Read The Demon Lord (A Demon Outlaws Novella) (Entangled Edge) for Free Online

did not like to think that he had been such a great fool, but now he wondered if there’d been a warning hidden in her words.
    When she saw he had nothing more to say, the ugly little priestess left him alone. He listened hard so as to be certain of her departure.
    It seemed like forever before Allia arrived. Her golden, long-legged beauty snatched his breath from him. She wore the amulet he had given her. It nestled above her breasts, dull against her glowing skin. The sight of her wearing something of his increased his sense of possession.
    “What kept you?” he demanded.
    “My sisters.”
    She said nothing more than that, and before the priestess’s story, he might have accepted it as enough. Now, with opened eyes, he read the underlying tension in her. Whatever they had wanted from her, it left her uneasy and dimmed much of her inner light.
    He was not ready to confront her about the priestess’s claims. His need for her was too great, and it seemed like forever to him since he’d last been with her.
    He took her too quickly, with less gentleness and more desperation than he’d intended, yet she did not protest or try to slow him. If anything, her need for him was as great as his for her.
    Later, as they lay in each other’s arms, he pressed his cheek to the top of her head. He toyed with a lock of her hair, and the priestess and her false claims were all but forgotten.
    He had Allia with him now. He would make his love plain to her so she would not want to leave. There could be no more doubt between them.
    She would give up her sisters.
    “I have something to show you,” he said.
    They lay at the edge of the basin from her pool, which was filled with delicate flowers of red, yellow, and purple. He gestured with his fingers. Flames erupted in the midst of them, and beside him, Allia gasped as the blossoms caught fire. He watched the delight shine from her face when she saw what he’d done.
    The burning flowers formed words. The words read, You are my heart and soul . As the flames died away, the flowers remained untouched.
    Golden tears filled her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks as she took his face in her hands and kissed his lips. She slid from his embrace to rest on her bare knees beside him. Sitting on her heels, she reached for her gown to fumble in its diaphanous folds. The tension he’d sensed in her earlier was gone.
    “I have something for you, too,” she said. She held up a pretty stone on a gold chain.
    His vision blurred so that he could not see clearly. The priestess’s words rang in his head.
    Have you seen these before?
    …
    His eyes turned to ice, black and hard and chillingly hostile as they narrowed on the amulet in her hand, then fastened on her face. “What is that?”
    His hostility arrested her action. He had just given her a gift of infinite value and immeasurable beauty. She couldn’t begin to imagine what had caused such a drastic shift in his mood.
    Rather than slip the chain over his head, she slowly drew back to clutch it next to her heart and to the amulet he had given her.
    “You’ve given me protection against demons,” she said. “You’ve just given me an even more beautiful gift. I want to give you something in return, something of great value to me.” She held it out for him to take from her, so that he could examine it and place it around his neck himself. “It will tell my sisters that you’re mine.”
    He ignored the offering but continued to stare at her as if he did not know her, and did not like what he saw. “Why should I care what your sisters think?”
    The amulet she wore for protection grew hot against her bare skin. Something was suddenly, and seriously, wrong. He had been fine moments before. Now disaster loomed.
    She should have known he would resent any suggestion of dominance over him. “Because I care what they think,” she said. “This stone will tell them I’ve accepted you willingly. I thought you wished for your demons to form bonds of