The Demon Lord (A Demon Outlaws Novella) (Entangled Edge) (3 page)

Chapter Three

The goddesses had convened in the great room of the temple while their priestesses went off to collect alms.

As Allia sat in her sisters’ presence, tremors of unease at the thought of discovery rippled through her. She had sworn her handmaid, Desire, to secrecy. Then, she had met the Demon Lord every night this past week.

She had no idea what she would do if their trysts were revealed, or how her sisters would react. The one thing she did know with an abiding certainty was that she would be forced to choose between the them and her lover. She wasn’t ready to do that.

She had not been able to stay away from him. It was as if her heart shriveled and a piece of it died every moment she was not with him. He had assured her they were safe from discovery, and that not even his demons dared venture so deep into the center of the desert unless summoned by him, but she remained unconvinced.

She had infiltrated his territory with ease.

Someone cleared her throat, dragging Allia back to the great room of the temple. Her sister Nala had spoken to her and was awaiting a response. The expectant faces regarding her had grown unusually solemn.

Low in her belly, panic unfurled its wings. She toyed with the amulet she wore, the one that spoke of her love and loyalty for her sisters. It was a simple stone, and yet this was her most valued possession. It represented all that she was.

“So far, he has not approached me,” Allia said aloud, yet again. The lie weighed uncomfortably heavy on her conscience and her heart. She had never withheld anything from her sisters before.

“How long will you continue to wait for him?” Nala asked. “Perhaps we should come up with a different plan. Or send someone else to implement this one. Someone more to his taste.” She looked around the gathering of goddesses. “Rialla? What about you?”

“No!” Allia interrupted, then realized she’d been too quick to speak. Her sisters all looked at her, surprise on their faces. “I’ve invested a great deal of effort in this. He has to know that I’m there, in his territory, and surely, I must be familiar to him by now. It’s most likely that he’s being cautious in approaching me. After all, what reason does a demon have to trust us? A few more days, that’s all I ask.”

The others agreed, although she did not miss the worry in Nala’s eyes.

The meeting ended with the return of the priestesses carrying armloads of alms, and Allia retired to her rooms and her privacy.

A light knock sounded on her door. It was her priestess, Desire, with an expression of deep worry on her face. All the lightness of the beauty Allia normally saw inside her had been muted by it, and foreboding shivered through her. Desire did not bear good news.

“You are being spied upon,” she said. “Mamna follows you.”

Allia sat down heavily, taking a moment to smooth her skirt over her knees, then pleated the sheer, colorful fabric into neat folds with worried fingers. “How much has she seen? What does she know?”

“I’m not certain,” Desire said. “Someone commented on her recent absences at night, and she made a sly joke about clandestine meetings. She looked at me as she spoke.”

Mamna’s slyness disturbed Allia. It insinuated there was something personal for her to gain in this matter. Why Nala chose to keep her so close remained a mystery. The misshapen priestess had little inner beauty to redeem her, and even less devotion. She worked to her own agenda.

When it came to slyness and personal agendas, however, Allia was not in a position to criticize another. The realization stabbed her and stole her breath.

“Thank you,” she said.

Desire left, closing the door quietly behind her.

Allia sat and thought for a long time. Then she removed her amulet and placed it in a bedside drawer for safekeeping. She was torn in two opposite directions and did not need this reminder of the goddesses when she met her demon lover again. She wanted to forget the devastation he and his demons had wrought on a people that she and her sisters loved so much. When she was with him, he was not the demon who had once destroyed the world. And while she loved her sisters, she could not help but be hurt by their lack of trust in her.

Far worse was the knowledge that their lack of trust was justified.

It was possible they knew nothing for certain yet, merely entertained suspicions. They would have confronted her otherwise, which meant she should have a few more days to find some sort of resolution.

One thing remained certain. She would not give him up. She could not live without him. Nor did she want to. She was no longer hunted. She was caught.

She loved him.

But she could not fully explain her dilemma to him without confessing her part in a plot against him, and he would not take such news well. He was not at peace with their relationship, as she was. He did not like being bound. It made him feel weak.

It made her feel strong. When she was with him, nothing else mattered. She loved him with all her heart. Yet he was a demon. He held his emotions in tighter constraint than she did. To him, she was a possession. She had no idea if he was even capable of love.

She had only a few days left in which to find out.

That evening, she was more careful. She saw no signs of Mamna, or anyone else, following her.

As she lay in his arms beneath the stars, languid from their union, she thought this was the part she would miss most of all if they were forced to separate. The physical pleasures of this world were unlike anything she had ever experienced, but the pleasures with him were beyond comparison.

She turned to face him. “We can’t continue like this. Sooner or later we’ll be discovered. We may have been already.”

He shrugged. “Then don’t leave me. Stay here.”

He made it sound so easy. It was far from that, and yet he would never understand. Demons had no love for each other.

He reached across her with one arm, his weight heavy, and groped at the ground as if searching for something. When he settled back again, he held a flat object in his hand. Attached to it was a long, slender chain. “This is for you.”

He draped it around her neck. She picked it up to examine it more closely. It was an amulet, carved from plain red desert varnish and imprinted with the shape of a lightning bolt. Warmth leached into her fingertips as she smoothed them across its rough surface.

“This will allow you unmolested movement through demon territory,” he said. “As much as I’d like to, I can’t be with you every moment of every day.” His eyes smoldered with banked demon fire, as they often did when he made love to her. “Although I’ll be with you each night. I no longer have any desire to hunt.”

She smiled, blinking back tears, touched by the gesture. His feelings for her were deeper than she’d dare to hope. He had crafted protection for her. The goddesses made similar gestures to the mortal men they favored. Their amulets let the sisters know that a man had been spoken for. In return, it allowed the men to be warned when immortals were near.

He thought that he could protect her from demons with this amulet, and perhaps he could.

But not from the goddesses.

She was not afraid of them. She was afraid of being parted from them, and of being ostracized, because she loved them. Her bond with them was different, but equally as strong.

Yet theirs was not the bond that tore her heart to shreds whenever they were apart.

Awareness of her heart’s desire illuminated her situation with more clarity. If she distanced herself from her sisters, she thought it possible she would survive the rift. She did not believe she could survive being parted from him. If she could convince him to leave the other immortals behind and run away with her, where might they go so that they could be together with this same delirious physicality?

A shard of hope pierced through her dilemma. There was more to this world than the small corner the goddesses had allotted the immortals after the demons arrived. Could she get him past the boundary of mists surrounding the desert regions that the goddesses had created to protect the recovering world?

If so, would he go with her?

She pressed his amulet to her lips, then let it fall on its chain to rest between their two bodies. “We could leave here,” she said to him. “We could run away together.”

He frowned at the stars, the bubble of peacefulness that had settled around them after their lovemaking now ruptured. “I run from nothing and no one.”

“A poor choice of words on my part.” She settled tighter against him, resting her chin on his bare chest and her palm on his arm. She pressed a kiss to his jaw, then a second and third, in an effort to persuade him. “Come away with me. There’s nothing to keep either of us here. I’m already yours. You’ve found what you say you came to this world for.”

“But the others have not.” He cupped her hip with one broad, gentle hand, then absently trailed his fingers back and forth from the dip of her waist to the crest of her thigh.

“Demon numbers are far greater than goddess ones,” she said. “They can’t all form bonds such as ours.” She pushed a little harder, knowing possessiveness was a weakness with him in regard to her. He didn’t understand love. Loyalty was another matter entirely. “Unless a goddess can form a bond with more than one demon at a time. Do you think that might be possible?”

His fingers stilled in their wanderings, then tightened on her thigh, not enough to hurt her, but to establish ownership. He rolled over so that she was on her back and pinned beneath him. He gripped both of her hands in one of his and held them above her head.

“A goddess would not dare to accept more than one bond with a demon.” His frown deepened to a scowl. “
You
would not dare.”

“I had no say in ours. Neither did you.
This
,” she lifted her head to kiss the harshness from his mouth to emphasize her words, “simply happened.” Her voice softened as she gazed into his eyes, all the passion and longing she held for him sparkling in the golden pinpoints of light that shone from the pores of her skin. “I wouldn’t have it otherwise. You are the only demon I want.”

“And I’m all you’ll have. The others would not dare challenge me for you. Not while you wear my amulet.” He took her mouth with a kiss of feral intensity. His tongue swept against hers, leaving her gasping with need for him. He lifted his head long before she was ready to let him go. Triumph glittered in his eyes. “You’ll stay here with me.”

She wished she could. “I can’t. My sisters will come looking for me.”

“Do you think I fear a few women?”

She went still beneath him, drawing a quick, careful breath. “Perhaps you should.” This was as close as she dared come to a confession.

And to a warning for him.

He had the ill grace to laugh. “I forget nothing. It’s you who forget that goddesses are meant to belong to demons. That they are the hunted, we are the hunters.”

And yet he was the one bonded to her, she thought but did not say. Always, he sought confirmation that the bond was as strong for her as it was for him. It was. But her bond was comprised of love. His came more from an inherent desire to possess her.

She wondered how deep his desire for her truly ran…if it was enough to make him follow her if he believed she was leaving him.

“You’ve pursued goddesses both inside and outside of time,” she said. “Across the entire universe. And yet I’m the first to be caught. You shouldn’t forget that either. Or what happens when prey becomes cornered.”

He heard one message in her words. “Yes, you are caught. And you’re
mine
.” He smoothed a hand over her breast and down her abdomen so that she gasped with pleasure at the delicate caress, then slid his fingers between her thighs. She closed her eyes, lost in a relentless, unquenchable craving for both him and his touch. “Say it,” he commanded her. “Say that you are.”

It was true. She could not deny it. Or him.

“I’m yours.”

He took her again, but with such a fierce tenderness that afterward all she could think of was how much she wanted him, and what she needed to do in order to remain with him.

…

Her name was Allia.

She had whispered it against his lips moments before leaving him, and he understood how precious it was to her, how valuable the gift. Only her sisters and her handmaid knew it.

He had no name to offer her in return. He was the Demon Lord. That was how he was known, and he’d had no need for any other.

Until now.

For a long time after she left him, he sat on the rocks near the edge of where her goddess-fed pool had been that first night. Its waters had either seeped into the ground or evaporated days ago, but the impression caused by its weight remained in the packed desert sand. The soil glittered with speckles of gold in the moonlight, the same way Allia’s flesh gleamed whenever he touched her. He could still smell her scent on his naked skin, warm and fresh and so intoxicating that it left him light-headed with need for her.

Other signs of her presence also remained. Where she went, life followed her. Grass sprang from the earth in their tiny oasis, thick and green. Small flowers, fragrant and colorful, bloomed out of season.

He pondered her words to him and what they meant.

She wanted to be with him always, but despite the amulet she’d accepted from him, did not believe it was possible. In a way, he supposed it was true. While he didn’t like the point she had raised about the inequality of their numbers and how that might impact the bond between demons and goddesses, he found he could not dispute her logic. He couldn’t put itfrom his thoughts.

He had no intention of allowing another demon close enough to her to find out if she was right. No demon would share. His amulet would leave her immune to their charms and give her the physical strength to withstand any type of assault.