Page 38 of Demon Food

The king flicked his gaze upward, his patience waning. Then he stopped cold and said, “He could…beg?”

“P-please,” I sputtered, and my eyes widened even further. I shook my head. It wasn’t me. It was my voice, and I’d said it, but it wasn’t me.

“Please, what?” the king asked, smiling down at me. “What is it you want, sweetness?”

My body was paralyzed. Invisible hands held my arms down and kept my chin lifted. I was panting, but there was no stopping myself from saying, “T-touch m-me. I w-w-ant him to t-touch-ch me.”

His perfect grin spread. “Oh, did you hear that, Alek? He wants you to touch him. What luck.”

My lips parted to curse him, to spit at him and tell him to go to hell. Then my jaw trembled shut again, held tight by the same invisible vice.

“You know what I think?” the king asked, caressing my cheek with the back of his hand, and my eyes rolled shut as I tried to fight it, tried to pull away, but I couldn’t. “I think you should crawl to him. Show him what a good boy you can be. Then maybe he will reward you.”

Hands. Tendrils, rather. Somehow icy and searing hot at the same time, they waxed over my skin like a vast webbing. I wasn’t just being pushed. I was being influenced from the inside as my body lowered itself to hands and knees.

Then I began to crawl. But it wasn’t just any crawl. It was slinky and sexy with my spine forced into a deep arch and my ass lifted in exposure to everyone. I wasn’t submissive by nature, but that was what this felt like. The most submissive thing I’d ever done.

Every demon in the room started to react. It was impossible to turn my head to see them, but I could feel their arousal. I could feel their twitching, writhing, salivating as my chain dragged the floor between my legs on this sensual fucking crawl to the prince. My fingernails scraped the wood as I tried to fight it, but there was no fighting.

My phantom controller stopped me in front of Alek, and I peered up through my lashes. I could see myself through his eyes. I looked like the most subservient slut possible. I looked like I wanted him to nail me into the wall.

He stared, that same bored expression on his face, but something about it was labored. He didn’t twitch, but his throat bobbed. If I hadn’t been where I was, I would’ve missed it.

Fear struck my heart.

“Would you like control?” the king suggested. “Say the word, and he’s yours.”

Alek’s gaze flicked to his father. No more than three seconds after he held out a palm, I grunted when the webbing encasing my body suddenly tugged in his direction. I was struck with a need to vomit, like my body was being disassembled, then yanked through a pocket in time by way of a thousand tiny shreds of flesh.

Then I was his. I could feel myself under his command, and panic hollowed my chest.

“Please,” I begged, and it wasn’t his doing. It was mine. My mouth was working. “Please, don’t. It’s not right. You know it’s not⁠—”

He silenced me. With a gentle curl of his fingertips, he took the words from my mouth, leaving it dry and empty.

It was different from the way his father had done it. My mouth didn’t get sealed shut. It was as if he’d coaxed my very words. Called to them, took command of them, then replaced them with a lingering echo of…calm.

Alek parted his lips to speak but interrupted himself with a rough cough that lasted and lasted like whatever it took to maintain this magic was draining him further.

“I see you’re feeling ill, son.” The king gestured toward me like I was a warm stew in a bowl. “Might I suggest touching him like he asked?”

Alek cocked his head down at me, his strange copper gaze wandering over my face. My heart sank.

This was the prince of Novithia. The heir to the most powerful kingdom stood before me, and he was sick. He could use my body to heal himself within minutes, and it didn’t matter that it would kill me. It wasn’t like they gave a shit about my tiny, two-person family or my insignificant life.

I wasn’t even a two-person family since Landry left. I was nothing.

“We’ll let you play,” the king said, signaling to the soldiers. “Enjoy.”

“No need.” Alek’s gaze was hard as he addressed his father once more. “This is not the one.”

The spell seizing my bones vanished. I crumbled to the floor, air burning my lungs as I blinked hard, flexing my fingertips. They worked. My body was my own again. It was as if the spell had never been there to begin with.

The king halted, slowly swiveling around. It looked like it pained him to ask, “And what’s wrong this time?”

Alek swiped his hands together. “Nothing against him. I simply don’t find myself with attraction toward him.”

My eyebrows lifted a little as I searched his profile. What? He was a virgin demon—one who had never eaten—and a lack of attraction was the reason?