Demon Moon

by Cameron Dane

  “Please.” He reached out to touch her, but she swatted his hand away. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk it.”

  “No, of course you couldn’t.” Cassie wiped her nose with the back of her hand angrily. “Not with all the work you’ve put into getting me to this moment.” That was what crushed her heart. That was what reached right down into her chest and ripped out her soul. Her hands started to tremble, and she felt her lips quivering uncontrollably, but she wouldn’t stop until she got it all said. “When I think of how bothersome I must have been, coming to you for all those years because…” She had to stop for a moment. Her throat was too clogged to speak through the pain. “Because…because I thought you were my light. I thought you were my comfort, my connection to wanting to be alive after my father died. I thought you even seemed to like having me close by sometimes, too. But it was just a trick.”

  “No, Cassandra. No.”

  “Yes.” The pain coalesced in her belly and almost doubled her over. She looked up at Connor through blurry, wet eyes. “You groomed me and tolerated my presence to get me to this place. Oh, God.” Her hand covered her mouth in an attempt to hold some of the debilitating pain inside. “When I think of all the time we spent together. All of us.” She turned her unfiltered gaze on the men standing further back, listening to everything. “I thought we were a family. I bragged to all my friends about the surrogate brothers that took me in and made me one of their own. But the truth is that all you ever did was lie to me. About whom you are, what you are, about everything.”

  “No.”

  “Not everything.”

  Cassie ignored Cain and Caleb’s words, going back to the one who had torn out her heart.

  “But you --” She landed a pointed finger on Connor. Her voice cracked, and she had to start again. “You held my hand when I grieved. You slept with your door open so that you could hear me when I dreamt that my father was haunting me. You were my everything, Connor. You did all the right things to make me fall completely in love with you. When I think how --” Her voice broke again, but she was determined; she would get it all said. “When I think how you must have been barely tolerating my dogged determination to be near you.”

  “No.”

  “You think I can believe you? Now?” Cassie’s tone screeched higher with each word. “All I can hear in my head is you laughing at my stupid, insignificant adoration of you. How you must have detested my presence even as you knew you needed it in order to achieve your goal.”

  “No, Cassandra.” Connor reached out and grabbed her wrist, branding her with his touch as she’d begged him to do only a short time ago.

  She twisted her arm and yanked it away before she succumbed once again. “No, no.” She had to cover her ears or go mad. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies. I can’t.” She lifted her gaze to his, knowing that every moment of love she’d ever felt for him was there for him to see, stripped bare for him, but she couldn’t hide it anymore. “Don’t you see?” She started walking backwards, away from him. “One more lie from you will surely kill me.”

  She took off at a dead run for the stairs, desperate to get away.

  Chapter Eight

  Connor didn’t waste a second with indecision; he was right on Cassandra’s heels. She’d had a head start, and he knew her hurt was pushing her forward with incredible speed. Connor was a big man, though, and the pain he’d witnessed in her eyes spurned him onward, too, so it was no time before he was within reach.

  “Cassandra!” he commanded, his voice as hard as he’d ever heard it. “Stop!”

  “No!”

  He scrambled up the stairs and wrapped his hand around one of her ankles before she could climb another step. She struggled to pull free, but he was determined and wouldn’t let go. He simply grabbed her other leg too. He yanked her back toward him, and she lost her footing. Connor quickly wrapped his arms around her stomach and chest and braced her fall, covering her from behind.

  The feel of her supple body sprawled out on the stairs beneath him was heaven, as if it was meant to be there. His cock immediately hardened to life and pressed against his jeans, seeking its counterpoint where it was nestled right beneath his groin. He moaned as he inhaled her fresh fragrance, one that, when he breathed it in, seemed to clean him, too. She’d washed up before changing into her sweats and T-shirt, but all his body wanted to do was mate with her and cover her with his scent again. It was sexual need at its most powerful, and the demon within struggled to show itself once again.

  “Cassandra.” Connor held Cassie to him as she pushed against the restraints of his arms. “Don’t fight. Listen to me. Please.”

  Cassie covered her face with both of her hands and dropped her forehead to the stair just above her face.

  “Please,” she begged, her voice muffled by her hands. “I don’t want to be lied to anymore. Just let me go.”

  “There are no lies between us, I swear it.” Connor struggled against a terrible urge to take Cassandra again. “I have never lied to you about us. Never.”

  She turned her head to the side then, and Connor was able to see the tears still filming her eyes. The sight of it rocked his very foundation and surged in him a need to do whatever it would take to make her believe the truth.

  “Please.” Now it was his turn to beg. He reached up and wiped the wetness from her cheek. The sheen of her tears, and the fact that he’d been the one to put it there, tore at his very soul. “Nothing between us has ever been a falsehood. Our friendship is real and true. You must believe me.”

  Her body heaved beneath him, and he knew she struggled to contain her silent crying.

  “I used to believe every word you ever spoke to me.” The corner of Cassie’s mouth seemed to turn up a little bit at that, and Connor’s chest expanded with renewed hope. “Even when you were teasing me, and Caleb and Cain told me not to be so blindly devoted, I believed that your fibs were a special bond between the two of us.”

  “They were. They are. Nobody brings out that part of me as you do. It is special. You draw out many sides of me that nobody else can, Cassandra. The demon exists, yes, and I never wanted you to know about him, but the rest of what we share, none of that is a lie.”

  Her eyes slid closed, and without that life shining through her green gaze at him, his world became dark again.

  “I can’t believe you,” she whispered. She suddenly began to struggle to get away again. “I don’t know how. You lied to me about such an important part of yourself that I don’t know what is real about you anymore. Without trust and security between us, we don’t have anything.”

  That triggered the desperation living within Connor as nothing else could. He would not accept defeat over the only thing he’d ever wanted in his life.

  “We have nothing between us anymore, you say?” He reached down between their bodies and pushed the elastic waistband of her sweats down over the smooth globes of her ass, just enough to expose her to his touch. He slid his blunt finger between the seam, making her gasp and buck up against him. He pushed further between her thighs until he fingered the moist plumpness of her folds. “I would say the fact that you are soaking wet means that we have something between us. Something that your body cannot deny, even if your head wants to.” He pushed into her pussy then, all the way to the second knuckle, and she flooded for him even more. “Yes, we have something between us, my Cassandra. Something that will not be denied.”

  She gasped and worked her body against his buried finger. “You want to fuck me again?”

  “Yes,” he confessed, the word almost a sacrament. He added another finger, stretching her snug, damp channel as he mimicked the sex act that he wanted to do with her until neither one of them could walk. “I ache for you. I am so hard that it hurts.”

  “Then do it.” She planted her elbows on one step and her head on another, and thrust her ass in the air as best she could with her sweatpants bunched at her thighs trapping her legs almost completely together. “D
o it, Connor. Fuck me. You’ll like it. I’ll like it, but it won’t change anything.”

  “Yes…” He unzipped his jeans and released his raging cock. “…it will.” He spread her open and pushed his cock inside, sliding through her tight heat inch by slow, desperate inch, stretching her in almost immeasurable increments, making her feel it all until he was encased by the fist of her pussy all the way to the root.

  She whimpered beneath him, but rolled her hips back against him in the smallest circle, so he knew she loved having him back inside her body again. He rested his lips against the shell of her ear and started bombarding her with his soul.

  “We are not a lie, Cassandra.” He curled his hands around the soft flesh of her hips and held her in place while he took her body with exquisitely tender thrusts. “I don’t care if you believe nothing else, but you will believe that I cherish every moment I’ve ever had in your presence. Please.” He choked on the word as a flood of fear overwhelmed him. He bit at her ear and slid his tongue inside, needing to mate with her body in every way that he could. “Please, say that you believe me.”

  She reached back and touched his face, and he almost spilled himself right on the spot. “I want to,” she whispered brokenly. She worked her hips back against his cock in jerky spurts, her motions hampered, as were his. “God, how I want to.”

  “Then do,” he pleaded. “Please…” Words fell away as Cassandra’s cunt squeezed Connor’s dick with agonizing tightness, milking at his length in a way that begged for a faster, deeper penetration that he fought to suppress. The demon wanted out; he couldn’t be held back in the throws of complete sexual conquest.

  “No.” Connor cursed as this twin who was not a twin, but rather a part of himself, demanded freedom. “Not right now. Please.”

  He gritted his teeth as the need to possess took over, overpowering his will to deny once again, as it always did. He did not know what insanity had taken hold of him and made him think he would be able to hide this part of himself from Cassandra throughout the length of a marriage. He did not know what kind of fanciful dreaming had allowed him to imagine that he could control the demon when they were so closely linked together in every way.

  Sweat soaked Connor’s shirt as his spine stretched the flesh on his back and pushed the demon body out from within. A mountain of shifting cartilage took over his face, and his horns burst through the top of his skull at the same time, outing him as a demon once again. He barely noted the burning hot pain searing through his body that was a natural part of the shift, as fear of Cassandra’s revulsion took over his mind.

  The demon emerged quickly and demanded control. Cassie jerked beneath him and clutched the step above her, crying out as his cock dug deep into her tight pussy, jamming her tender flesh into the stairs. Connor fisted her hair and tugged her head back, torturing himself when he saw a flash of panic and fear darken her eyes. The demon frightened her, he could tell, but even with that, he couldn’t stop.

  He smoothed a trembling hand down her hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered against her temple as his pace picked up in accordance with his new body’s needs. He took her hard in a way that made her gasp and grunt beneath him. “Sexual passion forces the demon out. I’m sorry. I thought I’d be able to control him, but I can’t keep him locked in. I feel too much when I am with you.” His hips pounded his cock in and out of her wet, sucking channel again and again. He took her like an animal in heat. He hated that he couldn’t stop it, even as his prick grew so hard that it hurt. His balls drew up tighter than they ever had before, proving to him that his body liked it, even if his mind was ashamed. “It’s rough, I know. I’m sorry.”

  He swore he heard her whisper, “It’s okay, Connor, it’s okay,” and that decimated what was left of his control, what was left of his soul that didn’t already belong to her.

  “Please forgive me,” he said, his voice guttural as release became everything to him. He plowed into her one final time, grinding her into the stairs, pleading desperately, “Forgive me for everything, please.” His orgasm ripped from his body with a blinding white light that almost let him touch heaven. Hot streams of semen emptied from his body into hers, endless ropes of cum that seized his muscles and jerked his body over hers as he found his release.

  He shoved his hands under her body and found the top of her slit. He spread her open and unearthed her clit, swollen so big that he was sure she must be in pain. He wet his fingers with the moisture that was all over the inside of her legs, and with the first soft figure eight she was bucking back against him as the first tremors of orgasm took her over too.

  “That’s it, that’s it. Don’t fight it, sweetheart.” He held her stomach with the flat of his hand as she tried to pull away from what she was feeling.

  “No…no…Oh, God…” She reached back and grabbed at his ass, digging her nails into the muscles there, tying him to her while her cunt clenched his cock with the power of her orgasm. She clawed at his flesh, screaming, “Connor!” and with dark satisfaction, Connor knew he’d bear the marks of her passionate release.

  Cassie’s pussy grabbed at his buried cock in rippling waves that wouldn’t stop, and Connor grunted, shocked when his penis jerked within the tight glove of her folds and spurted another shot of scorching cum deep into her body.

  Eventually, Connor regained his breathing and equilibrium, and pulled out. He was determined not to look down at his penis covered in Cassandra’s slick moisture, but he couldn’t help it. It was a glorious sight, and he reveled in it, even reached down and wrapped his hand around himself to feel it before stuffing his cock back in his jeans. He looked down at Cassandra’s swollen pink pussy where it peeked out from between thighs that were smeared with his ejaculate. He committed the beauty of her raw sexuality to memory, because for all he knew it would be the last time it ever happened.

  Connor shimmied Cassie’s sweats back up over her beautiful, plump ass and covered her up. He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her to her feet. He turned her around, taking two steps down himself so that they were almost at eye level with each other.

  When she seemed to be steady, he released her and moved even further down the stairs. He needed the distance, else he might not be able to say what he needed to say.

  “What we just did” -- he glanced at the stairs where he’d just taken her, and then met her wary gaze head on -- “and everything I said while we did it, that was the truth of what I feel for you. I feel it when I am like this.” He pointed at his face, still in full-on demon landscape. Then, for the first time without hiding, he closed his eyes and concentrated. Within less than a minute, he was back to the face she’d always known. “And I feel it when I am like this.” He pointed at his face again. “That does not change. That will not change. Ever. No matter what. Do not come to me until you believe it, for I cannot abide the look in your eyes when you do not trust me. Not when I have had your trust for so long.”

  Connor’s throat closed up, and his words were forced out over the sandpaper of his tongue, but he was going to say the rest if it was the very last thing he ever did. “Not when your friendship and trust has become the very thing that feeds my soul.” He pulled back to the shadows then, but he was very afraid that even with darkness there was no longer any place to hide. “Not when, in my two hundred years of existence, I have never loved another as I love you. Don’t come to me again until you know in your heart that that is the truth.”

  Connor disappeared down the darkness of the long, wide hallway until he was out of sight. Thirty seconds later Cassie heard the front door slam.

  Cassie stood there, her feet a pair of cement blocks that wouldn’t allow her to chase after Connor. Her jaw hung slack, wide enough to let flies in. She couldn’t make her body function, but her brain was an oval racetrack in her mind with a half dozen cars racing around trying to be the idea that took root first.

  It was quite a list.

  She had given Connor her virginity. Connor had propos
ed. Connor wasn’t human. He was a demon. She had the ability to make Connor human, if she was willing to do it.

  The question was, could she trust that his motive went deeper than ridding himself of a piece of his DNA that he so clearly abhorred?

  Cassie’s mind fought a battle that tore her thoughts from one end of the spectrum to the other. On the one hand, Connor had withheld from her vital information about whom and what he was. On the other hand, he had chased her down and made love to her again. He’d invaded her in a way that she could still feel between her legs, and had a suspicion she would be feeling for the rest of her life. If not physically, than in the memory of how desperate he’d seemed to make her believe in him. In how apologetic he’d been for getting a little bit rough with her body, when in fact she’d quite reveled in it. It had been right then when she’d felt the sincerity of his words and needs washing over her in droves, pushing her to unimagined heights of intimacy that she’d wished for with Connor ever since she’d realized she was in love with him.

  That was the thing that had rooted her in place on the stairs like a plaster garden statue. He’d told her he loved her. The brightness in his eyes that he’d tried to hide from her as he’d confessed his love could not be faked either. She knew that one thing about him in a way that nobody else did. She had always known that whatever his mouth was saying, or whatever his body language was withholding, she could always read what he was really trying to say in those dark eyes of his.

  She knew Connor Hawkins better than she knew herself. She’d always believed that. She’d always known she could be the woman to ease his solitude and reticent heart, if he would just let her in. Well, now he had. The only thing that was different was that there was more inside of him than she could have ever imagined. Apparently, a lot more.

  Only, her heart didn’t really seem to care about that. All she seemed able to focus on was that Connor had told her he loved her. When had that happened? Why hadn’t she seen it in him when she could always see everything else so clearly? Most important of all, though, was she brave enough to have blind faith in its truth?