Seduced by a Demon King

by Heaton, Felicity

  He frowned. Because he didn’t want her to believe he was stupid?

  “Is intelligence a quality you measure males by?” That question slipped from his lips and he regretted it when she looked at him, her incredible green-to-blue eyes bright in the dim light.

  She stared deep into his, causing that unsettling sensation of the world dropping away again, stealing his awareness of his surroundings. He was vulnerable like this, his senses so focused on her that he wouldn’t notice any danger until it was too late. A small voice deep inside him roared at him to be more careful, to guard himself better, but he couldn’t bring himself to heed it.

  She nodded slowly.

  Intelligence. Personality. Looks. What other things did she measure a male by? Wealth? Skill? What sort of skills? Strength? Abilities?

  He wanted to know.

  A delicate sigh escaped her rosy lips as she turned her cheek to him.

  “Gods, that’s beautiful.” She softly breathed the words, awe lacing each of them, pulling his focus away from her for a moment so he could see what she found so beautiful.

  Warm light spilled over the ocean, turning the white caps of the waves gold and lacing the fingers of cloud in the lightening sky with that precious metal and shades of pink and orange.

  A sunrise.

  He had longed to see one for centuries, but now that it was right before him, he found his eyes drawn away from it, to the female on his right. She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them, her dazzling eyes sparkling and the colourful waves of her hair bright in the morning light as she watched the sun rise over the ocean.

  Gods, she was beautiful.

  With the first light of day warming her skin, she was breathtaking.

  His heart beat harder. Beat for her. He was sure it was purely her charms as a succubus luring him under her spell and he wanted to tell her not to use them on him, because he felt as if he was on unstable ground when he was around her. He needed to know if this desire he felt for her, this pressing need to hold her close and bend her to his will, was real and not a product of a glamour.

  A glamour she had admitted she wasn’t good at using.

  Was it real?

  Why did the thought it might be make the ground feel even less stable beneath him, had him afraid it would crumble and give way at any moment?

  He stared at her.

  Because for the first time in his life, he wanted a female. Truly wanted her, with every drop of blood in his body and every fibre of his being that roared at him that he had to make her belong to him, that he needed this delicate, seductive and teasing little female more than anything else in this world.

  He swallowed hard at that.

  “I must leave.” Those words rang hollowly in his ears, issued by his head even when his heart rebelled against them.

  He had to stay. This was where he needed to be.

  She smiled up at him as he shoved to his feet, pushing back against that alluring voice because if he didn’t return now, his aides would discover he was missing from the castle. He wanted to return to this world again, to explore it more, and that wouldn’t happen if the court learned he had left the kingdom without telling anyone.

  Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to leave.

  He wanted to stay.

  He needed to stay.

  That unsettled feeling that had been growing inside him from the moment he had set eyes on the succubus reached a crescendo and he stood there staring down at her, trying to put his finger on what it was about her that caused him to react in this way.

  Because it troubled him.

  She stood, brushed her backside down and then smiled. “Wait here.”

  She disappeared before he could say anything and reappeared a heartbeat later, gripping something in her hand.

  When she took hold of his right one, a hot jolt coursed up his arm, a hit of pleasure that filled him with a deeper ache to stay, to draw her into his arms and kiss her and forget about returning to his kingdom.

  A dangerous way of thinking.

  He tried to take his hand back, but she held firm, her strength surprising, and pulled his arm towards her. His heart thundered, beating loudly in his ears as his gaze fell to her lips and anticipation swirled through him, had his mind racing ahead to imagine how she would feel in his arms, her skin against his.

  All softness against his hardness.

  “Do not charm me,” he growled and tried again to take his arm back.

  She lifted her eyes to his, a crinkle forming between her fine dark eyebrows. “I’m not. When I said I never perfected the basics, I meant it. Failure, I’m afraid. Practically dropped out of succubus school. My tutors are perpetually disappointed with me.”

  His eyebrows dipped low. “You have no glamour?”

  She shook her head, her green, blue and purple waves brushing across her bare shoulders. “Not a drop. Well… that’s a lie. I do have it, but it’s so unpredictable that I never use it on men… and it seems so dishonest.”

  He canted his head and sought the truth in her eyes, and when he saw no trace of a lie in them, his frown deepened.

  He had the feeling she was far more complicated than he had imagined and that only made him want to stay even more, because he wanted to unravel everything about her.

  “You are not like other succubi,” he murmured, piecing together what he already knew about her.

  She arched an eyebrow at him.

  “Known a lot of them, have we?” She held her free hand up between them and shook her head. “Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. I can quite imagine and I don’t want to ruin what was a nice night with you.”

  Tegan didn’t want to ruin it either. He enjoyed spending time with her, doing nothing but talking and learning from her.

  Unfortunately, his mouth had different ideas.

  “I have never known a succubus.”

  “Known. Fancy way of saying sucked face or fucked?” She looked him up and down as he nodded. Surprise shone in her eyes as they finally locked with his again. “Never? Because I figured you’d had a heck of a lot of lovers.”

  He wasn’t sure whether to be offended by that or not. He felt offended. Mildly. But still offended.

  He tried to take his hand back again, but she had a strong grip on it, too firm for him to break without hurting her.

  “It’s not my business.” She severed his line of thought as she unbuttoned the cuff of his black shirt and shoved the sleeve up his arm.

  She used her teeth to open the slim black tube she held in her other hand and he frowned as she leaned over and scrawled on his skin with the offensive smelling pen.

  When she recapped it and stepped back, finally releasing him, he stared at his forearm, his eyebrows rising.

  She tiptoed and pressed a kiss to his cheek that had his ears going pointed and his claws curling. She had moved out of his reach by the time he had gathered his wits enough to attempt to take hold of her and steal a taste of her lips, leaving him grasping at thin air.

  “It was nice meeting you, Solid Eleven. If you’re ever in the mortal world, dial my digits.”

  She slid her fingers down his forearm in a maddening way, sending another bolt of lightning striking along it, and then she was gone.

  Tegan stared at his arm.

  There were eleven huge numbers inked on his flesh.

  Her digits?

  The sun broke the horizon, warming his skin, and he looked at it. Why did the sunrise seem dull and lifeless to him now when a moment ago it had been glorious?

  Why did he feel so uneasy?

  He looked back at his arm.

  And why was he filled with a powerful urge to roar in rage?

  CHAPTER 7

  Tegan did his best to listen to his advisers as they droned on about the practicalities of the project he had put forward, a thousand excuses that blended in his ears. It was always the same whenever he came up with something new. Something they didn’t understan
d.

  In order to retain some sliver of power, they cited every reason imaginable as to why they couldn’t condone it in the kingdom or why it wouldn’t work. Some of those reasons weren’t even applicable to the project he had set forth.

  Their current route of protest being one of them.

  “But the mountains would render such equipment unusable.” The oldest of his advisers, a male of six thousand years seated to his left nearest him, preened his black horns, something he always did whenever he was nervous.

  Tegan stared Balkan down from his position on the elevated platform at the end of the long dark wooden table in his war room. If any male among his four advisers would break, it would be Balkan. Eryt would be against everything that sounded even mildly dangerous and would stand firm about it. Sylas, seated just beyond Eryt on his right, would bend a little, but not break, especially if Tegan made it clear he greatly desired this project was put into action.

  Raelin, who occupied a seat on the far left, one he had pulled around enough that it almost appeared as if he sat directly opposite Tegan at the other end of the table, a clever power play by the male, had been against every single thing Tegan had ever proposed.

  Mostly because Raelin had despised him ever since the day Tegan had accidentally hobbled him with a wooden sword in the middle of an important meeting. Tegan had been a child at the time, barely three hundred, but Raelin had reacted badly, daring to cuff him for his insolence. Tegan’s father had been furious, sending Raelin to the cells for a lengthy stay in one of them.

  More than once, Tegan had attempted to remove Raelin from his council. The other three members always voted against it. That had led Tegan to attempt to disband the entire council, which had led to the court intervening.

  Which had led to him backing down, because at the time he had only been on the throne for a season and had needed his court behind him, guiding him in the ways of being a king. Looking back, he should have pushed onwards to disband the council and form one consisting of males of his own choosing. By backing down, he had given the four males seated before him power over him, and they had been stealing more of it from him each season that passed.

  Perhaps it was time he took that power back.

  If he tried to disband this group of merciless demons who were intent on pointing out every flaw in his plans now, there was a chance the court might side with him.

  Because as far as he was concerned, they were standing in the way of progress.

  “The Second Realm needs power in order to advance as the other demon realms are. You desire us to remain behind them?” Tegan stared Balkan down as candlelight danced over his features, turning his black eyes even darker.

  “No, my king. It is only that it seems—” Eryt started from his right.

  “Dangerous?” Tegan barked and the candles positioned in a row along the centre of the table flickered, causing the warm light they cast to dip and shadows to flicker over the faces of the four males.

  They settled, brightening and struggling to illuminate the large room on the ground floor of the black castle, their light barely reaching the columns that stood on either side of the table, and not making it as far as the bookcases that lined the walls. The tomes they contained, bound in dragon leather, recorded the history of his kingdom.

  At least one book for each king.

  His father had made it to two tomes before he had been slain. Edyn had barely filled the first few pages of his own book.

  How far would Tegan make it before his ended?

  He wanted to change his life before it was taken from him.

  He toyed with the sleeve of the loose white shirt he wore. His right one.

  The one that concealed the numbers the female had written on his skin.

  Numbers he couldn’t bring himself to wash away, even though he had written them down.

  A female he couldn’t stop thinking about.

  “Expensive,” Raelin put in and adjusted the gold embroidered collar of his black tunic, the uniform of the council. “This project would be too expensive. The people cannot afford what you are proposing.”

  Tegan’s mood blackened and he narrowed his gaze on the male who was two thousand years his senior at close to five thousand years old. A weak male, physically at least. His scrawny build had led him to develop other strengths.

  Such as his vicious cunning mind.

  Tegan could see his fiendish line of thought shining in his black eyes.

  He meant to make the people pay for the construction of the wind turbines and creating farmland that would become a village project, one Tegan had hoped would provide them not only with food but possibly with income too, improving their lives in many ways.

  “Strange, I thought we were one of the richest of the demon kingdoms. I recall being told that many times as a youth, and remember hearing those words spoken to my father by this very council.” He shifted his gaze to each of them in turn, reading their expressions. “Perhaps I should have been informed if the kingdom’s finances are that dire? I presume they are dire?”

  Balkan swallowed. Hard.

  “You seem to want to speak, Balkan.” Tegan waved his left hand, urging the male to find his voice. “Does the kingdom have coin or not?”

  Raelin shot the male a black look. Eryt fiddled with his ledger. Sylas didn’t know where to look.

  Balkan finally spoke. “We have a plentiful supply of coin, my king.”

  “So the cost is not an issue. The funds needed to fulfil this project in the first seven villages are covered.” Tegan leaned back in his chair, fingers stroking his right arm as he tried to keep his focus on the meeting now that he was beginning to feel he was getting somewhere.

  “My king, we cannot just go ahead and pay for such expensive projects. There is a precedence to be set here.” Raelin didn’t back down when Tegan turned his glare on the male.

  Nor when he stood, the scraping of the wooden legs of his chair against the stone floor loud in the heavy silence.

  He leaned over and planted his hands against the table top as he stared hard at Raelin. “This project is for the people, not a method of extracting more coin from them. It is meant to benefit them, not bankrupt them.”

  He curled his right hand into a fist and slammed it into the table as fury got the better of him, causing Eryt to jump and scoot back in his chair to a safer distance. The male tucked his ledger close to the breast of his tunic when Tegan growled at him.

  Every damned thing Tegan did was questioned by these buffoons. They had far too much control over his life and his kingdom. Testament to that was the way they had lectured him for a full day about the fact he had left Hell, scolding him as if he was a child, not a grown male.

  As if he was beneath them.

  Not their damned king.

  He had been an idiot for putting up with it rather than putting them in their place.

  But he had been distracted, thoughts of the female filling his mind and that strange need to snarl and roar keeping him off kilter.

  He stroked his arm, almost feeling the numbers hidden there. Digits he ached to call so he could hear her voice again. He didn’t care if she teased him, poked fun or mocked him. He had been slowly losing his mind over the past few days, sinking deeper and deeper into thoughts of her, into that need to see her again. If he could just hear her voice, he was sure the ground beneath him would feel solid again.

  He had thought it unstable when he had been with her, but now it felt as if it was pitching and bucking, attempting to throw him to his knees.

  He needed to see her.

  The spell she had cast on him wasn’t a glamour, he was sure of that now. If it had been, it would have faded by now, the distance between them and the time they had been apart destroying it.

  “Where is the kingdom’s money kept?” He splayed his right hand out and stared at it as he planted it against the wood, a thousand thoughts colliding in his head to keep him only half-aware of the other males in the room and wha
t he was asking.

  Someone stared at him. He could sense their curiosity, and the concern of everyone present.

  “I asked where the kingdom keeps its coin.” He lifted his head and fixed his gaze on Balkan, singling out the weakest in the group, the one most likely to answer him.

  “In many places. We make use of the mortal banks, have accounts established in several countries there. We also have a reserve here in the castle, and two smaller reserves in our most heavily fortified garrisons.” Balkan swiped the back of his hand across his forehead, his fingers trembling.

  The male never had liked being openly challenged. He had been born of weak stock. Not one of his living family or his ancestors had ever gone to war.

  None of these males had set foot on a battlefield.

  Yet they were meant to advise him.

  It was little wonder he couldn’t bring himself to trust them.

  “Accounts in the mortal realm.” Tegan pursed his lips and frowned at Balkan as he considered that.

  Kyter had mentioned debit cards. Did they perhaps debit such accounts of their funds? He recalled the device the male had used for the female’s plastic card and felt he was on to something, finally figuring out the machinations of the mortal world. He narrowed his eyes on Balkan and carefully picked his words, not wanting any of the present males to see how little he knew of the modern human realm.

  “And we have debit cards for these accounts?” He braced himself, and felt vindicated for doing so when all of their gazes turned suspicious.

  “My king, we spoke at length about your foray into the mortal world and how dangerous it had been to venture there alone.” Raelin sounded far too happy about how that lecture had gone too, had evidently enjoyed berating and belittling him.

  Tegan slammed his fist into the table again, shaking the goblets that stood before each of them and toppling the one nearest him.

  “You spoke, and you all spoke out of turn,” he snarled and pinned Raelin with a hard look. “Answer my question. A recent discussion with King Thorne of the Third Realm revealed the male has access to such cards.”

  A lie, but one that spurred Balkan into action.