His warriors and his younger brother Ryker, the current prince, weren’t complaining about his lack of interest in the females. All the more for them.
Gods, Tegan envied Ryker a little. He had freedom, came and went as he pleased, while Tegan was locked in his castle, only allowed out with an entire entourage of advisers and bodyguards, and even then it was only to official functions where the kingdom needed to be represented by its king.
Ryker had everything Tegan had lost, and Tegan would give anything to return to that life.
His dark eyes scanned over the feast. Edyn would have lapped this up. He would have loved sitting on the throne with a female on his knees, soaking up her praise and that of his people.
Tegan hated it.
A thousand years he had endured this dull and unsatisfying life.
That changed tonight.
His battle plan was sound, everything was in place. His strategy had been checked from all angles, every little thing accounted for and covered. All that was left was to put it into action.
He signalled the male to his right, who eagerly bustled over, his jug at the ready. Rather than allowing the male to fill his cup, Tegan placed it on the tray in the male’s other hand and nodded.
Tegan grasped the female’s slender wrist, pulled it from behind his head and pushed her forwards, forcing her off him. She tottered a little, giggled and swayed against him as he stood.
The two males guarding him immediately moved forwards.
Tegan turned on them. “I do not require an audience.”
Both males dipped their heads and pressed their right hands to their bare chests.
He cut them off before they could mention standing guard outside his rooms. “You are done for the night. Enjoy the feast and the females.”
The two exchanged a glance and then looked beyond him, to the males who were still celebrating, pawing at the females on their laps and calling out to the others that wandered around the room, seeking a partner.
The younger male on his right looked as if he might mention the orders the court had given them, but the other male grabbed him by the back of his neck and pushed him forwards, guiding him towards the nearest females.
Phase one of his plan successfully completed, Tegan tugged the blonde female towards the side door of the grand hall, one only he could access. She stumbled along behind him, still throwing compliments and things he supposed were meant to sound seductive. He paid no attention to her as he mounted the spiral steps, eager to reach his rooms and move on to phase two.
The female slowed him down, so he turned and scooped her up into his arms and took the steps two at a time instead, making swift progress towards his private floors. She stroked his chest and shoulders, even went as far as pressing kisses to his throat as he kept his focus ahead of him.
Almost there.
Light chased back the darkness ahead of him and he quickened his pace, his heart pounding harder as he thought about what he was going to do.
He set the female down as soon as he reached the broad torchlit corridor at the end of the stairs and pulled her along behind him as he stormed towards the door of his apartment. She continued to twitter, babbled words that were lost on him as he went over his plan again, ensuring everything was perfect.
He shoved the wooden door open with the flat of his hand and pulled her inside, shoved her aside and released her as he closed the door behind him. She moved around his drawing room, saying things he didn’t hear as she studied the paintings that hung on the black stone walls and ran her fingers over the glass that covered the long low display cases that lined them, eyeing his collection of weapons, helmets and other things from all the regions of Hell.
His trophies of war.
She fell silent, her eyes landing on him as he pulled his shirt off over his head and discarded it on the wooden floor.
Her throat worked on a hard swallow and she sidled towards him, heat kindling in her eyes as she approached. She raked them over his chest and stomach and that heat became a fire.
“You are beautiful, my lord.”
Tegan turned away from her, grabbed the black shirt he had laid over the back of his wine-red wingback armchair before leaving for the feast and donned it. Disappointment flared in her eyes.
He ignored her and tackled the buttons on his shirt. Buttons. They were fiddly small things, irritating him as he fumbled with them, trying to close the shirt of mortal fashion that Ryker had given him as a present.
He wasn’t sure how his younger brother could wear such things.
It was tight and restrictive, made his back itch as his wings pushed for freedom. He focused to keep them hidden as he adjusted to the confining feel of the shirt. If he attempted to swing his sword arm, he would rip the damned garment to pieces.
But then, he supposed it hadn’t been made for fighting in.
When he had first tried it on at Ryker’s insistence, his brother had assured him it was all the ‘rage’ for males to wear such tight clothing in the human world, an apparent attempt to reveal their physique whilst still being dressed.
Tegan glanced at himself in the mirror above the fireplace behind him when he was done with the buttons. He arched an eyebrow at his reflection. He supposed the cut of the cloth was rather complimentary. It stretched across his broad chest and tightly gripped his biceps, and even hinted at his muscular stomach.
“You look divine,” the female purred in approval in the common tongue and he conceded that he did look rather good in human fashion. “Do I get to peel it off you?”
He flicked her a glare, stooped and picked up his coin purse from the table beside his armchair. She swayed towards him, her eyes on his chest, clearly intent on unbuttoning the shirt he had just put on. He moved around her, crossed the room to a set of black wooden drawers, and pulled the one on the right open. He picked up a smaller coin purse and hung it with his other one on the waist of his black leathers.
He turned back to the female.
He would get into trouble with his advisers if they got wind of what he had done, but he didn’t care. He needed a change of scenery. He had been stuck in this castle for the last thousand years. It was time he got out.
It was only going to be for a short time. Everyone would think he was sleeping with the female in his quarters. He would be back before he was missed.
He just wanted a taste of the current mortal world to see if it was as exciting as the stories painted it to be, filled with marvellous technology that sounded like fantasy to him. He had heard tales of it from the Third King and his mate, glorious stories of a world that was vastly different to the one he remembered.
Electronic communication devices that could be used to speak with someone across the globe? Impossible.
Giant metal birds that carried mortals to far-flung destinations? Laughable.
But he had heard the stories coming from the Third Realm and the king himself had told Tegan all about the miracles of mortal technology. Thorne was using the technology to bring electricity into the demon realm he ruled.
Electricity.
Tegan glanced at the sconces burning on the black wall, at the dark wooden furniture of the office that adjoined his drawing room, and the paintings hanging on the walls. Mortals had things that took paintings. No, that wasn’t right. They called them photographs. They displayed them on their walls rather than paintings now, and such photographs appeared on electronic devices too.
Thorne had shown him such a strange device when the demon king had brought his new queen to visit. The mortal queen of the Third Realm had one in her possession.
It had been magic.
It had awed him.
A flat rectangle no bigger than Tegan’s hands side-by-side but it had been colourful and bright, and she had touched it and things had happened. His advisers had deemed it witchcraft of the darkest degree and warned him against it, but Tegan had been fascinated. He wanted to see more of these mortal inventions.
He wanted to
possess them.
It wasn’t as if he was committing a crime by leaving the kingdom. He was king. He only meant to go out to a place the Third King talked about and also purchase some more books. Small steps. If the mission was successful, perhaps he would go out again.
He grabbed hold of the female. She pressed closer to him, sliding her hands over his chest and leaning into his embrace. Tegan kept hold of her as he summoned his portal. The black abyss opened beneath them and the female squeaked as they dropped into it. They landed in the free realm, in the middle of the town he had once visited. People on the black cobbled street between the obsidian stone buildings stopped to stare as he pushed her away from him and distanced himself.
“This is as far as you go,” Tegan said.
Confusion danced in her pale grey eyes and she tried to get closer to him again. He backed off a step, maintaining the distance between them, and the confusion turned to anger as he spoke.
“I am leaving now.” He took the smaller coin purse from his belt and tossed it at her.
She caught it and he teleported before she could give him hell, nerves and excitement clashing inside him as he dropped back into the black abyss.
Heading to the mortal world.
That filled him with an unsettling, but thrilling sensation.
His life had been static for the last thousand years.
Now he was going to taste freedom.
And something told him his life would never be the same again.
CHAPTER 2
Suki regretted agreeing to come to Underworld tonight. She had regretted it from the moment her sisters had cajoled her into the trip, and she should have made her excuses and left. She wasn’t in the mood for hunting tonight. She was tired, cranky, and absolutely nothing was going her way.
She had managed to steal one kiss from a nice guy who had moderately good looks and had fallen for her charms, but he had tasted like ashes and her fuel gauge was still on the red line. She needed a male who could fill her tank, didn’t want to resort to the sort of feed her sisters seemed intent on getting tonight.
Allura openly fondled the man she had cornered, one who Suki had surmised was a shifter of some variety. Shifters often provided a good feed, but it would come at a high price. Chances were, Allura would kill him once they got busy. Shifters were strong, but not strong enough to handle sex with a succubus.
Suki had lost track of Vidia. The blonde female had been swift to ditch Suki’s sorry ass as soon as she had spotted potential prey. If Suki had to guess, she had spotted her favourite food.
A nymph.
Nymphs were strong enough to handle a succubus if they were old enough, but the ones who were old enough were so damned conceited and egotistical that Suki couldn’t stand them for long enough to get past the conversation stage of a hunt.
Vidia had once said that petting the ego of a nymph was worth it, even though it left a bad taste in her mouth. According to Suki’s clan, doing whatever it took to get a good feed was worth it, regardless of how crappy it made you feel.
Maybe that was the reason they all thought Suki was a complete and utter failure.
She was starving but she still couldn’t bring herself to sleep with a guy who wasn’t strong enough to survive it or stoop to grooming a nymph’s narcissism.
Suki tried to push all the niggling voices out of her head, the thousand jibes and taunts, and harsh words that had come from every corner of the clan, including the mistress who acted as the head of it. They went, but not before they took a few cheap shots at her already fragile mood, cleaving holes in her heart.
Why the hell had she bothered coming out tonight?
She looked at the pleasant man opposite her, one who scored an eight in most departments and who was talking her ear off about a subject she had no interest in and slowly looking more and more as if he was leaning towards ditching her for someone else.
Probably Allura or Vidia. He had asked about them more than once and she had caught the way he had drooled over Allura when the onyx-haired and violet-to-blue-eyed beauty had stopped to check in on her. She couldn’t blame him. As always, Allura had somehow managed to squeeze her incredible body into a black rubber mini and a leather corset that barely contained her ample breasts.
Suki was beginning to feel she should have stayed at home. This night was going to go the same way they always did when her sisters dragged her out. She had started out thinking tonight would be different, as always, and she would finally get things right. A few unfulfilling kisses later she would end up screwing everything up and going home alone, still hungry and in an even worse mood.
The opinion of her sisters would only get worse and her future would only look gloomier, and her mood would only grow darker.
She smiled at the nice man and forced herself to move closer, tried to focus on what he was saying but it really was boring. She didn’t really care what kind of car he drove, or that he owned his apartment rather than rented. None of that impressed her.
She had never been into material things.
At least not to the extent that her sisters were.
Sometimes, her succubus nature got the better of her and shiny cars and fat bank balances easily seduced her. The perils of living on a tiny allowance. When her money was in danger of running out, she fell victim to her nature, a strange sense of desperation gripping her that had her spending most of the days until her next payment walking around frazzled and in her own little world, seeking a male who might buy her something pretty.
A girl could dream about having money, enough to buy whatever she wanted, couldn’t she?
Of course, normally allowing herself to dream like that only made the reality of her situation an even worse nightmare.
Her sisters could afford pretty things, nice clothes and jewellery, and expensive make up, because they preyed on more than the sexual energy of their hosts. They preyed on their bank accounts too, convincing the addled males to buy them things. Suki had tried that once or twice, or maybe a million times, when in the grip of her flat-broke-fever.
She was yet to succeed in convincing a male to buy her something.
Another thing that left a sour taste in her mouth.
Allura did a drive by and sneakily pressed her hand to her forehead, forming an L against it. L for loser.
Her sister meant the male was a loser and to ditch him, but Suki couldn’t help but take it personally. Her entire clan thought she was the loser because she was forever having problems with men and feeding. The charm her mother had been famous for had apparently refused to be inherited by her.
Suki lacked the basic succubus skills so badly that a few of her sisters questioned whether she really was her mother’s daughter and not some stray she had picked up in the fae town or a baby swapped at birth with her real daughter.
Sometimes, Suki wondered that too.
Most of the time, she wondered how she could make her sisters proud of her. She didn’t want them to look down on her. She didn’t want to lose them.
The world would be a bleak and lonely place without her sisters.
She struggled to fit in at the clan, but she would struggle even more to fit into a world without them in it. She belonged at the clan, with her sisters. She had lost her only blood relation, but every female in her clan was her sister, whether they were a daughter or a mother, an aunt or a grandmother. They were all her sisters.
The only family she had.
Before her mother had died, she had told Suki something that remained with her to this day.
One day, she would find her place in this world.
Suki knew what her mother had meant by that. One day, she would prove herself to the clan, would learn to use her powers and bloom just as her mother had always said she would, and she would become part of the family just as she had always wanted.
One day, her sisters would love her just as she loved them.
Solid Eight tossed her a flirty smile, one she returned as she sidled closer t
o him.
She brushed her arm against his, savouring the way his aura shifted, the colours that flared around him like an aurora changing to reveal the red of passion and arousal. He wanted her. She could bag and tag him, although there was a danger the tagging part might end up being one attached to his toe as they wheeled him into a morgue.
Why did Solid Eight have to be human?
She was sure that underneath his blue jeans and dark checked shirt he had a good body, one that would delight her, and that his desire and passion would provide a modest meal. Humans were off limits as far as she was concerned though. One slip and she would end up killing him, even if they were only kissing at the time. She didn’t have the energy to focus on restraining herself. She was too hungry, needed a man who could get her off the red line through kissing before she dared to do anything saucier with him.
Allura strolled past again, tugging a handsome man along behind her. Suki was surprised her sister didn’t plant another L on her forehead. The clan’s favourite succubus just rolled her eyes instead.
Suki glared at her.
Fine, she was taking too long with the guy, but Solid Eight had her twisted in knots. The temptation to kiss him and see if he could handle giving her a little of his energy was great, but the thought of accidentally killing him was like a bucket of icy water on her libido.
Suki looked around the room again, hunting a stronger target, one who could handle a succubus and might be able to provide her with a good feed. If she could find a powerful man, not a nymph, she could probably fill her tank on kissing or at least kissing and a little fooling around.
An ache bloomed between her thighs and she rubbed them together in her tight black cotton mini, the thought of getting frisky with a man sending her temperature soaring and short-circuiting the part of her brain that constantly chided her, telling her not to go too far in case she accidentally killed her host.
A man flashed into her mind, his gaunt face and dull blue eyes hurling another bucket of ice down her panties, quenching the fire that had just started burning.
Seduced by a Demon King Page 2
