Chapter 266: Chapter 266: The Sweet Demon

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY did not feel like a chore. For Grayson, it felt like a deployment.

He stood in front of the full-length mirror in their bedroom, adjusting his tie finally with acquired skill.

“You’re smiling,” Mailah noted, leaning against the doorframe with two cups of coffee. She was wearing a cream-colored suit.

Grayson turned, the silver in his eyes flashing with a predatory heat as he took his coffee from her. “Last week, I learned that a rival firm is trying to poach our lead architects. In my world, I would have simply erased their bloodline. In this world, I get to bankrupt them using something called a ’hostile takeover.’ It is remarkably cathartic.”

Mailah giggled, reaching up to straighten his collar. “Just remember, no actual fire.”

“I make no promises if they mention sustainable bamboo again,” he murmured, leaning down to capture her lips in a lingering, caffeinated kiss.

The drive to the tower was uneventful. The crows were still there, perched on the streetlamps like feathered gargoyles, but Grayson didn’t even look at them.

James met them at the elevators, looking chipper as usual. “Gray! Thank god you’re here. The board is in a panic. The Henderson merger is stalling because their CEO is a ’legacy’ guy who thinks we’re too aggressive. He wants a face-to-face. He wants to ’test our mettle.’”

Grayson stepped into the elevator, his presence filling the small space until the metal walls seemed to hum. “He wants to test my mettle? How charmingly suicidal of him.”

James blinked. “Uh, right. Maybe less ’suicidal’ and more ’negotiation-y’?”

Mailah caught Grayson’s hand, her thumb tracing the pulse at his wrist. Easy, she signaled with a squeeze.

Grayson’s expression smoothed into a mask of perfect, lethal corporate professionalism. “Don’t worry, James. I’ll be a perfect gentleman. I’ll even let him keep his shoes.”

The meeting with the Henderson CEO, a man named Sterling who smelled of old money and unearned confidence, was held in the glass-walled boardroom on the 50th floor.

Sterling spent the first twenty minutes trying to dominate the room, talking over James and leaning back in his chair as if he owned the sky outside.

Mailah sat beside Grayson, her laptop open, but her attention was entirely on the man next to her.

Grayson hadn’t said a word. He sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on Sterling with the unblinking focus of a hawk watching a field mouse.

“The problem, Ashford,” Sterling said, waving a hand dismissively, “is that your firm lacks… heart. You’re all numbers. You’re all ’aggression.’ We want a partner who understands the soul of the city.”

Grayson tilted his head. The lights in the room flickered—just for a millisecond, so fast that Sterling didn’t even notice, but Mailah felt the sudden drop in temperature.

“Heart,” Grayson repeated. The word felt like a drop of liquid nitrogen in the air. “You think I don’t understand the soul of this city, Mr. Sterling? I have watched this city rise from the dirt. I have seen every brick laid and every fire that tried to take it down.”

Sterling laughed nervously. “A bit theatrical, don’t you think?”

Grayson stood up.

He didn’t move fast, but suddenly, he was looming over the table. He leaned forward, his palms flat on the mahogany. “You are stalling this merger because you are afraid. You are afraid that if you sign this, you will no longer be the biggest fish in your very small pond. You are projecting ’values’ to hide your cowardice.”

“Now see here—”

“No,” Grayson said, and his voice held a frequency that made the water in Sterling’s glass ripple. “You will sign the papers. Not because of ’heart.’ But because I am giving you the opportunity to be part of something that will outlive your grandchildren. And because,” he leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that only Sterling and Mailah could hear, “I am the only thing standing between you and the people who don’t play by the rules.”

Sterling turned a shade of pale that Mailah didn’t know was possible for a living human. He looked at Grayson’s eyes—which, for a fleeting second, were nothing but a black void—and reached for his pen.

“I… I think we can find a middle ground,” Sterling stammered, his hand trembling as he signed.

As the meeting broke and Sterling practically ran for the exit, James stared at the signed documents. “I… I have no idea how you just did that. You didn’t even offer him the higher percentage.”

Grayson turned to Mailah, the terrifying shadow vanishing instantly, replaced by a smug, boyish grin. “He had a very loud heartbeat, James. It was distracting. I simply asked him to quiet down.”

James shook his head, heading for the door. “I’m going to go get a donut. I don’t want to know. I really don’t.”

Once the door clicked shut, Grayson exhaled, the tension leaving his frame.

He loosened his tie, the silk sliding through his fingers like a discarded skin. He turned to Mailah, who was still sitting at the table, looking at him with a mixture of awe and something much hotter.

“You were terrifying,” she whispered. “And incredibly hot. I think I have a problem.”

Grayson walked around the table, pulling her to her feet. “It’s not a problem, Mailah. And as I recall, we have an unfinished conversation about my hearing.”

Mailah laughed, remembering their talk from the previous day. “Right. The ’mile away’ thing. You’re still sticking to that?”

Grayson actually had a twinkle in his eye, which was a brand-new look for him. He led her to the window, the city sprawling beneath them like a circuit board. “Listen,” he commanded.

Mailah closed her eyes. She heard the muffled hum of the traffic. The faint whistle of the wind against the glass. The hum of the air conditioning. “I hear… a city.”

“Listen deeper,” Grayson whispered, his chin resting on her shoulder, his arms wrapping around her waist. “Focus on the lobby. Third revolving door. The one that squeaks.”

Mailah frowned, concentrating. She didn’t hear a squeak. But then, she felt Grayson’s pulse against her back—slow, steady, and strangely rhythmic.

“There’s a woman in a red coat,” Grayson murmured. “She’s late for an interview. Her heels are clicking—three fast, one slow. She’s nervous. Her heart is hitting 110 beats per minute. She just dropped her badge.”

Mailah opened her eyes, looking down at the tiny specks of people entering the building fifty floors below. “You can’t possibly—”

Suddenly, the intercom buzzed. His assistant’s voice came through, sounding confused. “Mr. Ashford? There’s a woman at reception. A Ms. Gable? She says she’s here for the 2:00 PM meeting but… she’s a bit flustered. She apparently lost her visitor badge in the revolving door?”

Mailah’s jaw dropped. She turned in Grayson’s arms, her eyes wide.

“I am a demon,” he reminded her. “And I told you. I can hear everything. Which means I know exactly when we are truly alone.”

He lifted her onto the boardroom table—the very one Sterling had just signed his life away on.

The mahogany was cool against her skin, a sharp contrast to the heat radiating from Grayson’s hands as they found the hem of her blazer.

“Grayson. Not again. The board members–”

“They won’t,” he groaned against her neck. “James is currently at the donut shop across the street. He’ll be there for at least twelve minutes. The board members are in the elevator heading to the garage. I can hear the cables humming.”

Mailah let out a shaky breath, her fingers tangling in his dark hair. The sheer impossibility of him was the most intoxicating thing she had ever known.

“Twelve minutes?” she whispered, her heart beginning to match the rhythm of the nervous woman in the lobby.

“Maybe thirteen if he decides on a coffee,” Grayson murmured, his mouth finding hers with a possessive, soul-deep hunger.

Later that evening, the estate was quiet.

Grayson and Mailah were curled up on the oversized leather sofa in the library, a single lamp casting a warm glow over the rows of ancient books.

Grayson was reading a biography of a 19th-century railroad tycoon, looking for “strategic inspiration,” while Mailah was sketching in a notebook.

She paused, looking at him. “Grayson?”

“Mmm?” He didn’t look up.

“Now that the Sigil is safe… and Valerius is gone… do you think we can actually have this? A life?”

Grayson closed the book, setting it aside. He turned to her, his expression uncharacteristically soft. The silver in his eyes was gone, replaced by the clear, piercing blue that had become his “human” default.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and the honesty of it made her heart ache. “My memories are still a mosaic of broken glass. I know who I am supposed to be, but I don’t always feel like him. When I’m at that office, or when I’m with you… I feel like someone new.”

He reached out, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheek. “But Lucson is right. Valerius is a shadow. Shadows don’t disappear; they just wait for the light to shift. We still have to be careful.”

“I know,” Mailah whispered.

“But,” Grayson added, a wicked glint returning to his eyes, “if we’re going to be in danger, we might as well enjoy the perks of having a demon as a fiancé.”

“Perks?”

Grayson stood up, offering his hand. “I’ve decided that the library is too small. And the ’routine’ requires that I take my fiancée out for a ’romantic evening’.”

“It’s 11:00 PM, Grayson. Nothing is open.”

“In the human world, perhaps,” Grayson said, a mysterious smile playing on his lips. “But I know a place that doesn’t care about clocks. And I think it’s time you saw the city the way I do.”

He led her out to the balcony. The air was crisp, the stars sharp above.

“Close your eyes,” he commanded.

Mailah obeyed. She felt the air around them begin to vibrate. It wasn’t cold, but it felt… electric. When she opened her eyes, they weren’t on the balcony anymore.

They were standing on the very tip of the spire of his company tower.

The wind was howling, but around them, the air was perfectly still, held in place by an invisible bubble of Grayson’s power. The city was a carpet of jewels beneath them, the lights of millions of lives flickering in the dark.

“You brought me to the roof?” Mailah gasped, clutching his arm as she looked down at the staggering drop.

“The roof is for people who use elevators,” Grayson said, stepping right to the edge of the spire’s point. “We are above the roof.”

He pulled her into his arms, the two of them suspended thousands of feet above the concrete.

In this moment, with the wind screaming against his barrier and the stars feeling close enough to touch, Mailah realized that she didn’t just ship herself and Grayson—she was part of something that defied gravity itself.

“Do you trust me?” he asked again, the same question from the office.

“I think?” she said.

Grayson leaned down. “Good. Because tomorrow, we have a 9:00 AM meeting with the marketing team. And I hear they want to talk about… brand synergy.”

Mailah laughed, the sound lost in the vastness of the night sky. “Brand synergy? You’re going to hate that.”

“I am,” Grayson agreed, his lips finding hers in a kiss that tasted like the stars. “But I think I can find a way to make it… interesting.”

High above the city, a crow flew around the tower’s peak before vanishing into the night.

Mailah knew she should feel scared, but she only wanted to hold onto Grayson. She didn’t know how long this kind, gentle version of him would stay, so she made every second count.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep