The Demon's Deception (Demons Unleashed Erotic Novellas) (8 page)

Barbas knew that he had to gain her trust. This was the moment. He needed to know who the traitor in the castle was. Needed to know how the Fae were spying on the Demons. His mission was on the line. Sickness twisted his gut. He wasn't sure if he could utter the words. He'd never said them aloud. And he hadn't wanted to lie to her. For some reason, the lies that usually came so easily to him balled in his throat with regret.

"Tell me again what were you doing in the village?" She had been surprised to see him in the tavern. She hadn't been looking for him. She'd been there for another purpose.

"Trying to find whoever was looking for the Fae."

And he knew what he had to do. "I was."

"What?"

The game forgotten she stood straight. Her gaze narrowed, suspicion in their chestnut depths. "Why?"

"I am...." he hesitated. His body revolted at the idea of voicing the words aloud. He'd never uttered them before, never even admitted his secret shame. But he needed to gain her trust. And in this he had to be completely truthful even if the truth roiled his stomach. Barbas forced himself to reveal his deepest, darkest deception.

"I am half Fae."

TEN

"What?" She stepped back as if to distance herself from his confession.

"My mother was Fae. And I was looking to find them, you," he forced the truth from his very tight throat. He tried to continue and say he was looking for her. His mother. But he couldn't.

He'd promised he wouldn't lie to Aine. He never wanted to see his mother. She had abandoned him and his father to the depths of their prison. Once he'd been born she had given him away, given him up to his father's Demon care. For that reason alone, he hated the Fae. Forget that they had imprisoned his entire Demon race for over a thousand years. That he understood. That was simply a bid for power. But to give up your child. To renounce your blood was the deepest betrayal.

He hated the Fae for that sheer fact.

"Why didn't you just say so?" Suspicion coated her every word.

"Honestly?"

"By all means."

"I'm not sure I want to meet her," Barbas confessed.

Aine studied Barbas. She finally realized why her father had put her in the dungeon with him. He'd known Barbas was hiding something. And her job was to get the truth out of him. If only they were close enough to touch.

But she also figured out that he had just given her a gift. The gift of trust.

She needed to clear her head because something else was going on here. And without another word she pulled on her breeches. This was a conversation she needed to be dressed for. She had a feeling that he used sex the way Fae compelled, as trickery against an enemy. Because if he were engaging in sex, his opponent couldn't be thinking. "Why were you really in the clearing?"

"What?" His head jerked up, as if he'd been lost in contemplative thoughts of his mother. His mouth curved down and his eyebrows crunched into a frown.

"The clearing."

"Known place for Fae to appear."

She snorted. "So you figured you'd just show up and see what would happen? Were you planning on shouting for us?"

"I don't know," he sniped.

That was the truth. As she analyzed his answer she realized one mystery was solved. His parentage explained how he could walk freely into a warded stronghold.

She wasn't sure if it was because he didn't want to lie to her or if he really didn't know what he was looking for. This whole conversation was crazy. He dropped down onto the cot. "Instead I found you."

Oh, as if she would fall for that sappy line. Except she was totally falling for it.

"Why were
you
in the clearing?" he asked suddenly.

Because of what she'd seen there. She'd been observing the assassination team sent to try to kill the Demon Prince. She'd been beyond the circle of the ward, watching the Fir Bolg attack the prince and the woman. Her father had been there to incapacitate the prince. Except then they'd seen the Demon of Battle in the tree and her father had made the decision to level him first. Unfortunately, after her father blasted his energy toward the Demon in the tree, he'd been in an extreme state of lethargy. The original burst had taken all of his strength. His bodyguards had assisted the king back to the Fae Realm. And Aine had stayed, hidden and out of the way. She only left when she saw the water rising, assuming that the other Fir Bolg would make it out of the clearing in time. That hadn't happened and some of the Fir Bolg had perished.

She'd never told a soul that she'd stayed to watch the Demon Prince with his lady. Stayed to watch the prince's devotion not only to the Human woman but also to the frozen Demon statue. Her whole life she'd been told Demons were evil. They were near beasts. But what she'd seen that day didn't support the things she'd been told. And she'd wanted to observe. To understand. To form her own opinions about her enemy.

What she'd seen made her think that the Demons were not so different from the Fae. But she wouldn't reveal that to this man. She hadn't managed to broach the subject with her father either.

"I like to practice my katanas there." But the truth was far more complex. She'd been drawn to the clearing that day. As if fate had sent her. A shiver of premonition skittered down her spine. Fate. There was a reason that she'd chosen Barbas to be her first lover.

He stared at her with new eyes. "Fate," he murmured. He'd had the same thought she had. "You changed me. Changed my beliefs about the Fae."

"I'm glad." Aine wrapped her hands around the bars again wishing she could wrap her arms around him as easily. But between their restraints, the closest they could get might be a few feet away.

Barbas watched her curl her fingers around the bars as if she could pry them open and free them both from this cell.

Not iron, he realized, since she wasn't displaying any pain. If only he was close enough to kiss her.

Barbas leapt from the cot and stood, shoulders back, chin canted. He studied her as if he'd never seen her before. "You changed...everything."

Barbas's mission had been to find the traitor. Then use the traitor to infiltrate the Fae and strike against the Demon's enemy. She should be his enemy but she wasn't. He didn't want to strike against her. "I want to linger in a bed covered with silk sheets and drape your body in satin," he said in wonder.

He strode closer. "I want to drown in your kisses and sate myself on your essence."

She clung to the bars. Her body sagged as if caressed by his declarations. Another step, another promise. "I want to spend days making you come. And then days more sparring with you."

Each realization was like a dagger to his heart. He couldn't betray her. Wouldn't betray her to the Demons. He stalked closer until there was no more give in the chain holding him to the wall.

Aine stepped away from the bars, her face a mask of hope as she walked toward him. "I...want that too."

Barbas took the last step and beckoned to her. A Fae flute trilled a haunting tune as she too strained the bounds of her chain. They stood, chains taut, the chasm between them nearly three feet. But Barbas refused to be deterred. He lifted his free hand, stretched across the yawning space and brushed his fingertips against her cheek. "I want to lay with you in a field of heather and love you until we are bathed in it's scent," he breathed. Her lips parted and her hand slipped from the cuff that held her. He didn't have time to wonder at how she had gotten loose.

"Okay." Free of her bonds, Aine made the final move, wrapped her arms around his torso, and slanted her mouth over his. The first brush of her lips was soft, sweet, innocent.

"I want to wake up with you every day for the next thousand years." He sipped from her mouth as if he could convey all his emotions in this one kiss. His hand on her face was reverent.

She framed his face, crowding closer to his body until they touched from their toes to their mouths.
I want to love you for eternity.
But he didn't speak those words aloud. Too soon. Too crazy. And he still had to get out of this prison.

"Well isn't this touching." Her father's mocking voice ripped them apart.

Aine broke away from Barbas. Whatever her father had wanted of her, she'd failed. As an incandescent joy spread through her, she didn't even care. Barbas wanted her. Not the Princess. Not access to the King. Not power in the Fae Realm. He just wanted her. Aine.

She'd been touching him. So she knew. Every word he'd spoken had been imbued with truth.

"Father." She inclined her head.

Barbas had shifted so that he partially blocked her body with his. Trying to protect her from her father's wrath. Again. But she didn't think that she was the one who needed to be protected. Ready to defend their king at any moment, the guards hovered behind her father as if uneasy with whatever he planned.

"You disappoint me, girl."

"It happens," she said flippantly. He had disappointed her as well. So she guessed that made them even.

The king pointed at Barbas. "What is your connection to the Demons?"

Aine answered before Barbas could speak. "I've told you--"

"I can't trust what you've told me lately," the king interrupted. For he was the king right now, not her father. Still her blood boiled. As if she would put herself above the good of the realm. Did he not understand her at all?

"Your judgment is compromised," the king said.

Aine defended her abilities. "No. If anything my ability has grown."

"What is your connection with the Demons?" the king demanded again, ignoring her.

Barbas yawned. The move seemed to enrage the king. Aine watched the fire in his eyes change and morph into a cold, killing rage and her heart thudded. What was he planning?

"You seem to think he is our link to the Demons," Aine said desperately, hoping to stave off what she feared.

Aine didn't like the way her father was looking at Barbas. She could feel his frustration and rage growing with each word he uttered. "He was their volley."

"I sense nothing," she argued.

"You are wrong." The king said harshly, "He sent word to the Demon Castle that he had made contact with the Fae."

Barbas didn't move a muscle. But she could tell that something had shifted within him. On the surface, he seemed content to observe the argument between the two of them, but he was hiding a powerful emotion, which confused Aine more. Why wasn't he defending himself?

Instinctively, she clasped his fingers. No emotion bled through for her to analyze.

Then, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

The king lifted his arms and aimed his hands, palms flat, at their prisoner.

Barbas drew up his chest and shoulders as if preparing for attack. He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. He was comforting her? That wasn't right. This was all wrong. She couldn't let Barbas pay the price for her need to explore the pleasures of the flesh. Her need for touch.

"It matters not," the king said. "He has outlived his usefulness."

"No, father!" Her body was rigid as she gauged the malice in her father. He had finally lost his senses. She watched him gather his energy and she begged. "You cannot. Please."

"I will," he screamed and let go of a powerful ball of energy. As the blast hurled toward Barbas, Aine had no choice. In a split second, she raised her own palms and deflected the energy away from her lover. But the power bounced against her blast and rebounded back against her father. In a nanosecond, she realized her miscalculation. The punishment the king had intended to inflict upon Barbas had boomeranged back onto the king.

The expense of power to block her father's energy drained her even as she realized what she'd done. The action hit her right in the heart and slammed her back against her lover's body. Pain, dark, excruciating, and deep surrounded her, pulled her under, until she was deaf, dumb, blind.

ELEVEN

Barbas caught Aine as she fell, limp and unconscious. She slumped over, the effort to belay the power blast from her father had drained her body of energy.

Gods, the king hadn't killed her, had he?

The king. He was still as a statue. Barbas had seen what had happened to Leraye. Seen the horrible aftermath of a body frozen in stasis.

The guards rushed forward to the king's side but their monarch was suspended in an awkward position, his face contorted in a rictus of rage, brows lowered and mouth open as he'd jammed his hands toward Barbas.

Barbas lifted Aine away from the cold stone floor and into his arms. He carried her to his cot and lay her down on the rough cotton sheets. He stroked her hair and murmured pleas to her insensate body.

Aine returned to her senses slowly. He knew the exact moment she realized that she'd sacrificed her father for her lover. The consequence of that decision would stay with her forever.

Barbas wrapped his arms around Aine's slight form. Her body shook with the aftermath of both the physical effort to repel the king's blast and, he guessed, the reality that she'd just disobeyed the king's edict. The king had wanted him as good as dead. Maybe the blast had been a test? The energy would kill a mere Human but if it froze Barbas then the king would have known that he was a Demon. Except with his half Fae blood he likely would have been frozen too.

Barbas pressed her closer, and savored the feel of her body against his. He was shaking too. Not from fear. Amazement threatened to overwhelm him. She had saved him.

Her tears dampened his shoulder as she trembled against him. She felt almost frail and weak in the hard wrap of his arms. The moon's full power shone through the iron bars on the window and reanimated his strength. Soon he would be able to break free from this prison. That reality was not as exhilarating as he would have thought. He couldn't seem to focus on escape. Right now he only thought to comfort Aine.

She clutched at Barbas' shoulders as if he were the only support in her crumbling world and her sole focus had narrowed down to his arms.

The Fae definitely had a spy in the Castle. And now that he knew what the king had discovered, he could confer with Gaap. There was no way that his message to Gaap was common knowledge. Only a select few could know. The identity of the traitor was in their grasp. Assuming he could get his ass out of the Fae Realm and back to the Demon Castle.