Free The Devil You Know by Mike Carey Page B

surface of her skin—but she whimpered all the same. She tightened her hold on me, controlling my desire, and I growled against her throat and thrust against her involuntarily like some animal in heat. She turned her head and said in the shivery cup of my ear, “I want you, Nick. Tonight. I want you to fuck me.”
    “I’d rather love you.”
    “First fuck me, then love me.”
    Her eyes looked different when I pulled away. Wilder. Older. They were daemon eyes, which are different then human eyes. Daemon eyes see things that human beings cannot. They see beyond the Veil, beyond the edges of the universe. They see the Old Gods, the ones that came before the One God. They look different as a consequence.
    I undid Vivian’s blouse, trying not to tear it from her body in my haste. Under the shirt she wore an exquisite black lace bra that made her skin glow like pearl. Something about the contrast of the black lace underwear under all that conservative, studious clothing made me want her even more. It made me want to hold her and protect her and possess her. I told her how beautiful and fuckable she was as I worked first on the shirt and then on the bra. I told her other things, perverse things, things you don’t say to your girlfriend or wife. I talked to her like some common gutter slut, like some fuckthing, but the more I talked, the more excited she became. I’d managed to undo the front closure of the bra. Her nipples were pierced through with tiny silver barbells. I lowered my head to her breast and took one in my mouth, hard, like I meant to hurt her. She grunted and sank her fingernails into my hair. But the angle was all wrong for this kind of pleasure making. I turned and lifted her so she was sitting on the counter in front of me. That put us closer to eye level.
    She said things to me then to encourage me, filthy things that nice girls don’t say. Her eyes shone savagely. She wrangled the pullover off me and ran her fingertips over my ribs. Her nails left angry red marks behind. I shivered and ducked my head so I could turn my greedy affections back to her pretty, swollen nipples. I wondered if the piercings hurt. I bit and suckled them until she gasped for breath and opened her legs to me. She gripped my ass, and dragged me against her until my knees hit the front of the cupboards. I groaned at the pressure of my erection pressing into her belly, at the way she commanded me, demanded of me, controlled me. I had never met a girl like Vivian before. She had the most beautiful filthy mouth, the most vicious claws. “Nick,” she hissed in my ear as she undid my jeans, none too gently. “Now, Nick, now .”
    Under her skirt her bikini underwear was black lace like the bra. I hooked it with my fingers and slid it down just far enough for me to find my way inside of her. The first hard thrust caught Vivian unawares. She arched her back and screamed from the pain of the impact. She was tight and I was big, especially at that moment. My father’s gift to me. The angels have no genitalia at all, but the higher demons are hung like horses. She was wet but I had given her no warning. And anyway, there was no way for someone to prepare themselves for that. I stopped, locked deep inside of her, unable to move, and waited to see if she would reject me, if she would fight me.
    Vivian squirmed and grunted and sweated through the pain, trying to acclimate herself to my size. I put a hand between us. There was some blood. She wasn’t a human virgin, I’m sure, but she had been a daemon virgin until that moment. Her mouth worked for a moment, and then she finally said, “Jesus, Nick.”
    “Do you want me to stop?”
    Vivian looked at me with feral catlike eyes. “No. I want you to fuck me, Nick. I want you to fuck me hard.”
    I fucked her hard. It wasn’t lovemaking. It wasn’t even sex. Human beings engage in sex. Animals have a rut. I rutted with Vivian, and all that Brownswick had said in the woods came back to me in