An Eternity of Eclipse (19 page)

After grabbing a glass from the cupboard, I opened the freezer. I was reaching in to grab some ice when I felt a whiff of warm air circle around me. Something hard covered itself over me, pressing onto my body and making me feel every hard inch of that something’s impressive physique.

I gasped as Eclipse spun me around to face him. The opened freezer felt cold against my back while the heat jumping off Eclipse’s body made me burn all over on the front. Although I could feel all the cold air behind me, the heat from his body easily overshadowed it. The breath stalled in my chest when I felt him slide a protective arm around my waist. He held my eyes in silence as he pulled me closer to him and brought me onto my tiptoes.

Oh my.

There was no seduction radiating from him, no sexual innuendos, and no demonic lust that had me feeling powerless. It was just him—just Eclipse and the way he stared at me. Silence presided over us. It was so quiet that I could hear my own heartbeat thumping in my ears. My entire body nearly boiled over when he tugged me closer to him. My traitorous hands trembled as I battled the urge to run my fingertips over every muscle on his beautiful body.

“Don’t touch me,” he rasped, reading my mind. He gazed at my lips as though he had never seen anything more fascinating. I shared in this fascination while I stared at
his
lips. He had the most perfect set of lips—lips that were created to be kissed, to be admired. “I’d lose all control if you did.”

He then bent forward, his lips an inch away from mine. My heart thundered with need while heat continued to shroud over me.

This was so hot.

A small kiss wouldn’t hurt
, I reasoned to myself.
It wouldn’t hurt if I just—

Something hot trickled from my nose, stealing my attention. I instinctively touched it, ready to wipe it away so that I could continue to admire Eclipse and his beauty.

Horror clutched me when I realized that there was blood on my fingers.

“My nose is bleeding!” I cried after I grazed my finger underneath my nose. I gaped at him with elevated terror. The blood felt hot and terrifying on my fingertips. Oh my God. I had heard fangirls joke about getting nosebleeds when a hot guy turned them on, but what kind of loser would actually experience something like this?

“I barely touched you, Gracie,” Eclipse said tightly, taking a step away from me.

I scrambled away from him to grab a towel to dab under my stupid nose. I gawked at him in astonishment when something unsettling occurred to me.

“You gave me a nosebleed on
purpose
?!” I shouted through my towel, utterly outraged.

“This is how it is with someone like me,” he grounded out. Anger, need, and guilt suffused his eyes as he noted the blood trickling from my nose. It was difficult for him to witness this ridiculousness as well. “I barely touched you and you’re already bleeding. What do you think is going to happen if I kissed you? If I ripped your clothes off and covered my body over yours? If I actually took you to bed and made you mine? Do you think you could handle it? Do you think that human body of yours could handle anything I give you if I lost control?”

He sighed, taking a step further away from me. Disappointment marred his handsome face.

“Demons are not known to be disciplined entities. For myself, I am certainly not known for my ability to say no to the things I desire.” A crestfallen expression cloaked his features. The sexual frustration emanating from him was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. “Do not tempt me anymore, Teacup. Do not do what you just did unless you’re a Demon and you can handle what I want to give you. Because in the future, I doubt I’ll be so well-behaved.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice!

There was no way I was going to be tempting a sexually frustrated Demon ever again. I got a nosebleed from the mere
prospect
of kissing him! What on earth would happen to me if he actually lost control and threw me into bed? I gasped inwardly at the thought. Oh my flying pig, I made light of this before, but this guy was literally death in its most tempting form! I had to make sure I was careful around him in the future; I feared that my next experience would not end with a mere nosebleed.

“Don’t worry,” I passionately assured through the towel covering my nose. There was determination in my big brown eyes. “I don’t want another nosebleed so I won’t ever try to seduce you anymore as a plan for revenge. I mean, to be honest, I don’t even want to be near you right now."

His expression mirrored that of a boy who had just been told that he was no longer allowed to have any dessert. It was clear that he hated this state in his life—to be teased by a girl and to not be able to do anything about it in fear of killing her. Even though he looked sad and miserable, he closed his eyes and nodded in bitter approval anyway. He knew that it was better to have me fear him sexually than to be stupid and throw myself at him again.

“Well then,” Eclipse launched after opening his eyes. His critical gaze locked onto mine. “Thank you for ruining my night with that little tease-fest of yours, Teacup. If you must know, you just won because I’m completely miserable right now.”

I didn’t feel like a winner though. I was the one with the bloody nose. If anything, I felt like a loser.  

I merely blinked at him while I tried to control the flow of my blood by cocking my head upwards. From the corner of my eye, I could see him breathe in sourness. He wasn’t angry with me, but he was bitter, and bitterness and disappointment weren’t afflictions he enjoyed.

With a long breath and a self-mocking smile, he began to back away from me. Before departing, he gave me a nod of goodbye and parting words that effectively told me that even though he had forgiven me for making him angry, he hadn’t forgiven me for making him horny and teasing the hell out of him.

Unfortunately for me, business had just gotten mixed up with pleasure. He was about to show me the consequences of teasing a sexually frustrated Demon.

“Oh and don’t bother studying,” he uttered before disappearing into thin air and leaving me with the urge to cry as I spent the rest of the night tending to my bleeding nose. “For your cruel actions tonight, you’ll be getting an F on tomorrow’s exam and all the exams to follow. Have a wonderful night, Teacup.”

“So why are you fighting, silly human?”
13:
  The Third Wheel of Fortune

By the time Friday rolled around, I was ready to jump for joy.

In my little over twenty years of existence, I had never seen an individual receive so many F’s on her grade reports in my life—and this was stemming from the fact that the individual studied her butt off and actually did the work correctly!

I stood in front of the school’s bathroom mirror and gladly washed my hands with soap. I was incredibly excited to start my weekend. Granted, I could never really get a vacation from Eclipse—unless I gave him my soul and even then I’d probably never get rid of him because he’d, well,
own
me—but at least I could get a break from seeing my school assignments bleed with the red markings of a bad grade.

Eclipse, as charming and nice as he was to me, was the epitome of a two-faced jerk. He was nice to my face, but did evil things behind my back. You would think he’d cut back on the crap and give me C’s or something, but the F’s just kept coming. Though he didn’t show it, I had a strong inkling that he was still super pissed at how I tried to use sex as a weapon against him and was still punishing me for it. I understood that he was upset, but the punishments were plain ridiculous. In one of my classes, we got a progress report and I found that I was getting low scores in attendance points. The
s
hitty part was that I went to class everyday!

This was the prime example of why you should never piss off a Demon. No matter how nice they were to you and no matter how smitten they may seem to be with you, if you piss them off, then you’re on their
s
hit-list. And let me tell you, that’s quite possibly the worst list to be on.

After washing my hands and wiping them dry, I decided to take another approach with Eclipse. From this point forward, I would simply go with the flow and allow him to do whatever he wanted. The only time I would stand my ground was to reject him when he asked for my soul. I imagined a human girl could only amuse a Demon of his “caliber” for so long before he got bored. Until then, I had to go about my life as normally as possible. If I wanted any chance of making it out of this ordeal alive and sane, I had to persevere.

Nodding internally at that decision, I was promptly reminded that “normal” meant indulging in my sadistic tendencies, which I hadn’t been able to enjoy for a while now. In an effort to allow everything to resume as usual, I swiftly held my palm out and pressed on the anti-bacterial dispenser a few times. After I was satisfied with the amount, I casually tossed the soap onto the tiles. I washed my hands again before skirting around my little booby trap and heading for the exit. I opened the door and spotted two of my female classmates walking my way. I smiled, holding out the door for them to glide through.

“Thanks, Grace!” the two girls said in unison, their sweet smiles filled with appreciation when they walked past me.

I beamed brightly, releasing the door and allowing it to close behind me. “No problem! Have a good weekend, yeah? I’ll see you guys Monday!”

“You too!

“Bye Grac—Ahhh!”

The door swung shut just as their screams echoed through the walls of the bathroom. My sweet smile metamorphosed into one of relief as I savored in their misery. What a great way to relax after a tiring week.

“Grace!”

I whipped around as I stepped out of the business hall and onto the school campus. I followed the direction of the cheery and out-of-breath voice. My face beamed when I saw Dawn running towards me in her cute black dress. Her brown hair blew in the cold afternoon wind as she hopped over to me. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen her in a while and that I had come to miss her. You never know how much you’ll miss your girlfriends until you have the Demon of Lust hanging around you 24/7, making your life a living Hell.

“Dawn,” I greeted cheerily. I couldn’t control my smile upon seeing her. Much like her name, her simple presence was like a beam of sunray in my dark and overcast world. “What’s up?”

“Grace, I’ve been looking for you.” She attempted to catch her breath once she reached me. “Where have you been all week? You haven’t returned my calls.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I’ve been meaning to call you back. I’ve been so busy”—
being tortured by a Demon
!
I wanted to scream out—“with school this week. I completely forgot about everything else.”

“Oh no,” she squeaked out, her eyes wide like saucers. “Does that mean you forgot about this Saturday?”

I stared at her in confusion. “What’s going on this Saturday?”

“Grace!” she exclaimed, dismayed that I actually forgot. “Date? Remember? With my former advisee? Don? The guy from my church? The one you have a crush on? Remember how excited you were when I introduced you guys and he asked you to hang out?”

My eyes grew wider and wider with every point she listed.

“Oh no! I can’t believe I forgot!” I gasped, shocked that I had actually forgotten about the date that I had been so excited about.

Don was the equivalent of Ken from “Ken & Barbie.” In lieu of blonde hair, he had perfectly gelled and styled black hair. His typical style consisted of sophisticated collared t-shirts and khaki pants that were very cute and clean-cut. I had been eyeing him since I met him at one of Dawn’s parties. He was from her church and was also a former advisee of hers at the school before he transferred to another university. He was extremely good-looking and I couldn’t help but have a crush on him. With Dawn’s encouragement at one of the dinners she hosted, I went up to him, worked my charm, and apparently had made a really good impression because he called Dawn the next day to bug her to set us up on a date.  

I was over the moon because he was exactly the type of guy I had been looking for. He was cute, well-spoken, extremely well-mannered, and had admirable morals. He was the complete opposite of Eclipse, who was intensely arrogant, exhausting, and sinful. In short, Don was the type of guy you married, and Eclipse was the type of guy you fantasized about when you wanted to cheat on your husband. Luckily for me, I was only looking for the husband type.

I felt my interest flare up at the thought of going on a date with Don. This counted as getting back to the normalcy of life! I had a big crush on Don, and Demon or no Demon, I was determined to get my date with a potential future husband. The only problem was to avoid having a Demon follow me on the date. Because let’s be real: the normalcy of life
did not
include having an invisible Demon as a third wheel on your date.

I swallowed heavily, my head already throbbing when I mulled over how I was going to have a nice private date with Don without being sabotaged by Eclipse. I could deal with the Demon screwing up my grades, making me trip all over the place, and messing around with my calorie-intake. I drew the line at having him accompany me on a date where I was trying to make a good impression on a guy I really liked.

I groaned to myself, not knowing how I was going to resolve this dilemma.

Forget about being nervous on first dates.

I was nervous as to how I would escape to get
on
my first date!

●●●

“What are you up to tomorrow?”

Walking beside me while I pushed the shopping cart in the grocery store, Eclipse’s eyes were roaming every which way. I was doing my much-needed grocery shopping, and he was doing his much un-needed tagging along.

“Homework and studying. You know, same old,” I mumbled awkwardly, already thinking about the outfit I wanted to wear on my date with Don.

I narrowed it down to a pink polka dot empire dress or a white sleeveless dress that looked more innocent and pure. I glanced at Eclipse with my shifty eyes and decided right then and there that I would wear the white dress. I needed Don to see that I was wife material. Nothing would help a guy realize this more than seeing a girl dressed in a short and sexy, but extremely classy and demure, white dress.

“Why were your eyes all shifty when you said that?” Eclipse asked suspiciously, catching me just when I decided that it would be a nice touch to wear a white headband as an accessory to the outfit.

“My eyes aren’t shifty,” I retorted quickly, trying to keep my eyes centered on him instead of avoiding eye contact, which was a sure sign of shiftiness.

“Now you’re blinking a lot,” he noted.

“I-I have something in my eyes!” I declared dramatically. I pretended to rub my eyes to get nonexistent dust out of them.

Though uncertain of what I was doing, Eclipse still came over and attempted to help me blow the nonexistent dust out of my eyes.

“No, no! It’s okay, I got it,” I said before my hands made contact with his chest—or more precisely, his pectoral muscles.

Holy moly, that body is rock hard!
I distractedly thought when I laid my hands on him to push him away from me. I could feel his body heat seep from the cotton shirt and jump onto my skin, making my body tingle from a simple touch. At that moment, I clearly remembered the nosebleed I got from the prospect of nearly kissing him and remembered why I had to go on this date with Don. I may never be physically or sexually satisfied with my future husband after having Eclipse come into my life, but I would not let him ruin my life any further than he already had.

Completely forgetting about my shifty eyes, Eclipse grinned when he saw me retract my hands away in haste. Our bodies touching were enough to ignite a fire within our respective bodies, and I knew he had felt that too. He may not be able to quench the sexual frustration emanating from him through physical means, but he was still adamant on charming the hell out of me through psychological means.

I remembered him telling me that he planned on wooing me, seducing me, and eventually getting me into bed. I feared that his wooing had begun. He was going to start putting his heart into it now.

In the middle of the deserted canned aisle, Eclipse laid a comfortable hold on my hips and pulled me close to him.

His smile turned sensuous as he gazed down at me. “Let’s do something fun tomorrow night. All you do is study, work, and complain about how miserable I’m making you”—I frowned when he mentioned this—“so how about we go out, and I make it up to you by spoiling you on our dates?  Maybe we can see a movie and then go out to dinner afterwards? Isn’t that what you humans do? You go on dates as your way of courting one another?”

“I already told you—I have school things to do,” I uttered, using all I had to scamper away from his hold. “I may be getting bad grades, but I’m in school because I want to learn. I’m not going to skip out on my duties as a student. It would be a waste of tuition money if I did that. No. I have to study tomorrow. It’s the right thing to do.”

His eyes morphed into suspicious slits. “Why did your eyes twitch when you said that?”

“What are you, an optometrist? Stop making observations about the behavior of my eyes!” I shouted, freaked out that he was paying such close attention. I was normally such a good actress. Why was I so bad when I was around him?

Maybe it’s because he gave you a bloody nose prior to even kissing you and he could do more harm if you piss him off
,
my mind answered for me, making me twitchier than before.

I pushed my cart away and marched out of the aisle. I tried to lose him, but he was like a shadow. No matter how hard I tried to evade him, he would always be right on my heels.

“What do you even do for fun, Gracie?” he inquired, folding his arms with a pout on his lips. His footsteps mirrored the speed at which I was pushing my cart. “I mean, I’m feeling a bit misled right now.”

I gave him a blank stare and then pretended to be interested in the variety of hot sauce on the shelf. “How so?”

“Well, when I first met you, you were clubbing with your girlfriends. I assumed you were a party animal with sadistic inclinations. I didn’t know I was about to court some goody two-shoes nerd with sadistic tendencies. Like I said, I feel very misled.”

I stopped what I was doing and gaped at him with this new development. “Wait. Are you saying you didn’t know anything about my life prior to that night?”

He nodded as affirmation. “That was my first night seeing you.”

“So you knew absolutely nothing about my life before that moment?” I asked again.

He nodded once more. “Yeah. Other than the infamous killing that everyone else in Hell knows about, that was all I knew.”

“So the only thing you got on me is that you can pop up wherever I am?”

Eclipse looked at me strangely. He was clearly wondering why I would ask such a random question. “No. Not exactly.”

My heart almost skipped a beat at this ray of hope. Trying to not appear so suspiciously interested, I pretended to push the cart again while casually asking, “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

“My powers are limited,” he quietly revealed, walking beside me while we moved past the condiments aisle and ventured into the noodle aisle. “I can’t pop up wherever you are. I don’t have a GPS in my head. I can only pop up in places where I
think
you are.”