Page 73 of Demon Food

The prettiest pink flushed his cheeks.

“Which means it’s mine now.” I grinned as I whispered, “To think about whenever I fucking wish.”

No one else deserved his smile. Just me. Mine.

He huffed a little, wiping his hands on the cloth, doing his best to ignore me, but I could almost swear, the remnants of that smile—which was mine—still lingered around his full lips. “Okay. So, here’s what⁠—”

“Darling, no, no, that won’t do. You must speak to me in Vultaen,” I said, inching a smidgen closer to him. “Let me hear you speak it. Let me see my native tongue on your human lips.”

He flashed me a look.

“Oh, come on. You act as if this is the biggest law you’ve broken since you’ve been here.” I winked. “It is not even in the top five.”

He dragged his gaze from me, gripping the knife and hovering the blade over a candle to sanitize it. Then he said in perfect Vultaen, “I’m going to hold this to your throat the whole time.”

My cock reacted, swelling before I even had a chance to think. But no. No, I did not want a knife against my throat.

Did I?

“So, don’t fucking touch me if you know what’s good for you,” he continued in Vultaen, his dialect so different than mine. Rugged. Sensible. Cutting straight to the flesh. “I can either save your life tonight, my charming prince. Or I can end it.”

I glanced down at the blade, then up at him.

“Do you understand?”

I sucked the remainder of my cigarette, swallowing the smoke, willing it to numb me as much as possible, but I’d never quite been put to the test like this. This was it. It was do or die. It was now or never. It was run or it was this.

A sense of finality washed over me as each one of my nerve endings sparkled alive. Then I nodded. “Do your worst.”

21

FELORÉ

Alek’s knife fit perfectly in my palm, its handle warm, heavy, and the blade impossibly sharp, such that it would cut him if he so much as twitched against it. But that was the thing. He’d never twitched.

Not even now as I lay across from him in his bed, beneath his silken sheets, barely a pace between us. He was unmoving, smoking like a fucking thurible because he insisted, and calmly staring at me like he was awaiting whatever was to happen with the grace of a much more seasoned vultus. Even if his eyes were a little wild.

What the fuck was I doing? Was this trust? Was this me trusting him? He’d told me not to. You wouldn’t trust the darkness of a nightmare, and you shouldn’t trust me.

But here I was. Word after word, choice after choice, possession after possession, I was trusting him.

My swallow was dry. “I’m going to try to be subtle. As subtle as I can.”

“Subtle,” he whispered, the word lingering between us as his gaze dipped down to my mouth. “And what shall I do, human? While you’re being subtle.”

What a question. What an answer that wanted to spill from me.

You can fucking lie there and look exactly how you look which is goddamn enough, and I want your ghost hands on me or maybe your actual hands on me, and fuck you, Alek. Fuck you for existing.

“Nothing,” I said, peering up through my lashes. “Just lie there.”

His tongue skated across his teeth. “Just lie here.”

My gaze wandered down to his strong chest, to the muscles of his biceps and abdominals, and the candlelight that danced over his soft skin. “Lie there.”

He finally nodded, and it felt like a confirmation, only too soon because neither of us was ready for what was to come. Of that, I was certain.

I gripped the handle of the knife a little firmer in my palm. Then I gently pressed the blade against his throat. He tipped his chin back when I angled it upward toward his strong jaw, his breath rising high into his chest.