The Demon King of Lust

Chapter 39

I flinch as I'm jostled awake by Kieran's truck pulling to a stop in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

What? Where are we?

I groan as I stretch and look around. We're parked outside a small run-down gray apartment building. At one time, it might have been a big family home, but it's since been renovated into multiple small apartments, each with its own outside entrance. I always doze off in the car—I guess I'm a narcolepsy cliché in that sense—but I expected to wake up at home. Suddenly being here beside some sketchy apartments I've never seen has thrown me for a loop.

"It's fine, babe, go back to sleep," Kieran says with a soft lull. "I'll be two minutes."

"Wha-... wherraare we?" I barely managed to mumble out the words, my tongue still clearly in the process of waking up, but I seem to be just coherent enough for Kieran to reply.

"Sorry, I really didn't expect you to wake up. I'm just picking up some stuff."

I can't help but notice he explicitly didn't answer my question.

Why is he being weird?

I straighten my spine and meet his gaze.

"Where are we?" I ask again.

"This is uh... my place," he murmurs. It's almost like he doesn't want me to hear him.

"Wait... How is it that I've known you for this long and I've never been inside your house?"

"You mean, besides me having to basically move in with you so your asshole ex doesn't try to kidnap or kill you?" He shoots me a teasing smirk.

"Well... okay, fair point."

"Trust me, you're not missing out on anything."

"I'll be the judge of that. I'm coming with you."

"No..." The word rushes from him like it had been waiting at his lips. "...really. It's boring. You stay in the car. There's no sense in wasting the energy."

He unbuckles his seatbelt and has a leg out the door before he finishes his sentence.

"Kieran," I say, narrowing my eyes. "Are you trying to stop me from seeing your apartment? Do you have some kind of secret in there?"

I'm betting on a bathtub filled with porn.

"No secrets. It's just boring, that's all. Unless you have a fetish for popcorn ceilings and early-seventies wallpaper."

"Well, I'm still coming with you," I say, hopping out of the car before he can object further.

"Okay, if you insist."

He walks forward in tentative half-steps, like he really doesn't want to go inside.

"Do you have some secret live-in lover I need to know about?" I say it with a laugh, but there's a small pang of uncertainty in my question.

You don't, right?

He snorts, like the suggestion couldn't be more ridiculous to him. He shakes his head as he reaches the door and turns his key in the lock.

"Yeah, but I forgot to feed and water him this whole time, so he's probably just a shriveled husk in the corner."

The door creaks as it opens and we step inside. I can see just enough with the light from the street lamps to see a short and relatively bare entry hallway. Kieran hits a light switch, but nothing happens.

"Fuuucck..." he curses, throwing his head back on his shoulders. "I completely forgot."

"No power?" I ask.