Once Upon A Devil: A Dark Academy Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Everafter Academy Book 3)

by Scarlett Snow

To do so, she killed the son of the Rosso Lupa Alpha, letting his hot blood boil down onto the altar stones. The sacrifice accomplished two things that day. It ended their famine, and it turned the wolves into witch hunters.

  Can’t win them all, I guess.

  Elnora finishes ladling all of the contents of the pot onto my borrowed wounds, and then she puts the pot on the floor beside the bed. My stomach lurches, and I barely make it to the edge before I spew the contents into the waiting copper cauldron. White magic, cursed and foul, tumbles out of me. It burns on the way up my throat, but I don’t care. It’s out of me now, and that’s what matters.

  When the last of the goodness is purged from my system, I return to my human form and collapse onto the bed. Esmeralda whispers a word of dark magic, and I feel my power returning to me. The stench of my sick sweat is gone, replaced by the perfume of brimstone. I feel better. Now just wait until I get my hands on Cassim Salvador.

  The lack of wards protecting Cassim’s home is laughable. Either he wasn’t the one to cast the wards at the church or he’s foolish enough to think I wouldn’t come here.

  I emerge from his fireplace, shaking the ash from my clothes. His office, for the time being, remains empty, but not for long. I settle down in his chair and drum my fingers on the velvet armrest. Not thirty seconds later, the door opens, and Cassim storms inside with Eden in tow. My old friend. How unfortunate my old friend has been roped into this disastrous situation.

  Cassim stops short when he sees me sitting at his desk. I don’t even need to utter a single word. He knows his wrongdoings, and he sinks into the chair opposite me, his eyes averted to the floor.

  He should have dropped to his knees.

  “My Lord.”

  “Ah! So you do remember who I am. I was beginning to wonder.”

  Eden drops into a graceful curtsey, moving sinuously as only one of her people can do. She bows her head and lowers her amber eyes. “My Lord.”

  I nod to her. “Rise.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She casts a look toward Cassim that on the surface seems placid and unreadable, but I can see the lies in her gaze. I invented lies, after all.

  “I trust your journey went well?” I ask Cassim, once again drumming my fingers nonchalantly.

  Cassim swallows hard, the nervous gesture causing the vein in his throat to flutter. “Yes, My Lord. All has been taken care of.”

  I narrow my eyes on him. “Has it just?” Slowly, I push off his chair and circle the desk toward him. Cassim shrinks in his chair but remains seated. “You must take me for a storytelling fool. I know what you did and what you almost cost me. There are no wards in the universe powerful enough to pull a veil over my eyes.”

  The panic is quick to settle over him, and he throws himself at my feet, where he should have been all along. “Forgive me, my lord! I was only thinking of you… I only worship you, and that foolish girl, she—”

  “That girl you slander is no ordinary witch!” I seize his throat and slice my growing nails into his flesh. Cassim chokes and I push him down farther like the pathetic vermin he’s become. “You are too weak to use or wield silveryn on your own. Someone must have aided you.” The veins in his face pop as I tighten my grip and droplets of blood race into the fluttering valley of his throat. “Who?”

  His pulse thrashes under my fingers as the awareness of what I’m about to do dawns on him. He seizes my wrist in a desperate appeal for mercy.

  “My Dark Lord! Please! Forgive me!”

  I allow him to think I’ve done just that, but as he collapses to the floor, gasping and spluttering like a fool, I decide to give him a taste of his own medicine. With a wave of my hand, I replace the blood in his heart with a poison similar to the one he used on Ravyn. His heart spasms in his chest before it shoots the toxin into his veins. Cassim rolls on his side, his face turning purple, and he frantically claws at his neck.

  “Please, my lord!” Eden begs, falling at her master’s side. “Please forgive him! He can’t help it…”

  Cassim seizes her hand, and just manages to choke out a whisper of a protest. “No…”

  My lips curl into a disgusted snarl. What a pitiful man Cassim has become. He’s no longer worthy of being a member of this coven, let alone their leader. I sit back down in his chair and watch the life drain from his body.

  Eden pulls his head onto her lap, her eyes beseeching me. “He’s sick, my lord, and the sickness is… well it’s…”

  I lift a brow, growing tired of her ineptness. “I suggest you hurry up and spit it out, Eden. Your master has about thirty seconds before he dies.”

  “It’s Lilith,” she exclaims, tears of desperation sliding down her cheeks. “It was all Lilith!”

  The name sends a chill through my body. “Lilith, you say?”

  I school my features, but I cannot deny the excitement that surges through me. My dearest Lilith. I knew she was behind this, that lying bitch. I look down at Cassim’s pathetic face. What compelled her to reach out to Cassim and turn him against me, and why did he agree?

  I rescind Cassim’s hex with a lazy wave of my hand. The terror in Cassim’s eyes fades as he struggles to breathe again. It looks like I now have a reason to keep him alive, at least for the time being. I look down at him with disgust.

  “You, Cassim Salvador, are hereby relieved of your duty as covenmaster of the Mandrake Coven and the leader of Clan She’ol. From this moment on, you are my prisoner.” Stepping over Cassim’s listless body, I slide Eden a glance. “I now relieve you of your chains, Eden.”

  Her slave chain vanishes only to reappear around Cassim’s neck. I summon more chains from hell to wrap around his wrists and ankles, and the fire devouring the links sears into his flesh. Satisfied and smiling, I pick the chains up off the floor and drag Cassim’s traitorous body into the depths of hell with me.

  I’ve been sitting and thinking about Lucifer and the prophecy Redera spoke about, but I’m interrupted when my Daddy comes home. I’m standing by the fireplace with a pot of water in my hand when he comes in through the door and stops short, staring at me with wide eyes.

  “What in the name of Lilith are you doing?”

  Broin dumps his axe on the floor and rushes over to my side. It’s just past dawn and I’m feeling great after Lucifer healed me some hours ago, but Broin, seeing me out of bed for the first time since we got here, is having none of it. He scoops me into his arms as if I’m an injured child and carries me over to the bed.

  “I’m okay,” I tell him as he gently lays me down and pulls open my borrowed robe. “I was just going to make us some tea.”

  He’s too fixated on checking my now-vanished wounds to hear what I just said. I have to grab his hands to stop him. He looks up at me, his expression pained and confused. I let go of one hand to open my robe so I can show him my stomach, revealing a smooth expanse of skin instead of gaping cuts.

  “Look for yourself. I’m perfectly healed.”

  As realization dawns on him, tears gather into his bloodshot eyes. “I thought…” His voice cracks and he looks away. “I thought I was losing you,” he whispers, suddenly grabbing my shoulders and crushing me to his chest. “I didn’t know what to do. Oh, thank Lucifer!”

  His tears splash onto my face, and my heart shatters inside. This is the second time in my life I’ve ever seen Broin weep. I wrap my arms around him and pull him close, thankful for the second life Lucifer has given me, but also knowing that my debt to him is growing larger with every kindness. Then again, at this point in time, I’m no longer dreading fulfilling my end of the bargain in four years’ time. I’m starting to look forward to it.

  But Lucifer is later. Broin is now. I take his face in my hands and kiss his tears away, my lips brushing the salt droplets from his cheeks. He holds me close as if he’s afraid I’m a mirage, and he’s trying to wish me into being real.

  “It’s all right,” I tell him softly, wrapping my arms around him. “I’m fine.”

  My stomach chooses
that moment to growl loudly, and he shakes his head as he pulls away. “You’re not fine,” he objects. “You’re starving. Let me get you something to eat.”

  He starts bustling around, grumbling to himself over the lack of supplies, and it’s honestly one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. He tries so hard to take care of me. Finally, he looks at me with a guilty expression.

  “I don’t have any food here,” he says. “I’ll have to conjure some.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I smile.

  Broin casts the spell, and a pepperoni pizza appears in front of me, along with two big bottles of soda. He knows what I consider comfort food, and I dig in, feeling like I haven’t eaten in a week. He sits down beside me on the bed, watching me devour his offering.

  “Don’t you want any?” I ask around a mouthful of melted cheese.

  He shakes his head, smiling. “No.”

  “Not hungry?”

  “No. And I just want to look at you.”

  I smile and take a moment to wipe my mouth before I kiss him. I don’t think he would have minded even if I had kissed him with lips covered in pizza grease.

  Pizza is life.

  When I pull away, he has tears standing in his eyes again, and I don’t understand.

  I take his hand, asking quietly, “What’s wrong?”

  He sounds so broken when he answers that it makes my whole soul hurt. “I failed you again.”

  “What? Of course you didn’t. What are you talking about?”

  “I flew away and let them take you. I ran for my own safety…”

  “Because I told you to.”

  “But…”

  “Broin.” I put the pizza aside and take his hands. “You had to go. There was nothing you could have done, and I had to take my punishment. What was I going to do? Run away?”

  He sounds bitter. “Why not? I did.”

  “No.”

  This isn’t like him. He’s so eaten up by his guilt that he’s being irrational, and it frightens me. It’s like the thought of losing me shook him to his very foundation, and now he can’t find his balance. I move over so I’m sitting on his lap, and he wraps his arms around my waist, clinging to me. I take his face in my hands and make him look me in the eye.

  “If you had gone into the church, who knows what they would have done to you? His Excellency knows that you’d do anything to keep me from being hurt, and he’d have cursed you or put you in a cage where you’d be forced to watch.”

  “I watched anyway,” he whispers. “I was at the window.”

  I pull him into my arms. “I wish you hadn’t,” I tell him.

  His words are muffled, because he’s speaking into my hair. “I wanted to be as close as I could be to you. I couldn’t get in.”

  I kiss him, partly to quiet him, and partly for reassurance. His return kiss is desperate. I stroke his hair, his long curls ringing my fingers, and I tell him, “I’m all right. It’s over now.”

  —It will never be over for as long as I can still see you hanging from that whipping post,—he tells me.

  —Let it go,—I tell him.—Look at me now, as I am. I’m healed. I’m safe and sound and I’m all right.—

  He looks into my eyes, and I can feel the connection linking our spirits as it hums with the power of his emotions.—I can’t lose you, Little Red.—

  —You won’t. Not ever.—

  I push him back on the bed and he goes willingly, his hands settling onto my hips. I’m barely dressed at all, still in the robe I took from his closet, but he has far too many clothes on. I start undoing the laces on his shirt, opening the fabric so I can see the hard planes of his muscular chest. He pulls the shirt free of his leather trousers and helps me tug it over his head. We throw it aside and it lands on the floor somewhere. As long as it didn’t get into the fire, I couldn’t care less where it went. The important thing is that it’s not on him any longer.

  He pushes the robe from my shoulders, the calluses on his palms delightfully rough as he skims them over my skin, light as a feather. That thought makes me smile, and I get up. He frowns.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need a feather,” I tell him.

  He’s clearly mystified, but he shifts into his raven form anyway and plucks a long black feather from his tail. I hope it didn’t hurt to do that. I take the feather, and he resumes his man shape.

  “On your feet, Mr. Blackstone,” I tell him, smiling.

  He stands and I sit on the bed in front of him, holding the feather in my teeth by the quill. I palm him through the worked doeskin of his trousers, and I can feel his cock twitch beneath my touch. I smile up at him, and he looks back, his eyes bright. There’s so much love in his eyes that it makes me feel warm through and through.

  I slowly open his fly and reach my hand inside, finding the hard, hot flesh that I’m craving. This will make both of us feel better, I know. I draw him out and kiss the dewed tip. He pulls air in through his teeth.

  I trace the vein on the underside with the feather, barely touching him. He shivers and puts his hands on my shoulders. I tug his trousers down, and then they join his shirt on the floor.

  Broin stands before me, exquisitely nude. He’s lithe and slender but very, very strong, and every muscle is defined. I run the feather over the ridges and valleys of his abdomen, and I’m delighted to see goosebumps rise on his skin. He buries his hands in my hair, finger combing it as I was just doing to his, and he smiles at me, his cheeks a little flushed.

  I slide the feather over his dick again, circling the base with its ebony softness, then take the tip of it on a little tour down over his balls and his taint. I lean forward, pressing my cheek against his shaft so I can reach farther and draw the feather up the crevice between his rock-hard buttocks. He’s built like a piece of art.

  “Babygirl,” he moans. “Don’t tease your Daddy…”

  I smile up at him and rub my face against his erection like a cat, as if I could scent-mark his hardness as my own. I kind of wish I could. I extend my tongue and lick a slender line along the side, pausing just before I reach the head. With a wicked smile, I tickle his balls with the feather again, bringing it back up to trace that throbbing vein once more. He sighs, and I decide he’s waited long enough.

  And so have I.

  I take him in my mouth, just the tip at first, holding him steady while I circle his slit with my tongue. The hands that were stroking my hair now hold my head, and I run the feather down his thigh. He spreads his legs ever so slightly wider, allowing me to continue exploring him. I drop the feather and replace it with my fingers, running my touch along his curl-flocked balls and in between his cheeks.

  We’ve never really pursued ass play like this before, and I don’t know what he’ll think of it, but he’s not stopping me. I take more of him into my mouth, sinking down along his shaft until my forehead is against his quivering abdomen. While I do that, my fingertip strokes the puckered opening to his body. He thrusts slightly into my throat, not enough to choke me but enough to take his hole away from me. Maybe not.

  It doesn’t matter. There’s a whole constellation of things that we can do, and I just want to make him feel good, to give him pleasure and make him forget the things that had him so afraid. He usually takes care of me, but now it’s time for me to return that favor. I know what he needs, and in Lilith’s name, I’m going to give it to him.

  I suck him deep and slow until I can taste his pre-cum on my tongue. He’s enjoying this, but a blow job isn’t what either of us had in mind. I pull off and slide back, spreading my legs and smiling up at him.

  He drops to his knees and presses his face into my needy pussy, his lips and tongue finding me dripping wet. He licks my folds with one long swipe of his tongue, then he grabs my clit between his lips. He flicks the tip of his tongue over the sensitive bud, his big hands cupping my ass to hold me steady for his attention. I lay back and moan in appreciation as he shifts slightly and thrusts his tongue into my cunt, penetrating me
the way I hope he’ll do soon with his cock. He hums as he tastes my juices, and I pinch my own nipples, reveling in the things I’m feeling.

  It’s so good to remember that bodies can bring pleasure as well as pain.

  He eats me out until I’m on the edge. I’m panting, but my eyes are open, and I look down and see him looking up at me. Damn if that’s not one of the hottest sights ever: a handsome man with his face buried in my pussy, his love-filled eyes searching my face to see if he’s got permission to take me all the way.

  “Fuck me,” I gasp out, trying to hold off until he’s inside me before I cum.

  I don’t have to ask him twice. He joins me on the bed, kneeling between my wide-spread thighs, and he slides into me to the hilt. I pull him into a tight embrace, pulling him down on top of me. I want to feel his weight on me while he’s making love to me.

  Broin wraps his arms around my waist and starts to thrust. Our bodies are locked together, striving for the same beautiful goal. I get there almost immediately, quivering in his embrace, and he groans against my neck and increases his speed. He buries himself in my trembling cunt and cums, and I will never get tired of the way that feels.

  —I love you,—he tells me.

  I hold him tight and ride the waves of my orgasm, letting my emotions tell him that I love him, too.

  I pause outside the Church of Shadows, my palms turning sweaty against the black wooden doors. I know Cassim isn’t in here. No one has seen him since he left for Grimm City yesterday evening, and yet, even knowing this, I can’t ignore the nervous lurch that twists through my stomach and tightens the air in my lungs. So many years I have attended this church. I came with my parents before they died. I came with Redera and Grandma before they died. I have more good than bad memories here, but now I can’t wait to see the back of this place.

  “Little Red…” Broin whispers, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll wait here. Take all the time you need.”

  I smile sheepishly at him and push onto my tiptoes so I can press a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks, Daddy.”