Page 40 of Dancing With Demons

I drew closer still—the mere sound and smell of her drawing me in like a witch to the stake. Memories assaulted me as I reached for her.

“My— My lord B-Belphe?”

Father reclined on his throne-slash-bed. All around him a flurry of attendants offered him wine, grapes, cheeses, cakes—a veritable feast.

Their incessant simpering fell quiet under my bellowing, raging roars.

Fists tangled in my servant’s hair, I yanked and pulled it out by the root—wailing as I gnawed on his scalp and kicked his shoulders.

I was in a fantastic mood that morning. The delegation from House Zuriel had brought along another pile of presents, and Father said I could have all of them, and the delegation too.

“Arrghg! Agh!” I seized his gills, fighting to rip them free. My new servant was an axolotl demon. He had weird feathery gills on his head. I wanted weird feathery gills. I would have his.

“I think the young lord w-wants you,” the servant grunted out. “He does miss you so t-terribly when you’re apart.”

“Hmmm?” Father barely opened his eyes. He looked as if the mere act of turning his head to face us was too taxing. “Very well. Bring him here.”

The axolotl was quick in his movements. Bounding across the throne room, he peeled me off and deposited me beside Father.

I gazed up into the face that would be my own—pleased as ever to be beside him once again—and threw a punch.

Half a dozen palms flew between my fist and my father’s nose, bouncing my hit off the firm barrier.

Father chuckled. “Not yet, my young sapling. When you have embraced true beauty—true sloth—no one would dare deny your punches, or pawn you off to hang on to their gills. They will give you all that you want, because all you want is destined to be yours.”

“Arghg ishe yheel gee!” I was only fifty-three years old; I wasn’t freaking talking yet.

But I did understand. I repeated my father’s words, branding that truth on my bones.

All that I want is mine.

I palmed my cock, stroking furiously as I drank her in.

I had many things— No, I had all things. I had a bed made of the finest fallen angel feathers there were. I was served only the most delectable of fae cuisine. I had every new thing before it came out. I was brimming with power I didn’t even need to use, because all I had to do was drop my glamour, and life came to me on a silver platter.

I had everything except the one thing that no one had in hell... a mortal.

And how delicious this mortal was.

Hair as black as blood cascaded over the pillow like an ebony waterfall. The bright blush of life stained her lips and cheeks red, and my cock twitched in my hand at the mere anticipation of the day those lips would wrap around my dick as her cheeks caved in—sucking me dry.

I picked up the pace, grasping at the bedframe as the vision took me over.

She was magnificent. She was new, she was rare, she was mine.

And when she did that thing with her mouth and her face lit up with—with—with—

Dammit, what’s the word?!

My vocabulary failed me, but my memory didn’t. Clear as day, I saw her as she was the morning the imp made fools of us all.

All of us except her.

Yes, by then, the glamour had broken for me, and I saw the new student for who she truly was. A sudden and surprising accident that came about when I was silently, and invisibly, stalking the worm with the intent to kill him for sticking a finger up my ass.

I was all poised to strike, when she whispered the wrong thing to the snake in her blouse, and the scales were ripped from my eyes.

That day, she laughed and played with the imp—smiling a smile that wasn’t mocking, sneering, or ironic. The smile rose in my mind—teasing the dimples from her plump cheeks and brightening her eyes until—