Page 1 of My Best Friend is a Demon

ANDERS

“Hello, Angel.” The gorgeous blond turns her head, her soft smile hitting me so hard that my breath shatters. I can’t help but smile back at her.

I’ve seen many things in my life. Many beautiful women that somehow found their way to hell. But I’ve never seen anything like Angel.

And she’s way too good for the likes of me. Unfortunately for her, we’re mates. Only she doesn’t know it.

I don’t know how I made it over here but if she knew what I just did, she’d run screaming into the night. Demons don’t get out of breath though. We also lie like rugs when the occasion calls for it.

“Beautiful night, isn’t it?” I say, my hands itching to reach out and touch her. To get rid of the magic that I’m using and bare my claws to drag them down her soft, pale skin. Drag a claw down past her soft belly and through the tempting path of her sweet heat.

I drag in a stunned breath, feeling her scent in my bones, all the way to the core of me. I growl under my breath, surprised when she jumps and her pale blue eyes narrow like she heard me.

She can’t hear me. Nobody can, unless I want them to. Right?

I never heard about fated mates for demons so I’m not really sure.

“How did you know my name?” she says, backing away, her heartbeat quickening. I can taste her fear on the forks of my tongue and I want to tell her that she’s alright. Want to scream into the night that I would never hurt her.

But I need to calm down. I suck in my breath, dig my talons into my palms and strain to make my heart settle down, stop beating so fast, my body to relax.

The devil’s an evil bastard and what he wants, he usually gets. My mate is the perfect accessory for his brand of cruelty. He’s use her until all that’s left would be a husk of her glowing beauty and continue using that to keep me in line.

And that’s not happening. I will not let him have her. Nobody will ever touch her. Not even me, if she’s lucky.

“What are you doing out here in the woods all alone?” I say, stepping closer, eager to taste her essence on my tongue, feel her lose control around me, shatter into a million, delirious pieces on the night air.

She backs away, her pale eyes spearing me, a tiny little piece of their beauty anxious, wide with fear.

I can taste it on the night air now. She’s terrified but trying not to show it.

“You never told me how you know my name.”

“The thing is, Angel, I’ve known you a long time.” I remember her as a child when I still loved with my human parents. She loved to play in the hall of the tenement building, the apartment complex should have been condemned it was so full of filth and squalor. But there she was playing, her glowing blond hair and pale blue eyes lighting up the awful background around us. Her laughter like tinkling bells and her bright dress a beacon to my darkness.

“Do you remember that friend in the tenement building in Cheyenne? The old apartment that was so bad? I remember you running around the place and just lighting it up with your laughter. You were my best friend, the only friend I’ve ever really had.” I moved too much and was too big a bastard to have anymore friends. I chased them off.

But not her.

“Anders?” She says, breathless, her pale blue eyes widening and her delicate nose flaring like she’s scenting out the truth. Her pupils widen, ink swallowing pale blue skies. I can smell her arousal on the cool breeze as she moves closer, the darkness of the forest all around us, soft night sounds barely heard.

Her tiny hand lifts and she touches me, shivers waking across my skin. My eyes roll back in my head and my shoulders stiffen, fighting to hold back my own devil inside me. The one that says to take her, claim her and hold her tight. Never let her go.

I shouldn’t touch her. I can feel the innocent purity of her and I sure as hell don’t deserve anything like her. Don’t deserve her sweetness and light. My darkness swallows me whole and it would bury her alive, taking and taking until there’s nothing left for her to give but she’d still be locked to me, unable to escape my life force.

“Where did you go? One day you just disappeared and I cried for days because nobody would tell me where you were.” Her head cocks, her pale curls falling over her shoulders like glowing moonlight, soft and tempting.

“I had to go. My parents passed away and the state took me.” Not quite the truth. I reached an age where the devil decided it was time for me to come home and learn the family business. Unfortunately, he brought my parents with me. Drained them of all the life that they had and then left them burning in the pits of despair.

As I said, the Devil’s a bastard. They were nice enough and it hurt to see them used and abused like that. To know I was responsible for their plight.

He told me that every day until I stopped going to check on them. I learned. Demons don’t have emotions and thoughts beyond the next desire of the devil. We live to please him, his fight is our fight.

Her lovely smile fades and a shy, sweet look of pity washes over her pretty face. “I’m so sorry, Anders. That’s terrible. I wish we’d been able to stay in touch. I never had another friend like you.”

I suck in a breath and fight to keep the loss and gut-wrenching fear that still lives there to this day away. Way down underneath layers of evil destruction.

“I’m sorry too, Angel. But I hope that you got out of there and lived a happy childhood.”

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