Page 3 of When I Accidentally Summoned a Demon

2

Valefar

Idon’t know if I should be terrified of this pretty beastie or bewitched.

But something is happening. Something I’ve never experienced in all my eons within the Pit. It’s as if the ancient, obsidian ice in my blood is beginning to thaw. The frozen river of my being is cracking and groaning under a heat I cannot name. A ravenous savagery surges through me, unlike anything I’ve ever fathomed.

As I follow Vesper through the damp shadows of the forest, I can’t stop watching her. She moves like a monstrous poem—all sensual curves and a fluid, dangerous grace.

The world all around me wages a sensory assault, firing through my being with a relentless madness. The smell of wet earth is too rich; the sound of the wind in the needles is too sharp.

But she is the wildest of all. Her energy is a vibrant, chaotic thing, and it could drive the most hardened of demons to a blinding insanity. Her aura is so bright, it nearly burns my retinas, powerful enough to stare down the Morning Star himself without blinking.

I follow her up a set of creaking wooden steps. I’ve heard whispers of the human dwellings—frail, boxy things made of dead trees—but I’ve never seen the interior of one. My home is a jagged outcropping overlooking the sulfur pits of the Third Circle, where the screams of the eternally tormented serve as the only lullaby I’ve ever known.

She slides a transparent glass wall and steps inside. I follow, but the transition nearly knocks the air from my lungs. I stop dead, my tail sweeping the floor in a frantic, curious rhythm.

Earth. The scent of it fills the air. I gaze around, blinking as I adjust to the soft, artificial glow. Dried herbs dangle from a nearby wall, their scents casting a potent, floral haze. Glass jars filled with dried leaves sit on a stone counter. Vesper sweeps into the room while I linger behind, drawn to a metal grate on a white pedestal.

Curiosity, my greatest sin, compels me. I turn a small plastic knob. Click. Click. Whoosh.

A ring of blue fire springs up from the iron grate.

“What the sorcery!” I exclaim, leaping back, my hackles bristling, my tail whipping a nearby chair with a violent crack.

Vesper groans softly, hurries to the knob, and turns it, snuffing out the flames. Throwing me a disarming glower, she crosses the space between us in two sharp strides and pokes me directly in the center of my chest. Her finger is small, but the impact feels like a brand. I stiffen.

“No touching,” she snaps.

I look down at her finger, then up into her flaming emerald eyes. “You just touched me.”

She sticks her nose up, her chin defiant. “My house. My rules. If you don’t follow them, I’ll put a pretty collar around your neck and chain you up in my basement dungeon.”

I swallow hard, the mental image of a chain and her hand on a collar doing something traitorous to my pulse. But then I breathe her in, and that sensation returns. I wear nothing more than a leather loincloth, but beneath the hide, my cock twitches with a sudden, violent life. What in the unholy fuck?

It bewilders me. I have never felt the likes of anything like this in the Pit. I have seen it from the ones I torment. Their dicks rise, and I do my duty, tormenting to extract secrets, or punishing the weak.

But the closer Vesper stands, the more the ice doesn’t just thaw—it boils. My blood quickens with a growing fire I cannot extinguish.

What is happening to me? What is this witch doing to my very nature?

I lower my focus to her lips, then lower, to where the wet silk of her slip clings to her breasts. Every luscious curve maps out in the moonlight filtering through the glass. I’ve never put much thought into the bodies of humans. To a demon, the dead are just meat—unappealing, gray, and smelling of rot. But here, in this world of vibrant colors and blinding lights…it is overwhelming. I don’t know how to react. I don’t know how to respond to the way her skin seems to glow with its own internal heat.

She passes a large white box on the left, which hums with a low, mechanical growl. I try to ignore the sound, focusing on the sway of her hips as she turns a corner into a corridor that looks like a minefield of vivid, plastic objects.

Vesper pauses, kneading her brow with her free hand. “I forgot. I was going to clean up after the ritual. Damn.”

My tail flicks in agitation, searching for balance, and accidentally swipes at a strange, padded chair on springs. Multiple objects of stimulation hang from it, and as my tail hits it, a spinning rattle bursts into a frantic, playful song.

The sound is so sudden, so high-pitched, I flinch, slipping on a small, sharp plastic brick. A Lego, the human world calls it. It’s a weapon of pure malice. One we use on some of our deepest offenders.

I stagger, but Vesper grabs me by the arm, her face flushed as she yanks me back with such unexpected strength, it prevents me from crashing into her wall.

I can’t help it. My gaze drops. Her breasts swing with the sudden movement, and the predator inside me salivates in an utterly wondrous way. My hands smolder from where she touches me, a phantom heat to crawl along my flesh.

She doesn’t notice. She’s already rushing to the singing chair, flustered and panicked, turning a knob to kill the music.

I admire the curve of her bottom. I’ve never appreciated such a plump, perfect heart shape until this very moment. When she spins around, her gaze is lethal.