Page 12 of The Demon Crown

She rolled her gaze up to the ceiling. “How long have you been stuck in there?”

“Long enough.”

The last thing she wanted to do was get her leathers wet. Again. She’d already washed them, but they were terrible to dry out when the cave was already rather humid. She’d have to find a safe place to dry them and for her to wait while she lacked her clothes. He’d look if he got the chance, and she didn’t want him to look.

But she also refused to let him sit in a pool of ice cold water longer than he needed to. So Varya waded into the water, gritting her teeth against the cold.

“Why are you so set on helping me?” he asked as she slotted herself underneath his arm. “You don’t seem like one of my subjects who likes me.”

“I don’t have to like you to help you,” she grunted.

“I’d think that’s a requirement for helping people, actually.” He didn’t lean as much weight on her as last time, at least. Maybe the water was helping.

She grunted again, heaving him up to sit on the edge of the pool. And then froze between his legs as he stared at her, face pale and eyes sunken. He looked... tired. Or perhaps resigned. Not at all what she’d thought a demon king would look like.

Varya braced her hands on either side of his bare hips and admitted, “I like helping people. Even people I don’t like.”

She could see the confusion on his face. He didn’t understand. But how could he? This entire kingdom ran on foolishness and greed and…

The question popped out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Is it true that you can only feel greed?”

He sighed, leaning back on his hands as though he had to put space between them to answer her question. “In a sense. I can feel happy or sad or angry, but none of them are as powerful as greed. It is who I am, and what I was born to be.”

“You were born?”

“In a sense.” His lips twisted as though he’d said some kind of strange joke. “Now, I’ve been dying to ask. What is it that you desire?”

She felt it. His magic. People had always claimed that if they were close to him, that they felt the greed that he spread. They could feel it flowing through their veins and into their lungs, tangling in their blood. He made people do terrible things, but right now, he wasn’t asking her to do anything. He was asking for an answer and she couldn’t deny him that.

“I want my people to be safe,” she found herself saying. “Even if that means I have to steal from the Horde themselves.”

He frowned. “That wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“And what were you expecting?” she asked as his power flowed off her shoulders like water.

With an arched brow, he looked down between his legs. Then he flicked his eyes back to hers, and something warm sparked between them.

Suddenly she realized she was still standing in the pool of water, halfway up to her waist and she’d gone numb from the knees down. He was leaning back on his hands. All that lovely muscle flexed and bared before her. And she knew that if she just looked an inch lower, she would be treated to a sight of a half hard cock that bobbed for her attention.

She couldn’t do this. Not with the king of their kingdom, and certainly not with a demon who had used his magic against her to get her to fuck him!

Yanking herself out of the water, she shook off the frozen droplets and snarled. “Enough, demon king. You have made yourself very clear.”

“Have I?”

“Yes!” she shouted, her words echoing through the cave. “I am only here so I’m not hung after someone finds your dead body in this cavern and then realizes I was here with you. I will not have you die on my watch and the rest of my family die because I did not get back to them in time. You will heal. Faster than you say you are trying and then we will leave. That is what is going to happen here. Nothing else.”

He poked at a cut over his ribs and seemed to mull over her words. But then he tilted his head back, and that grin stole over his features again. “What if I want to add something to that list?”

“You will not.” Varya bared her teeth at him. “There is nothing you could possibly wish to add to that list. I have not, will not, entertain any more of your foolishness. I don’t know what your game is, demon king, but I have no interest in playing it with you.”

“Ah, I think you have more than a little interest in playing it.” He leaned back on his hands, looking far too comfortable and making her want to smack that grin off his face. “Do you want to know a secret about me? I haven’t told anyone about it before, little thief.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Is it not what you are?”

“I’m not a thief,” she ground between her teeth. “I do not steal from the living very often, and I try to replace what I steal when I do.”

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