Possessive Love #5
Love comes in all shapes and sizes. And sometimes it has horns and a tail.
Jacob’s in love. Again. Only, his future husband likes muscular men, and Jacob, well… isn’t. A few sessions at the gym, and he’ll have the leather-clad motorcycle courier eating out of his hand, though. And no, he won’t switch his attentions to his hot new personal trainer. Honestly, he won’t.
Valvach’s not your typical demon, preferring books over torture. Which goes down about as well as you’d expect in Hell. A move to the surface gives him the opportunity to start anew. To stay, he’s going to need to make a friend, someone to help him blend in. And sweet, curly-haired Jacob is the perfect candidate. If he can’t lick him, he can at least spend time with him.
When friendship blossoms into a passion that knows no bounds, Jacob and Val believe they’ve found the perfect match in each other. However, Hell isn’t so accommodating, and they find themselves with a fight on their hands to prevent being torn apart and relegated to different planes of existence.
Exercising a Demon is a MM paranormal romantic comedy featuring a demon who’s more of a lover than a fighter, a human who might finally have found the man/demon of his dreams, steamy sexual liaisons involving a tail, and a sweet demon/human pairing who accept each other for who they are and embrace each other’s quirks.
PROLOGUE
VALVACH
Screams permeated the air as I waited for my father to grant me permission to enter his office. An especially loud scream had my fingers curling into my palms and my tail swishing backwards and forwards. I didn’t blame the person screaming. They hadn’t asked to end up in Hell, and if there was one person who could relate to that, it was me. Although, if it was who I thought it was emitting the blood-curdling sounds, the six women he’d killed over a period of a few months should have given him a slight inkling that no pearly gates were going to be waiting for him.
Still, I’d never met a newbie who wasn’t surprised to find themselves outside the gates of Hell shortly after shuffling off the mortal coil. Even the religious people spent a few minutes in stunned silence when they realized where they were. That silence didn’t last long once they got their personal torture timetable, though.
“Come in!”
I pushed the door open and swallowed a groan at my mother being in attendance. This conversation would be difficult enough with just my father. Satan knows I’d been working myself up to having it for weeks. My mother being present, though, that brought a whole other level of challenge to it. I’d been hoping to get my father onside before my mother got so much of a whiff of what was going on. That plan had just gone up in flames.
Mirrolok, the third, gave the papers on his desk a quick shuffle before looking up as I entered his office. Cursed Satan! His horns were shiny and had just the right amount of curve to them. Mine always felt inferior in comparison. My brothers’ horns were rather more spectacular, too. If it weren’t for the fact that my mother worshipped the ground my father walked on, I might have suspected her of straying sixteen months before my birth—a demon’s gestation period being a lot longer than that of a human. I knew that because I’d been reading up on some stuff.
My father waved a hand at the chair on the opposite side of his desk. “Sit, son.”
I threw a quick glance at my mother to ascertain her mood. Bangror looked just as beautiful as she always did, my parents the perfect picture of demon health and vigor, their scarlet-red skin gleaming. “If you’re busy, I can come back later?” Please say you’re busy. I’ve changed my mind. I can wait another decade before having this conversation.
“Not at all,” my father said with a smile. “Actually, it’s good timing. We were just talking about you.”
“You were?” I sat more heavily than I’d intended, the chair groaning under my considerable weight. I might not have inherited my father’s perfect horns, but I had his muscular physique. The fact that they’d been talking about me didn’t bode well, though. Not when I prided myself on keeping a low profile. My mother and father shared a look, and I tried not to grimace, pulling my tail onto my lap and arranging it neatly while I regained my composure. “What were you saying?”
My mother pulled a chair alongside my father’s and sat. “A few things have come to our attention, Valvach.”
My fingers dug into my thigh. “Such as?”
“Such as you not completing the jobs assigned to you. This is a family business, and we all need to pitch in. Brostraxol and Izrimoth complete all their tasks with gusto, while you…” She let out a little sigh.
At the mention of my brothers, my perfect demonic brothers, who never put a foot wrong, I raised my chin a little higher. “I do my jobs.”
My father leaned forward in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of him. “How was the rack last weekend, Valvach? Did you make your quota of screams?”
I shifted in my chair, my mother immediately zeroing in on one of my nervous habits. “Don’t play with your tail, darling. You’ll make it sore.”
I pushed it away from me, the end hitting the floor with a thwack. I spent the next thirty seconds pretending it hadn’t hurt, even though my parents knew full well how sensitive a tail was, given they had one of their own. “I don’t like the rack,” I muttered.
“Speak up,” my father said.
I sat up straighter. “I said… I don’t like the rack.”
My mother frowned, either thrown by my honesty, or confused by how someone could dislike the rack. Possibly both. “What do you mean? What is there to not like about it?”
I held back a shudder with difficulty as I pictured the torture rack and what it did to the humans scheduled to experience it, which was everyone at least once a month. “It makes them all… stretchy.”
“I see,” my mother said, one of her horns twitching. “That’s what it’s supposed to do.”
“Yeah, I know that, but… yeah.” It was hard to put my distaste into words. I was a demon. I was supposed to get off on seeing people’s faces contorted into pain. I just didn’t. And there was only so long you could fake it convincingly.
My father pulled a piece of paper in front of him and leaned forward to squint at it. “You’ve been scheduled on the rack once a month for the last two years. Why are we only hearing about your dislike of it now?”
I gave a shrug worthy of a moody teenager before deciding that I might as well tell the truth, that as a lead-up to what I’d wanted to talk about, anyway, I wasn’t likely to get a better opportunity. “Brostraxol has been doing it.” Brostraxol was the oldest of my two brothers. “He likes the rack.”
“Everyone likes the rack,” my mother said. “Everyone except for you, that is. The rack is fun.” I retrieved my tail and picked at it again. At least until my mother’s gaze dropped to it and I quickly relinquished it once more. She let out a long and dramatic sigh. “Okay. You don’t like the rack. That’s not a problem.”
“No?” There was no holding back my note of surprise.
“No,” she said. “There are plenty of other jobs you can do apart from the rack.” She thought for a moment. “Skin flaying?”
I pulled a face. “It’s very messy. The bits of skin get everywhere. I end up spending the evening picking them out from between my toes.”
“Whipping?” my father suggested.
“Too bloody,” I said.
“Force-feeding?” That was my mother piping up again, the look on her face one of hope.
“I don’t like vomit.”
“Immersion in boiling water?”
“It smells terrible. And that’s the same for burning people alive before you suggest that.”
My father rubbed at his jaw, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “What exactly have you been doing around here, Valvach?”
I shrank in my chair under his steely glare. I guess the game really was up. “Not a lot. Brostraxol and Izrimoth do most of it for me. I usually just read.”
“Read,” my parents both chorused, disbelief present in their voices.
“Read what?” my father asked once he’d recovered from his shock. “Please tell me it’s hardcore porn?”
I dropped my gaze from his, my red skin gaining another level of color beneath his scrutiny. “Last time Zeggal was summoned to the surface, he brought some books back with him.”
“What sort of books?” my mother asked in a low voice.
Shit! I shouldn’t have mentioned Zeggal’s name. As demons went, he was one of the good ones. While he enjoyed torture, there were a lot of other things he also enjoyed. The books he’d brought back from the surface had contained all manner of interesting things: elaborate paintings and sculptures; buildings with floors that showed no sign of a bloodstain; museums, and parks, and… The list was almost endless. “Books with photos in. And books with stories. They’re harmless.”
“They don’t sound harmless,” my father said. “Not if they’ve got you shirking your responsibilities.”
“I don’t shirk my responsibilities to read. I shirk them because I don’t like doing them.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t like torturing people.” There. I’d said it, and the world hadn’t ended. “I hate the screams. I hate the blood. And most of all, I hate them trying to convince me they don’t deserve to be here. Because, some of them probably don’t, like that guy who defrauded a multinational corporation. They could spare the money. I know that because he gave me a full financial breakdown the last time I buried him alive.”
My mother let out another sigh, this one even longer and more heartfelt than the previous one. It was her special sigh, the one that said she might love me, but that some of my behavior was distinctly trying. “You could be a greeter, I suppose.”
The word “greeter” was misleading. The greeter’s job was to deliver a short, sharp shock at the gates of Hell, to break the news to newcomers about where they were, and then debase them using any means possible, including calling them names and using physical violence. “I don’t think I’d be very good at that,” I said. Before either of my parents could comment, I broached my reason for coming here. “I don’t want to be an embarrassment to you, to either of you, so I was thinking I might be better elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” My father’s brow wrinkled. “Do you mean the east side of Hell?”
I sat forward in my chair, didn’t fiddle with my tail, and did my best to sound confident. “No, not the east side of Hell. I meant the surface.”
“The surface?” My father repeated the words slowly, as if he’d never heard them before, and then started to laugh. Between splutters of laughter, he turned to my mother and said it again. “The surface. Did you hear that? He thinks he could live on the surface.”
My mother, at least, didn’t laugh, her expression one of concern. “That’s not possible, Valvach.”
“Why not?” Indignation rose in me. I hadn’t expected them to like the idea, but I’d hoped they’d consider it for longer than two seconds. And instead, they were treating it like it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke. I was serious.
“Because… you have to be summoned,” my mother said. “And even then, you can’t stay. You don’t just go to the surface.”
“Why not?” I challenged. “Who decided that?”
“Well, Lucifer, I assume,” my mother said with a slight frown. “He sets the rules.”
I turned my focus to my father, my expression pleading. “You meet with Lucifer regularly. You could get him to agree to it.”
Before he could respond, my mother came around the desk to perch on the edge. She took hold of my hands and stared into my eyes. “You know I love you, Valvach, don’t you? You’re my youngest and you’ve always been more sensitive than your brothers.” I nodded. There was no point in denying it, especially coming on the back of me admitting that I didn’t like to torture people. “That’s why I’m going to be very blunt with you, because I love you, and I want the best for you. Even if we could get Lucifer to agree, as some sort of experiment, there’s a whole host of practicalities I don’t think you’ve given nearly enough consideration to.”
“Such as?”
“You’d have to maintain a human form for long periods of time,” my father said. He waved a hand up and down my body. “You couldn’t walk around on the surface like that, or the screams you hear here would be nothing in comparison.”
I lifted my arm, my mother letting go of one hand so I could, and stared at my cherry-red skin. I was a little paler than my father. Smaller horns. Paler. The comparison was never favorable apart from my build. “So… I’d learn to do that. I’m sure it would just take practice.”
“What would you eat?” my mother said. “You can’t just survive on human food, you know. We need to feed on the suffering of others. You say you don’t want to torture people here. Do you think it would be easier on the surface? You can’t just walk up to people and torture them. There are rules up there about that sort of thing. That’s how people end up here.”
Frustration became a raging beast in my chest. I’d known they’d try to talk me out of it, but I hadn’t expected their arguments to be so valid. It might be true that there were some aspects I hadn’t given a lot of thought to, but if you tried hard enough, you could always find problems with any situation. “I’ll find a way. And if I fail, what’s the worst that can happen?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll come home again. And then I promise I’ll try harder.”
“Why, the surface?” my father asked. “What are you expecting to find there?”
I’d asked myself that same question a hundred times, ever since the idea of going there had first taken root. No one was going to summon me, so if I wanted to experience it, I had to take matters into my own hands. “I don’t fit in here. It’s time to try something new.”
My mother squeezed my hand. “Darling, I hate to break it to you, but you won’t fit in there either. You won’t last a week.”
I swallowed down my hurt. “Maybe not, but I should at least get to try.” I raised pleading eyes to my father. “Will you at least ask Lucifer, please?”
My mother and father exchanged another look, and when my father nodded, I couldn’t hold back my grin. Mirrolok, the third, could be a very persuasive demon. I was going to the surface; I knew I was. And I was going to carve out a new life for myself and find the fulfillment I never could here.
H.L Day grew up in the North of England. As a child she was an avid reader, spending lots of time at the local library or escaping into the imaginary worlds created by the books she read. Her grandmother first introduced her to the genre of romance novels, as a teenager, and all the steamy sex they entailed. Naughty Grandma! Romance novels were forgotten for a while when real life got in the way: university, clubbing, work, moving to London, and more work.
When life settled down (slightly) H.L Day stumbled upon the world of m/m romance. She remained content to read other people’s books for a while, before deciding to give it a go herself.
Now, she’s a teacher by day and a writer by night. Actually, that’s not quite true—she’s a teacher by day, procrastinates about writing at night and writes in the school holidays, when she’s not continuing to procrastinate. After all, there’s books to read, places to go, people to see, the gym to visit, films to watch. So many things to do—so few hours to do it in. Every now and again, she musters enough self-discipline to actually get some words onto paper—sometimes they even make sense and are in the right order.
Exercising a Demon
Possessive Love Series
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