Page 23 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

Ero: A Lesson from the Shadows

I woke before sunrise. The deadweight of B?k’s arm held me in place, tucked tight against him. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, bare skin pressing into me with a searing heat that was comforting one moment, suffocating the next.

I steeled myself. In what was becoming a morning ritual, I carefully lifted his arm to slip out. He didn’t stir. Thank Haz for small favors.

I needed a moment to think. If I could find Brü, I could collect my new tent. Perhaps a potion of luck, too. I crawled out of B?k’s tent, preoccupied with my developing plan—but came up short at what I found.

Doused ash where there should be fire.

Empty trees where there should be tents.

Silence where there should be bustle .

I stumbled across the tiny clearing. The stench of piss and shit and vomit wafted from the woods where the prisoners had been. Spare bits of rope trimmings were all that remained.

They were all gone.

I braced myself against a tree. My faculties that’d been dulled last night by the exhausting climb were back in full force. Including my anger.

B?k had set me up.

B?k was toying with me.

And B?k could fuck all the way off if he thought?—

“Good morning,” he said.

I rounded on him. He stood just outside the tent in a languid slouch, tugging a shirt over his head to conceal the delicious ripple of muscle I’d slept against. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Where are they?” I demanded.

He padded toward me, in no hurry to answer. I tried to hide my nerves, but I could tell he sensed them by the shimmery waves his pleasure made in the air.

He lifted the end of my messy braid, considering it thoughtfully.

“B?k,” I said, unnerved by his silence. If he didn’t want to speak, I would. “Yesterday on the trail, I thought?—”

“Remove the enchantments on this,” he instructed, tugging the braid gently.

I took a step back. Instantly, his gaze darkened, and the air heated. His temper was quick this morning.

I swallowed and forced myself to hold his gaze as I combed my fingers through my hair, undoing the braid and the enchantments with it—demonstratively.

As if to say, See how reasonable I am? Would you like to try that too?

When I finished, I dropped my hand to my side, searching his face.

Despite trying to keep my tone steady, my question came out close to a whisper. “Why did everyone leave without us?”

B?k ignored my question. He stepped forward, closing the distance between us once more.

I leaned back without stepping—only to meet a wall of unforgiving bark.

I reached back and gripped the tree he’d backed me into with both hands to steady myself.

His breath tickled my forehead. I tried to look away, but he gripped my chin and held me in place.

B?k’s irises glowed black, the tiny flecks of gold and crimson warring for space.

“I’m going to offer you a deal,” he said.

He wants your soul a terrified voice inside me chirped. Wasn’t that what demons bargained for? Belonging to him for eternity would make this collar look like child’s play. I promised myself I would take option two, whatever it was. He’d already claimed my free will. I didn’t have to give him?—

“Dawn to dusk,” he said. “You run. Each time I catch you—” he emphasized the inevitably of my multiple failures with an arched brow, “—I fuck you just the way you want.”

I narrowed my eyes. That was clearly a trap. That sounded delightful?

He smiled at my uncertainty. “The way your body begs to be fucked.”

On cue, my stomach hollowed. My body betrayed me at every turn—particularly where B?k was concerned. Its desires were much darker than my mind’s. He knew that, of course. He’d watched me battle it since the moment we met. And I couldn’t exactly lie to someone who could read my desires.

“B?k…”

He remained silent, waiting for me to finish. But I couldn’t. Because there was nothing to say. Once again, I had no leverage. I swallowed. And then I remembered his words from before, and a tiny prick of hope broke through my fear.

“You said a deal,” I pointed out, scrabbling for purchase.

He nodded, his smile vicious. Slowly, he brought his fingers up to trace the metal bracing on my collar.

“At dusk, I will ask you if you want me to remove this,” he said. “I will give you one chance to answer. If I take the collar off, you can leave and never look back. I will remove the tattoo from your skin, strike your name from the Fated’s enrollment logs, and never pursue you again.”

I took a shuddering breath.

Yes. This was it. It had to be. Whatever he did to me today, by tonight, I could be free. Would there be a catch? Almost certainly. But I would be smarter this time. I would see it coming, I promised myself. I would outsmart him.

“If you say no,” he went on, “then I’ll know you’ve accepted what this is. And we can stop with the pathetic games.”

He bent forward, boxing me in with his forearms on either side of my head. He breathed against my mouth—the flavor of midnight woods overwhelming me. Our noses nearly touched as he stared directly into my eyes with his devastating onyx glare.

“Do you understand, kitten?”

“Yes,” I hissed.

“Then fucking run.”

My feet thundered through the brush, grasping for distance in favor of stealth. I slid down an embankment and splashed into a stream.

Perfect .

I would take wet boots if it meant leaving no tracks.

How long would my head start be? He hadn’t told me. But I didn’t see or hear any sign of him yet, and that seemed like a good sign—even if it’d only been a few minutes.

When the stream curved, I played a quiet melody on my lute and willed my tendrils to lighten my feet.

I flew past obvious hiding spots—boulders with dark crevices, tufts of cattails, a tangle of fallen trees.

Only when my breathing grew labored did I leap into the thick foliage, wedging myself deeper until I couldn’t see anything at all.

I had to elbow vegetation out of the way to raise my lute again for a cloaking tune. When it ended, I closed my eyes. Rest. I could rest. I could catch my breath and?—

The gust of wind came at once.

He didn’t even pretend.

The plants around me whipped back and forth, lashing me violently before they flattened to the ground under his assault. Whereas I was dripping with sweat from the exertion of my run, B?k stood as calm and cool as he had been before, head tilted with a pitying smile. The sun was barely up.

“You’re not very good at this,” he mused.

My heart trilled. I’d been pretty sure until about three seconds ago that I was doing great. So this was…an unfortunate turn of events.

B?k didn’t move, but his shadow rippled. I watched it warily, recalling the way it’d grown in the woods before he had. Now it dissipated instead, forming tendrils that rolled toward me like dark fog.

I scrambled back, jumping for a low tree branch. I caught it and swung my body, planning to leap the stream and run once more—even if it proved futile. But the shadows were faster. They snaked up my arms, encircled my wrists, and held my fingers to the wood.

I dangled there, kicking the air until the shadows caught my feet too.

“Fancy trick,” I said through my teeth. “But that wasn’t hard enough—right? Maybe you should let me go and try again.”

The only sign that he’d even heard was a slow head tilt.

The shadows spread, spilling into my sleeves and up my arms like silken snakes, ice cold and slippery, raising goosebumps wherever they touched.

I couldn’t help the image I conjured—of those shadows finding the places B?k had already discovered—of fucking me for him while he watched.

When I blinked the image away, his faint smirk broadcasted a smug “message received.”

I flushed. Would he? Could he?

I held his gaze as his shadows crawled up my legs, tickling the insides of my thighs—and paused there.

I whimpered.

“What do you want, kitten?”

What did I want?

I wanted him to rip my clothes off and fuck me. I wanted him to leave and never come back. I wanted—just for once—to want something simple that wouldn’t destroy me.

How much control did I actually have over which desires he could read?

That question fizzled as one of the shadowy wisps darted up my thigh and dipped into the evidence of my arousal.

B?k’s smirk deepened. He leaned back against a tree with his arms crossed, a good ten paces away, and watched me writhe as the shadow slid slowly through my slick heat, tickling my pussy, and dragging its wetness down the inside of my thigh .

“When I ask a question, you answer,” B?k ordered.

The compulsion gripped me.

B?k sounded like he had the first time he’d compelled me in the woods. Blank. Devoid of all emotion. That realization—even more than the caress of his chilly shadows or the fact that I was bound and hanging from a tree—made my heartbeat pick up speed.

“What is your name?” B?k asked, clinically disinterested.

The shadows danced to the clasp of my cloak, the button on my pants, the hooks in my armored fae shirt. Like an eager suitor after one too many drinks, they made quick work of undressing me for him, dropping my clothes to the forest floor.

“Ero,” I gasped, tugging uselessly against the shadows—instinctively trying to shield some part of my body from B?k’s stony gaze. The tendrils in my chest seemed scared of the shadows. They tangled up, rearing back as if they’d encountered a wild animal.

“Who do you belong to?” B?k demanded.

I wasn’t trying to be obstinate. Had the compulsion not pressed an answer off the tip of my tongue before I had a moment to polish it, there’s a fifty percent chance I would have said what he wanted to hear.

Instead, I growled, “No one.”

A faint gust of warm air served as the first sign that B?k wasn’t totally closed off emotion-wise. But his low chuckle made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rise.

“You don’t think so?” he taunted.