Immortals After Dark 07 - Kiss of a Demon King

ache receded at last. When he opened his eyes, her head was whipping toward his nose. Crack.
    "What the hell?"he roared.
    "I waited five hundred years for that?" As she squirmed from beneath him, her illusion briefly wavered before the mask was back in place.

    Her eyes were watering.
    Inhaling deep breaths for control, he said, "You were ... a virgin?" Damn it, he'd warned her about going demonic, because he'd known he might hurt an experienced woman-but this ... "I never wanted to
    hurt you, Sabine. Why did you let me believe you were experienced when you were pure?"
    Whatever he said was the exact wrong thing. "I am experienced, and I am not pure!" As she cloaked herself in invisibility, he felt the biting slap of her palm across his face. He'd hurt her, and his fierce sorceress had hurt him back.
    Once she'd gone, he stared down at his still semihard shaft, wincing at the blood and seed.
    Undeniable signs of her pain, and his pleasure-which had been stronger than he'd ever dreamed it could be.
    But the guilt for hurting her wouldn't recede.
    Neither would the knowledge that the vow he'd given her was for revenge.
    19
    That good?" Lanthe asked when she found Sabine sitting on the side of her bed in a bathrobe, with her head in her hands. Though the fire was stoked, she
    was shivering.
    "Why did I even expect anything different? He was awful. If I had to decide right now, I'd say I never want to do that again."
    "It's only because he's a big demon, and it was your
    first time."
    "Maybe demons and Sorceri truly don't belong together. Maybe their kind is just too strong for us."
    "He probably just lost control of himself during his first claiming of you. I mean, you had been building up some serious steam, and-"
    "He ended up blowing in a big way. Lanthe, he wanted to mark me with his huge fangs." And when she'd told him no, he'd shoved inside her with all the strength in his body. She shuddered.
    "You should have seen the way he looked. He's truly a demon!"
    "I can't believe you had bad sex, and now I'll have no sex. For three hundred and sixty-four more days. That'll teach me to wager against you."
    Sabine didn't crack a smile. With a sigh, Lanthe sat beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Look, I think maybe we've been hurt so often that even if someone harms us accidentally, we're blind to see it that way."
    "Do you really believe that?"
    "Yes. I think ... I think that not everyone is out to get us or to use us." When Sabine only made a scoffing noise and kept her head in her hands, Lanthe added, "Granted, every being we've come into contact with in the last five hundred years has, without fail, tried to screw us over. I don't know, though. Maybe the demon's truly an honorable guy. What if he's one in a million? What if he would take back the hurt if he could?"
    Sabine peered up. "One in a million?" If Rydstrom was, then Sabine might not have been completely in the right with her actions. He had warned her about how he would lose control.
    Still, how was she supposed to know what would happen? She'd never done anything with a demon before! "He didn't know I was a virgin," she admitted.
    "Oh, Abie, no."
    Maybe I shouldn't have head'butted him, or slapped him, or . . . "And I left instructions for him to be punished." Her infamous temper had gotten away from her yet again. "For him to be bathed. Thoroughly. It might not be too late to take it b-"
    Without warning, the door to her chamber opened.
    Omort entered. "Leave us," he told Lanthe. "At once!"
    She had no choice but to hurry out, casting Sabine a fearful expression before she left them alone.
    Sabine sat upright, apprehensive to be anywhere near him after that earlier show of power.
    He paced the room, his cape snapping. "Your covenant . . . broke." When he faced her, his brows drew together. "I feared you would enjoy it. With him."
    "Do I look like I enjoyed that?"
    "1 am sorry you had to go through it. You will not
    again."
    She exhaled with impatience. "We can't be sure I'm
    pregnant."
    "The demon's seal is no more?" When she hesitantly nodded, he said, "Then another female can breed with
    him."
    As Rydstrom's fated mate, Sabine was the one female who could bring forth his seed the first time. But now that that seal had been broken, Rydstrom could impregnate other females.
    "You will not return to him," Omort said. "Lanthe or Hettiah will take over your duties-once she has
    healed."
    "Hettiah shouldn't be alive right now. She almost got
    both