Page 16 of Demonchild

“Beliath?” she whispered.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and Malissa wondered again if she had gone mad. Had it been nothing more than a waking dream? The voice speaking to her out of thin air. The malefic presence. The great, horned shape she had glimpsed moving in the corner of her vision. Had it all been a figment of her overactive imagination?

Then the demon’s hands were on her. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel them clamped around her upper arms, as solid as the hands of any man, but twice as large, and twice as warm. The tips of the fingers were adorned with claws.

Those unseen hands dragged her forward roughly, and her naked breasts flattened as they met an unyielding wall ofinvisible muscle. A male member, huge and upright with arousal, pressed against her abdomen. If she had looked down, she would have seen its hard imprint in her soft flesh.

But she didn’t look down.

She looked up.

Up at the pair of orange eyes hovering in the air above her. Gleaming eyes with slitted pupils, like the eyes of a cat or a serpent, or some other creature that ambushes its prey.

This was no dream, she realized. This was real. This was happening.

The demon had her.

CHAPTER 10

“Begone!”

Malissa shouted the word with all her might, not in her own native language, but in the elder tongue in which her mother’s spellbook was written. She’d long been proficient in reading and writing the ancient runes. Over the past few weeks she had spent a great deal of time perfecting her pronunciation of the arcane language too.

Now, those many hours of practice paid off.

The demon’s grip on her body loosened, his fingers slipped away from her skin, and his glowing orange eyes—the only part of him Malissa could actually see—dimmed and went out. There was a faint sucking sound, like a sudden inhalation of air drawn between clenched teeth, and then, just like that, the demon was gone.

Of course, Malissa couldn’t actuallyseethat he was gone—she hadn’t been able to see that he was there in the first place, aside from those terrifying eyes—but she could sense it. The dark entity had been banished, of that she was certain.

That didn’t stop her from leaving the circle as quickly as possible.

With a startled gasp, she stumbled backward in fear. Her bare feet slipped on the soggy grass, her balance faltered, and before she knew what was happening, she was tumbling backward onto the ground. Above her, the stars in the night sky seemed to whirl dizzily, and then…

All was still and quiet.

Malissa was lying naked on her back in the moist grass, heart racing, breasts heaving with each labored breath.

She was safe.

She had escaped the demon’s grasp.

Yet as Malissa’s fear gradually receded, a feeling of uncertainty swept over her. Had she done the right thing? The demon had grabbed her, and his grabbing had not been gentle… but neither had it been excessively rough. He had notharmedher, though he undoubtedly could have. Her arms bore no bruises from where his fingers had squeezed her, no cuts from his sharp claws.

And she was right back in the same position she’d been in before. She still needed the demon’s help. She still needed his seed. Her very survival depended on it.

Only now she had angered the one individual who could help her.

Heavenly Creator, what had she done?

Malissa sat up. Her heart was pounding again. Her mind was churning as she tried to think of what to do next.

She could return tomorrow night, as she had originally planned to do. Perhaps the demon’s anger would have cooled by then. Surely he would not turn down the opportunity to breed her. And hedefinitelywouldn’t turn down the freedom which that breeding would buy for him.

Would he?

Hewasa demon. He had rebelled against the Creator himself, knowing full well it was a battle he could never win. Perhaps he would be willing to accept another thousand years of imprisonment simply to spite a little human queen who had spurned him.

Damn.

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