Page 5 of The Devil of London

“You’re a fucking whore, Aderyn. I thought you were pure, and yet, you suck cock like a skilled courtesan. Fuck you to the depths of hell, harlot. I hope you burn right alongside your lover when you meet your maker.” Maxwell’s words were weak, but the message was clear.

“I’d be fucking careful, Maxwell. No one calls my girl a whore but me.” Nasir lowered to where I still knelt with my face hidden in shame. In the entire time I’d been with Nasir, I’d never cared what others thought of me. I’d done scandalous things with him as well as watched them unraveling around us. But Maxwell’s words struck something deep within me because I’d actually liked him.

“Look at me, beautiful. Aderyn,” Nasir snapped, jerking my chin until it forced me to look up at him. The moment he saw the pain in my gaze, he pulled me to my feet and flush against his body. Pressing his forehead against mine, he breathed me in until he whispered. “Fuck him and his zealous ideology. You’re not a whore. You’re my whore, and therein lies the difference. We’re forever, you and me. Okay?” he asked before he pushed me backward and away from the sword that sliced through the space where I’d been standing.

Maxwell wildly swung the blade at me for a second time. I rolled, barely missing being cleaved in half as it cleaved into the wooden boards of the floor. Khaos rose, lunging for his blade as Maxwell continued to swing his own wildly. I didn’t move fast enough the third time. It allowed the tip of his blade to slice my cheek, which caused me to scream in agony as additional pain filled my mind.

Khaos bellowed as the blade sailed toward me yet again, but a silver blur moved against it, sending it flying out of Maxwell’s hands. The momentum of Khaos’s swing never pausing as he pivoted, brought the blade around again, and carved it through Maxwell’s throat. The air was painted with blood that rained onto my still-naked body, and a second later, Maxwell toppled over, landing on me.

I screamed again, his blood pumping out of him and over me as I tried and failed to scramble backward, one-handed as I held my wounded cheek.

“Fuck, what the fuck were you thinking?” Merikh demanded in his sharp, Middle Eastern accent.

“He had one fucking arm! How the fuck was I to know it was his sword arm?” Khaos demanded as Maxwell’s corpse was ripped from where it was sprawled over me, and two pairs of eyes peered down at my shocked, terrified face as I continued to scream. “Damn it,” Khaos whispered as he dropped to his knees and yanked me into his arms.

“What the fuck did you do to her?” Merikh asked. His eyes swung to the altar where the severed arm remained with the fingers oddly angled. “You sick motherfucker. Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did to her.”

“It’s none of your fucking business what I do with her.” Nasir sneered, pulling my hand away from where it still cupped my cheek. “Fuck!” Rising with me in his arms, he strolled to the altar and exhaled. “Grab me her chemise and my cloak. I need to get her to Damaris so she can sew the wound.”

“Here, take this. Place this on the wound to stop the bleeding.” Merikh’s eyes lowered to mine before they dropped to my bruised lips. Khaos stroked my hair, muttering soft words that slowly coaxed my hysterics into calming. “Damaris will close the wounds and place a salve on it to reduce the pain.” The sound of approaching footsteps had us turning toward the entrance, and when Aaryn stepped through the doorway, Nasir and Merikh growled.

“Riders are approaching,” Aaryn stated before his eyes lowered to my face. “You fucking cut her up?”

“No, asshole. I would not cut her,” Nasir growled.

“Maxwell was left-handed apparently,” Merikh responded.

“Hand me her fucking clothes now,” Nasir demanded with a look of anger, and something else I’d never seen in his eyes. Worry. “Aaryn, go see if the riders are friend or foe. Help me dress her, Merikh. She is going into shock.”

Chapter Two

Khaos

Merikh held Aderyn’s naked body against his frame, and when I’d finished pulling her chemise on over her head, I met his cold, emerald-colored eyes. I didn’t need the asshole to tell me I’d gone too far tonight. I knew I had. I’d never expected to enter the church and find my wife standing before a priest, declaring to love another man until death.

“Tonight, shouldn’t have happened. You should’ve walked in and removed her. It should’ve been that fucking easy.”

“You ever walk in on your wife marrying another man, Merikh?” I asked, the question making my mouth taste sour.

“No, but I watched the love of my fucking existence walk off with my best friend, who was one of the few men I’ve ever respected enough to call my brother.” Ouch, that one stung. “I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same shit, but this reincarnation of her, it’s not the same as the others. She isn’t some evil bitch who enjoys murdering humans. This girl isn’t some whore who’d fuck her way to the top. She’s soft curves and shy glances. Aderyn isn’t the same woman we both loved.”

“No, she isn’t, but it changes nothing. She’s the same soul who fucked with the gods and got us all cursed to be denied the one thing we wanted. I’m a fucking incubus who can’t fuck the one woman I have loved since the moment I set my sights on her. Yet, if I don’t fuck, I’ll go mad and slaughter thousands of humans until the bloodlust wanes.”

They had cursed me to never have the one woman I craved. My wife and soulmate. If I fucked her, she’d end up dying on me. The moment we’d begun to learn one another or get close, the secondary curse came into play, forcing hatred to burn like poison through our veins.

I wouldn’t chance it, no matter how badly I craved to feel the maddening pleasure her body would give me. So, to prevent the bloodlust from rising, I found my release with nameless women who I forgot before my come could drip from their cunts. She hated me for it, but she didn’t know I hated it more than she could understand. No one would ever hold a candle to the pleasure she’d once given me. “It could be worse, asshole. At least you can get off. Me? I can only get off inside your wife.” He grunted when I turned angry eyes on him. “Save it for your enemies. I haven’t asked you to let me fuck her again, have I?”

I hated that he’d been cursed to find release only with Aderyn, which he’d ignored for the most part.

They cursed Aderyn to be reborn with no memories of our past. Every life she’d lived had been horrid and filled with pain. As if the gods chose the worst parents possible and then forced her to be raped, beaten, or ripped apart by their brutally savage hands. It was why I’d raced to every rebirth the moment the fluttering started within me. I wanted to save her from the pain she would endure, but until this one, I’d never made it before she’d been broken and had been turned cold and merciless. Often times, she’d already been married with babes of her own as well.

Eventually, I’d discerned a pattern, and for her last rebirth, we’d been at the right place at the right time. I wasn’t sure if that was the reason, or why she was different in this life. Yes, she’d endured cruelty, but she didn’t allow her pain to touch others.

The men thought it an accident, but I wasn’t certain it had been one. When Aderyn had burned down the bawdy house on Drury Lane, I’d seen the pain in her eyes. I’d tasted her rejection when I’d refused to employ her as a whore in my establishment. Then I had left her in my chamber, which was where the blaze had started. Whether her magic had chosen that moment to rise in her veins, or she’d known how to wield it before then was anyone’s guess. What mattered was that she’d burned it to the ground, and in doing so, she’d ended the lives of those I’d sworn to protect. Innocent lives of lesser beings who had been hiding in the cellar.

Tying the bows of her chemise, I wrapped my heavy cloak around her body before accepting her slight weight from Merikh, who begrudgingly allowed me to do so. Sitting with her in my arms, I watched as he placed the white cloth against the wound Maxwell had inflicted. My eyes slid to his corpse, which still held the blade.

“He cut her with Damascus steel made for the Herne bloodline.” It meant she’d carry the scar with her throughout her entire lifetime. Normally, she didn’t carry scars from one life to the next, but if the injury was inflicted with a special blade, it would remain. Anger at myself shot through me like liquid fire. I’d been lost in the pleasure of her mouth and had let my guard down. I had never let my guard down around an enemy.

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