by Kiki Howell
She separated them in her mind, him and his demon, but she wondered how false that perception might be. Her mother had told her before that the demons had dangers, another 'safety clause' as Ciaran's father had referred to it. If a man gave in to it too much, he'd go insane, mad, for the rest of his life. If that descent into madness happened here, she wondered if she could protect herself, if she could get away on the boat. Shaking off the harrowing prospects, she looked to him as she sat on the couch, asking permission to cuddle up against him again.
"Please. Yes," he answered. "I want you close, but, for now, without all the other stuff until I work this out. I'm so sorry. I didn't feel like this at all the other night with you. I don't know what is different. Me? You? The place?"
"Maybe the lack of your brothers and work friends, all those in your circle leaving you alone. Doesn't the demon keep a link to the others? Maybe last time it just waited for them to come, and this time they aren't, right?"
"I don't really know. I guess until the other night, emotions had never been involved when with a woman. And, the other night, I felt a rush of so much, especially anger at my father for keeping us apart all those years. Here, I wanted to just let it come, the rush of emotions, being with you, in this place, far away and safe for a time, but that's not working out. I'm being denied even the briefest moment of happiness by this thing."
"Guess the peace and love stuff pisses the thing off. But, if that's true, does no one in your circle love any woman?"
"No," he answered, pausing as she watched his eyes move as he thought it through. "No. They all wanted this damn thing. Waited to be of age for it. None of them had it in them to fall in love prior, I don't think. My brothers definitely not. They married for the arrangement, her looks and money, really, a union advantageous to them both. I know there is no love because as much as they act the part in public with their wives, the women are both shallow enough, enjoy the lifestyle enough, to have open marriages otherwise. My brothers fuck whoever they want whenever they want, with an arrogance and freedom that is sickening. I believe the others are all the same, married for the same pathetic reasons. It has always amazed me what some women will do, put up with, to live a life of luxury. The point is, they all wanted this demon. It made them all feel like men. The only thing they fight for is to keep it and their bank accounts."
"Oh, I know women like that. I never got the mind games they would have to play to be with their husbands, but they do. They even seem to enjoy life, too, despite the loveless marriages. The arrangements and perks suit them just fine. Maybe if we had not fallen in love so quickly as teens, actually as children, maybe we could have understood such a lifestyle choice, too."
"Maybe. But we did. So, now what?"
"You tell me. I don't know what you are feeling, how it feels. Do you feel out of control? Your whole body is tense, afraid or ready to fight. Why are you holding back from me?"
"It's the threats in my head. It threatens you, tells me to do things. I feel strong enough to ignore it, but where you are involved I will take no chances. I just want to go slow, to know you are always protected from that side of me."
"How do you live on a normal basis with that thing? Is everything you do dreadful enough to appease it? Sorry, I know that sounds bad, but you act like you've never threatened the thing and how it likes to live before."
"I guess, in a way, I haven't. I live making deals, making money, it likes the gluttony of that. The excessive parties, the women, have always suited it. Even when I think of getting away, I guess it feeds off the rebellion of that. And, I just have so much anger in me, so much resentment. I literally hate my father, a man who, dead or alive, I couldn't do anything about it all so it festers. I guess I do live a life that makes it happy, and that makes my skin crawl as much as the demon does."
"It sounds like torture, Ciaran," she said, cautiously reaching out to caress his face.
The crimson flashed in his eyes, stronger this time unless it was just the darkness, but she swore she felt the heat of the rage in her fingers. Everything about him clenched. She didn't know how to help him. The usual just seemed to upset him, or that being in him, more.
"I don't know what to do for you, or maybe what not to do for you. Tell me."
"I don't know," he said with a hiss, his hand coming to her face, but stopping just short of touching her, and trembling there as it hung in the air. "I can't hurt you, but making love to you, just the thought of gentle caresses, kissing you, angers it, and not in a good way, if that makes sense. Still, surely I've done some good in my years with this, some kindnesses. While I'd felt twinges, the beast trying to change my mind, it was nothing like this. Something is different about the way it's reacting inside of me. This is unexplored territory. So, until I understand it, I need to keep a distance, I guess. This isn't fair. I brought you all the way out here with no idea this would be so bad. I planned to go with the lust, appease it, but the thing is so frantic I can't even manage to do that. Irritated. Something. It's driving me nuts. It has to be me with you. I got touches of this the other nights, but not this extreme."
She grabbed his hand, then, hard, moved it down to her thigh. For some reason, something in him mellowed a second, as if a part of him, the demon part, she guessed, actually felt a sick and twisted sort of joy, was pacified by her anger, with the violent way she'd touched him.
"Wait a minute. When we were together before, it was fast, lustful, desperate, all things the demon would like, and it seems when it's happy, if you can call it that, or appeased, it leaves you be more. Is that right? We were rough and frantic at first, yet it still came, right? I guessed you felt something for me then."
"Yes. Well, I don't know. Something is just different, as if my father trained the thing to hate you, though that can't be it. I can't explain it. Although, I think the other night I still carried enough anger of all the time wasted being apart that it fed off of the rage for a time. This time I'm feeling hopeful, for the first time, that I could be with you, love you, and it hates all of that. Basically, this is my sick and twisted life, thanks to my father. See, even there, my hatred for the man makes it calmer, appeased, as you said. It has no alliances. Only when I am with the circle is it okay with any sort of alliance because it controls the other demons in the other men. It's a sick bastard I live with, that tries to control me."
"Okay, then let's give in to it, make it happy. I don't mind things a little rough. Just tap into your lust, your base desires, and take me hard. At least we can be together. I want you, Ciaran. At this moment, however I can have you."
Her stomach tightened, and she grew damper than she already was just saying the words.
"Believe me, I want you so bad right now that you would think a demon lived in me, too," she offered, trying to find the right words to convince him to take her. "I want you, now."
She moved toward him quickly, ignoring the way her mind threw out fearful thoughts. She went with the whole bad boy appeal thing, and seduced him, hard and fast. Pushing him back on the couch, she straddled him, tore at his thin shirt, baring his chest. Letting her nails dig in as much as they could to the mounds of muscle there, she bent down to bite at a nipple.
A growl grew in the back of his throat as his mouth came to hers, bit and sucked on the delicate skin until electricity buzzed through her, make her want him until she ached. In one graceful move, he grabbed her ass and stood up, holding her body to his as his mouth found hers, his tongue forced its way in, and the kissing grew deep and rough, heated. Her heart beat in double time as he walked them over the wooden walkways, until they hit a room with a bed in it. In the seconds she had opened her eyes, she could see the bed against another railing. Open air with a roof over their head, the place lent itself to the romance she couldn't have with him. Lanterns had not been lit here, but the lights around the walkways, the moon, gave them enough illumination.
He moved his hands to her sides and tossed her on the bed. Her breath caught, held until her lungs b
urned and forced her to gasp for air as he landed over top of her, on his knees, enough to shred her dress away. She screamed out as the material ripped over her flesh, bit for just a burning second, enough to stoke the fires within rather than extinguish them. She'd always had so much anger when it came to men that she'd never actually been a gentle lover, or taken to tender lovemaking.
Sinister noises emanated from deep in his chest as he took her hard and fast, ignited something in her as well. She let him set the pace as her body responded to the forceful entrance of his erection, the contractions starting immediately, hinting at the force of the impending orgasm that would soon take her.
Their kisses grew searing as she trembled in her need of him. She arched her back, slamming hip bones against hip bones, letting her know they were alive. She'd caught a glimpse of his red eyes, though he closed them fast and tight.
Am I fucking a man or a demon? Shot through her brain before she could stop it, and she let her own anger at the unknown fuel the fire.
His arms wound so tight around her she could barely breathe. Her nipples rubbed against his hard chest, igniting the tender flesh, filling her tightly coiled body with heat. She took her well-manicured fingers and let them dig into the flesh of his rapid moving ass. The firm muscles moved him in and out as she guided him, angling his hips, until he hit just the right spot.
They rolled right off the bed, hitting the floor with a breath stealing thump as they came together. Fever scorched her flesh, while her insides contracted and released. The sounds of their cries moved over the calm waters as their release took them both to a place they'd never been before, not even with each other. Once she hit that precipice, the pleasure almost maddening, another round of internal heat relaxed her, made her jelly in his arms. His grip still unbearably tight, she fought for breath as a growl started that he seemed to silence.
"Appeased?" she asked, her voice heavy with her own sated pleasure as the long day began to weigh on her.
"For now," he said. He lifted her from the floor like she weighed nothing and placed her gently on the bed. "You sleep."
She may or may not have fought him on that idea as sleep overwhelmed her.
Chapter Seven
Growling, the mix of animal and demon so familiar to him it could have come from his own chest, woke him up with a start. Believing the sound part of a dream, he lay there a minute, the moonlight flooding onto the bed where they'd slept side by side. Well, she'd slept peacefully, him not so much. He'd spent the night attempting to analyze the new ways his demon acted up within him to no avail.
Adjusting in micro movements, hoping to regain some feeling back in the arm she rested on, the tangle of a sheet around his right leg built his frustration, an emotion he'd been tapped into all night. He knew without even looking that most of the bed sheets, save the one over them, were strewn around the room along with their clothes. Allanah's head rested against his chest, her shoulder wedged in his bicep, hence the blood shortage to his fingers. A smile graced his face, though, as he relished the feeling of her naked body, warm where it touched his.
The sound of her light breathing should have soothed even the savage beast, and he scoffed at the absurd saying. His beast remained far from soothed. He couldn't put his finger on the source of its agitation no matter where he let his mind roam. It had to be a sheer aversion to love. There wasn't another reason on this earth he could fathom as to why this woman, this gentle, beautiful, loving and resilient creature, scared the demon so. To even think of the hellish thing afraid amused him, granting him another few seconds of reprieve from the shenanigans of the thing causing chaos among his organs as well as other vital systems of the body like digestion and blood flow. Nothing quite right, his parasympathetic nervous system all out of whack, he'd been plagued with an upset stomach, heartburn, and a headache since they'd arrived. Not to mention the fatigue from holding himself in his human form causing physical aches and pains.
"This isn't the way a physically fit man in his early thirties should wake up," he thought out loud, half growling and half grumbling to himself, yet quiet enough not to wake the sleeping beauty at his side.
His brothers thought the demon within, as they stupidly called it, made them stronger. He guessed it did when shifted, at least until you got on its bad side, pissed it off. He heard it again, his growl, louder, closer, this time.
He sat up with a start when it registered that the beastly sound moaning through the night air had not come from his mind, nor from him. Looking out to the water, his disbelief at the sight made it take a few seconds to register. His coven, full beast, surrounded them, the energy coming from their fur lighting the moonlit dark further, casting an ominous cloud around them. He moved her aside, as easily as a frantic man could, taking two large and fast steps to the edge of the room before his entire body tensed with fury.
"I promised to kill you if you came here," he said in a quiet hiss through his teeth as he looked around him again, a circle of unnatural, unworldly fur closing in, surrounding them.
He gripped the wooden banister until it splintered in his hands. This small detail infuriated him until he shook, violently, his breath coming out in painful pants as he ground the pieces of wood in his hands into sawdust that littered the water below his feet. Hearing a fast sound behind him, he turned back to see Allanah's wide eyes, not full of fear, but full of fury, matching his own.
He knew she'd woken as he'd moved out from under her, but rather than cower, or scream, he could see her now as she stood in all of her naked glory, unashamed, seemingly unafraid, though, not stupid.
He scrambled, pushed the suitcase sitting neatly on the floor her way. He grabbed his shorts, yanking and shaking them free of the blanket they had been half hidden under. Putting them on with tumultuous tugs, he didn't knowing what would come next. He nodded to the suitcase for her to do the same.
"You said they wouldn't come," she stated, rather matter of fact, her voice icy with her ire, chilling him actually, as she snatched a dress from the case.
"I threatened. They promised. I don't get it. They are dead men," he rambled, each thought abrupt, each word cut off more as he'd continued on.
His chest tight, his fists clenched, his heart hammered in his chest, not from fear but from rage. All the aliments of last night forgotten, he acquired new, let his fury storm into madness until his bloodlust took over. At this point, moments before a shift, the demon and him were one with the only exception being alliance. He wanted to protect her, the demon's only bane, while the demon wanted to protect itself by aligning with the beasts. The indecision, turmoil, the fight between what lived within him and his true soul, kept him barely human.
"Why the fuck are you here?" he screamed into the night, toward the circle of beasts who'd remained frozen in their circle, maybe as confused as he was as to the why.
In his head he heard the cry of the many around him. The demons allowed the men silent communication, which at times could be quite maddening, since they used it more in bad situations when everyone talked at once. Deciphering the tangles of words, he figured out the gist of it. His demon had called them. It had been threatened, its existence vulnerable, so that they couldn't ignore the call. They had assumed some physical danger, that if Ciaran was in danger of dying so would his demon in turn, so they had to come save him.
What else could they do? Only, here now, they couldn't figure out what exactly had threatened it. They questioned if the thing was devious enough to lie, to pull some sort of ruse. Clearly, no physical threat loomed, and the demon secured. Still, it shrieked out the warning Ciaran had been feeling and puzzling over himself. After a short, rushed back and forth ending in a disoriented state of bewilderment, he shook his head, hoping to clear the cotton brain he'd achieved without alcohol. In fact, he'd kill for a shot of whiskey.
"They came," he said to her, trying to keep his voice just a tad calm despite her wild eyes, "because they thought my demon in trouble; as in me and it dying kind of tr
ouble, which makes no sense. I was not in any battle with anything. Still, as I told you last night, the thing is up in arms about something. I thought it through all night, and I can't believe it could be so threatened by love. But, I don't know what else it could be."
"I believe you...or rather it was in danger," she stated with a calm tone, although he'd heard the underlying tremble.
The beasts around him growled again, this time a battle cry, though they seemed to look around them for an unseen enemy. As they did so, they stomped closer to the bedroom, to them, to surround him. Their large feet made unnatural waves in the water. He'd not realized fully until this moment that the anxious way his demon had been fighting was from some fear of another type of magick, one pure and good, until he heard the other men ranting about it in his head, attempting to figure out the source when there stood only one around them.
"What the hell is going on?" he yelled, looking around the circle of beasts to find the threat himself because what they were thinking made no logical sense. Looking back at Allanah, he demanded, "What have I been battling? What are you talking about?"
"I mean this," she said, her hand raising in the air, a ball of light, bright, white, blinding, forming in her hand, growing until it surrounded the room they stood in like a wall of energy, of protection.
The beasts around them seemed to go crazy, then. Mad, really. Their ruby eyes glowed like flames, her energy ball exaggerating the effect. A war cry, he could only describe the hideous animalistic screams coming out of their mouths as, made her energy ball quake, though it held him inside. As irrational and threatened as he suddenly felt, his demon reacted, insisted on a change he'd thought to fight tooth and nail until he got answers.
However, the shift not coming, he knew, as the thing squirmed inside of him, enraged, maybe suffocating, making him experience the same, that he wasn't the one holding it back. She was. Somehow. With her light all around them, that she glided with her hand around so gracefully, so easily, to control. The ball, which glistened like glass, blinded him. The stomping of his coven around it made him shake. The demon inside, possibly dying, made him curl up in a tight ball around the pain. He clutched at his own throat, gasping for breath until he realized it a sensation only. Air, as sure as the day hinting over the horizon, burnt through his lungs.
