The Sinner

I watched him over my taco salad as he scarfed down a burrito, two chicken tamales, and an entire sizzling fajita platter.

“But you don’t need to eat,” I said, grimacing as he followed a swig of beer with a gulp of Horchata.

“All demons crave food, time, and sex.”

Another flush of heat burned through me. “You crave time?”

“There is no time on the Other Side. Not as you know it. No neat, linear march of weeks, months, and years. It’s a nebulous cloud in which every yesterday can be tomorrow, and a thousand tomorrows are happening all at once. On This Side, the monotony of immortality is broken with every new sunrise.”

I leaned my cheek into my hand. “Despite your questionable table manners, you’re something of a poet, Cas.”

He glanced at me, then focused on his food. “Cas?”

“Is that okay?” I toyed with my napkin. “It just started to feel more…right.”

And familiar. Because everything about Cas was growing more familiar to me with every passing minute. I lifted my head to catch him watching me. He looked away.

“There’s nothing poetic about wasted time,” he said irritably. “The ticking clock is supposed to make life more exciting and precious, yet the great majority of humans squander it. If you lived forever, you’d be an even lazier lot than you are now.” He pushed his plate away, muttering almost under his breath, “And Cas is fine.”

I grinned. The demon was sort of adorable when he was contrite.

And sexy.

It was unescapable. Casziel had an otherworldly magnetism, true, but he was also just flat-out hot. I cleared my throat. “Okay, we’ve covered time and food, but demons also crave…um…?”

“Sex?”

Heads turned. Someone’s fork clattered to their plate.

I hunched lower in my seat. “Say that a little louder; I don’t think the chef heard you.”

Cas shrugged, unperturbed. “Yes, we crave sex. Some more than others. One of my subordinates, Ambri, for instance, missed his calling as an incubus. But then, he’s not interested in being saved.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a risk of forfeiting my redemption if I—pardon my Gallic—fuck a human.”

Holy crap, the way those last three words zipped down my spine and burned like a flare between my legs stole my breath.

Get a grip, girl.

I took a long pull of cold water. “Why? Because sex is considered a sin?”

“It’s not sex but the creation of Nephilim that’s forbidden. The offspring of demons and humans.”

“There are Nephilim here?”

“Of course.”

“Would I know them if I saw them?”

“Very likely. They tend to gravitate toward politics.”

I laughed, and his lips tilted in a small grin as the waiter dropped the check.

“Maybe your redemption is getting a job to help me pay for all this,” I said after paying the bill and tucking my credit card back in my wallet. We stepped out onto the street. “I didn’t have ‘bankrolling a demon’s Earth vacation’ on my bingo card this week.”

“This is no vacation.”