Tempted by Demons: A Reverse Harem Paranormal (Brides of the Sinistral Realms)

by Lidiya Foxglove

  I shivered. “This is a lot to take in for my summer vacation,” I said, trying to make light of it.

  “We shouldn’t have gone so far yesterday morning…” His eyes slid sideways, looking me over, as his hand moved down to my waist. “But you are so hard to resist…and it’s only fair we show you everything you’d be missing if you leave.”

  “Is it fair?” I murmured. “You’ll tell me all these things, and then you’ll have to erase them.”

  He pulled me onto his knee. “I shouldn’t do this, should I?” He tipped my chin toward his.

  I met his eyes head on, willing and eager despite a chiding voice in my head that reminded me I had already kissed two men on this vacation. I don’t know when this stopped being a vacation and turned into a fateful decision. They needed the woman who would help them to save this island, but on my end, this decision had to be about who I really was and what I wanted.

  I was floundering around in my life and I had been for a long time. There was an exquisite sort of purity to life here. To these three men who were so ready to devote everything to me. To the promise of a magical world…

  Alister obviously knew I wanted him to kiss me, and I could have rushed it, but I sensed that he was one to take a step back. To let things build and unfold until they were all the better for one’s patience. His eyes grazed across my lips, and his fingers followed with the barest brush of fingers across my lips, like he was going to know my mouth before he kissed it.

  He leaned closer to me, his hands slipping around my cheeks to hold me still. “Once I begin, I hardly know where to end…but I will try to go slowly with you.”

  “You…don’t have to go that slowly…”

  “I should learn patience,” he said, the words like silk tinged with something almost like cruelty, but I don’t know if it was for me or for himself. I think only he could have gotten away with this and made me so eager for it. He was the bookish one, the straitlaced one in suits; I wouldn’t have expected him to be the most suggestive, but I had been warned.

  He opened his mouth, his breath brushing my lips, and his tongue slid across my lower lip. I responded with a hitched breath of my own, opening my mouth only a crack, making him work for it. He gently caught my lower lip between his teeth and tongue and pulled it open, slipping his tongue inside now. Once he was in, he went deep, and I responded more forcefully than I expected. My hands couldn’t help but reach for him, finding the thin fabric of his shirt beneath his jacket, stroking the strong back beneath.

  He smelled like old books and clean laundry and maybe some sort of polish. I guess he just smelled like the house, actually. The manor was his baby.

  He leaned into me with a little urgent noise of approval as my hands explored him, down past the waistband of his pants. My fingers briefly clutched a firm ass before tugging his shirt free.

  “No, Edie,” he growled.

  “I can’t at least touch you?”

  “Yesterday wasn’t sufficient?”

  “Yesterday was amazing…but it was yesterday.” I grinned, straddling him, rubbing against the hard length in his pants.

  He kissed me again. “Van said you saw his real form.”

  “Um…I guess I did.”

  “Be careful what you wish for. You aren’t intimidated, knowing what we really are?”

  “I do want this trip to change me,” I said. “Maybe you’re right and I shouldn’t go too far, but…”

  “You need to feel something real,” he said.

  “Yes…”

  “We all want you like this, you know,” he said. “You tempt me to succumb, but I must resist…”

  He pulled me closer to him and kissed my neck, almost nipping at me, growling with need. He tore my blouse open.

  I didn’t even care about the buttons that went flying. No one had ever torn my clothes off before. It spurred a deep sense of primal surrender inside me as he unclasped my bra with one deft motion at my back and tore the cups down enough to get at my bare breasts. He plucked my nipples between his teeth and swirled his tongue around them until I was moaning.

  I unfastened the button of his pants, my whole body crying out for more.

  He pushed up my skirt and slid his fingers along my wet slit. “I loved watching your face when Dante was giving you pleasure,” he said, gently toying with my clit, stirring all my sensations back into the forefront.

  “Cool…Dante likes it too,” a low voice said behind us. “But you two want to join us for breakfast?”

  Dante was standing in the double doors. I shrieked, jumping to my feet, holding my blouse shut. Yeah, I really shouldn’t have let myself get so caught up in the moment.

  Alister was perfectly composed as he stood, lifted the straps of the bra back up onto my shoulders, and clipped the back together. “I’m sorry, Edie. We should eat while it’s hot, shouldn’t we? I lost track of time.”

  “I should get a new shirt…”

  Van walked in, adding to my chagrin. “Oh, there you are,” he said. He looked at my semi-undressed state and Alister trying to subtly adjust his erection and narrowed his eyes. “Crap, Edie, I thought you and I were getting somewhere and now it seems like I miss all the good stuff.”

  “I didn’t mean for that to happen!” I cried. “I don’t know how to date three guys in one house!”

  “I was just showing her our old photos,” Alister said. “And talking to her about the nature of the Sinistral Plane. Things got out of hand.”

  “Sure, that makes so much sense, nothing sexier than photos of us at eight years old,” Van said. “But…fair enough. I guess I wouldn’t know how to have three wives either.”

  “We could show you a few ways…,” Dante said, stepping closer to me.

  “Whoa,” I said. “I’ve never had two guys fight over me before, much less three guys wanting to share me. And do you realize what a huge thing you’re asking?”

  “Of course we do,” Alister said. “That’s why we keep warning you not to get in too deep with magic and why we would give you pleasure before taking any for ourselves.”

  “You don’t think getting pleasure, and seeing supernatural monsters and guys starting fires in the palm of their hand, is already in pretty deep? Man…I can’t even believe I just lumped oral sex and supernatural monsters in the same category…”

  The guys exchanged a few expressions with each other, the kind they just couldn’t help making, and then Van said, “Edie. We’re trying hard not to demand that you stay here where you obviously belong, but we’re excited by the very prospect of you. All the signs are there. We all feel a deep attraction to you, and you to us. And you actually fought the beasts that threaten us. I can’t imagine anyone is ever going to seem as perfect as you…that’s all.”

  My hands were a little shaky. “Yeah, I…I know, a lot of it feels right to me too. A lot of it…”

  “You’re just addicted to technology,” Dante said. “Stupid texting and stupid games and stupid…apps.”

  “You don’t really know anything about it!” I snapped, getting annoyed with him again.

  “And yet, you came here to escape it, didn’t you? We’re offering you so much more than a phone. You would have three men who cherish you and protect you until the day you die and you don’t really have to give up anything. You can still write and call home and even visit now and then.”

  “But I do have to give up something! You don’t understand. That’s not how people communicate anymore! I don’t even talk to my mom on the phone as often as I text or chat!”

  “Why the hell not? You don’t want to hear your mom’s voice?” Dante sounded pissed. Alister had just told me he didn’t really have a mom, so…

  “It’s okay,” Van said. “We really are asking a lot. Edie, the trip isn’t even halfway through.”

  “Hey, I mean…I could just stay another two weeks, right? I could probably get the time off work. I don’t really have to decide that fast.”

  Alister looked at Dante, as
if telling him to keep quiet. “No,” he said. “No one is allowed to stay here more than two weeks without making a commitment. It’s too difficult to erase your memory if you’re here too long.”

  “Okay…I can’t stay and I can’t have sex. I think you're making this up.”

  “Memory spells are difficult,” Alister said. “Wouldn’t you want them to be?”

  “So let’s just keep getting to know each other,” Van said. “One day at a time. I think today looks like a beautiful day to go out on the boat and I need to check my traps.”

  “Is the boat as dangerous as the point?”

  “No, no. We’d be going to the edges of your world. Very little magic there.”

  “That sounds good,” I said, relieved that he was saving me from this confrontation.

  “You know what’s dangerous, though?” Dante said. “Sex on a boat.”

  Van just laughed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Edie

  “So I heard you went berry picking without me yesterday,” Van said. “I have to say, I’m feeling left out.”

  The little fishing boat—which had a gasoline engine but looked pretty ancient—was steering away from the island, Marchcliff Manor immediately vanishing into a convenient mist. I wondered if it was even possible to find this island without an invitation. The mist pretty much lingered around the island while the rest of the sky was blue, but the water was choppy. Nothing too dangerous, just a smidge motion-sickness-inducing. Van kept glancing at me or putting a protective hand on my back when the boat rolled over a wave. The guys seemed protective of me from the first day, but the tone of it had been slowly but surely changing. The way Van touched me was the way you would touch something that belonged to you.

  “Nothing of the sort,” I said. “Actually, I didn’t even know where you were or I might have invited you.”

  “Yeah, I was probably in the garden. The time when we have visitors is also such a busy time for me. Everything’s growing. And Dante is behind on the canning.”

  I laughed. “Who knew demons were so domestic?”

  “It’s a matter of survival,” he said. “We still have to eat.” He looked out to sea. It always felt like he was looking for something.

  “So what would my job be if I stayed?”

  “You would take care of the babies,” he said, like I was going to appreciate that.

  “Take care of the babies? Ew.”

  He looked so hurt that it was obvious we were running into a cultural divide. “You don’t want children…?”

  “I do, actually, supposing I had a guy to make them with and I could afford them, which has never seemed possible. But…not to just watch the babies. In my world, women have careers too.”

  “We would all have the same career,” he said. “We would all be the guardians of Marchcliff Manor and you would certainly be welcome to help fight any threats that—“

  “What if I wanted to be the cook?”

  He paused. “Do you?”

  “Sometimes. And you guys can watch the babies.”

  Van laughed. “We would all watch the babies, of course. We have to make sure they learn their duties as a Sinistral and how to manage their magic, and you wouldn’t be able to teach them that. It’s just that you wouldn’t have to do anything else. Alister, Dante and I are used to handling things and as the only wife, you would be much more precious than us.”

  “That sounds weird. Like, not much of a partnership.”

  Van gave me a look that was more like, Jeez, lady, what do you want? even as he said more diplomatically, “Of course it’s a partnership! It’s just that we all need you more than you need us and we know that. It’s all on us to find a human bride. After all, Mr. McAllister and his bond-mates remodeled the entire house for their wife. I don’t think she was complaining. So, if you want to cook, Dante will have to let you. Or we could rebuild the summer kitchen.”

  “Summer kitchen?”

  “Yes, when the house was first built it had a summer kitchen detached from the house, but in the remodel, they added a kitchen in the house and the summer kitchen gradually fell into disuse, but the building was maintained.”

  “Could we put a gas stove in there?” Then I stopped, throwing up a hand. “I’m sorry. Never mind. A stove isn’t going to make or break my decision. I’m just getting your hopes up.”

  “What will make or break your decision?”

  “I—I don’t know! I guess it’s that—my life has been really out of balance back home, and I don’t know if it’ll get better. I know I spend too much time hunched in front of a screen and it’s almost impossible to avoid. But it’s still home and everyone understands me there. I fit there. You guys are just…really different. I’m afraid I’ll feel like I’ve made an awful mistake. You don’t even know what I’m leaving behind. I think that’s part of it. It’s just…little things that depress me. Like if I got sick, I couldn’t just lay in bed watching cartoons and eating ginger candy. But what's worse is that you’ve never seen a cartoon, and that’s just weird.”

  “What if we did?” Van asked. “What if we went to the mainland?”

  “I thought you couldn’t.”

  “It makes the island more vulnerable. One of us has to stay. But a few days surely wouldn’t hurt. Although I know Alister and Dante will protest. I also think…they would like to go.”

  “Hmm…and I think they’re the ones who should go. I don’t mean to leave you out again, Van, but…you seem more accepting of whatever.”

  “You’ll have to convince me…” His hand was already on my waist, loosely, but now he tugged me against him.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked, not unwilling to play along.

  “I’m not sure you appreciate how hard we’re working to act like sensitive modern men courting you patiently…when we can smell your need and we all want to satisfy it.”

  “Ohhh…well. I’m sorry. A relationship does have to be founded on more than…smelling need.” I took a sharp breath as he lifted me onto his lap with a strength that was surprising, even for how built he was. He settled me against him, smoothing his hand down the front of the light cotton dress I was wearing.

  “The thing is, Edie, you’re right. I don’t need to go to the mainland to show you why you need to stay. I don’t care about the mainland at all. Everything I need is here. And I know that your heart belongs here.”

  “You think you know me better than I know myself?”

  “Yes.” He tugged one of the straps off my shoulder and kissed me above my shoulder blade. My head tipped back, my body growing warm at the increasing awareness of how close we were. His calloused fingers grazed my soft skin. He spread his legs, so mine spread too, until I was as wide as my muscles (which let’s face it, were probably atrophied from sitting at a computer desk all day) would allow.

  “I’d better steer the boat, huh?” He took one of my own hands and guided it to my pussy. “You’re pretty wet down there. If you’re going to take Alister and Dante on a trip while I keep watch, you can make it up to me by giving me something to look at while I drive out to the traps.”

  I had never touched myself much with my fingers; they weren’t nearly as good as a vibrator, let’s face it. I could never get off with just my own hand. But with all the constant temptations put before me, including the stiff cock in his jeans right now, less than an inch away, and his gorgeous eyes on me, I thought it might be different. And it was impossible to feel shy around Van. He was so direct about everything.

  I stroked my folds with one hand while I dug my fingers through his hair.

  “I want you to come for me,” he said. His arms moved slightly as he turned the craft.

  “Okay…,” I breathed. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “I think you’re going to have to try harder.”

  I pinched my clit between my fingers and worked it as fast as I could. It was a little strange to get so intimate with myself, but I was starting get somewhere.r />
  “Edie, I can’t wait to fuck you,” he murmured, pulling down the other strap of my dress. He tugged the bodice down just beneath my breasts. “I can’t wait for us all to fuck you. You know what that table is for, inside the cave?”

  “What?”

  “It’s for the elemental sex.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a secret…only for demon brides…” He pinched one of my nipples between his fingers. “But in her diary, Winifred McAllister said it was a greater surrender to pleasure than she had ever imagined…”

  “I’d like to see that diary,” I moaned, and I wondered if that was what Alister was looking at in the library. It was the last especially coherent thing I said. I was tugging on my own clit in time to him pinching my nipple as his other hand stayed on the wheel. My hand was shaking from working so hard, and my legs were also quivering.

  On the brink of losing my mind, I yanked the fabric of my underwear aside and rubbed the swollen bud against the rough fabric of his jeans, stroking it up and down the hard length of him. I could feel his cock throb, wanting to break free. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I reached down and unfastened the button, then tugged down his zipper. My hand reached down past his underwear, finding a gloriously thick length.

  He groaned as I stroked my pussy lips over his cock. I couldn’t quite reach down to the base because his jeans were still in the way.

  “You’re killing me, Edie,” he said.

  “I’m so close…”

  “You sure are.” He took his hands off the wheel and took both my breasts in his hands, lifting one up to lick and suck. That was enough to do it for me. Stroking urgently against him, I tugged at his shirt, pulling it up so I could see more of him as I whimpered out a climax. It didn’t take hold of me as much I wished; I needed more.

  Something bumped against the boat.

  He stiffened. “Shit.” He slid me off his lap, all the excitement of the moment draining away in an instant. He sped up, steering around something, and then looking back. I saw pale, sinuous bodies flickering under the water.