Was there even a slight chance that those fantasies would become a reality? Doubtful.

The portal not being fully closed when she’d said those words felt like a curse. I was not supposed to have heard them; I knew that. And I could not think about them in any way but a filthy one that was most certainly not the sentiment she had intended.

Although, she had massaged her bosom in that provocative way …

But then she’d shouted at me. Which, oddly enough, had only made my … desires … stronger.

Infuriating human!

I leaned out from under the awning, squinting as fat water droplets splashed on my face and shirt. The shock of the cold water managed to snap me out of the aroused haze I was falling into—had been throwing myself into for almost a week. Ever since I’d stepped out of a portal into her apartment to find her humming absently, a strip of pale, flawless skin exposed between that teeny, little shirt and the indecently tight pants that had hugged every curve of her …

“Are we doing this, Boss? Because your shirt is getting wet from the sky water,” Beezle remarked. I looked down, the fabric of my shirt splotched with droplets.

“Stupid,” I muttered, pushing past the pair of them and stalking towards the entrance we’d watched her take every week. “There’s no time to go back to Hell and change. Hounds, you need to be much smaller than you are … at least until we get to our destination.”

I needed this to work. I needed to feed the Soul Token. Needed to show progress to my father. Damn it, I needed to tell my father that I had a Soul Token with a piece of her in it, and that it could—theoretically—draw energy from the living to feed Hell.

You can’t tell him yet. You’ve only seen it happen once. It might have been a coincidence, I told myself, pausing as the doors loomed before me.

Two tiny black mice scuttled up my leg, along my back and up under the collar of my shirt.

“You seem to like this form,” I murmured, wondering where the handle for the door was. Come to think of it, I’d never seen Jemma Bliss use a handle. She seemed to simply walk up to it, and it parted for her.

“Yeah, we figure you’ve got a soft spot for mice,” Bub squeaked in my ear, his whiskers tickling.

“Well, one ‘Mouse’ in particular, am I right?” Beezle added cheekily.

“I could crush you in my fist so easily right now, you whelp,” I growled under my breath.

“But you won’t, Boss. Because you’re the best boss ever, you treat your employees like friends.”