Page 100 of A Summoned Husband

35

EDEN

Darkness swirled around me. A storm of shadow and whispered voices pebbled my skin and made my breath fog with each exhale. My eyes snapped open and I looked around a room that was more nightmare than real. It was shapes that struggled to keep their form, blurred at the edges. A single breath was enough to blow them away.

My room or… something that was supposed to resemble my room stretched out around me, the smell of Asmodeus still heavy in the air and my sheets still a mess. We had been in there, tangled in those sheets, or at least that was what my mind was trying to make me believe.

Slow fingers pushed through the sheets. They even felt like mine, but they weren’t. I knew that no matter what my thoughts kept tripping over.

Asmodeus and I never made it to my bedroom. No. We had destroyed my living room.

This wasn’t real.

Pain lanced behind my eyes, sharp enough to make me hiss.

What the hell was going on?

My feet hit the chilled wood floor and I walked over to the windows. The woods stretched on, the black sky void of all stars and the moon far too dull. It did nothing to light the silhouette of trees that stretched up toward it, it merely highlighted the tops in its dullness but made everything below a sea of pitch.

Something was wrong. I may not be a demon or a witch or whatever, but I could feel there was something wicked at work. It tried to fog my mind and confuse me. So similar to those four or five glasses of wine that had started it all.

There was an endless buzzing and I couldn’t catch my breath.

I swayed slightly on my feet, fingernails carving into the wood sill. My mouth opened to call for him, but silence was all that escaped my lips.

Swallowing hard, I tried again.

“I have to call for him.” I knew that and yet…

My mouth opened.

Silence.

I could see him in my mind. I could see the pulling intensity of his eyes as he looked down at me, the high rise of horns that scraped at my ceiling. The broad stretch of his shoulders with muscles rippling under taut, deep flesh with every move of his arms. He smiled. A smile that teased and dared.

My mouth opened.

His name was right there, on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t say it.

“What? You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” She stepped out of the shadows like something that would forever haunt me. A shiver danced down my spine as her eyes flashed in the dark. Reflected. Like a cat staring down a hall at nothingness. Her smile was the wicked kind meant to spread fear, the space between her teeth too dark as her lips curled up unusually high at the edges. “If I let you call for him now, what fun would that be? These things take time and I’m going to make sure I take advantage of every second.”

I should be afraid but as she walked toward me all I felt was angry and annoyed. This was her. This was the bitch who had tossed my Abuela around like a ragdoll, and I would be damned if I was going to stand there and shake before her.

With her shoulders bare, I could see the script that went down the left side of her face to her jaw. It continued down the side of her neck and her collarbone. It disappeared in the top of a bodice, the colour an iridescent black that shimmered a deep scarlet as she breathed. Her skirt was long, it dragged behind her, thick and elegant. The fabric was silent as she moved, made of the same fabric as her bodice.

“The demon’s wife.” She chuckled like that was something funny.

I turned, leaning on the sill behind me as I kept my eyes on her. The urge to lunge across this pretend room and wrap my hands around her throat made my fingers itch.

Answers first, Eden. “Where am I?”

Her head tilted but that eerie smile remained. “Somewhere he can’t follow.”

“But you want him to, don’t you?”

“Eventually.”

My eyes followed her as she slowly moved through the room. A room that was mine but wasn’t. She ran her hand over the top of my vanity, her long-taloned fingers plucking at the leaves of my plants as she moved.