by A. K. Koonce
Catherine feels the same way.
“Can you just go sit somewhere—anywhere else?” Zaviar bites out through clenched teeth, but Damien’s warm palm slips over my hip, holding me against him.
“No, stay,” he groans. “She feels good.”
My lips part but the rapid words stumbling over themselves inside my mind never emerge.
I feel good?
“She feels good?” Zaviar looks flat out offended by the notion.
“Believe it or not, some men do think I feel good.” My eyes narrow, and I can’t help but cock my head at him.
“Well, those men were referring to your pussy, and I doubt your fuckin’ cunt has the annoying personality that you have,” Zaviar says.
A snorting, choking laugh sounds behind me, but I’m too busy glaring at the man in front of me to glare at the demon behind me.
The fuckers.
“No really, it’s . . . she’s soothing. I don’t know. I can’t explain it,” Damien says before I can muster up a good dick joke to fling Zaviar’s way.
“Maybe it’s because she has similar magic to Corva?” Ryke guesses. I know I should also be trying to figure this out, but then Damien’s arms wrap around me, and he jerks me against him hard and fast. He pulls me to his chest, and every single part of him is touching every part of me. My palms hover over his pecs, and in the shadowy cocoon of his body, I peer up at him. And his hooded eyes are peering down at me.
“This feels good?” I ask, my fingers hesitantly pressing to his collarbones. My heart quivers as his lashes flutter from my touch alone.
He nods slowly, and a dirty thought makes itself at home in my mind in the middle of all this seriousness.
“Bet you wish your dick worked now, huh?” I whisper quietly, but judging by the low chuckle behind me, I’m not as quiet as I think I am in the hidden shadows of Damien’s body.
A slow smirk pulls at his full lips. Warmth sears through me at the sight of his small smile. I made him smile in the middle of all of this!
“I think we should look for Corva. See if there’s anything she can do for his pain,” Zaviar says in a muffled voice that I can barely hear.
The plus side of being wrapped up like this is, I don’t have to look at his scowling face all day.
“Maybe you two should circle the area and see if you can spot her,” Zaviar suggests.
I try to lift my head, but Damien pulls me harder to him, his muscles flexing as he holds me close.
“Don’t go, please,” he whispers with a shaking breath.
My neck strains, and I barely catch a glimpse at Zaviar. For once, he isn’t glaring at me. His pretty sky-blue eyes are clouded with worry and sadness as he stares down at his brother.
All of what he did with Corva, he did for his brother. He’s lived here for a year for his brother. Just how much is he willing to do for Damien?
Will there come a day that he thinks this is all too much?
He nods his head slowly. Apparently, today isn’t that day.
Zaviar’s palm settles on Damien’s shoulder. He squeezes hard, and then wind crashes over us. It’s a powerful and urgent wave of a force. I feel him fly off, but I never see him leave.
Boots storm across wood in a pounding sound, and I feel the breeze against my face. A big shadow swoops over us, signaling Ryke’s departure as well.
And then, we’re alone.
For several tense moments, all I hear is his thundering heartbeat and ragged breaths. His body shudders with tension from time to time as if he’s fighting off a pain deep inside himself, but he holds me in a sweet caress. His palms are so low on my back his fingers skim against my ass, but I never mention it.
I just let him hold me. I let him use me the way he let me use him. That’s what we have together: a terrible relationship that only exists when one of us benefits from the other.
It’s a toxic thing when I think about it, but it doesn’t feel toxic. It feels good to know I’m helping him. Even if I know he’ll hate me again when this is all over.
What if it didn’t have to be that way, though?
I take a deep breath and reach inside myself to prepare to do something I never do. Something that repulses me to even think about.
My gag reflex is already kicking up just imagining it.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” I say before I can dry heave against his perfect chest. “I’m sorry for putting you in the middle of my strange Krave relationship.”
His fingers dig into my skin as he moves his hand higher up to the small of my back.
“Why would you choose him as your mate, knowing your kind hates demons?”
It takes me a second to understand what he means.
“I didn’t choose him, Damien. Your soul chooses your mate. Trust me, if I had a choice in the matter, I wouldn’t choose someone who manipulated his way into becoming my friend, and then reported back my every word to my father.”
His thick lashes open slowly, and he studies me.
“Oh,” is all he says.
“Fated mates just happen. It’s something deep inside that your heart understands even if your brain never fucking does.”
“That’s very rare for seraphs.”
My brow furrows, and I can’t help but push my fingers through his messy golden blond hair. I hate the way my stomach is twisting hard right now as I study his handsome face.
“Demons have them,” I whisper in a voice tinged with sadness.
Someday he’ll have a mate. And I’ll be a jealous bitch, because Damien’s one of the good ones. He’s kind and honest.
When he doesn’t despise me entirely, that is.
And shit, the lines of his chest are so hard my tongue could dive in and spend hours licking every single hard part of him.
My throat clears as I shift against him, and I can physically feel Catherine roll her eyes at me.
I try to wash the dirtiness from my mind, but it’s like a stain that will forever tarnish anything innocent that might try to break into my thoughts.
But I do try.
“I can’t believe you actually admitted that I feel good,” I purr, my fingers skimming down the strong angle of his jaw.
A smirk tilts just near my thumb, and he closes his eyes once more like he’s too tired to talk.
But he does.
“You’re a pain in my ass ninety percent of the time. It’s only fair that I get some relief ten percent of the time.”
Get. Some. Relief.
That dirty stain in my thoughts will never wipe clean.
I focus harder on the important parts of our lives right now. My temples literally hurt like a migraine with how much effort I’m putting into this. It’s pathetic.
“Why do all this, Damien? Why put yourself through this instead of just accepting your fate and becoming a demon?”
The heat of his palm trails up the bare expanse of my ribs and down to my hips where my shirt and jeans don’t quite meet. What we have right now, this untouched moment, it feels intimate. It’s a trembling halt in time that I know with come crashing down as the seconds tick by.
“My parents were seraphs. They have similar views about demons being some sort of monsters. Seraphs aren’t as innocent as stories make them out to be, but my parents always held Zaviar and me to high standards. Standards we rarely ever met. As we got older, my father used to make a comparison. A threat of sorts to try to keep us in line.” He flinches again through the pain, and my fingertips trail up to skim the fine lines around his closed eyes. I can almost feel his pain right now. It hurts me physically, like I’m absorbing the agony he refuses to show. “My father used to say, ‘You keep fucking up like that, and you’ll end up a demon.’” His eyes open to meet my wide gaze. “He never said I’d be a fallen. He never said I’d be cut down and removed from the only home we’ve ever known. But he was right. And I just—I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, I guess.”
I blink at that response and the pain that’s still building
and stinging behind my eyes.
He’s hiding more than he’s saying.
But he is saying it.
“You’re afraid,” I whisper with a tiny smile. “You’re afraid of becoming exactly what your high and mighty father always said you’d be.”
“I—yeah. I am. The magic in my veins, it was good. It was pure and chaste.”
I arch a brow at him.
“I mean, it was supposed to be. I wasn’t innocent when I was a seraph. How horrific will I be as a demon?”
Oh, my dear sweet demon.
“We’re not all bad. I’m a dark fae, and you don’t see me running around hexing people with evil, do you?”
“Your sister made a deal with me involving the discontinued use of my cock, Ari.”
Well . . . I guess he has a point there.
“Not all creatures of darkness are like that, though. Most just like the shade and shadows. We get distracted with our magic just like anyone else.”
“Shade and shadows?” He arches an eyebrow at me. To prove my point, I snuggle into his chest, making his big body tense up as I push harder against him and really delve into the darkness he’s providing.
And then . . . I disappear.
“What . . . the . . . fuck . . . did you just do?” he asks, his arms loosening around me while I lie unmoving and unseen in his arms.
I pull back from the cove of shade I’m blending into, and my hands appear against his chest before the rest of me does.
He smiles slowly.
“Dark fae are shadow benders. We blend into darkness. As children, that’s typically the first form of magic we learn. We play hide-and-seek in the most magical way. We aren’t born with malicious intent, Damien. My father preached my entire life about how cruel and monstrous demons are. And yet, my first friend was a demon girl my father kept to clean our rooms. My first kiss was a demon. My first . . .” My words slip away as I remember the delicious way a man showed me how demons do it better. He wasn’t lying. Demons definitely do it better. “You get the point.”
His eyes are soft, and his head dips down until his nose lightly touches mine, his warm breath mingling with mine.
He looks pained once again but not from physical wounds.
“You sure you’re bound to that incubus?” he asks, his head tilting so our lips brush in the faintest way. I can feel his words against my mouth, and it hurts me to know he’ll never touch me so long as I belong to someone else.
Destiny, fate, predestined love, it’s all a cruel bitch sometimes.
My lips part, and my chest almost throbs as much as my head does right now. A drum from a castle party beats in the distance in time with the pounding of my skull. A party that loud can only mean one thing.
It must be the prince’s birthday, I think absently.
When I tip my chin forward a fraction of an inch, his mouth almost catches mine. We almost share a pressing kiss that I want to taste so fucking bad it hurts.
But my spine arches with pain, and my head flings back as scorching heat burns through my temple where my migraine was. It sears through me like a lashing knife, and my voice cuts out in a cry as pain wracks my body.
His hold on me loosens and becomes a delicate embrace as I fall apart in his arms.
“What’s wrong? What’s happening, Ari?”
My head throbs like my skull is trying to break open from the inside out.
And then it does.
Blood slides down my temples, and I fling my eyes open as the pain subsides at once with a numbness that can only be magically explained.
I heave for air, and I hate how I know instantly what just happened. But I reach my trembling hands up anyway. My fingers push through my bloody hair for only seconds before colliding with something hard. I follow the thing up. The smooth bone-like thing curves slightly before coming to a fine point several inches off of my head.
There’s two of them. Two smooth but bloody horns now pierce from my skull.
“What the fuck!” I shove back from his solid chest. “You did this. You’re turning me into a demon,” I accuse.
“What!” He lifts his hands like he might plead with me and strangle me all at the same time. “It doesn’t work like that, Ari. It’s not an STD. It’s not a fucking Sexually Transmitted Demon.”
I close my eyes and try to calm my ragged breathing, my slamming heartbeat, and my rapid-fire thoughts.
It’s not him, you lusty nitwit, Catherine whispers, and then my mouth falls open hard.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I push my hands through my hair, but then I touch the horns again. My anxiety just spirals higher.
I shuffle across the netting until I reach the platform. I sit there with wide eyes and not a single useful thought in my head.
I really imagined I could live the rest of my life in isolation with just me and my poltergeist. I really am a nitwit.
Fuck.
Air twirls my silver locks around my face, and someone lands with solid footsteps against the platform. His shadow covers me entirely, and I wish I could disappear in his darkness forever right now.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” Zaviar comments to his brother before his gaze catches on the sight of the curving horns on my head. “What the hell happened to you? You fuck a horny dragon, Crow?” His cruel voice rakes against my already frazzled nerves.
“She thinks I gave her a sexually transmitted demon,” Damien answers, coming closer until he’s right in front of me, his palms warming my thighs as he tries to catch my gaze.
“It’s the demon essence. It’s . . . changing me.”
Soon, I’ll be as much of an outcast as all of them. And I’ll wish I tried harder to make things right in this screwed-up fae world.
“Oh, so the pretty little crow is becoming demonic?” Zaviar sneers.
How does he even have room to talk right now? He still looks like he flew down from a cloud to lull me to sleep with a harp of gold and glitter.
“You look more fae than I do, you faehole!” A growl comes through my words, and the moment I say them, my eyes widen, and I know what I should do.
“Faehole?” His brow scrunches but I ignore him.
I have to do it right now! I can’t waste any more time with Catherine changing me like this.
I stand immediately. I don’t waste time with the stairs as I fly down to the lower level.
Damien looks down from the treetops overhead. Big green leaves hide him almost entirely from view, but I can feel the concern in his gaze.
“What are you doing?” he yells down.
“I’m going to go to a party,” I yell back. My fingers smooth my hair to a proper appearance, but the blood coating my face probably isn’t very appropriate for a celebratory bash.
“What?” Damien asks, like I’m out of my fucking mind.
Somedays I am. Today isn’t one of them, though.
“It’s my brother’s birthday, and he always celebrates with a party. And I want to celebrate . . .” my voice drops to a whisper I know he’ll never hear. “. . . by killing him.”
There’s only one way I can live peacefully. And that’s by releasing the ancient demon inside me.
And I can’t do that unless my brother isn’t alive to steal her.
12
Beautifully Brainless
Zaviar
When I was little, I used to think demons and half-demons were just seraphs who sold their souls for sin.
I’m starting to wonder if this beautiful woman sold her fuckin’ brain instead of her soul . . .
I stand in Corva’s bedroom doorway, and she meets my eyes, but doesn’t stop her erratic searching through the small closet filled with only black lace and leather. A long sleek blade made of black steel hangs near the door, as if Corva doesn’t trust the very people she invited to live with her.
She doesn’t. I know she doesn’t.
And I respect her for that.
Aries huffs at the dark clothes and then, without a second th
ought in her brainless fucking skull, she crosses her arms and pulls the shirt over her head. My brows lift as the curve of her breasts push against her silk bra. Damien would probably have the decency to glance away, but I just eat up the expanse of her smooth stomach and the perfect curve of her hips. Her hands drop there, and when she starts to unbutton her jeans, her lashes lift once more, and she holds my gaze.
“Are you just here for the striptease, or did you have a specific asshole statement you wanted to make, Remorseless?” She doesn’t wait for my reply as she shoves the tight material down her thighs and kicks it off.
I think this is the longest I’ve gone without getting frustrated with her. Even with her tacking on that fucking nickname for me.
She’s flawless . . . flawless and frustrating.
“I just wanted to warn you. I know that if you’re set on fucking something up at the castle, then I won’t change your mind.”
“But,” she says for me.
“But don’t fuck up what we have here. Don’t draw attention to my brother and everyone else here for your own selfish purposes. You fuck us over and I’ll make a nice rustic coat rack out of your pretty little horns, Crow.” I keep my voice low and calm, even as she tries to balance on one leg and slip on four-inch black fuck-me pumps. She stumbles and pulls dresses off the hangers as she teeters headfirst into the closet.
Fucking hell.
How is she striding confidence and awkward fumbling all at once? It’s like she’s never worn shoes before or something.
It wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t sexy and suffering all at the same damn time. The firm curve of her ass is in the air wearing only a thin pair of silk black panties, and I’m supposed to stand here and withstand the thoughts of me fucking her hard and fast from behind.
Until she shoves out of the mess of hangers and twisted black clothes and finds her composure again. Her composure seems to consist of a constant sneer when she looks at me.
I’m used to it.
“If you’re so worried about it, maybe you should escort me,” she suggests stupidly as she clips on a diamond-studded collar of sorts.