Page 19 of Demonchild

“Three.”

“More,” Malissa gasped.

Beliath laughed and licked his lips clean. To Malissa, it appeared as if the floating, liquid mouth simply disappeared in one circular swipe of a long but invisible tongue. The eyes were still there, though—the glowing orange cat’s eyes hovering in mid air.

“If you want more,” Beliath said. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow night.”

“No!” Malissa snarled, half mad with desire. “I want itnow!”

Her muscles were weak from her climax, but she managed to clumsily push herself into a kneeling position. The demon must have been kneeling as well, because his eyes were not too much higher than the level of Malissa’s own, and when she flung herself toward him, her hands came down upon the huge, powerful muscles of his thighs.

That meant his cock was right there between them. Malissa couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there, and she knew it was hard.

She shivered with lust.

She wanted to pleasure the demon the way he had just pleasured her. She wanted to make him come with her lips and her tongue, the same way he had just made her come. She wanted him to do it inside her mouth, wanted to taste it, wanted to swallow it.

With a hungry moan, she parted her lips and bowed her face toward Beliath’s lap. Her tongue extended from her open mouth, seeking the demon’s hard arousal.

Before she could find it, a hand seized her hair and tugged her head back, making her gasp with surprise and a bit of pain.

“Tomorrow,” the demon purred.

“Beliath, please,” Malissa whined. “Please, I want to taste y—”

“Begone!”

The hand holding her hair went away. So did the hard thighs supporting her hands. She fell forward, and her palms hit the ground.

The demon had banished himself.

Malissa was alone.

CHAPTER 11

Malissa stood in her chamber, looking up at the portrait of King Wulfgang that hung on the wall facing her bed. It was noon again, and the warm, golden sunshine flooding in through the windows imbued the pigments with an almost lifelike vibrancy. The portrait had been done a few decades earlier, and it depicted a much more youthful Wulfgang than the one Malissa knew. In the painting, his face was broad and masculine, his cheeks rosy and sanguine, his beard and hair black and rich and regal. These days, the real Wulfgang was gaunt and gray, with pallid skin and rapidly retreating hair.

Nevertheless, Malissa could see the connections between this image of the past and the man she had married. The petulant lips, the aquiline nose, and most of all the eyes—the cold, hard, overcast eyes. One of the reasons Malissa had always hated this painting was the way those eyes seemed to follow her around the room. She could even feel them watching her as she lay in bed at night.

It was not a comforting feeling.

But she was grateful for the portrait now. The likeness, while not up to date, captured enough of the king’s essence to serve her purpose later tonight. Now she only needed to figure out how to get it off the wall. She stepped forward and reached for the frame.

“Excellent, isn’t it?”

The voice startled Malissa so badly she almost cried out. She drew her hand away from the portrait’s frame and whirled tofind Dr. Jaeger standing just inside the door of her chamber, watching.

“My apologies, Your Highness,” the man said, bowing deeply. “I did not mean to startle you.”

“How long have you been standing there?” Malissa asked.

Jaeger rose. “Only a moment, I assure you. I should have announced my presence sooner, but I was struck by the beauty of the scene. I’m certain the king would be pleased to see his young wife gazing upon his likeness with such devotion.”

As usual, it was impossible to tell if the man was being ironic or not.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Malissa said.

“No? I thought you had sent for me.”

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