“Demon,” she called out, her voice ringing out not with lust but with anger. “You will cease this foolishness.”
His eyes flashed again, another pulse of power rocking through the entire building until she feared it might loosen the stones from their base. As though his magic penetrated even the rock surrounding them.
But it didn’t. And she just stuffed his power underneath the ice in her heart and glared at him.
“Enough,” Selene said again. “You’ve done enough.”
ChapterSix
He hated sorceresses. Always had. Always would.
But there was something to be said for a group of them on their knees before him. He’d never been a particularly ruthless man. Lust did not come with the desires for pain or torment, unless enjoyed by both parties. Something told him that the sorceresses would regret this later.
Still, seeing the High Sorceress without a means to an end to the pleasure he gave her made a wicked voice in his mind whisper, “Yes.”
He hadn’t felt this way in a long time. The victory of battle running through his veins even threatened to reveal his true form, which was much more than just the horns on his head. They were not entirely correct in calling him a demon, but the rumors had started from somewhere.
His brothers might wear those forms a little more comfortably, but Lust knew how to make himself more desirable to these humans. And desire him, they did.
Even the strongest women in the entire kingdom writhed at his feet, moaning as though they needed just a simple touch and he’d set them off. Should he? He knew the torment would linger with them. They’d hate themselves for how much they wanted his touch again.
Because his power only worked on those who still felt some form of lust for him, no matter how small.
“Enough,” her voice rang out. Beautiful and clear and cold as the first winter storm.
Lust glanced toward the stairs. And there she was.
Beautiful was too common a word for her, and incorrect in many ways. He would not call her plain. That was a disservice to both her and himself. Certain features of hers were pretty enough. The dark waves of her hair might have been even close to beautiful if she hadn’t flattened it to her skull in a severe bun. He supposed he could also admit the glare of disgust in her eyes was perhaps a little attractive as well.
Her glare sharpened into something close to hate as he sent out another pulse of his power, testing the edges of whatever shield she’d put up and... strangely... Nothing.
He hissed out a low breath and suddenly reacted.
His cock hardened, straining against his pants in a sudden rush of blood through his entire body. The hairs on his arms stood up and his heart thundered in his chest. That look in her eyes. The one that said she wanted to throw him across the room if she could. Why did he like that so much?
No person had made him react like this in centuries. He’d seen every woman he wanted. He’d tasted them all, been inside their wet heat, licked every possible part of their body and yet... This woman made him harden completely unbidden.
A part of him wanted to lunge for her. Surely she felt something. No one was immune to him unless they were one of those rare asexuals, but they didn’t live in his damned kingdom. They moved. She stayed here for a reason, which meant she was interested in sex at least a little.
And if she wasn’t interested in him, that was fine. Most of these sorceresses didn’t want to fuck him. But they wanted to fuck someone. A few of them had been avoiding each other. A break up? His mind caught on theirs for a second, noticing how their emotions tangled with each other. Or perhaps a fling that had never started, but both of them desperately wanted. Their attentions were on each other, not him, but the effect was the same.
No matter. He turned his attention back to the stairs as the hard snap of her heels struck the white marble. She approached and every time that click echoed through the hall, an answering zing of electricity danced down his spine.
How dare she? How dare she think she could seduce him before she felt even an iota of those emotions herself?
“Ah,” he called out, opening his arms wide as though she didn’t affect him in the slightest. “The puppet.”
“Easy now,” she said as she stepped over the High Sorceress. “You may call me that to my mother, but I am no one’s puppet.”
“Eavesdropping is for the weak, you know. You could have come down and seen to me yourself.” He let his eyes linger over her curves. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t have, but there is such a thing as self restraint.” She’d even laced her fingers together at her waist like the proper little pious pet sent to the slaughter.
“Self restraint?” His nostrils flared in anger. “You know nothing about lust if you think there is no restraint in it. Perhaps you are too innocent to even understand the concept of it. Is that why your mother chose you to surrender to me? Because you’re a child who has never understood what lust feels like?”
He knew it wasn’t. There was more to this than any of them wanted to let on, but he wanted to see the anger flash in her eyes like it had in the tavern. He wanted to push her into doing something silly. Like flicking his fucking horns as she had in front of all those people.
“I can feel,” she hissed. “I just feel nothing for you.”