someone to push him around and tell him what was what. He didn’t want to know best. He wanted Caroline to know best. He wanted to get in the fucking passenger seat and get his dumbass hands off the wheel. He didn’t know anything. A big fat zero.

Sweetheart.

Deep inside of him that word clanked a drumstick against a tin can. It was trying to cause a ruckus, make a fuss. It was demanding to be heard. Trying to start a block party with all the rest of his feelings.

She straddled his knees and went to work again on his pants. Her normally gentle hands were rough on his body. She reached behind his zipper and found his cock, pulsing and growing in her hand. In a move that Tre would remember even in his next life, Caroline licked the palm of her hand and jacked him a few times.

As she crawled up his body, she took her other hand and swiped between own legs. When her fingers came away, they were glistening. Tre grabbed her hand by the wrist and brought those fingers to his mouth. He sucked her flavor off of her and groaned.

“Caroline, love,” he grunted and grabbed her by the hips as she straddled his hips, the bare skin of her thighs dragging against his jeans. “Slow down.”

“No,” she told him bluntly. She wrenched his hands from her hips and tangled their fingers. She slammed his hands down onto the ground, reared back and slicked her pussy over his cock. He hissed and she released one of his hands just long enough to reach back and line him up.

She pinned his hand again and sank down on him an inch. She couldn’t take any more, despite how wet she was.

“Love,” Tre grunted, trying to untangle his fingers from hers. “Let me soften you up. Let me touch you.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and swiveling her hips. There was a fierce, unforgiving look in her eye. She glared at him. “Hands off.”

She let go of him with one hand and brought her fingers to her clit. She stroked fast little circles over herself that Tre made a note of. He watched her give herself what she liked and commanded his hips not to move at any cost. She sank down another inch and then another. She was softening and accepting him. Taking him in. He breathed through his teeth, blinked his eyes fast. The images of her snapped across his consciousness. The harsh light, her utter nakedness. All his clothes. His cock slowly disappearing inside her.

When he was gone to the hilt into her, she grabbed his hands again and fully pinned him. She was at an angle over him, her breasts close enough to taste. But her eyes kept him from leaning up.

“Either you want me or you don’t. Do you understand?” she demanded.

“Caroline.”

“No,” she shook her head. “No arguing. I don’t want a caretaker, Tre. I don’t need another leash. Either you figure out how to see me as a whole person or you can’t have me.”

She lifted up and slammed back down on him, their bodies making an almost vulgarly wet slap. He hissed in a breath.

“I see you as a whole person.”

“No,” she shook her head again. “You see me as some perfect, delicate object that needs to be spoiled and protected. And you see yourself as some broken thing that resembles a man. But you don’t even see yourself as a full person.”

Her words were infecting him. The other sex they’d had had been cloudy and almost delirious. But this sex was in sharp focus. The harsh light, her burning eyes. Her fingers digging his hands into the floor. Lashing him in place with words he’d never have been able to listen to otherwise. The way she was riding him, harsh and punishing, was slamming him headfirst into reality.

This couldn’t have been pleasurable for her, he thought frantically. She was taking him so hard. No finesse, just force. But there was a flush on her cheeks and her eyes were having trouble focusing. She tried to say something but dropped her head back and made a breathless little moan instead. He felt her spasm on him, tightening.

“You are a person and I’m a person,” she gasped. “If we’re not meant to be, that’s fine. I’ll get over it.” He was sure that she would. He was not so sure about himself. “But don’t end this before it starts just because you’re not seeing it correctly.” Her breasts bounced above him, her body slammed into his. He could feel her wetness even through his jeans. “You have to see me, Tre. I’m so tired of being an object. I’m so tired of being invisible. You have to fully see me.”

And then she fully tightened, every single muscle in her body down to her eyelids. He gritted his teeth as he watched her go over the edge. A soft cry escaped her before she fell flat over him, her pussy pulsing around his cock. Their fingers were still tangled but her hands had gone lax. Tre pulled his hands from hers and traced down her arms, over her neck and back. He dragged his hands down her thighs and found the soles of her feet with his fingertips. She shivered against him and Tre could do nothing more than clamp his forearms over her back, fully clasping her to him.

“I see you,” he whispered, thrusting up into her soft heat. “I’m looking.” He gasped against the liquid-tight clasp of her. “I won’t stop,” he promised before he could stop himself. And then he found he didn’t want to stop himself.

“I won’t stop,” he chanted over and over as he fucked her from below, his feet planted on the ground and one of his palms flat over her ass to keep her tipped perfectly to take his thrusts.

She moaned and slipped her arms under his neck, hugging him fiercely and planting her temple on the floor next to his head. He tipped his face toward hers and their breaths slammed into one another. Her eyes were as hazy as his, half-lidded as he rhythmically fucked into her, sharp and desperate.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

“I won’t. I won’t. F-Fuck. Goddammit. I won’t.” He didn’t. He rode them fast and hard through the storm of it. He saw, in wonder, her eyes blow out, dilate hard with her pleasure. She dragged her clit tight against him as he changed his rhythm, pushing into him and grinding. She moaned and lunged forward to bite his lip. She bit him fiercely. Unexpectedly. There was anger and passion and ownership in that bite. It was with her weight on top of him, her teeth scoring emotion into his flesh, that Tre felt himself come loose from himself.

His orgasm fought its way out of him, and he went with it. He realized dimly that he was leaving something behind, even as he was shooting forward into something else. He came hard, deep inside Caroline, and had no idea where he was going to land.

 

***

 

They lay like that, in a weak puddle on the floor, for over an hour. His clothes were sticky and stuck to his damp body, she was naked and stretched out over him. They were wet with one another’s passion and completely wrung out.

Caroline thought that maybe he was sleeping, but she didn’t open her eyes to find out. It wasn’t until he started to harden inside of her that she realized he wasn’t sleeping at all. Her eyes sprang open to find him staring at her.

She gasped when his hips came forward just a scant inch, pushing further into her. Their lips met and their eyes stayed open.

This time, it was slow and sweet and sinuous. Nothing sharp or forceful. He held her tight, but his hands were all over her back, warm and gentle. Her fingers found their way to his hair but she didn’t tug. She merely searched out the warmth of his scalp. When they finished, jerking and gasping, their lips were pressed together but they weren’t quite kissing.

This time, Tre only let the afterglow last about thirty seconds before he hauled them upright. They both winced when wetness spread between them, but the wince turned into laughter. He set her on her feet, making sure she was steady before he started wrestling his clothes off of his sweaty, spent body.

“Jesus,” he murmured, shaking his head as he led them to his shower. “What the fuck just happened?”

“Not entirely sure,” she mumbled, her hair a rat’s nest and her eyes half dazed. He made quick work of showering them both, making a lot of guesses at what the hell to do with her hair. She was lazy and relaxed and too snoozy to give much instruction. So he pulled them both out a few minutes later, toweling them both off as gently and quickly as he could before he tumbled them into bed.

She was heavy, half over top of him, her breaths even and her eyes closed. He couldn’t sleep. He had one hand wide over her back and his other hand over one of her ass cheeks, his fingers pressed gently into her crease. It wasn’t sexual, he was just trying to hang onto her any way that he could.