Page 11 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

He moved closer, encircling one of my wrists gently with his thumb and finger.

His lips grazed my forehead, and I could tell he wanted me to look up at him, so I did.

His red eyes shone with malice. He lowered his voice to a silky rumble.

“When you were in that wardrobe, I could smell it on you. You would have been thrilled to suck my cock to save your life.”

A traitorous prickle of tears sprang to my eyes. Because he was right. And I couldn’t think of anything worse than his knowing it.

“In the woods,” he continued, “I might not have been as hard on you, but you enjoyed my strap a little too much. I needed to make sure the ride was the real punishment.”

My tears spilled over. Embarrassment and shame twisted my insides.

I needed to get away from him. This was a fucking mistake.

I needed to run—and I couldn’t . It was one thing to indulge myself and let him use me for our mutual benefit.

It was something entirely different to hear him recite my innermost secrets— truths I would have taken to my grave rather than admitting out loud.

“Please stop,” I said.

“You said you could handle this,” he taunted. “Were you wrong ?”

Oh, fuck him.

If there was one thing I would never admit.

His hand moved ominously for the cuff, but I raced him there. Call it a twisted type of self-preservation. I snapped one cuff into place and groped for the other.

A wave of nausea stopped me. The cuff was spelled.

The tendrils in my chest receded sharply from the assault of the metal, like a pet with a trampled tail. A hollow chill gripped me. I couldn’t bite back the whimper that spilled from my lips.

B?k watched me closely as he reached to help with the second cuff, his gaze settled even as my breathing became erratic and my tears flowed faster.

“There they are,” he purred, pausing long enough to trap my chin in his fingers. His tongue flicked out and ran slowly up my cheek.

The air swelled with his arousal. He wasn’t kidding. My tears were his foreplay.

I was too busy quietly panicking to be indignant.

The cuffs were dampeners . Of course they were.

They were for him—to keep him steady while he worked out his demon rage.

But on me, they attacked the musical knot in my chest that gave me life.

This was out of bounds. It wasn’t exhilarating sex. It was murder .

“Please,” I cried. “Please!”

He was considerably taller than me, and with my hands in the cuffs, I couldn’t put my heels firmly on the ground. I swayed on my toes in my panic.

“B?k, I—I?—”

B?k dropped to his knees. My breath ceased to exist. Seeing that man kneel before me did things to my insides I couldn’t explain. A horrid symphony of empty pain clashed with a rush of powerful pleasure.

No! my head shouted again, though the rest of me had already abandoned the fight.

B?k didn’t use my own slow-burn tactics against me. Quite the opposite. He lifted me off the ground and flung my legs over his shoulders, pinning my back against the tree with his face buried in my pussy. His tongue took me before I could cry out again. Even my head shut right the fuck up then.

I was instantly blind to the forest and the rest of the mortal realm.

Blind to the pain of being separated from my magic.

His tongue swirled against my clit with perfect pressure, like he knew exactly what my body needed.

And then it snaked into me…but the lapping pressure on my clit didn’t let up.

I writhed, trying to look down at him to confirm what I felt.

Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Holy. Fuck.

I’d seen his tongue. It wasn’t—but yes, right now it was. Forked. One side swirled in perfect rhythm outside and the other plunged in, curling forward to hit a spot no one had ever touched.

I came unraveled, pulsing around him in a pathetically short amount of time. I cried out, throwing my head to the side. Our shadows in the moonlight stretched across the trees in uneven waves. His loomed unnaturally large.

I wasn’t fucking B?k, the man. I was fucking B?k, the demon .

There was little time to grapple with that, because he didn’t let up.

I keened and cried, desperate for a chance to catch my breath—a mercy he refused.

Soon, I didn’t want it anyway. He withdrew his outer attention from my sensitive bud and traced every curve and valley instead, tickling and lapping, and playing—all while inside, he drove deeper and harder.

A fresh wave of need grew until I bucked my hips, silently begging for him to finish it.

Only he knew.

He knew exactly when I was on the edge of tipping, and he stopped. Now he was getting his revenge. He teased me to the precipice of release once, twice, thrice…each time freezing to blow cool air over my pulsing need.

I cried. I begged. His warm tongue trailed slowly over the cold, bringing temporary relief—but not release.

Inside me, he curled to graze that secret place.

Just barely. Telling me he knew where I wanted him and driving me mad with his refusal.

Then he thrust again, mercilessly, until my legs trembled.

“B?k, I’ll—I’ll fucking—I’ll?—”

Kill you? Crawl on my hands and knees and grovel at your feet if you just let me finish? I couldn’t decide.

His low chuckle vibrated against me. That nearly did it too.

Any promise I made now, I would inevitably break tomorrow. We both knew that.

I had no power.

I sagged in defeat.

And then he gave me everything at once—the swirling suction, the curling friction, the hot breath.

I came screaming. Stars burst in my peripherals. I blinked at the forest, unable to see straight.

“Stop!” I cried then. “I—I?—”

But my pleas no longer resembled words.

“Try meaning that, and maybe I will,” he taunted.

I didn’t mean it, and he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow.

His tongue pushed me through the wave of pleasure, answering my growing hysterics with amused flicks and merciless strokes. He shoved me through the agony as my body screamed for respite and started the build of tense pleasure all over again.

“Haz!” I cried out, my god’s name wrenched from my lips in a fit of pathetic sobs.

B?k stopped then, just long enough to glower up at me. “He’s not welcome here. You call my name, or you take it in silence.”

Silence then, I vowed.

I sucked in a breath, but his tongue was already back at work everywhere .

At some point, I realized I was crying his name. Another vow broken.

I came apart again, and again, and again.

And. Again.