The Demon King (38 page)

“
I don’t mean to be,” she
said.

“
Of course you don’t,” he
said. Then he leaned over her to whisper in her ear, pulling her
closer with the hand at her back. “You can’t help what you are,” he
told her. “None of us can. So what will you give me in exchange for
their lives, my Dark Angel?”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Dahlia went utterly still in his arms. His
words moved through her with a grating sense of horror. Had he
really just said that?

But when she gently pulled back and looked
up into his eyes, she knew he had. And she knew he was serious. The
promise was right there in the fire surrounding the blue.

Just for clarification, she asked, “What do
you mean?” But her voice was hoarse and it caught a little in her
throat, because she knew damn well what he meant.

Playing along, Lazaroth stepped to the side,
but kept his hand at her back. He gestured to the club and its
writhing, reveling inhabitants. As if he had control over her
vision, she easily zeroed in on the men he had been referring to.
He was right. Though they attempted to hide it, they snuck covert
glances or outright lust-filled gazes at her over the lips of their
drinks and behind the backs of their friends.

“
What will you give me,
Dahlia?” Lazaroth asked casually. Glancing at her with those cold
burning eyes before looking back at the men. “What is it worth to
you to not have their lungs pulled out through their
throats?”

Dahlia felt his words like a punch to the
gut. She lost her breath and dread settled deep and hard and heavy
inside her. It was a weight in her soul that numbed her fingers and
toes and did nothing to help with the dizzy weakness the drink had
already infused her with. She felt as if she were falling.

Down the rabbit
hole
….

“
Answer me, angel,” he
said, turning toward her. The blue of his eyes was melting into the
red, making a ring of purple fire.

Purple fire… like Stale
Fire,
she thought.
Like my fire
.

Her mind was spinning
through useless realizations, stalling because it didn’t want to
face what Steven – what
Lazaroth
– had just said.

“
What are you willing to
sacrifice?” He cocked his handsome head to one side. “To keep those
men breathing?”

“
Anything,” she whispered,
closing her eyes.

Thrum, thrum,
thrum
….

The music pulsed her heart,
pushed her blood, filled her soul. She saw the course of her life,
being born into a royal family that dictated
who
she was, being led into a Tuath
fae adulthood that dictated
what
she would do, being kidnapped by a mad Entity who
dictated
how
she
would betray. Her entire existence, she’d been a slave to
circumstance, and she’d never had the power to make any difference
in any of it. Fate still went strolling unhindered through its
territory and took what it wanted, sometimes leaving bodies in its
wake.

No matter what she did. No matter how hard
she tried.

Until now.

Even as the club swayed,
entranced in its universe of lights and distorted techno sounds,
Dahlia realized – that this time? There was something she
could
do. Even if it
meant doing the one thing she was terrified to do. Even if it meant
giving in.

“
Anything?” he asked
softly. His lips were beside her ear, and she felt his voice as
well as heard it. He’d moved in so close, towering over her like
her shadow.

Anything
, her mind echoed. “Anything you want.”

If that was what she had to do to slam the
door in fate’s face, so be it. If that would keep him from becoming
the thing the Demon’s Curse so badly wanted him to become, the
thing he was already well on his way to becoming.

“
That’s all I needed to
hear.”

Dahlia inhaled sharply when the hand at her
back moved and his arm encircled her waist tightly. He pulled her
to him, and the world moved. It seemed to shift, then blinked out
of existence. A split second later, she was reaching out to steady
herself, her hand against the king’s hard chest when the world
reappeared, and they were standing in a parking lot.

“
Get on the
car.”

Dahlia blinked, swayed a
little, and took a step back. Lazaroth was standing beside a large
black muscle car with a mile of shining, black hood. The windows
were darkly tinted, but she could see through the windshield that
the interior was black leather. She frowned and looked up at him.
Had he told her to get
on
the car?

He released her and walked from the side
toward the front of the vehicle. His shoes echoed on the pavement.
They were alone in the lot; though every space was taken, it seemed
deserted of all life. The music from the club could be heard from
outside, but it was muted and distant. Beyond the edges of the lot
and the façade of the building housing the club, darkness stretched
as if it were the end of the world. Dahlia had the strangest
sensation, as if Lazaroth had taken the club, its inhabitants, and
the whole of the lot outside it and sliced it out of reality to
place it in another dimension.

The king stopped at the front of the car and
turned to face her. “A deal is a deal, Dahlia. You want those men
to live – and I want you right here,” he said, leaning over to
splay his hand across the shining black paint. “On your back.”

Dahlia’s heartbeat kicked up ten notches.
She looked from the car to him, and found a gaze that brooked no
mercy, no lenience. He waited patiently as she processed the
command – and her knees felt weaker, and moisture formed between
her legs.

Gods help
me
, she thought. He was turning her
on.

This had never happened before. Not once in
her long, long life had she felt anything remotely like real,
sexual desire for a man. She’d been a Tuath cursed with the body to
bring vast amounts of pleasure, and a mind that wanted to turn away
from it all.

But now a man stood before
her who was more dangerous than any she’d ever known, a king
wielding powers darker and more potent than any she could have
dreamed, and yet everything about him made her
want
him. Even this right here. The
command he gave her, the way he patiently, but impatiently, waited.
The burning fires in his eyes.

She wanted it. All of it.

Suddenly, Dahlia realized her salvation. She
realized his. There in that give and take, that command and
surrender, was a way for her to reach the man she was falling in
love with. Because that was where trust came in.

And she trusted him.

Gods help her and her very soul, she trusted
him. And when she steeled her nerves, climbed onto the hood of the
car, then laid herself out on it like a sacrificial lamb, she
proved it.

Chapter Fifty

Lazaroth could scarcely
believe what was happening. He’d counted on Dahlia Kellen fighting
him. He’d primed himself for a battle of wills. He’d prepared
himself to do whatever it took –
whatever
it took – to force her to
yield to him. But he stood in stunned silence, his heart literally
aching in his chest, his cock hardening into a pain-filled vessel
of maddened desire, and watched as the woman he would kill and die
for crawled obediently atop the Demon King’s car.

The car came with the position. As did so
many things, so many things he wanted to share with her, give to
her, shower her in. He wanted to give her the world, and now hope
filled the empty spaces around his hard, cold desire and made him
think – maybe, just maybe, he might get the chance to do so.

Dahlia was the essence of entrancing. She
moved like a cat, all grace and supreme confidence. She stepped out
of her blood red sky-high heels, revealing toes painted a deep,
deep red that was nearly black, the same shade as a Black Dahlia.
Then she leaned over and with strength and grace mortals could only
dream of, she pulled herself onto the black muscle car and began
crawling across its shining hood. Every inch she gained across that
black expanse, every single move she made, was like watching magic
being born. He was mesmerized. He was lost.

Something sliced through the dark and the
red of his being. There was nothing but need, nothing but the
suffering of longing and of loneliness. There was an anger that
laced every breath he took, a fire that burned at the edges of his
vision, his world. This was the essence of existence in the wake of
the Curse.

But in Dahlia’s practiced yet somehow
innocent of movements, something managed to break through his
cursed world.

He had been standing in a
dark room. No windows, no doors. And just like magic, she pierced
the walls, tearing through them like tissue paper, and she broke
through that darkness. For half a second, he remembered. He
felt
.

And then the darkness was
back. And with it, the red. And the hard, unrelenting
need
.

Dahlia reached the center
of his hood and rested back on her elbows, breathing deep and fast.
He could almost hear her heart beating; he could if he tried. But
he was too busy
seeing
. The long, lean lines of her, crisscrossed in red velvet,
were like a pulp fiction novel brought to life. She tossed her jet
black mane, and it shimmered in thick locks across the hood of his
car. Then she arched her back and bent her knees, revealing the
slightest hint of what lay between them.

She was the most stunningly beautiful angel
to ever fall from the heavens… and land in his hell.

He caught her gaze and held it as he
unbuttoned his suit coat and shrugged it off his broad shoulders.
He could see the pulse pound in the side of her neck, and noticed
it quickening further. He moved to the side of the car and draped
the jacket over the driver’s side rear view mirror, never hurrying,
and never taking his eyes from hers. He held her fast like that, as
if he had strapped her down with steel chains.

She made a soft sound, one of fear perhaps
or one of helplessness. He knew she was overwhelmed – spread out
like a present for him on the hood of his car. He knew he was
scaring her. And yet she did as he asked, just to save some humans
she didn’t even know. She was very brave.

Of course, he was going to
kill them anyway. He would just wait until they made a second
mistake. He could even
force
them to make that mistake. Then he would have the
excuse he needed to end them.

She’s
mine
, he thought as he turned to move back
toward the front of the car. He reached out his hand, brushing his
fingertips ever so gently along the smooth expanse of her lengthy
leg as he walked. She jumped a little at the touch. And then she
tore her gaze from his and turned her head to the side. He saw her
shut her eyes tight, no doubt willing herself to not move, to not
get up and flee.

She could have run. She could have even
attacked him if she’d wanted. He almost chuckled at the thought.
She was that much of a spitfire.

But instead, she remained where she was and
obediently allowed him to touch her. It made him hate the men she
hoped to save even more. He decided when he killed them, he would
do it slowly.

Laz watched her closely as he wrapped his
hands around her ankles and inexorably pulled her legs further
apart, revealing the tight curve of her bottom and the red satin
panties that beckoned so starkly against her pale flesh. She sucked
her lip between her teeth and clasped it hard; he expected to see
blood well up any second now. The thought made him smile, and when
she opened her eyes and turned her head to watch him, he could see
by the reflection in her eyes that his fangs were longer and
sharper than ever.

“
Don’t move your legs,” he
told her firmly, capturing that gorgeous green gaze again and
holding it hard. He slowly released her legs, and she inhaled
sharply, knowing full well just how vulnerable she had become. She
was one strip of fabric away from being fully exposed to him. And
suddenly, that was all he wanted in the world, more than anything
he had ever craved. He wanted her open, uncovered, bared and
helpless.

A sound climbed slowly up his throat. It
reverberated off the cars around him, shook the ground beneath his
feet. It was the demon in him, the monster – fully awakened and
hungry as hell. He climbed like a predator onto the car, graceful,
easy, and strong, moving over her like a living shadow, dark and
dangerous and inescapable.

She watched him come, helpless to stop him.
He stopped when he was towering directly over her and held himself
up with one hand pressed to the hood near her right shoulder. His
other hand, he placed on her right leg above her knee. She jerked
again at the contact, but let out a ragged breath. She could not
escape his gaze, though he knew she wanted to. His magic surrounded
her now, and she was only fortunate he was not using more of
it.

His smile turned downright cruel as he ran
his hand up the length of her leg from her knee to her upper thigh.
From there, they traveled further up, and Dahlia went very, very
still. He heard her little breaths, quick and short as his fingers
found the edge of those satin panties. He ran his fingertips along
their seam.