Page 51 of Make Me Lie (Rich Demons of Darkwood 1)

Cain glanced me over, then said, “Well, you didn’t want me to touch you, little devil. Looks like Stellan here is your savior.”

He sauntered toward the door, and Stellan stepped aside. I hastily grabbed a blanket and dragged it around my shoulders, cinching it around my body.

Cain glanced over his shoulder, his eyes colliding with mine, and he had a look that I couldn’t read. Then Stellan closed the door between us and leaned against it.

“Exactly what unfinished business do we have?” I demanded crisply. “Are you going to try a little harder to murder me this time?”

“I wasn’t trying to murder you. I was trying to shock the truth from your lying lips for once.” He stalked toward me, cocked his head as he studied me. There was a glimmer in his gaze that I couldn’t read. “Somehow you’re bringing even our resident psychopath under your spell.”

“I thought you were all psychopaths.” I leaned back on the bed, cocking one arm to pull a pillow under my head. I was good at reading people, and he didn’t bleeddangeroustonight. Not anymore.

Maybe after tonight, he was beginning to realize I wasn’t his enemy.

“Likely,” he admitted. “But Cain is the worst of us.”

Not for me. For me, Stellan was the worst.

His accusation thatIwas the reason The Demon took Sophia still lingered.

One night, The Demon had called me down to dinner. I’d walked into the dining room to see him sitting at the dinner table, bowls of fettuccine and salad greens on the table, a glass of wine in front of him. Strains of Vivaldi filled the air. There’d been a dinner guest to his right, a bound and gagged man who begged me with his eyes to help him, even as I turned away.

Those types of men were how he’d first introduced me to his work. He said they were serial killers and child rapists. He said I was making the world a better, safer place for kids like me when I helped him.

Later on, though, there came others.

The Demon had toyed with a cell phone, and my heart had stopped when he pushed it toward me.

It was myrealcell phone, my secret, not the one he’d given me.

Sophia’s last message glowed on the screen.I can’t believe you would kiss my brother! He’s so gross! :p

“I don’t want to fight in front of our guest,” The Demon had said, “but you have a lot of explaining to do, young lady.”

I’d convinced The Demon that Stellan meant nothing to me, and I’d helped flay our dinner guest so The Demon wouldn’t hurt Stellan and Sophia. I’d convinced The Demon to move not long after.

They’d been this brief, bright spot in my life, and I’d left them behind even though it tore my heart out. My best friend and my first love.

“Hello.” Stellan snapped his fingers in my face. “Are you still with me, Aurora?”

“Unfortunately,” I said. Sometimes a good dissociative episode was all a girl had, but that wasn’t happening tonight. “I’d never have hurt Sophia. If The Demon had… I would’ve killed him.”

I should have killed him instead of setting him up to finally be caught. I’d been stupid, sentimental, just because he was my only family.

Stellan stared at me, something flickering in his gaze, as if his warring feelings were playing out in front of me. I held my breath, hoping he’d believe me.

I could tolerate everyone else believing the worst about me.

But I couldn’t stand for Stellan to believe I’d hurt Sophia.

Some of the tension relaxed from his shoulders, and relief spiked in my chest. He believed me.

“What are you doing with Cain?” There was a raw edge of jealousy in his voice.

“I don’t know.” Honest answer. There was something raw between Cain and me that seemed to bring me back to life.

But when I looked into Stellan’s eyes, I felt the same butterflies in my stomach I had as a stupid lovestruck teenager. He sat on the edge of the bed, a frown dimpling the space between his dark eyebrows.

“Why’d you leave without saying goodbye?”

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