Page 18 of Demon Queen
We reached the floor and he dropped his arm, spinning around to smile at me while he walked backwards through the tables like he had eyes on the back of his head. “I’m from heaven. My mother was an angel.” His eyes danced with mockery, because heaven and hell were jokes to him. Silly humans to not understand real angels and demons.
“You remember your mother?” I asked carefully.
He shrugged. “Of course. Demons always remember. I watched her die.”
I tripped on nothing and fell into a table, bruising my knee badly before I slid down to the floor. He’d watched his own mother die. He wasn’t my Wilkie? But that laugh. He was a tailed and winged creature from another world, but not my winged creature. He’d had to watch his own mother be killed?
“Are you okay?” he asked, crouching over me. “You’re crying. Did you break something? I know that humans are delicate, but to lose a fight with a chair…”
I blinked away my tears and beamed maniacally at this person I didn’t know, who wasn’t my baby. Hope crashing and burning. Like usual. “I’m fine. I’m so great.” I wasn’t fine. Or great. I needed to curl up in a ball right there on the floor and die.
He gave me a skeptical look and then frowned in intense concentration before he launched up and away, disappearing from sight.
A thud quickly followed, and there was Dorian, frowning down at me, wings outstretched. So big, powerful, terrifying. Those spikes were still there, and the tail was ten feet long stretched out behind him. Ten feet. He was almost that tall. Was he? I was on the floor so maybe he only seemed that big. He put a large hand out to me and I automatically let him pull me to myfeet. I stared at that red-skinned hand. He really was a demon. Whatever. The world had already ended years ago. Nothing else mattered.
“What happened?” he asked as I pulled my hand out of his and tried not to make it weird. I couldn’t let myself accept comfort or help from him, not when I already knew what monster he was under the demon skin. The world had not ended. I had to keep going in case my baby was still out there somewhere, even when I didn’t feel like it. Especially when I didn’t feel like it.
“Nothing. I tripped on a chair. I wasn’t looking where I was going, and neither was the other demon, but he didn’t fall. I’m sorry to make a mess,” I added, slowly getting the chair back in its place.
He cleared his throat and folded his wings back so he looked slightly less imposing. He had a shirt on but not a jacket. Maybe he’d rip it off again. “Straldi said that you have papers for me to look over. You’re apparently a very competent businesswoman.” Like that mattered in this world. In any world.
I shook my head. This was not the time for self-pity or fatalism. I was dealing with demons. They would take advantage of my emotions as surely as they breathed. I mean, they did breathe, right? Either way, I had to focus and be my own best advocate. I took a deep breath and met his gaze levelly. They sure did glow. “That’s right. I have a payment plan that I hope is agreeable to you. If you need higher payments, I have some leeway while maintaining my business, but not a lot.” Who cared? The young demon was just another dead end. And yet, if I was going to work for Dorian—no I should think of him as Drigo—I had to be on my guard.
“Let’s look at them.”
I gave him a cool nod and turned towards the stairs leading up, but Dorian caught my hand and swung me back aroundto face him so that we were nose to nose. He was hunched over because he was so much taller than me, so massive and fantastical and warm. And I had no idea what I was doing there anymore. I’d never find my baby. I sniffed and tried to look like all my hopes hadn’t been crushed.
He growled, examining my face, “You haven’t had lunch. You’ll show me your papers in the kitchen while you eat.”
“That’s not necessary. You could take the papers and look them over while I go out and get lunch. I don’t expect anything here to be suitable for humans.” I sounded like I was used to the idea of human not being the default. I wasn’t. Not even a little bit. Now I was wondering what all the other monsters ate. How many ate human? Did they cook human first or just chomp it raw? I needed to leave. Then I could curl up in a ball and cry. For years. Every time I got my hopes up, only to have them crushed, I had a hard time coming out of the horrible depression that I could feel myself spiraling into.
He cupped my chin, the physical contact bringing me back to the moment with a lurch. He could crush my skull so easily. “You will eat before you’re hungry. Otherwise, you’ll get lightheaded. You shouldn’t make a habit of fainting. You never know what monster’s going to catch you.”
“Or none, and then I’d get a concussion and go into a coma and not have to deal with this mess.” I blinked at him. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
He moved his hand up the side of my face to my hair, his head tilted slightly while he studied me. Was he going to rip out my spine? Was this finally when the other shoe dropped?
“I will make a point of catching you,” he murmured then cleared his throat and stepped away. “Or even better, I’ll keep your blood sugar level so that you don’t faint. Shall we?” He gestured me toward the door behind to the bar. I nodded andwent ahead of him, but I limped slightly from my ridiculous chair incident.
“Allow me,” he said, moving in front of me to get the door then holding it open so I could pass.
It was impossible to get through the door without brushing against him. His body was warm, strong, and it sent a bolt of awareness through me that made me want to burn off my skin. I’d been burned before. I was far too old and jaded to go looking for trauma, but I still walked down the metal stairs from the bar to the basement kitchen with him right behind me, so aware of him that it was almost painful. No, it was painful. I’d loved him so much and then transferred all of that obsessive passion onto my bundle of sweetness, so now…Yeah. Painful.
The kitchen was directly under the club, but it was a different world, thick pillars wrapped in vines and stone like an underground grotto while the open fireplace on the end danced merrily without any visible sign of fuel. This was a kitchen? Opposite the fireplace on the far wall was a waterfall.
No. This was definitely not a kitchen.
“Are you chilled at all?” he asked in that velvety voice while his eyes glimmered like coals coming to life from our long dead romance.
I cleared my throat. “I’m fine. Are you sure this is a kitchen? I don’t see any dishes.”
“You don’t like it?”
I smiled my most polite smile. “As a kitchen, it lacks certain essentials such as sink, stove, and counter space. You said that I’d work here washing dishes, didn’t you?”
“Did I?” he said, leading me to a half circle couch near the fire. A charcuterie board was laid out on the coffee table with a wide assortment of cheese, meat, and thick crusty bread, as well as a bottle of wine.
I crossed my arms, staring down at the incredibly comfortable looking couch and the snack tray. Protein, complex carbs, with vegetables like he kept tabs on human eating habits. He’d prepared this just for me. Didn’t I feel special? Especially terrified.
