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CHAPTER TWO: SEALING THE DEAL - PART TWO
Azel stared unseeing at the piles of bills on his table. When had it become so expensive just to live? Rent ate up almost half of his wages. Then there was food. Gas. Utilities. Internet. Phone bills. Streaming services. Clothes. Spending cash. Hell, he had a cleaning budget. He paid hard-earned money so he could do chores, like laundry and scrubbing his damned toilet. How did that make sense?!
Hell might have been, well… Hell, but some days, it seemed preferable to this. Things had been easier then. There’d been less responsibilities. Less worries. You did the job you were created to do. You did it well or got tortured for eternity. It was a shit deal, sure, but at least the rules were simple. He always knew what was expected of him. He never had to deal with this gnawing unease that every choice he made, every move he took, was wrong and slowly screwing up his future.
Now he worked a deadend job that anyone could do but few wanted to, especially for pay no one should be expected to live on.
Or had, anyway. Apparently, he couldn’t even manage to keep that job.
Ugh. Azel leaned back in his chair, his head hitting the old, stained wood of his secondhand furniture. What was he going to do now?
Startled by the sound, he glanced up at his ringing phone. His breath hitched with crackling expectation as he reached for it, already sure who was on the other end of the call. “Hello.”
There was a heavy pause for a moment, before Harri’s quiet voice said with shaky determination, “I want a straight answer. What would a deal with you look like? Exactly. I—” She huffed, the sound adorably flustered. “I want to know specifics.”
He smiled, the hushed, guilty words sounding like teasingly heady dirty talk. Specifics, huh? His girl wanted to get graphic, did she? He leaned back in his chair, holding the phone to his ear as he imagined her embarrassingly huddled over her own like a sinner with a secret. “Well, before, when I struck deals with humans, we’d draw up a contract.”
“A contract?” Her voice was muffled as if she were holding her hand over her mouth to hide her words from the world. “That sounds…” She hesitated, searching for the right word. He wondered what she’d settle on. Terrifying? Ominous? Ill-advised? “…binding.”
He let out a surprised laugh. Yeah, she wasn’t wrong. “Demonic deals are absolute. Once drawn, they cannot be annulled or amended. Both sides must fulfill the agreement, to the letter.”
“Or what?” She sounded both shocked and a little intrigued.
He shook his head, marveling at the unending curiosity of mortals. In demonic deals, that wasn’t a question you wanted answered. Hell was many things but, above all, it believed in ruthlessly adhering to rules. And unwaveringly punishing those who didn’t. Lucifer fell — lost everything and had been banished for all time — for breaking the rules; he’d never make that mistake again. Nor let those who worked for him to either.
Azel had seen what happened to humans who failed to live up to their contracts. Hell had special places for those people, unique tortures devised specifically for those who’d gambled with The Devil and lost. Ones that took the details of deals, meant to give a person a taste of their greatest desires, and twisted them into nightmares. Wanted riches and wealth? Cross a demon and you’d spend eternity having everything, from your luxuries to your fingernails, torn from you, until there was nothing left but your eyes to stare longingly at what you’d lost. Wish for legendary love or unparalleled passion? The human mind couldn’t imagine the endless ways to break a heart apart, piece by achingly precious piece.
And, for a demon who’d broken a contract… Azel had never personally known any who had, but he’d heard tales. And they were enough to horrify a denizen of Hell.
“But this wouldn’t be like those deals, right?” she said hurriedly. “You said you needed money, not my soul.”
That was right. This deal was different. Wasn’t demonic or sanctioned by Hell. No one was watching them, scrutinizing over the fine print and waiting for one of them to slip. This was a simple, rather mundane transaction.
“You’d said we could negotiate.”
Yes. Every agreement started with negotiations. What did each party want and how did they expect to get it. On comfortable ground again, Azel sat up straight, grabbing one of his bill statements and a pen. “Where did you want to start?” He began to write, the ink already on the paper swirling and changing into his neat, almost elegant handwriting, forming less from pressing pen to paper but rather through his own act of will and magic.
Incubus Contract Between Harriet Cathrine Wren and Azel Brimm
He stared at those words. That didn’t seem right. This might be a contract between a mortal and a demon but this wasn’t a demonic contract, and all that implied. There would be no soul exchange. No infernal accounting.
Just her and him.
So he scratched out the first word. But he couldn’t just leave it empty like that, right? It felt unspecified, unfinished. The dealmaker in him rankled at the blank space that begged to be filled.
Get Rid of Nate Contract? No, that wasn’t right. It was accurate, but not right, sounding more like a hitjob than a pretend boyfriend scenario.
Roleplay Contract? He shook his head. That made it sound fake. He supposed they were fake dating, but the contract would be real.
Relationship Contract? He tapped his pen against the table. That felt better. Still vaguer than he’d like but closer to the heart of the agreement. He wrote it out, curious to see the words all together. Looking at it in his precise and legible script, he tilted his head, feeling something in him settle.
Yes, that felt right.
Okay. “So you want my help to encourage your ex-boyfriend to move on by pretending to be your new boyfriend. Did you have a timeframe in mind?”
She made a thoughtful sound. “I’d want it to happen as soon as possible, but I suppose it would take however long it takes, right?” An almost melodic murmur hummed through her and into his ear. “How long does something like this usually take?”
Hell if he knew. His usual contracts were typically between mortals looking for unholy carnal satisfaction. They were for people who were looking for a love and lust that would literally burn them from the inside out. Who would willingly — eagerly, demandingly — trade their ordinary existence for a taste of something decadently transcendent.
With all humility, that usually lasted about a week before the human body simply gave out, unable to handle the heat and rush of an incubus’s passion.
But this?
How long could something like this take, really? “You said you’d pay me. How much are we talking?” He felt his face flush. Jeez, how pathetic was this? He had no problem wheeling and dealing with souls, holding life and death in his hands. In his expansive lifetime, he’d given and taken the most lascivious of pleasure devised by human or demon. But candidly discussing money? He winced. It felt so embarrassing. Dirty. Like he was some charity case or swindler or something, charging someone to date him.
“Well, first, do you even have time to do any of this? What hours do you work at the bar?”
He cringed. “Not a problem anymore.” He frowned at the stinging, bitter taste those words left on his tongue. “Let’s just say, I can be at your disposal at any time.”
She was silent for a long moment. “Is that why you agreed to this? Because you lost your job?”
He shut his eyes, feeling his skin flame with shame. He hated feeling desperate, but he needed this. He let out a harsh breath. “Like I said, this helps me as much as it helps you.” It’d give him a source of income while he looked for a new job and, in return, he’d make sure her off-hours were hassle-free. It was a transactional deal. An agreement for services rendered.
“Well, how much did you make at the bar?”
Azel searched her tone for judgment but found none, just curiosity. So he told her, calculating his wages and average tips together. She was quiet for a long time. So long, he felt compelled to break it down for her, ramble about numbers — mentally trying to math out precisely the bare minimum he needed to make ends meet — to maybe find the right figure for her. To tally up the total of his worth. He shut his eyes in a disgusted grimace, hating this feeling.
“Okay.”
His head popped up, surprised. Really? “Okay?”
Sounding more sure, she coughed. “That sounds fair. I’ll pay you that much a day until our deal is done. However long it takes.”
The demon in him smirked at the loophole she’d left him. If he wanted to, he could drag this out forever, keep collecting on the cushiest of gigs. He blinked and stared out his window at the now dark night. “We should put a time limit on this. If I can’t complete the objective in that time, our deal should end and some compensation should be paid back to you.” The words felt like gravel in his throat, but he couldn’t stop them.
What was he doing?! A demon may have to adhere strictly to every deal, but that didn’t mean they had to draw up fair contracts. Wieldy, winding bargains that ultimately favored Hell were always a demon’s primary goal and profound pride. In his lifetime, Azel had cheated more than his share of humans.
Why did it feel so wrong this time? With this human? “A month?” That should be plenty of time. To both shoo Nate away and find a new job. A good and fair timeframe.
He held his breath as she mulled it over. “Okay. A month.” Again, he felt something inside him slide and click into place, making it somehow easier to breathe. What was it about this woman that made him feel like that? She sighed, the relieved sound a familiar echo that mirrored his own feelings. “So where do we start?”
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