Demon Seed

by Demon Seed (lit)

  Chapter Ten

  Hiding a smile of satisfaction, she returned her attention to her bath, setting the soap down and working her hands slowly over her soap slick body. When she glanced at him again beneath her lashes, she saw that his gaze was on the movement of her hands, his eyes glittering with need. Satisfaction filled her. The fear she had refused to face, that he had grown tired of her and that her burgeoning body would have no appeal to him, vanished as she saw the tension in him.

  Doubts returned to plague her when he made no attempt to move closer. Finally, realizing that she could not continue to soap herself without becoming painfully obvious, she moved deeper into the pool to rinse herself.

  A shiver of anticipation moved through her when she heard his boots drop to the stone floor and the soft rustle of cloth as his clothing followed suit.

  She turned to face him when she heard the splash of water behind her. He caught her upper arms, dragging her against his body. For several moments, he merely stared into her eyes. Abruptly, he tightened his arms around her. Her head swam dizzily. Darkness engulfed her.

  She opened her eyes again when she felt herself falling, catching a glimpse of Nuri’s bed chamber as she impacted with the mattress and then his face and broad shoulders filled her view as he moved over her. Pushing her thighs wide, he settled his hips between them, his engorged cock digging into her cleft as he caught her wrists, pinning them to the bed on either side of her head and arching against her. Lowering his upper body until her breasts were crushed against his hard chest, he covered her mouth almost brusingly with his own, forcing her lips to part. And when he had breached the fragile barrier of her lips, he thrust his tongue into her mouth with a ravenous ferocity that sent a thrill of excitement through her.

  Uttering a sound of need, she struggled to free her wrists from his grip to hold him tightly against her, to caress him. His hands tightened. A low, rumbling growl of fierce need vibrated from his chest as he lay claim to every tender surface of her mouth with the rough stroke of his tongue.

  When he broke the kiss at last and moved along her throat, Colette was gasping for breath, writhing feverishly beneath him in mindless need. She felt the edge of his teeth as he opened his mouth along the side of her neck, sucking it until he brought stinging sensation to the surface before he released the patch of flesh and explored her ear with his lips and tongue.

  She dragged in a panting, shaky breath as he abandoned that assault and nipped a trail along her throat to her breasts. Blood flowed into her nipples, engorging them to almost painful fullness as he ran his tongue over her breasts. She gasped as he caught one turgid peak between his teeth, raking them along the tender flesh in a way that made her fingers curl into claws as nearly unbearable pleasure shot through her and finally sucking it into his mouth.

  She arched her back as he ceased to tease that nipple and moved to its twin to torment her, gasping, bucking against him.

  “Please,” she moaned shakily. “Nuri, please!”

  Releasing his grip on her wrists, he burrowed an arm beneath her back and wrapped his fingers tightly around her opposite arm, pinning her arms to her sides and arching her back upward for his hungry caresses. Lifting his hips, he slipped an arm between them and guided his cock head along her cleft until he had wedged it firmly into the mouth of her channel. Shifting his arm beneath her hips then, he curled his, thrusting deeper, plowing into her in hard, aggressive thrusts that forced his erection past the clinging resistant flesh of her body until she began to feel as if he would split her in two.

  Thoroughly pinned by his weight and his arms, she could do nothing more than shake and pant with need as he drove into her, withdrew slightly and pounded into her again, glorying in his forceful possession, feeling her body rush blindly toward release. She welcomed it, moaning with the force of her burgeoning, squeezing her eyes tightly to hold the sensations to her.

  All too soon, it seemed to her, her body reached its peak and burst in a fiery culmination that drew hoarse, keening cries of rapture from her. The sounds and the convulsing of her body seemed to drive him over the edge, as well. A tremor traveled through his length and he uttered a harsh growl as his own body began to jerk and quake in ecstasy as his hot seed flowed into her.

  Thoroughly sated, Colette went limp beneath him, struggling to catch her breath.

  His grip on her eased. Breathing raggedly, he lifted away from her and looked down at her for a long moment.

  She felt him stiffen. Slowly, he withdrew his flaccid member and rolled off of her.

  Colette made a half hearted sound of complaint in the back of her throat when she felt his fingers trail lightly over her, unwilling to let go of the haze of repletion at the moment. Confusion filled her, though, when he snatched his hand back as if he’d been burned and she heard his feet hit the floor beside the bed.

  With a great effort, she lifted her eyelids to look at him curiously.

  His face was ashen as he stared at her, his gaze fastened on her thighs, and her heart skipped a beat at his expression. The alarm was sufficient to galvanize her. Still weak in the aftermath of her exquisite climax, she struggled upright and looked down at herself. Blood was streaked along her thighs. Horrified, she merely stared at it for several moments before her head jerked upward and she met Nuri’s equally appalled gaze.

  She placed a shaking hand on her abdomen when she realized what the blood might mean, but she felt no pain at all. Surely, it could not be anything serious if she felt no pain?

  With an effort, she pushed herself to the edge of the bed and stood up. The muscles in her thighs gave her a twinge of discomfort, but despite the fear she’d been trying hard to ignore, she still felt nothing to cause her any great alarm. When she glanced up again, she discovered that Nuri had vanished.

  Frowning, she looked around for several moments and finally moved away from the bed and went to stand before the mirror above the dressing table.

  She saw then why Nuri had looked so appalled. As thoroughly as she had enjoyed his rough caresses, she saw now that they had left their marks. Bruises were already beginning to form on her wrists and arms, her hips, her throat, her breasts and thighs.

  He thought he’d hurt her. Maybe he even thought he’d unseated his child with his roughness.

  He hadn’t hurt her, though. She’d thoroughly enjoyed it, and, despite the small amount of blood on her thighs, she could not believe the child had been harmed.

  Dismay filled her, though. It didn’t matter what she thought at this point. Nuri was convinced that he’d brutalized her. She knew that from the look on his face when he’d left.

  She would not be getting another serving of pleasure--maybe ever--unless she could convince him she looked far worse than she felt.

  She suddenly felt like weeping. Sniffing the tears back, she looked around the room dully for several moments and finally moved to the washstand to clean herself up. She felt no better once she had clothed herself, though, and settled in the chair she had claimed for herself before the hearth.

  What if she was wrong? What if she had enticed Nuri and ended up loosing the child he wanted?

  When a day passed without incident and then another, Colette finally relaxed. They had only played a bit too rough. There was no reason why they could not share their bodies with each other so long as they curbed their enthusiasm only a little.

  Nuri did not give her the chance to reason with him. After waiting almost a week for him to show himself, she finally decided to take the matter into her own hands and began to search the abbey.

  She finally ran him to ground in the library. He was seated in the overstuffed chair in front of the fire, staring at the flames instead of the book that lay open on his lap.

  “The babe has come to no harm,” she said tentatively when he refused to acknowledge her presence.

  When he looked at her at last, she smoothed her hands over her belly, showing him the rounded mound.

  Nuri swallowed a little sickly and ret
urned his attention to the flames. He could not bear to look at her, for each time he did the image rose in his mind again of the bruises he had left upon her when he had taken her with so little care for her frail human form. It mattered little that he had not intended to harm her. He had done so, and it tormented his days and his nights, made worse by his nearly overwhelming urge to take her again, and his fear that he would yield to the demon inside of him and hurt her again if he allowed himself to go near her.

  He had not expected her to yield to him gladly. He had thought that she would struggle and, in his mindless quest to fill his senses with her, he had thought that he was preventing her from hurting herself fighting him when in truth it was the strength of his body and the force of his lust that had hurt her.

  “I can not change what I am,” he said harshly. “There is more beast in me than humanity. Still, I regret ….”

  “I don’t regret it,” Colette said earnestly.

  His gaze flickered over her. “Only that I did not succeed in removing the demon’s seed from your belly?”

  Colette felt her jaw go slack in stunned surprise. Hurt quickly followed. She was not happy about her condition, but regardless of what he’d come to believe about mortal women, she would not deliberately harm it. “No! It’s true that I was angry about it--at first--but I would not harm it or want it harmed. How could you think that?”

  “Easily. I may not be familiar with the full spectrum of human emotion, but I have no trouble understanding hate. I felt that when I was forced to watch ….”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. Colette felt a little sick herself. “You hate me for that?” she demanded, torn between disbelief and anger.

  His lips tightened. “Nay,” he growled. “Myself, because I could not stop it. Malik because of what he did--fate. I do not know. I only know that I am sick with the anger inside me and it will not go away.”

  Whatever he said, he was angry with her, too. She knew that. She had to wonder if he had believed she was taunting him. She hadn’t been, but she had--mostly--enjoyed it and that was enough of an affront, she supposed.

  Well, she could not help what she was either, she thought angrily. She had not asked for it. She had not been able to prevent it any more than he had. “What Jala told me was true then? You mean to …,” she stopped abruptly when she realized she had been about to say ‘send me away’, for that was all too revealing a comment, “…release me once it is born?”

  His face hardened. He swallowed audibly and looked away. “If it is--healthy,” he growled finally.

  Meaning he still believed she wanted to harm it? Hurt and angry over the not so subtle accusation, she had to swallow against a hard knot of misery before she could speak. “It was not I who threatened it!” she said angrily. “You did that!”

  He slammed his hands against the arms of his chair and stood abruptly, kicking the book that had been in his lap into the flames angrily. “I know this! How does your revenge taste, mortal? Is it sweet? Does it warm your nights to know ….” He broke off. Pushing past her, he stalked from the room, slamming the door so hard behind him Colette wondered that the hinges held.

  She’d been staring blankly at the door for several moments before it occurred to her that it was the first time he had been so furious with her that he had not seemed even to think of using his magic to remove himself from her presence.

  She avoided him after that, not because she was afraid of him, although she had no idea when she had ceased to feel any fear of his volatile temper, but because she was too furious with him to want to see him.

  After a time her own anger cooled, but she had had two very unpleasant confrontations already and decided that was enough. She tried not to dwell on her misery, but it was difficult when she had so much time on her hands and no real outlet for her restlessness. She spent a good deal of time altering her clothing as her belly grew, letting out the waist as far as it would go and then raising it when even that was no longer enough to allow her breathing room.

  The first time she felt the child inside her stir, she laughed for a little while and then cried when it dawned on her that she was not going to be around to cuddle it. Nuri would not allow her to take it with her even if she could, and he did not want her to stay.

  The sorrow she felt at that made it impossible for her to ignore what she had been trying to hide from herself--that she had ceased to think of it as something unwelcome and unwanted.

  She knew why, though she’d tried to deny that, as well.

  She loved the demon. She didn’t know how or why, and it didn’t matter. Knowing wouldn’t change anything. She felt it in the ache in her heart every time she caught a glimpse of Nuri.

  Unfortunately, there did not seem to be anything that she could do about it, either to stop it, or to try to seek Nuri’s affection in return. Regardless of what he’d said, and she had once believed, she did not think that he was incapable of feeling love. He might not fully understand his human emotions, he might have a very hard time controlling them, but he felt them. He had been jealous when Malik had claimed her, maybe mostly from pure possessiveness, but she thought if it had not been for that he might have come to care for her.

  Had he wanted to hurt her because of that, she wondered? Was that why he had been so filled with guilt? Or was it only that he had given his desire full reign and it had not occurred to him until afterwards that she was mortal and far more frail than he’d realized?

  She thought it mattered, that it was important to make him understand that he had not hurt her as he’d thought, but she had already tried to make him see that and he had only growled at her like a wounded beast. As tempted as she was to try to lure him into her bed again, she thought that was probably no better an idea than trying to talk to him, probably worse, particularly when she knew she was indeed more fragile now that she was so far along in her pregnancy.

  As she drew nearer and nearer to her time, she did her best to put it from her mind as a tangle that was impossibly snarled and could never be made right again. It was not easy, but she realized that some things simply could not be changed and had to be accepted.

  She did not want to think of the babe at all, fearful of feeling the pain of separation when she had to leave and yet that was as impossible as accepting that she had lost all chance of finding a way into Nuri’s heart.

  Her time came upon her early and without warning. She knew that she still had weeks to go, nearly a full month, and her first reaction was fear. She tried laying down, but the pains did not subside even a little. They steadily became worse until she was hardly even aware of Jala when she came in to bring her noon meal and tidy the room until she heard the crash of the tray as it hit the floor.

  “Babe comes?” Jala demanded, her voice squeaky with fright.

  Colette groaned. “Yes!” she said with an effort.

  Jala screamed, ear splittingly and dashed into the hallway. “Master! Master! Come quick!”

  “No!” Colette gasped, but she saw almost at once that it was too late, for Nuri appeared beside the bed while Jala was still jumping up and down in the hall screaming his name.

  He studied her for several moments and finally settled on the edge of the bed beside her, placing his hands on her swollen belly. “I can take the pain away,” he said finally in his deep, rumbling voice.

  Colette grasped his wrist. “No! It’ll hurt the baby!”

  He shook his head. “It will come to no harm,” he told her, pulling his hand from her frantic grasp and leaning over her to stroke her hair from her face.

  Dizziness washed over her and then a swirling gray mist that seemed to envelope her mind. The pain receded, but with it went much of her awareness. Dimly, as if she was standing outside her body and only watching what transpired, she saw her belly contracting, her body struggling to expel the infant.

  She didn’t want to be distanced from it. She did not want to feel the pain either, but she knew if she allowed herself t
o be pulled away that she would not know when the infant was no longer cradled in her womb, that she would not know when it was taken from her.

  She fought the spell Nuri had woven around her until at last she no longer had the strength to fight it anymore. Then, darkness claimed her and, as she had feared, she knew nothing at all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Colette knew even before she opened her eyes that something was very wrong. She did not feel as she should. She didn’t know why she felt unlike herself. She just knew that something had changed drastically.

  She opened her eyes and pushed herself up on her elbows when she heard Jala burst into the room with her usual clumsiness.

  “Wake, good! Now you go!”

  Colette stared at the ugly imp blankly. “What?”

  “You go now! Follow the drive, you will find the road.”

  Colette’s hand moved to her stomach. It was flat as if nothing had ever been there. “The babe?”

  “Nuri’s son!” Jala growled. “Not matter, you. Go! Before Master changes his mind and gives you to Malik.”

  Colette’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe for one moment that Nuri would consider handing her over to the demon Malik. Jala was lying. She was in a desperate hurry to rush Colette from the abbey.

  “He wouldn’t do that!”

  Jala’s eyes narrowed. “Know him, do you?”

  Colette’s lips tightened. “Well enough to know that’s a lie.”

  “Suit yourself,” Jala snarled, slamming the tray she was carrying down on a table. “Night soon, though, if you not go.”

  When she’d left, Colette got out of the bed. Dizziness assailed her once she was on her feet, but it passed fairly quickly. It still took an effort to walk the distance between the bed and the washstand to clean up.