Demon x male witch - WIP Chapter Two (sfw) (Patreon)

Hello friends! Surprise!! Another WIP for you of Demon's story. I know you wanted Oats the dad-bod kelpie too, and I promise he's not been forgotten about, but Demon's story is written up to Chapter Four at this point, so I figured I'd spend a couple of hours editing this for you tonight, and post it on Patreon as a WIP.

I really hope you enjoy this - I think it's one of my favourite things I've ever written, and it's dedicated to everyone who has wished for their own demon (or equivalent!) to come and be their fake romantic partner to get them out of an awkward ex situation... You're seen...!

Content: pining, hiding in a bathroom to avoid an awkward encounter with an ex, fake boyfriends trope, and lots of fluff. Seriously, watch your teeth, folks. It's sweet. We also meet Coco and Țepeș a bit, and there are some other cameos from the Full Moon Motorcycles gang!

Wordcount: 6470 (!)

(Chapter One here) 

Demon needn’t have worried about his Ducati.

By the time he’d done a U-turn, reached the t-junction at the end of Grosvenor Street, and turned right, the bike’s familiar roar splintered the peace of the night loudly enough to set off two car alarms as he passed, and he laughed, leaning lower and sending the bike practically flying. Either he’d left the spell's radius of influence, or the witch had relented. Either way, he was relieved that the others wouldn’t have to know about his feisty little witch just yet. After the shit he’d said to both Pumpkin and Țepeș about their getting involved with a human though, he knew he deserved it.

As his mind followed the path of those thoughts, he shook his head like he was trying to shake raindrops off the visor. That feisty little witch was not his. He didn’t even know the witch’s damned name, nor did he want to.

Except…

… he did.

He wanted that witch’s name in his mouth; in his head.

Yes, he wanted to know him, but Demon also ached to know the intimate feel of the witch’s magic, and maybe even to have it drew on his own. Witches took all sorts of familiars to regulate and manage their magic, and some even took demons…

Maybe — no.

Fuck.

No.

He knew what that kind of yoke felt like, and he had fought every day to keep humans’ attention off him precisely because of it. But that yoke had been slotted unwillingly over him before. What if this time he wanted it?

No.

Fuck. No.

The Ducati screamed beneath him and he realised he’d hit neutral instead of second like a fucking noob. He ground his teeth and focused on the bike and on the road.

He had planned to go back to Full Moon Motorcycles to see if any of the others were around — some, like Pumpkin and Barbie, didn’t really sleep, after all — but instead he took the motorway away from town, and rode until the pastel wash of dawn lit up the sky behind the nearby rolling hills.

If that pink hue was almost the exact colour of his witch’s rosebud mouth, he’d soon be turning his back on it to ride home anyway.

A week passed, and Demon’s mood was tangibly so much worse than usual over those next seven days that Țepeș finally punched him on the shoulder to get his attention as they drew their two Ducatis up beside each other outside Hank’s shop.

As the vampire’s gloved hand connected none-too-gently with his right shoulder, Demon snarled openly at him, rounding on his best friend and baring his teeth beneath the visor, snapping like a cornered dog. He felt like a cornered dog, though it wasn’t anyone’s fault but his.

Adi tactfully took her leave of the pair of them, the delicate little human sliding off Țepeș’ pillion seat and kissing his shoulder as she passed. “I’ll see you inside?” she asked, and the vampire nodded.

Țepeș didn’t usually join them for morning rides, given how lethally dangerous the sunlight was to him, but Adi was there, and if Adi wanted Țepeș to be somewhere, there he was. It was nauseating. For a former SAS solider who was built like a brick shithouse, Țepeș was undeniably soft and squishy beneath all that protective leather now. Certainly where Adi was concerned anyway. They’d just been lucky that Adi was cool with a group of bikers full of non-humans. Demon was sure that Țepeș was feeding from her now and again too, which was a whole new level of intimacy and trust that he couldn’t quite fathom.

Țepeș jerked his helmeted head upwards in a ‘what’s going on with you?’ gesture and spread his hands to drive the question home. He also directed his helmet pointedly at the pillion seat which was still very much in evidence on a bike which had never once seen a passenger in the entire time Demon had been riding with Hank’s crew at Full Moon Motorcycles.

The sparking, skittering unease that had been crackling around inside Demon like lightning for seven whole days now threatened to come roaring out of him, but he leashed it with an effort and bit it all back, breathing heavily. Țepeș didn’t deserve his petty irritation. The vampire was the closest thing he had now to a best friend, and he wasn’t about to throw it all away over some human he barely knew.

“It’s nothing,” Demon muttered into the cushioning of his helmet, but Țepeș wasn’t having any of it. When Demon made to swing his leg over his bike and stump away into the shop to avoid talking about it, Țepeș revved his bike insistently, angrily. Deafeningly. He didn't talk often, and Demon had only heard his scratchy, damaged voice a handful of times, but man, he found ways to be expressive when he needed to be.

“Let it go, Țepeș,” he said heavily, shaking his head.

Before they’d set off earlier, he’d promised Hank that he’d stay for coffee and a bit of a chat with everyone after the morning’s ride, and unfortunately, that oath now bound him as securely as a perfect chalk summoning circle. Instead, all he wanted was to get back to his apartment, shed his clothes and his glamour like snakeskin, and simply… wallow.

A gentle hand closed around his bare forearm and he looked down to find Coco standing on his left beside her yellow Honda. Her thick, wild, wavy brown hair blew into her dark brown eyes with a sudden gust of wind and she laughed and pushed it back with her other hand without letting go of him.

Despite being a demon herself, Coco had always been gentle with him. Apparently it wasn’t in the succubus’ nature to get territorial, and she had been something of a steadying influence on him since she’d joined Hank’s little family. She’d found companionship with another of her kind, though she fed on desire while he fed on pain, and he’d learned to be gentler and more accommodating. She’d smoothed his sharp edges.

He’d taught her to ride a motorbike late at night in the open expanse of the Park & Ride car park on the edge of town, and for the longest time, he’d thought perhaps he was in love with her. Turned out that the Greeks knew what they were talking about when they gave a different name to all the various kinds of love, but he hadn’t known there was anything other than lust back then. After that, they’d settled into an easy, platonic friendship.

He looked down at her and felt a few of his raw edges smooth over again.

“Ok?” she asked in that soft, caramel voice.

“Yeah,” he rasped, closing his eyes for a moment against the force of the empathy that lurked in their depths.

“You know we’re here for you too, right?” she said in a low voice after a long moment. “You protected me when that jerk tried to change lanes without looking this morning, and you battered that woman’s mirror off when she clipped my elbow, but you don’t always have to be the one protecting us. You can talk to us.”

“I know,” he croaked. “I know. I’m just…” he waved his index finger around near his temple to indicate the turmoil in his brain. “Figuring something out.”

“Ok,” she smiled, and stepped back. “I just wanted to tell you we love you too, Demon.”

Something choked in his throat and he fought off a huge wash of emotion.

Before Full Moon Motorcycles, he’d never dreamed of having anything close to a family. He might not remember his time in Hell with much clarity now, but he did remember fighting all the time, maintaining constant vigilance, and the unceasing struggle to keep that hard-won power over his Princedom, while here… here he was allowed just to exist. He didn’t need to maintain a Princedom of torture and punishment just to feed his energy and his magic and his twenty-six legions. The city simply offered it up to him for the taking.

Even when he’d come to the mortal realm though, he’d been alone. He’d been tricked too, let his guard down, and he’d come way too close to paying for it. Never again. But now he had a mismatched family of people who knew what it was like to live on the edge, to hide who you were, and to have to watch your back. They watched each other’s backs. That idea had taken a lot of getting used to, and sometimes it still seemed hard to grasp.

They loved him though, and he was allowed to love them back.

Exhaling, Demon pocketed the keys before pulling the much shorter girl into a big hug and laying the cheek of his helmet on the top of her head. He cupped the back of her head briefly in one, gloved hand and then released her, swallowing thickly to suppress the tears that welled unseen behind his visor. He knew she’d taste the salt tears in his aura all the same, and she’d pick out from his roiling mess of emotions that he was grateful to her. He didn’t have to say any of it out loud.

He stepped up the curb and found Țepeș standing there regarding him. Then he pulled his hands wide into an indignant little ‘aw, come on’ kind of gesture.

“Yeah, well, maybe you should have hugged me first instead of punching the stuffing out of me,” Demon snipped as he carefully drew off his helmet and shook his hair back into some kind of order around his horns. Țepeș let his head and his arms droop in comical disappointment at his ‘failure’.

Demon ducked into a sidelong hug with him though, and he felt Țepeș laughing silently under his helmet, so when it was over he knocked him on the top of his lid with his knuckles and pushed him away with a hand to the centre of his chest.

“Boys!” Coco called as she came up the curb behind them. “God, you’re worse than puppies. Inside, both of you, before your roughhousing pulls Țepeș’ bally off and he gets a third degree sunburn. I would not like to answer to Adi if I were you…”

“Yes, ma’am,” Demon joked, and shot Țepeș a look. “You good?”

Țepeș nodded, but he reflexively checked the neck of his black balaclava all the same, then waved them inside ahead of him and they all filed in; Demon first, Coco second, Țepeș last.

Inside the shop, Hank had his arm slung affectionately over his nephew’s shoulders, both werewolves looking a little tired after the full moon the previous night, and Ninja was making themself more comfortable in a quiet corner after maintaining their humanoid shape for the morning’s ride. The mimic melted slowly out of the sleeve of their leather suit and curled up in the shadows as little more than a pile of slightly iridescent, black gloop. When Hot Stuff saw them, he slipped out from under his uncle’s arm and placed one of the cupcakes someone had brought on the polished concrete in front of the mimic, who mustered a happy thumb’s up from their black puddle, and then proceeded to envelope the little pink cake in a tide of shimmering black slime before retreating once more.

Pumpkin and Pickle were doing some new dance together for their respective social media pages while Barbie filmed them. Sometimes she would deliberately get Demon in the frame too, since their followers seemed to adore his chiselled arm muscles. He didn’t have his helmet on that day though, and Barbie knew that he did not want his face — glamoured or otherwise — appearing anywhere online, so she kept the focus on the two prancing around in synchrony on the far side of the shop like a pair of spring lambs on crack.

Țepeș had already joined Adi in the two seconds he’d been inside, and as Demon meandered idly over to join them with his hands in his pockets, he found himself wondering what his witch was up to. The weather that day had been gorgeous so far. Maybe he’d gone out.

With a glowing fondness in his chest and a rueful smile on his lips that he’d never have admitted to, Demon watched Pumpkin and Pickle and Barbie, and Hot Stuff and Coco, and Adi and Țepeș, and he hoped that his witch had some friends like these to take his mind off his shithead ex-boyfriend.

The thought had barely finished crossing his mind when Demon’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

Frowning, he drew it out and saw an unknown number on the screen. Something made him answer it all the same. “Yeah?”

A soft, rasping exhale sounded first, followed by the sound of someone swallowing nervously. “Demon?”

Demon almost dropped the phone. As if he’d called him with his mind, there he was. “Yeah? It’s my little witch, right?”

A fractious, anxious kind of laugh bubbled out of him and he snorted. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“What’s wrong?” The witch almost sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “Are you hurt?”

After another few, quietly-panting breaths that had Demon pacing back and forth across the polished concrete floor, the witch said in a hushed, slightly shaky voice, “No. I’m fine. I’m not hurt. It’s… fuck it’s so stupid really. I shouldn’t have called you. I —”

With the horrible suspicion he was about to hang up, Demon blurted, “Wait, where are you?”

From the reverberation, the witch sounded like he was in a bathroom.

Demon turned away from the two goofing around on the other side of the shop and ducked back out of the front door and onto the deserted side street. “Sweetheart, where are you?”

At the endearment he’d never meant to use, the witch gave a soft little exhale and then said in a much more resigned tone, “Don’t laugh, but I’m hiding in a cafe bathroom because I don’t want to go out there… He’s there with all his buddies and… I just feel so shit. I… I thought maybe…”

“I’m coming. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you. It’ll have to be on my bike though.”

“Shit, you don’t have to do that,” he said. “I just wanted to hear your voice again. You seemed… like you were on my side in that alley, you know?”

“I am on your side,” he growled. “That shithead hurt you and he thought your reaction to being betrayed was funny. He’ll get what’s coming to him in this life or the next.”

“You should scare me, you know?” the witch said after a little, hitched inhale. “Demons aren’t supposed to care about humans.”

“I’ve spent a fair bit of time up here with your kind, you know? I even have a couple of human friends.” He’d said it with a wry twist to his tone, and was gratified to hear the witch laugh. “Seriously though, where are you?”

The pause that followed seemed awkwardly reluctant, and, sure enough, Demon shook his head when he heard the answer. “Kickstand Cafe…”

“You went to a biker cafe when your ex is a biker?”

“They do really good pastries, ok?” the witch fired back, though he kept his voice low enough that it came out as an indignant hiss. “I spent all morning helping someone in my coven with one hell of a rite, and I needed the sugar and caffeine. Andy never usually came here til late afternoon on the weekends, but he must have changed his schedule or something. Or I guess I never knew where he really was anyway. If he was busy banging her when he was supposed to be ‘working on his bike’, I mean,” he added, his tone turning acrid as cold coffee grounds.

“Hush, I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“You’re nearby?”

“I’ll be there in five.”

“That doesn’t answer —”

“Stay put.”

“Bossy, aren’t you?”

“Depends on the situation,” he said, and hung up before he said something inappropriate about actually being a switch.

He hauled open the door to the shop again and crossed to where Hank was talking quietly to Adi about how they were planning to swap out Pickle’s stock exhaust, and the werewolf caught the tension in Demon’s shoulders instantly. He laid his hand on Adi’s shoulder and said, “Just a second, honey,” and came over to meet Demon a few feet away. “What is it?”

“I gave you my word I’d stay for coffee after the ride, but…”

“I release you from your oath,” Hank said immediately, knowing Demon’s predicament, and Demon felt the knot of it slide loose in his chest. “What’s serious enough that you’re taking off like this though, kiddo?” he asked.

The fact that Demon was technically many centuries older than Hank meant nothing to the soft, fatherly werewolf, and to be fair, Demon did actually look like a man in his late twenties or early thirties to most people. Beneath the glamour, he had that scarlet skin and those creamy-gold horns and red eyes, but outwardly, he was a six foot (or thereabouts), tanned, dark haired and dark eyed young man. The tail had always proved trickier to glamour, though mostly a well-tailored pair of jeans did the trick. It wasn’t like he was falling into bed with humans on the regular.

“A friend called and I said I’d go check on him.”

Hank looked curious, but he nodded. Demon didn’t have friends outside of Full Moon Motorcycles, and Hank knew it.

“Listen, can I borrow a spare lid? I don’t know if I’ll need to give him a lift or not.”

“Course you can. You know where the spares live.”

“Thanks, Hank.”

The others called Hank ‘Dad’ for how he looked after them, but Demon had never been able to do that comfortably. Not that it bothered Hank in the least.

The werewolf just nodded and turned to go back over to Adi, but before he did, Demon mumbled, “Don’t… Don’t tell the others?”

Hank narrowed his brown eyes, but he nodded again, if a little less willingly this time, and Demon grabbed a spare helmet and headed out. He kept it over his wrist by the strap since he had nowhere to store it on his bike while he flew through the city in a red blur, hastened by a combination of magic and supernatural reflexes. He was at the Kickstand in under four minutes.

A row of motorbikes was lined up at an angle in the parking bay outside, from modest, 125cc bikes bearing ‘L’ plates to a few big litre bikes and almost everything in between. Demon spotted a white Suzuki and wondered if it was the shithead ex’s. Without proof, he wasn’t prepared to make the kickstand mysteriously give way, or make the battery or tyres mysteriously flat. Anyway, his witch was waiting for him inside, so he killed the engine of his Panigale, which had drawn more than one person’s attention, and secured it with a quick curse against theft while he was still astride it.

The Kickstand Cafe was not one that Hank’s family tended to visit, mostly because it was on the other side of town. They preferred to ride out into the countryside, to where their favourite haunt — Elusive Neutral — sat nestled in the lea of some heather-clad hills. The Kickstand was a squat, single-storey shed, decked in fashionable, black, charred-timber cladding with a red, corrugated roof, and because it sat right on the road, it almost seemed to be more about showing off your bike to passers by than it was about enjoying the company in a nice setting.

Still, the smell of coffee pervading the atmosphere told Demon that his witch was right about the quality of the food and drink they produced, and he made a note to drop by more often if he was passing that way.

The place had a few picnic-style benches and tables out the front on a rather uninspired patch of weedy gravel, with some neglected plants in rusty oil drum containers dotted about for some shabby-chic ambiance. Despite the fact that it was a nippy, mid-autumn day even with the sunshine, there were a number of bikers arranged around the tables, laughing and joking with each other over snacks and steaming drinks, and the place had a relaxed, chilled-out kind of feel. Even with the presence of his witch’s ex tainting the vibe like a steaming fresh turd in a rose bed.

Demon drew off his helmet and maintained the strongest glamour he could muster to hide the horns and the red eyes and skin. Since he still had the pillion seat on his bike, he looped the spare helmet through the otherwise-useless little strap on the pillion seat’s cushion and secured his own beside it, adding another little spell to make doubly sure they’d stay put. That done, he turned to regard the cafe.

Sure enough, there on his left, lounging on the wooden picnic bench beside the path up to the cafe’s door, Demon spotted his witch’s shitty ex out of the corner of his eye. Andy had watched Demon pull up on his Ducati with a curious and slightly wary expression, so Demon knew that Andy half-recognised him at least, but he suspected that the man couldn’t quite place him. His powerful glamour often had that effect on completely non-magical humans. Made it useful for evading traffic officers, more often than not.

Disregarding him completely, Demon strode up the path and felt more people’s heads turning as he passed.

“Fucking hipster,” someone hissed, eyeing the faded black jeans he was wearing and the white t-shirt that offered no protection either. The short black gloves and helmet were the only bits of biker gear he owned, and they were either for the aesthetic or to help his glamour. The rubber soles of his black ankle boots struck the stepping stones with a decisive thud on each stride, and he pushed open the door into the warm, cosy, interior without looking around.

He didn’t pause by the counter on his left to order anything, and instead he strode with a scowl on his face down the line of tables on his right towards the back where the toilets were signposted. No one stopped him or tried to make him order drinks before using the facilities, and he didn’t make any excuses.

When he opened the door to the gents, he found his witch standing in the small room with his hands braced on the side of the sink, head bowed. His black hair fell loose to his jawline that day, and Demon heard his hummingbird heart beating frantically at the same time as the noxious mix of anxiety and shame hit his nostrils. He was across the room and at his side in two strides.

His witch looked up sharply, and his emotions went from distressed to delighted and slightly disbelieving in a flickering, dizzying rush that rolled over Demon’s tongue like the bubbles in champagne.

“You came,” the witch breathed, staring up at him.

“I’m here. You ok?”

He nodded. “Feeling kind of stupid, but —”

“It’s not stupid. He’s a big guy, and he messed with your head.”

Large, dark brown eyes blinked up at him from that pale, delicate face, and Demon’s heart squeezed. The urge to deal out punishment was usually the first thing he experienced in a situation like this, but he did know what it felt like to want to protect as well. The desire to keep this strange, powerful witch safe was like nothing he’d ever known, and it should have sent him running for the hills. Instead, he stayed where he was and regarded the witch with a level, patient gaze.

“Is Andy still out there?” the young man asked.

“Yeah. You want to walk out with me?”

A flash of frustration and anger surged through the witch’s emotions and it tasted to Demon like a handful of chilli powder. “What I want is for his food to taste like dog shit,” he snarled suddenly, almost choking on it.

Demon unconsciously opened himself up to the spike of hurt, and to the festering anger that followed after, and he drank it in greedily. His magic needed the replenishment after propelling him and the bike across town like an arrow.

“I want every can of coke he opens to explode in his face. I want every coffee he drinks to burn his mouth and his throat,” he went on, “But I…” Demon rode the peak of the witch’s anger and savoured it before it softened and melted into cooling resignation. “But… I have to trust that he’ll get what’s coming to him. I have to let it go.”

Uninvited, Demon brought his hand up slowly to cradle the man’s porcelain jaw and he heard the way his breath stuttered at the contact. “I know that demons aren’t the kind of creatures you should just trust, but trust me when I tell you he will get what’s coming to him, whether you or I give it to him now, or further down the line after his heart gives out in his nineties. He will be punished for how he treated you, and for how he’s treated her, and how he’s treated everyone before and since.”

The witch bit his lip. “You know… I believe you.” Then he asked tentatively, “Is… Is she here too?”

“I don’t know,” Demon replied. “Do you know what she looked like?”

“She’s a biker like him, I think,” he shrugged, turning around and resting his narrow hips against the sink. He folded his skinny arms across his chest and bowed his head so that his hair fell into his face. He looked and felt tired too. His magic was still there, but it was hollow and brittle and drained, and Demon wondered just what kind of rite he and his friend had been performing that morning. He didn’t ask.

Instead, Demon reached out again and tucked some of his soft, black hair behind his ear to reveal a couple of piercings, and the man looked up sidelong at him and smiled gently as Demon asked, “You ready to head out?”

The witch nodded, so Demon lowered his hand and turned away, but the witch grabbed for his wrist and Demon froze to look back over his shoulder. He frowned, about to ask what was wrong when the witch took a deep breath, and then said, “Jasper.”

The name rang like a bell through Demon’s body, sweet and pure and honest. “You gave me your Name?” he breathed. “Your True Name.”

“Yeah, well, I figure if you’re coming to my rescue like this, you’ve got to have something to call me, and it’d be weird if you called me anything else.”

“I could call you ‘boyfriend’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘baby’, ‘love’, ‘sunshine’, ‘moonbeam’…” he said, watching the colour rise in Jasper’s pale cheeks as the nicknames rolled off his tongue, each more ridiculous than the last. He hooked his finger under Jasper’s chin and tilted it up a little. “You didn’t have to give me your Name, sweetheart. I could do all sorts of things with your Name on my tongue, you know?”

“But you won’t.”

“How would you know? I’m a demon, remember?” he said as he lowered his hand to his side again and regarded the witch through the glamour with his red cat’s eyes.

“Sweetheart,” Jasper echoed with a new and playfully self-assured intonation, for which Demon himself was absolutely unprepared. “I can see through that glamour of yours without any kind of spell. I can see those horns,” he went on, taking another step closer without breaking eye contact.

Demon swallowed.

He reached up for Demon’s mouth and boldly thumbed his upper lip back to show his teeth. “And those fangs,” he continued, and Demon’s throat worked as he swallowed again, feet fixed to the spot.

Demon’s jaw slackened, and he didn’t realise his breath was starting to come in quick, shallow pants. He swallowed a third time, his mouth dry. He had Jasper’s Name, but it felt like the other way around.

“And those eyes,” Jasper said, shifting his touch away from his lips and running his thumb over the arc of Demon’s dark eyebrow.

Demon shuddered and his tail tightened around his right thigh like a strangler vine.

“It’s not possible for me to forget what you are, Demon,” Jasper purred. “I see what you are every time I look at you. But I have some defences of my own, in case you decide to take my Name and do something nasty with it.”

“I won’t,” Demon exhaled, the word a promise already. “I won’t, I swear on my own True Name. Yours is safe from me.”

“Thank you,” Jasper said, stepping back and breaking the contact.

Demon swayed forwards just a fraction.

God dammit he was hard.

He wasn’t sure if that had been one of Jasper’s defences — tricking him into promising not to use his Name for anything nefarious — but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t have used it anyway. He wanted to see where this went, and for the first time in many years, he wanted a genuine connection with a mortal. With a witch. Even his magic was craving it, where usually it recoiled.

He closed his eyes and took a steadying inhale before sighing it out and regarding Jasper with a slightly clearer gaze. Cocking one eyebrow, he rasped, “Are you ready to go now?”

Jasper nodded, but a little of the light in his eyes faded at the prospect of what was to come.

Demon made his way out of the gents’ at a laid-back stroll with Jasper walking a pace or two behind him. When he caught a glimpse of the golden pastries behind the counter on their right though, an idea crossed his mind. When he diverted to investigate, he heard Jasper’s tiny, muffled yip of surprise behind him. He chuckled, and when the barista looked up and met his eye, she bit her lip and a subtle wash of lust drifted through his awareness.

Demon was used to people finding him attractive, but it didn’t do much for him besides stoke his ego a bit. If Coco had been there, she could have fed on it (and she often did), but as it was, Demon just offered the young woman a charming little smile and ordered himself a cinnamon Danish to take away. Then he looked back over his shoulder to find Jasper scuttling over to stand close by his side.

“What are you doing?” Jasper hissed. “I thought we were heading out?”

“What do you want, love?” Demon asked in a low voice, using the word just to watch Jasper flush, which he did immediately. Demon also didn’t feel like he had the right to give voice to Jasper’s Name yet. When Jasper just frowned at him though, he added with a smirk, “I hear the pastries are great here.”

“Yeah, sure, they are, but…”

“Then you’re not going to leave here without. Pick one.”

“Is this another one of those ‘rare’ circumstances where you get bossy?” he muttered. “I’ll have the same, please,” he added to the woman who was watching their exchange with slightly baffled amusement, and he thanked her when she slotted a second into the paper bag for him. Jasper started to fish out his wallet from his pocket but Demon beat him to it and used his phone to pay.

“Really?” Jasper scowled.

“Yes.”

Distractedly thanking the barista, Demon turned back to Jasper with the paper bag in his hand and moved away from the counter. He paused near the glass front door and said, “Listen, how do you want to play this? He’s still sitting at the table on our right as we head towards my bike. You’ll recognise my bike, right?”

“Hard to forget,” Jasper said dryly. “It’s the red Panigale V4 S. How’s that fancy Akrapovič exhaust sounding today, by the way?”

Demon’s lips quirked up at the corner at the memory of Jasper’s cheeky bit of magic, and Jasper’s gaze flickered to catch it. A second after, a new note of lust spiked through the scents of the coffee shop, and Demon realised it was Jasper’s. His cock twitched again in his dark jeans and he took a slow breath. “Beautiful,” Demon answered him with deliberate double-meaning.

Addressing Demon’s first question with a decided blush still in his face, Jasper shrugged and said, “Well, if you’re alright with it, you could always pretend to be my new boyfriend? I mean… You don’t have to do anything, but it seems like a better explanation for why I’m cowering behind you and leaving on your bike… If you don’t mind.”

“Sweetheart, I’m a demon. Punishing and tormenting people is literally in my job description; of course I don’t mind. And you’re not cowering.”

“I basically summoned a demon because I couldn’t face meeting my ex alone. That seems like pretty cowardly cowering to me,” he muttered.

Demon’s expression darkened. “You are not a coward,” he growled, the sound couched low and dangerous in his throat as he took a step towards Jasper. “And seeing you already with someone else, despite knowing that he hurt you only a week ago? And seeing that that person is another biker — one who rides the bike that I do, I might add, instead of his shitty little crotch-rocket? His big ego and his tiny dick are going to take a hit, trust me.”

“His dick isn’t tiny, for the record.”

“Don’t defend him, or his cock,” Demon retorted, disgusted.

Jasper barked a loud, clear laugh though, and Demon tried to let the comment slide because it lit up Jasper’s lovely eyes again and brought little crease lines to the corners of his mouth. He half-suspected that Jasper had only said it to get in a dig at Demon. He hoped so, anyway.

“Fine. I get to pretend-show-you-off in front of his friends…” Jasper agreed with a tiny, pleased smile that went some way to repairing Demon’s own slightly fractured ego. “Ok, boyfriend. Lead the way.”

If Demon technically took Jasper’s hand before they left the shop, then Jasper didn’t object, and if he deliberately didn’t look in the direction of Jasper’s fuckwad ex as he stalked towards his stupidly expensive and powerful bike, then it only helped maintain his self-control. If he’d met that shithead’s eyes, he might have ‘accidentally’ relieved him of several essential body parts on the spot.

Interlaced with his own, Jasper’s fingers tightened, and Demon felt oddly grounded, like his magic had found a lightning rod and now had somewhere to go instead of crackling around aimlessly inside him all the time. It was an idea that tipped his mind distractedly down the path of witches and their demon familiars, and he forced himself to stop.

They got all the way to the Ducati before Andy’s voice piped up, as though he simply couldn’t contain himself at the sight of Jasper hand-in-hand with a much better looking biker.

“Jassy?”

Jasper went rigid at the ugly nickname, and Demon turned slowly around to look at Andy. His gaze raked over the man, who was now standing up beside their picnic table and staring at the two of them with his mouth hanging slightly open. Demon hoped a fly might take a liking to it and buzz in looking for bullshit.

On the spur of the moment though, Demon looked down at Jasper and, without moving his lips, murmured, “Kiss me?”

Without a second’s hesitation, Jasper kissed him.

It wasn’t a chaste kiss at all.

It was the kind of searing kiss that could have fed a succubus for a week.

When Jasper’s hands came up to grab Demon’s dark hair, which was just long enough to tug on, Demon moaned into the kiss, and it turned from fiery to filthy.

He grabbed a handful of Jasper’s backside and squeezed, and Jasper let out a genuine gasp around a breathless smile, breaking the kiss and tilting his head back. “Fuck,” he breathed, and Demon kissed him again.

If Andy said anything else, neither of them heard it.

With his eyes still closed, Demon finally drew back up to his full height, his cock straining once more against his jeans and the scent of Jasper’s open lust rolling around him in a heady cloud. He gave one final, almost sweet kiss to the witch’s puffy, swollen lips, and smiled.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes again was the look in Jasper’s dark eyes, blown black with arousal, but the second thing to come to his attention was Andy standing there in the periphery, still gulping like a landed carp. Demon smirked once at him over Jasper’s shoulder, and then turned his back on him.

“Helmet,” he said calmly to the witch, as if sporting a raging boner on a motorcycle wasn’t about to be the most physically and mentally uncomfortable thing he’d experienced in a while.

Jasper’s fingers didn’t shake or fumble as he unlatched first Demon’s and then his own helmet from the pillion seat’s superfluous strap, and while Demon swung his leg over and slipped his glamoured helmet on over his horns, Jasper fitted his own helmet on and took hold of Demon’s shoulders.

His hands were warm and sure as he gripped him for balance while he climbed on, then he sank down and settled himself on the passenger seat. He leaned forward over Demon’s right shoulder and murmured, “I’m good to go.”

“That makes one of us,” Demon muttered dryly, adjusting his posture a little. “Fuck. That was some kiss, sweetheart.”

“Thank you. Whenever you’re ready, Demon. Andy is still staring and it’s making me uncomfortable.”

“Hold on then.”

Jasper looped his arms around Demon’s ribs and linked his hands in front of him, and Demon started up the bike and revved-bombed it for the benefit of their little audience, checked for traffic, and then shot away up the street to leave Jasper’s ex in utter, outraged confusion.

Jasper was still laughing when they turned the corner, and Demon took the immense liberty of lifting his left hand off the grip and reaching back to hold the outside of Jasper’s thigh.

Jasper squeezed him tighter around the middle for a second and laughed all over again, and all the while, their little brown paper bag of pastries swung merrily back and forth from Demon’s wrist.

___

To be continued! Hope you enjoyed it!!