Page 32 of The Demon Court

The pang of answering guilt in his chest had him hissing out a breath. He had no right to do what he’d done. Every day with her in his castle made him step further and further toward the monster she thought him to be. And he hated it.

Standing, he approached her with his hands up in peace. “If I had thought you wouldn’t enjoy it, then I never would have invited her.”

Lust expected a flash of anger. For that glare he was becoming rather fond of to slash at his face. Instead, she stood silent. Selene stared off into the distance as if she wasn’t even in the room with him.

He gave her that time to think. She’d earned it. Instead, he moved around behind her and started working on the knots. But that silence quickly turned into a tension that he couldn’t stand as he let the rope slide from her body and hit the floor.

One last time to provoke her, that was what he told himself. Then he’d leave her alone.

Lust whispered in her ear, guttural and deep, “I didn’t think it would be so easy to break you, sorceress.”

There it was. The stiffening of her spine and the hatred that swallowed her up. She glared at him as though he was the scum of the earth and damned if it didn’t harden his cock.

“I am not broken,” she hissed. “You took my body, fair and square. My mother gave me to you and I am loyal to my family. I will do what I must. None of that requires me to give you my mind or my loyalty.”

“Ah, but you will be loyal to me. You have no one else.” He stroked the backs of his fingers against her velvet soft cheek, surprised to see she didn’t lean away from him. “You are alone here, little moon. Soon you will come to me for comfort.”

“Like I said in the throne room, I have no use for you.” She turned her face from him and then he saw her retreat again.

He’d never seen someone do that before. Oh, he’d helped people after awful things had occurred. He’d brought them back into a realm of sexuality that was safe and comforting. But he’d never seen someone just... disappear.

There was always a hint of the human beneath the mortal flesh. A flavor of them always existed.

But she withdrew. No hint of who or what she was. No mortal in front of him at all, just a darkness and a blank cold that wriggled underneath his skin.

Oh, this wouldn’t do. If this wasn’t breaking his little sorceress, then it was something much more terrifying and he refused to watch her fall apart. Not because of him. Not when it made his stomach twist and his heart thunder in his chest. Like he’d lost someone important.

Dragging his knuckles underneath her chin, he forced her to look back at him. “What would it take?”

“For what?”

“For you to feel something, little moon. I don’t want to see this husk of a woman in front of me. It hurts.” He tilted his head to the side, eyes tracing over her lovely lips and those cold, dead eyes. “You are a vibrant woman. The warrior I met in the tavern had more emotion in her than she could keep still. It overflowed from you, did you know that? I was made to feel only lust from humans, but I could feel everything from you. Your anger at me for being in the tavern. Your pride at having bested me. The amusement you felt when you flicked the gold dust off my horns. All of it.”

Her eyes had opened a little wider with each word he said, and he knew he had captured her attention. Even now, he could feel that fleeting flicker of interest.

But it wasn’t quite enough to get her to look at him with that anger he so adored.

Leaning so close he could feel her breath on his lips, so close the barest movement would have shifted them into a kiss, he whispered, “Now where is that sorceress? She was far more tempting than this one.”

“I don’t want to tempt you,” she replied.

“But you do all the same.”

Those dark eyes saw too much. They sliced through his very soul as she peered into his gaze. Searching for something? She’d find no pity or remorse in his eyes, not when he knew he was doing the right thing.

Finally, he felt a long sigh brush against his mouth. “Trust.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“If you want me to feel something, you must give me a reason to trust you.”

“There are many who trust me, and I have never had to win their affections.”

At the word, she arched a brow. “Clearly you are wrong. Lust has no need for deeper levels of trust. They have to know you won’t hurt them, but so few people want to hurt others. A friendship, a relationship, that all grows from much deeper trust. Trust that grows like the ancient roots of a tree. Everything but lust requires a certain level of it, and you do not know how to make people trust you. Only to desire you for a few moments and then leave.”

The words struck harder than he’d expected them to. He even took a few steps away from her, wincing as he rubbed his chest. They struck him like a knife between his ribs. And he didn’t know why.

“Then I ask again,” he growled. “What does it take?”

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