I’m suddenly aware of how often I’m breathing, and for faefucking sake, just leave already.
My head turns slowly, and I find him staring at me with his honest amber eyes.
“You don’t really trust her, do you?”
“Not as much as you trust everyone around you, Damien.” It’s a biting remark but a true one.
He’s too trusting.
He should learn to be more like his brother. Then uncomfortable situations like the bathroom fiasco wouldn’t happen.
I shake my head at him. Instead of sitting through another moment of unending tension, I stand, since it’s clear he won’t leave anytime soon.
But the moment I stand, he does, too.
“You think I’m too nice?” He steps in front of me and corners me against the hard edge of the couch. His warmth bleeds into me, and I shift against him as my breasts press into his chest.
“You’re definitely too nice.” I stare up at him unflinchingly, even though he has a good ten inches on me heightwise. “If you had a backbone at all, you wouldn’t be caught up with my sister. You wouldn’t take her word that she’s helping you when she clearly just wants to see the mutilated outcome of mixing fae magic and demon magic. She wants what my father fears.” When he just gives me a confused look, I answer for him. “Monsters.”
His lips part as if I just slapped him instead of speaking honestly.
“Why would she do that?” he asks, astounded.
He really is just too fucking trusting.
“Because she is the result of mixing fae magic and demon magic. And you three, you three are the only things that might be more repulsive to the fae world than she is. She’s creating creatures just like herself because there is safety in numbers. And you’re too stupid to see that.”
His big palm strikes out fast, and I react as soon as he grips my wrist. But pathetically, I don’t react the way I should. Instead of kicking him in the balls or slamming my fist into his pretty face, my lungs instinctively release the most desperate breath. It’s a pathetic little gasp of lust. To make matters worse, my back arches until my hard nipples skim firmly against the planes of his chest.
His brows lift at my body’s ridiculously weak reaction to his tight hold on me. I, too, feel surprised at the moment.
What. Is. Wrong. With. Me?
Am I possessed by stupidity as well as a demonic spirit?
I straighten and pull back until there’s a healthy amount of space between us. I clear my dry throat, but he still hasn’t released my wrist.
His face lowers, and I feel the growl of his words before he speaks them.
But when he opens his mouth, it’s a groan of pain that comes out.
He’s no longer gripping me but clinging to me. His big body stumbles into mine. His face twists in pain, and all I can think about is how this strong man is being taken to his knees, and I’m lowering right down with him. He hunches over. His hand is in mine now, and he squeezes it hard as a whimpering growl shakes through his clenched teeth.
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” My palms skim all over his chest and arms. Every part of him is burning up with heat.
His only reply is harsh sounds of agony. It makes my heart pump harder, my hands fumble faster, to find a wound of some kind.
When he turns away from me, I see it.
Sharp black spikes pierces through his shoulder blades where soft white wings probably once were.
“Oh no,” I whisper as my body tenses with hard realization.
Blood slides down his skin where the talons of something large and jagged presses beneath his flesh.
They’re demon wings.
11
The Pain of Demons
Aries
The screams of torment are a sound that you never want to hear in your entire life. It’s a ripping pain that tears viciously right from the chest without mercy, and somehow the person’s still whole.
Still whole but bitterly broken.
Zaviar and Ryke came storming downstairs as soon as Damien’s groans turned to violent pleas of helplessness. I followed numbly behind them as they flew him up the winding stairs and into their nest at the top floor.
Shivers and sweat control Damien’s massive, strong body. All I want to do is cuddle him and tell him everything’s going to be alright.
But it’s been hours, and the wings are still caught within him. Only a couple of inches of black talons protrude from his tattered, bloody shoulder blades.
“Shouldn’t they have formed by now? Why is it taking so long?” I can’t help the way my voice catches like I might cry for him, since he hasn’t shed a single tear through all of this torture.
“Takes longer,” Ryke whispers as he stands at the edge of the platform looking down on his friend with concern in his eyes. “The runes slow the demon process. Something that should take seconds might take hours.” His large arms fold sternly over his scarred chest, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s remembering how he went through this very same thing.
Except he was alone then.
And Damien is surrounded by people who just want to help him.
Even me.
His brother covers the wounds on his back with a warm, wet washcloth, and Damien’s spine tenses hard the moment the cloth covers his talons. He flinches and groans through it all, trying to keep his agony inside himself.
I can’t stand it.
Finally, I make the haphazard trek from the platform and over the netting to where he lies curled in a ball on his side. My legs wobble beneath me, and when I’m only a few feet away, my foot slips through a small hole, and I fall completely. My palms splay out in front of me, and unfortunately, Damien’s slick body catches my fall. I’m sprawled over him, my hands braced against his side while my leg stays caught in the thin strings.
Zaviar looks at me with a hard glare like he just cannot fathom how someone like me ever made it twenty-three years without getting herself killed.
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.