Claimed by a Demon King

by Felicity Heaton

  She had burned that demon to ashes.

  She had hurt Thorne.

  Sable wrapped her arms around herself and stroked the bandage around her right biceps. She couldn’t believe she had hurt him. She hadn’t meant to.

  She looked down at the leather cuff still strapped around her right forearm. Her wrist had been hurting ever since she had entered this region of Hell and now she had a strange power, the ability to incinerate a demon with nothing more than a touch. Why?

  Maybe she should turn back and find the kitchen after all. A healthy dose of demon grog would knock her out and she wanted to sleep, to escape this nightmare and lose herself in Thorne. She wanted to pretend nothing had happened and she was the same woman she had been barely a few days ago, a hunter with a gift, an ability to sense fae and demons.

  A lamp cast pale flickering light ahead, revealing the end of the corridor.

  A room.

  Sable reached the threshold and paused, her breath hitching in her throat and heart clenching.

  In the middle of the dark stone room stood a pure white marble statue of a couple.

  A huge male demon looked down at a petite female, his expression filled with love and devotion as he gazed upon her. The woman nestled against his chest, her own gaze turned downwards and a soft smile playing on her beautiful lips. Her left hand hung away from her side, free of the incredibly detailed folds of her empire-line style gown.

  That hand was worn and shiny, as if someone had slipped theirs into it many times.

  Sable moved closer, entranced by the woman.

  Her cheek shone in the light of the candles burning on the shelves around the walls too, as if someone had caressed it often.

  Yellow roses lay at their feet in varying stages of decay. Some were completely dried and withered, brown and crisp, but others still had colour and softness.

  Sable edged closer still, until she stood before the couple, and stared at them.

  She had never seen such a beautiful statue before. It radiated love and tenderness, and sorrow so deep that it brought tears to her eyes.

  Thorne’s parents.

  Loren had told her about them, that they had died almost two thousand eight hundred years ago, killed by Kordula and Loren’s brother, Vail, and that Thorne had been young for a demon, only around seven hundred years old.

  Sable’s gaze drifted down to the woman’s left hand and she reached out to it, imagining a young Thorne doing the same as he looked at his mother and father, the parents that had been taken from him.

  A heavy thump echoed down the hallway behind her, followed by another, growing in volume.

  Sable drew her hand back and looked around, searching for another way out. She didn’t want to be caught here, in such a private place. Her heart sped up when she realised there was no other exit.

  No escape.

  The footsteps drew closer and with them came dread. What if it was a guard or, worse, one of the vampires? No one would find her down here.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Sable swiftly turned to face their owner.

  Thorne stood before her, bare-chested and bedraggled. The strained lines of his face soon turned towards anger though as he looked between her and the statue behind her.

  “What are you doing in this place?” he barked and frowned as he moved into the room, making it feel even smaller than it had a moment ago. “You should not be in this place.”

  Sable looked over her shoulder at the statue and then down at the roses.

  It wasn’t just a room.

  It was a tomb.

  Thorne had buried his parents here and still came to them often. To smooth his mother’s cheek and hold her hand? To speak with his father?

  Tears rose into her eyes again and threatened to spill.

  She blinked them away. She had no reason to feel sorry for him. At least he had known his parents. He’d had centuries with them.

  She had never known hers.

  Sable looked back at Thorne and his expression softened.

  “I did not mean to shout at you,” he said in a gentle tone. He thought he had made her cry.

  She shook her head and pinned her gaze on the floor.

  “I’m sorry.” She kept her head bent and hurried past him.

  Thorne caught her arm and he was surprisingly gentle. She stilled, keeping her back to him, her heart beating in her throat as she waited for him to speak.

  “Why were you here?”

  Sable stared at the corridor. “I couldn’t sleep. I was looking for the kitchen to grab some water… or maybe some booze… and I somehow ended up here. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  Silence fell, as oppressive as it had been when they had stood together on the balcony. Was Thorne trying to think of something to say? Was he angry with her?

  He released her and sighed. “You should not wander the castle alone when so many males are present.”

  She had figured that out for herself when she had thought he was a vampire come to attack her or one of the demon guards.

  Sable looked over her shoulder at him. He had his back to her, his gaze on the statue. He walked over to it and she felt she should leave, but she couldn’t convince her feet to move.

  He seemed so different tonight.

  Lonely.

  It made her feel lonely too.

  “Why did you come down here?” she quietly said and his shoulders heaved with another sigh, his muscles expanding and relaxing, calling to her. She wanted to step up behind him and smooth her palms over them, to rest her head against his spine and hold him, because she knew that if she did, she would find her balance again.

  When had she started relying on him like that? When had Thorne become her anchor, her pillar of strength? When had she become so weak?

  “I could not sleep. Too much weighs on my mind.” He remained with his back to her. “So I came here… to speak… you will think me a fool.”

  “Not at all.” She turned to face him. “You came to speak with them.”

  She could understand that. He had probably talked to them often when they had been alive, sharing whatever burden weighed on his heart. She had done something similar a few times with Olivia and it had felt good. She wished she had been able to talk to her parents, to tell them her problems and hear them tell her that everything would be alright.

  “You are sad… why?” Thorne looked over his broad shoulders at her and his revelation didn’t shock her.

  He could sense her feelings.

  She felt a growing connection to him too, and it frightened her.

  “Sad for you, I suppose,” she lied and looked away when he frowned at her, as if he knew. She searched for another topic of conversation and found it in Thorne’s left hand.

  A single yellow rose.

  “How often to demons honour their ancestors?” She had heard that most demons brought offerings of the ancestor’s favourite brew or sacrificed something living to honour them.

  Thorne looked down at the rose in his hand, raising it at the same time.

  “Yearly, on the day of their birth and the day of their death,” he said and twirled the rose stem in his fingers, slowly enough that it barely shifted the green petals and didn’t affect the closed bud at all.

  Sable looked at all the blooms. There were too many.

  “And you only offer a single rose?” she said and he nodded. “So how often do you honour your mother?”

  He was silent for a moment, and then quietly stated, “Monthly.”

  He cast his dark crimson gaze over the drying roses.

  “More recently… I have honoured her weekly. I have needed my parents’ counsel.”

  The lines bracketing his mouth and his eyes were visible signs of the stress he was under. Only a month had passed since she had first met him, but he seemed so different.

  Weary and tired, quieter and troubled.

  A little like her.

  Sable edged closer to him and he lifted his gaze to her. Sh
e hated the look in his dark eyes. Her heart throbbed heavily at the sight of them glittering with so much pain, fathomless and searing, burning him up inside.

  She wanted to take it all away, even when she knew she couldn’t, just as he couldn’t take away her hurt and her fear. He couldn’t remove it but he could make her forget it for a while. He could shove the rest of the world and all of her worries aside with one single heated caress, a touch that would burn away all reason and leave her a slave to sensation and need—a slave to him and the connection blossoming between them.

  He had that power over her, and a deep, longing part of her wanted him to use it. She wanted him to draw her into his thickly muscled arms and kiss away her fears, and that was a dangerous thing to desire.

  Thorne heaved another sigh, his broad chest expanding with it, and then went down on one knee before the statue.

  Sable watched in silence as he laid the rose at his mother’s feet, looked up at the woman and spoke to her in the demon tongue. She wished she knew what he was saying as he quietly talked to her, and to his father. He gazed up at the tall male and then lowered his head. His shoulders tensed.

  She moved closer to him, drawn to comforting him and unable to deny that desire, and reached out to lay her hand on his back. His head shifted towards her before she could and she withdrew her hand as he rose to his feet, standing as tall as his father.

  She had to say something to break the silence before it became strained again.

  “Your mother was beautiful,” she whispered and he turned his head a little towards her, enough that she saw the slight smile that curved his lips.

  “I have never seen a more beautiful female.” He fell quiet and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and she knew that he wanted to say more but feared how she would react if he told her that he thought her beautiful too.

  She smiled to alleviate his nerves. “What were your parents like?”

  “My father was brave, strong, and led this kingdom in an era of peace because of that strength. He taught me much… how to lead men… how to fight… how to do what is right, no matter the consequences. If I could be but a tenth of the male he was, the warrior he was… the king he was… I would be happy.”

  But clearly he thought himself less than even that small amount. Because his kingdom was at war? Loren had also told her that Thorne had been through many wars in his centuries as the Third King, and the surrounding realms constantly challenged his reign because he had been so young and inexperienced when he had ascended the throne.

  But the man before her now wore the scars of those battles on his body and on his soul. He was strong and brave, and led his kingdom well, even if he couldn’t see it himself.

  She wished that he could or that she could make him see it.

  “My mother was beautiful, and delicate, and raised me while my father dealt with the kingdom. She would walk me around the castle and laugh as I tried to fight the guards or lecture the captains and commanders. She would smile at me as I prattled on about the day I would go into battle at my father’s side and we would win a great victory, and she would tell me that my greatest victory would not be a battle… it would be love.” He cast his gaze down at his boots. “Sentimental, yet her words offered me comfort in our time apart. When I lost my parents, all I had to keep me going were the lessons they had taught me, the affection they had shown me, and their belief in me.”

  “It must have been hard for you.” Hard felt like an understatement as she looked at him, at his solemn expression and the visible strain etched in every line on his handsome face and in his eyes, and then the statue behind him.

  Thorne looked back at it too.

  “I was not a good king… many said I was too young. I spent the first three weeks here in this room, a weeping and pathetic boy, until my father’s commander came to me and told me I had mourned enough. He pulled me onto my feet, shook me hard, and turned me to face my father, and he told me that I was my father’s legacy and I was king now, and I had to honour my father. I had to make him proud.” Thorne brushed his hand over his father’s right one and then curled his fingers into a tight fist. “I have been trying ever since.”

  “Thorne… I’m sure your father is proud of you.”

  He shrugged and faced her again. “What of your parents?”

  A sore subject. Sable shrugged this time and tried to keep the biting edge of bitterness from her tone.

  “What of them? I never met them.”

  Thorne’s eyebrows pulled down over incredulous crimson eyes. “How is that possible?”

  “They dropped me on an orphanage doorstep when I was a baby, barely a day old.” She really didn’t want to talk about this with him, or with anyone.

  Sorrow and compassion coloured his eyes and she couldn’t bring herself to keep looking into them. She lowered her head. Thorne lifted his hand, holding it out to her, and flexed his fingers.

  Sable went to him but didn’t take his offered hand or look at him. She kept her eyes on his parents.

  “I often imagined what my parents were like. When I started school, sometimes we had to draw our family, and I imagined what my mother would be like. I drew what I saw in my heart… a beautiful woman like your mother… but as I grew older, I began to feel that beauty was skin deep and didn’t reach her heart.” Sable’s dark eyebrows met in a hard frown and she clenched her fists at her sides. “She left me, and I will never know why.”

  She risked it and looked up at Thorne where he stood beside her, right into his eyes, drowning in the affection and concern they showed her.

  “She didn’t even leave a note. She just dumped me like garbage.”

  Thorne raised his hand and Sable didn’t stop him. She needed his touch too much to push him away. She savoured it as he stroked the backs of his claws across her cheek, the soft caress melting her inside, thawing the ice around her heart and erasing some of the pain beating in it.

  “I am sorry, Sable. No child deserves such a life,” he whispered, his deep voice laden with tenderness.

  Sable shrugged it off and tried to stifle the awkwardness running through her.

  She had never spoken about her parents to anyone other than Olivia. She felt weak for spilling her sob story to Thorne, but at the same time, it felt good to share it with him and have him know the part of her she hid from the world.

  He opened his hand and cupped her cheek, his large palm engulfing it, and tilted her head back, until she was looking up at him.

  It suddenly hit her that he was touching her.

  “You shouldn’t,” she said and stepped back, and he frowned, the edge of disappointment and anger in his eyes warning her that he had taken her words to mean something else. That he shouldn’t kiss her. She shook her head and wrapped her hand around the leather cuff on her right wrist. “What if I hurt you again?”

  Sable looked down at her arm.

  “I thought it was only a tattoo, but what if I was wrong? So many demons and fae have markings… what if this is a marking like that? What if one of my parents was something non-human?” It would explain her gift and her new power, and would make her hate them even more for ditching her, leaving her to fend for herself without a clue about what she was and the world she had come from.

  “It is no demon marking.” Thorne wrapped his fingers around the cuff and she stared at their hands. His partially covered hers, warm and strong, steady when hers was shaking. She looked up into his eyes and he smiled. “We will find out all that we can about it, Sable. I swear it.”

  She dropped her gaze back to their hands and then down to his right one.

  She had burned him but there were no bandages on his fingers.

  Sable took her right hand back from him and reached out. She caught his hand gently in hers and raised it between them, and turned it over and tentatively stroked the tips of her fingers across his, afraid of hurting him again. The burns were gone. She had never felt so glad about anything, and had never feared as greatly as s
he had in that moment on the battlefield. She had thought he would burn away as the other demon had.

  She had thought she would lose him.

  Heat blazed through her, the intensity of it increasing as she swept her fingers over his. Her awareness of him increased with it, her heart picking up pace and her breathing following, coming faster and shorter as she toyed with his fingers. She should let go.

  Should but couldn’t.

  Thorne’s other hand brushed her cheek and it burned beneath the caress, her breath hitching in her throat. He tipped her chin up and stared down into her eyes, his blazing crimson, scorching her as they narrowed on hers and then dropped lower, taking in her lips and then her body. He raked his gaze back up and lingered on hers, and she melted under his scrutiny, aching for him to speak, to touch her, to do something other than stare into her eyes.

  “You are more beautiful than my mother,” he whispered in a thick, gruff voice that sent a shivery ache racing through her. His thumb played on her lower lip, the caress soft and teasing, making it tingle. “Inside and out… more beautiful than any female in existence. My mother would have adored you… and my father too. He liked spirited females… and my female has spirit, and strength, and beauty. You were born to be my queen, Sable. Mine alone. My forever.”

  A tiny part of her said to silence him, to make him stop, because he was starting to talk about her as if she was already his again and she didn’t like it. She was too weak right now though. Her defences were down and she couldn’t contain the blush that darkened her cheeks when he stepped closer, bending his head to look down into her eyes as he held her jaw, his expression more beautiful than the one his father’s statue wore.

  He earnestly whispered, “You are truly beautiful through and through.”

  Sable rose onto her tiptoes, ignoring the small voice that screamed at her to stop, to go back to her room and not do this. It was cruel to lead Thorne on but she needed to forget for a while. She needed to leave everything behind and lose herself in him.

  “Kiss me… please?” she murmured and he gathered her against his chest, easily lifting her up to his lips, and gave her everything she desired.