The Demon King’s Bride by Skye Wilson

7

Bea

We walked into the reception hall like we owned the place.

I guessed, technically, we kind of did.

Only—that wasn’t true. The wedding was being held on my parents’ estate, yes. And when my parents died—hopefully a very long time from now—Simon and I were supposed to inherit it. Just like we would inherit all of Simon’s father’s property when he passed on as well. We’d been the joint benefactors of our parents’ wills since birth. Not just me. Not just him. Simon and me, together.

Except that I hadn’t married Simon today.

Even if it looked like I had.

“How does it feel?” Don purred down into my ear. He folded his hand over my fingers, which were curled around his arm. His smile was dangerously contagious.

But my smile was as fake as the disguise Don wore.

“Like we’re lying through our teeth,” I said through my forced grin and my straight, white teeth. “Every moment that passes, I hate more than the last.”

The string quartet in the garden was playing Clarke’s “Trumpet Voluntary.” With the flowers and sparkling wine glasses and soft glow of the candlelight, it felt like we were royalty greeting our subjects for the first time.

This was also almost true.

I was the future queen of the Leviathan Financial empire.

And if Don was to be believed—I certainly bought it, even if Ava and Joan were still on the fence—he was a king of Hell.

Given some of Leviathan’s current corporate practices, those two things seemed like they could have a lot of overlap at times.

Some demons, like Don, could summon fire from their hands and wore hidden wings on their backs.

Some, like my father and Levi Roth, my new would-be father-in-law, controlled unfathomable amounts of money and dressed in Armani suits.

“Let me know when you hit rock bottom on hating things, then.” Don patted my hand, then raised his palm in a brief wave of acknowledgment to our applauding guests.

“What? So you can break through bedrock and drag me back to Hell with you?” I waved to everyone as well. Like a beauty queen with a bomb hidden in her crown.

“Just thought it might be a nice place to consummate our marriage,” Don said through his own smile. “When I make our bed rock later tonight, I’d like it to be on solid ground.”

“If you wanted solid ground between us, you probably shouldn’t have tricked me into marrying you in the first place.” I chose to ignore the comment about consummating our marriage.

Was Don charming, clever, and smoking hot? Sure. If he was even half as good at sex as he was at kissing, he was probably a great lay, too. I’d give him that.

But there was a difference between being in business with devils and rolling into bed with one.

That’s what I was telling myself, anyway.

It helped me keep my mind off of how badly I wanted to do exactly that: get Don into bed and never leave it again.

“The foundations of our union might be shaky, Bea. But I don’t think your trust in me is,” Don said with a dark chuckle. His breath was humid against my ear as he dipped down to whisper in it. “Just imagine the other parts of you that I could make tremble. Knees, lips…”

“Don,” I growled at him in warning.

“And I can assure you, darling—” He winked down at me. “—as soon as I get you alone, I think you’ll discover at least one thing between us that’s very firm.”

I swallowed hard as the thought of Don’s cock crossed my mind.

I focused my eyes straight ahead and said nothing in return.

By the time we reached the head table, my pussy was throbbing again.

Don might have been a demonic scoundrel, but he certainly had a way with words.

Our table was perched up on a pedestal. On top of a white linen tablecloth lit by flickering candlelight, there were dinner settings laid out for two.

As we stepped up onto it, Don grabbed my hand. He raised it to his mouth before I could pull it away.

Don’s lips seared against my knuckles in a triumphant kiss. When he broke it, he hoisted my hand into the air to the roaring approval and applause of the crowd.

A blush rose to my cheeks immediately. I stared up at him in a sort of awe.

“What?” he asked, smirking down at me. “Something wrong?”

“You’re showboating, Don.”

“Maybe. But it’s hardly a sin for a man to show off his new bride.”

“Pride isn’t a sin anymore?” I arched an eyebrow at him. God, he was good-looking. It was almost unfair. “I hadn’t heard.”

“There are more interesting sins I think you and I should be considering right now.” Don pulled my chair out for me and I slipped into it. His hands curled around my shoulders as he dipped down to whisper into my ear again. “And of all the sins I’m guilty of tonight, pride is the least of them.”

A word, unspoken, rose up in my mind like the bubbles of the champagne a waiter poured into our glasses.

Don was right. He really could make my knees shake. I drew in a long, slow breath to try to steady them while he slipped into the chair at my side.

“I know I’m yours now.” I whispered to him once the waiter was gone. “But certain other concerned parties aren’t going to agree. Like Simon’s father, for instance. And mine. How long do you expect you’ll actually be able to keep this up for?”

“I can usually keep it up for several hours, if you think you can handle that.” Don placed my glass of champagne in my hand and clinked his glass against it.

“You may have married me, but you aren’t Simon,” I reminded him. I tried not to imagine what a few hours in bed with Don might be like—and failed. “What’s your plan, exactly? You’ll spend the rest of our lives disguised as him?”

“Would you rather I changed back to my true form?”

I nearly choked on my champagne. I’d taken a sip at exactly the wrong time.

“No,” I sputtered. I had to clear my throat to compose myself. “I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.”

It was hard enough to control myself around Don when he was sitting here looking like the man who’d put a hit out on me.

If Don decided to regain his actual looks, I was pretty sure that any sense of control I had left in me was going right out the door—and straight into bed.

“Oh, Bea.” Don shook his head slowly, staring deeply into my eyes. Every time he looked at me like that, it felt like he was looking right into my soul. “You’re not going to be able to deny me forever, you know. Face it—we both know there’s not a single part of you right now that would prefer to have Simon here instead of me. You were made for me. Only me. Surely you can feel it too.”

I scowled at him.

I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right.

If Simon had been here, he would have been complaining about being forced to wear a tux and making fun of my Great-aunt Gertrude’s skin-tight leopard print gown by now.

Don, on the other hand, smiled as Gerty waved at us over the crowd.

“She looks stunning in that dress, don’t you think?” Don raised his hand to give a small wave back to her. “It suits her. Whoever she is.”

“That’s my Great-Aunt Gertrude.” I paused for a second, wondering why I was telling Don any of this at all. “But she’s pushing eighty. You don’t think it’s a little…gauche on a woman of her age?”

“I think it’s fantastic,” Don said genuinely. “Don’t you?”

I couldn’t help but smile. Just a little bit. Genuinely as well. “I do, actually. She’s always been a free spirit like that. I used to spend summers at her villa in Italy when I was a little girl, you know. She taught me how to put on lipstick and gave me my first sip of wine.”

Those summers in Italy were some of my favorite memories as a child, in fact. I’d eaten my weight in pasta, fallen asleep reading books in vineyards, and been blissfully free of playdates with Simon for months at a time.

“She taught you well.” Don cupped my cheek to turn my face toward him. His thumb lingered around the edges of my lower lip, tracing its shape. “Promise me something?”

“It depends,” I told him. “What do you want?”

“When we’re that age, promise you’ll still wear things that tight. And that low-cut, for that matter.”

“You’re assuming that I’m going to let you live to see morning, given the mess you’ve made of tonight,” I warned him.

But Don only laughed.

He knew exactly what an empty threat that was.

“If you want to kill me, darling, you’re more than welcome to try. But do me a favor and wait until after dinner, will you?” Don nodded to the waiter who was coming toward us with two plates of filet mignon. His gaze didn’t leave me for long, though. When his eyes met mine again, they were gorgeously gray again. Don’s eyes, not Simon’s. “I’m starving.”

With that look in his eyes, I suspected he wasn’t talking about the steak at all.

We got through dinner without any issues—except that I couldn’t talk to him at all without him saying something that made my breath catch in my chest and my cunt ache. Every question I asked, he turned into yet another innuendo.

I supposed if Don was really a demon, it shouldn’t have surprised me that he was a horny devil on top of it.

But by the time the wedding band took their places and called us down for our first dance, it was hard to say whether I was more turned on or annoyed.

“You’re going to have to talk to me about something other than sex eventually, you know,” I told him as we moved to the dance, floor, hand in hand.

“And I will in the morning,” he promised. “But for tonight—it wouldn’t hurt if you tried to enjoy yourself, you know.”

“Oh, darling.” I mimicked the same tone Don used when he purred those words at me. “Doesn’t it look like I’m trying?”

“I’m surprised you have to try, frankly.” Don placed a hand on my waist and pulled my body close to his. If he wanted me any closer, we’d have to take off our clothes. “After all—they’re playing our song.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. I didn’t know much about Don still, but if Don and I had a song, I highly doubted it would be anything by the Police. Specifically, “Every Breath You Take”—the song Simon had chosen for our first dance. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t have anything against Sting. But those lyrics about how he’d always be watching me? More creepy than romantic, if you asked me.

So, imagine my surprise when the band started playing Frank Sinatra instead.

“Is this… ‘Strangers in the Night’?” My eyes popped open in surprise. My body was already moving with Don’s in an elegant, effortless waltz. Every time Simon and I had practiced this dance, he’d stepped on my feet so many times I usually had to ice them after. But with Don, it was instinctual. Effortless. Like we already knew each other’s moves.

“It is,” Don admitted, holding me close. “Your favorite, isn’t it? I thought it suited us well.”

“It is my favorite. And it does suit us,” I said slowly in return. It was perfect, actually. And—apart from the fact that Don was a demon who’d replaced the man who was actually supposed to become my husband today—in so many ways, so was he. “But…how did you know?”

“Like I told you. I’ve known you for a long time. Quite well, truth be told.” The guests all gasped as Don swept me off my feet and spun me around like I weighed nothing at all. They must have been terrified. If it had been Simon pulling that move, I almost certainly would have ended up crashing down onto the floor. But instead, Don placed me back down with a gentle ease and a wicked smile. “Can’t you feel it? This isn’t the first time we’ve danced in each other’s arms.”

“I can,” I admitted in a whisper. I was getting lost in his eyes again. Ever since dinner, they still hadn’t changed back to blue. “It’s crazy, but…”

“Of course,” Don added as my words failed me. “The last time we did this, we had significantly fewer clothes on.”

I gulped as I stared up at him. I couldn’t help but imagine it.

Don’s strong, firm body in place of Simon’s. My breasts pressed against his chiseled chest. The thick muscles of his arms wrapped tight around me. His cock, rock hard, throbbing against my stomach and my cunt burning hot between my legs.

The same way it burned for him now.

This was wrong. All of it. I wasn’t dumb. I knew exactly how bad and weird all of this was.

My husband wasn’t my husband.

The man I’d married had come straight from Hell itself.

He was here to protect me from some kind of demonic forces that wanted me dead.

It was still all a little crazy to try to hold in my mind at once.

But the longer Don held me in his arms, the easier it was becoming.

Yes, this was wrong.

But the way our bodies moved together, in such perfect sync, in such exquisite, sensual harmony…

It felt right.

That worried me. It scared me too.

But whether I liked it or not…

It excited me even more.