Page 89 of The Dark Lord Awakens
Back in my chambers, I found the massive black marble tub filled with steaming water that shimmered with oils that smelled like midnight air and something uniquely Iferonian that I still couldn’t name. After over a month of daily bathing rituals, I’d gotten used to the whole “butler helps you bathe” thing—which probably said something disturbing about how quickly humans can normalize literally anything.
Azrael moved with his usual silent grace as he prepared the bathing implements. Seriously, for someone built like a marble statue, the man moved like a ghost with excellent fashion sense.
“Allow me, my lord,” he said, crossing the room to assist me.
And here was the part that still made my brain short-circuit like an overtaxed power strip. In theory, having an impossibly attractive supernatural being undress you daily should eventually become routine. In practice, my body haddeveloped a Pavlovian response to Azrael’s proximity that was getting harder to ignore—and harder to hide, if you catch my drift.
His fingers worked efficiently at my buttons, each brief contact sending little jolts of electricity through me that I desperately tried to attribute to static or shadow magic or literally anything other than the obvious. Because developing a massive crush on your demon butler was exactly the kind of complication my new life as an accidental dark lord needed.
“So,” I said, desperately searching for conversation to distract from my body’s increasingly obvious reaction to his proximity, “do you think Sir Formalitee will actually explode from excitement before we break ground on his precious Administrative District? The man practically vibrated through the floor every time someone mentioned building codes.”
“A distinct possibility,” Azrael replied, his voice closer to my ear than strictly necessary as he slid my shirt from my shoulders. “Though I suspect his excitement would just make him temporarily vanish in a puff of bureaucratic smoke rather than cause any lasting harm.”
His cool fingers brushed against my bare shoulders, and I suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with temperature. This was ridiculous. I was a grown man, not some teenager getting hot and bothered over accidental contact. Except apparently my body hadn’t gotten that memo, because every casual touch from Azrael sent my pulse racing like I’d mainlined espresso.
Back on Earth, guys like Azrael—supernaturally gorgeous with cheekbones that could cut glass—wouldn’t have given awkward, average-looking me a second glance. I’d spent my college years crushing on unattainable types like Professors Holloway and Sinclair from a safe distance, never actually doinganything about it because rejection is only fun if you’re a masochist, which I decidedly am not.
Yet here was Azrael, with his perfect face and his perfect hair and his perfect everything, helping me undress like it was the most natural thing in the world. The universe had a twisted sense of humor—giving me a hot demon butler only after transforming me into someone who looked like the cover model forEthereal Lords Monthly.
Once I was undressed—a process that had somehow become both routine and excruciatingly charged—Azrael held out his hand to steady me as I stepped into the bath. His palm against mine felt cool and strong, and I tried very hard not to think about those hands touching me in other contexts, because that way lay madness and potentially very awkward physical reactions.
I sank into the hot water with a groan that I immediately regretted because it sounded way more pornographic than intended. “Sweet merciful darkness, that feels good. If I fall asleep and drown, tell everyone I died heroically fighting a dragon or something.”
“I would never permit such an undignified end, my lord,” Azrael replied, and was that amusement in his voice? “Though I’m certain Mr. Snuggles would be honored to feature in your fictional demise.”
As Azrael knelt beside the tub with a pitcher of water, I studied his profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the elegant arch of his cheekbones, the way his dark lashes framed those unsettling crimson eyes. It was like someone had taken every “hot villain” trope from fantasy novels and condensed them into one unfairly attractive package.
“May I, my lord?” he asked, holding up the pitcher.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak without my voice doing something embarrassing like cracking or coming out an octave higher than normal.
He poured warm water over my hair, one hand shielding my eyes with surprising tenderness. When his fingers began working soap into my scalp, I had to bite my lip to stifle a sound that would have been mortifying to explain. His touch was somehow both precisely professional and unbearably intimate, each circle of his fingertips sending waves of pleasure down my spine.
This was a problem. A big problem. Because while I might have zero actual experience with relationships—unless you count that one awkward kiss behind the gym in tenth grade, which I don’t—I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what attraction felt like. I’d just never expected to feel it quite this intensely, or for someone who was technically my employee, or in a body that wasn’t even originally mine.
The whole situation was a mess of ethical complications that would make a philosophy professor’s head explode. Was I attracted to Azrael? Definitely. Was he attracted to me? Sometimes I caught him looking at me in ways that suggested yes, but he was also literally paid to serve me, so there was a power dynamic that made everything weird and potentially problematic.
“The castle tailors have outdone themselves with your attire for tonight,” Azrael said, his voice pulling me from my moral quandary. “They’ve created something rather… exceptional.”
“Let me guess—they wanted to cover me in spikes and skulls and random bone accents, and you had to talk them down to something that won’t make me look like the final boss in a gothic video game?”
A smile flickered across his face—a real one, not the polite butler version. “Your assessment is remarkably accurate, mylord. Though they preferred to call it ‘traditional demonic formal aesthetic.’”
“Same difference,” I muttered, trying to focus on fashion choices rather than the way his fingers were working magic on my scalp.
When he guided me to lean back for rinsing, his hand cradled the back of my head with surprising gentleness. I closed my eyes, focusing on the sensation of his fingers combing through my hair, working out tangles with meticulous care. It was weirdly intimate, this ritual we’d developed, and I looked forward to it each day in ways that probably weren’t entirely appropriate.
Once my hair was clean, Azrael handed me a washcloth and soap, our fingers brushing in a contact that felt like a small electric shock. “Perhaps you would prefer to complete the bathing yourself, my lord?”
“Thanks,” I managed, taking the cloth and waiting for him to turn away before attending to the rest of my washing. Even after a month, there were some lines we didn’t cross—though the boundaries seemed to be shifting in ways I wasn’t entirely sure how to navigate.
When I emerged from the bath, he was waiting with a heated towel that he wrapped around me, his hands lingering at my shoulders. Through the fabric, I could feel the slight pressure of his fingers, the careful control in his movements.
“The void products have enhanced your features, my lord,” he said, his voice carefully neutral, his eyes anything but as they traced the contours of my face. “Your natural luminescence has intensified.”
I caught my reflection in the mirror and had to admit he was right. My silver-white hair seemed to glow with inner light, and my skin had taken on an almost pearlescent quality. Even my eyes seemed more vibrant, the blue deeper and more intense. Itwas like looking at a photoshopped version of myself—still me, but with all the settings cranked up to eleven.
“Good thing I’m not trying to go incognito,” I joked, suddenly self-conscious under his intense gaze. “I’d make a terrible spy glowing like a fantasy-novel protagonist. ‘No, no, I’m just a regular guy with naturally luminescent skin and hair that reflects moonlight. Nothing suspicious here, Officer.’”
