Page 36 of Hellish Fae
That dirty stain in my thoughts will never wipe clean.
I focus harder on the important parts of our lives right now. My temples literally hurt like a migraine with how much effort I’m putting into this. It’s pathetic.
“Why do all this, Damien? Why put yourself through this instead of just accepting your fate and becoming a demon?”
The heat of his palm trails up the bare expanse of my ribs and down to my hips where my shirt and jeans don’t quite meet. What we have right now, this untouched moment, it feels intimate. It’s a trembling halt in time that I know with come crashing down as the seconds tick by.
“My parents were seraphs. They have similar views about demons being some sort of monsters. Seraphs aren’t as innocent as stories make them out to be, but my parents always held Zaviar and me to high standards. Standards we rarely ever met. As we got older, my father used to make a comparison. A threat of sorts to try to keep us in line.” He flinches again through the pain, and my fingertips trail up to skim the fine lines around his closed eyes. I can almost feel his pain right now. It hurts me physically, like I’m absorbing the agony he refuses to show. “My father used to say, ‘You keep fucking up like that, and you’ll end up a demon.’” His eyes open to meet my wide gaze. “He never said I’d be a fallen. He never said I’d be cut down and removed from the only home we’ve ever known. But he was right. And I just—I don’t want to give him the satisfaction, I guess.”
I blink at that response and the pain that’s still building and stinging behind my eyes.
He’s hiding more than he’s saying.
But he is saying it.
“You’re afraid,” I whisper with a tiny smile. “You’re afraid of becoming exactly what your high and mighty father always said you’d be.”
“I—yeah. I am. The magic in my veins, it was good. It was pure and chaste.”
I arch a brow at him.
“I mean, it was supposed to be. I wasn’t innocent when I was a seraph. How horrific will I be as a demon?”
Oh, my dear sweet demon.
“We’re not all bad. I’m a dark fae, and you don’t see me running around hexing people with evil, do you?”
“Your sister made a deal with me involving the discontinued use of my cock, Ari.”
Well . . . I guess he has a point there.
“Not all creatures of darkness are like that, though. Most just like the shade and shadows. We get distracted with our magic just like anyone else.”
“Shade and shadows?” He arches an eyebrow at me. To prove my point, I snuggle into his chest, making his big body tense up as I push harder against him and really delve into the darkness he’s providing.
And then . . . I disappear.
“What . . . the . . . fuck . . . did you just do?” he asks, his arms loosening around me while I lie unmoving and unseen in his arms.
I pull back from the cove of shade I’m blending into, and my hands appear against his chest before the rest of me does.
He smiles slowly.
“Dark fae are shadow benders. We blend into darkness. As children, that’s typically the first form of magic we learn. We play hide-and-seek in the most magical way. We aren’t born with malicious intent, Damien. My father preached my entire life about how cruel and monstrous demons are. And yet, my first friend was a demon girl my father kept to clean our rooms. My first kiss was a demon. My first . . .” My words slip away as I remember the delicious way a man showed me howdemons do it better. He wasn’t lying. Demons definitely do it better. “You get the point.”
His eyes are soft, and his head dips down until his nose lightly touches mine, his warm breath mingling with mine.
He looks pained once again but not from physical wounds.
“You sure you’re bound to that incubus?” he asks, his head tilting so our lips brush in the faintest way. I can feel his words against my mouth, and it hurts me to know he’ll never touch me so long as I belong to someone else.
Destiny, fate, predestined love, it’s all a cruel bitch sometimes.
My lips part, and my chest almost throbs as much as my head does right now. A drum from a castle party beats in the distance in time with the pounding of my skull. A party that loud can only mean one thing.
It must be the prince’s birthday, I think absently.
When I tip my chin forward a fraction of an inch, his mouth almost catches mine. We almost share a pressing kiss that I want to taste so fucking bad it hurts.
