Page 35 of The Demon’s Collar (The Bard’s Demon #1)

Ero: His Worst

Bardic Advice from Eroithiel von Dua to future generations: Asking a demon to “do his worst” is not the best way to showcase the heights of your wisdom.

B ?k’s low chuckle painted a trail of goosebumps down my arms. But I just watched him, tingling with anticipation.

This must be what it was like to be a true penitent—one of Haz’s devotees who did more than visit the temple once a year to pretend at holiness. The ones who welcomed the Temple Mothers’ wrath when they had misdeeds to atone for.

I had plenty of misdeeds. I’d never atoned for a single one. I made a masterclass of dodging consequences. Letting B?k—who I knew would derive his own pleasure from the act—deliver the justice I craved was just poetry.

“You will follow my orders without hesitation,” B?k purred, lacing the words with compulsion that made the collar around my throat thrum .

He pulled the strap back, ready to strike. I closed my eyes. Waited. My core pulsed. A resounding crack echoed through the night—but the strap struck the surface of the water, not me. I shuddered.

“You will answer when I ask you a question,” he went on, tracing incongruously gentle circles on my chest with the wet leather. “Do you understand?”

I didn’t open my eyes. I took a shaky breath, and whispered, “Yes.”

This time the strap landed. It lanced across my bare chest, lightning to my peaked nipples. I cried out. My hands shot up to soothe the pain, but he blocked them with his forearm.

“Hands behind your back,” he ordered.

The chilly breeze sank its sharp teeth into my aching nipples when I dropped my hands.

I would never admit it, but there was a delicious release in his compulsion this time.

No choice to make. No self to fight. The knowledge, in fact, that fighting his orders would do irreparable harm. It made everything so simple.

A silky shadow snaked around my wrists, binding them together behind me. I looked up at B?k, greedy for the way his eyes held mine—no longer indifferent, but hungry. Ravenous. There was power in having him this way, even if he had me right back.

He waded closer, leaning down to invade my space.

His hot breath tickled my ear. He didn’t so much as blink as he thrust two fingers inside me and teased my clit with his thumb.

I groaned at the delicious, unexpected invasion.

Wondering for just a beat if this was going to go a different way than I’d thought—if his threats were just foreplay, not a demand for real recompense.

And then his free hand snapped something onto my collar.

I didn’t want to look away from him, but I couldn’t help it.

Curiosity has its own power. I barely had time to register that the thing was a leash, coiled around his fist, before he yanked on it.

I stumbled forward, losing my footing. His fingers and the pleasure they teased vanished.

I was only under water for a second, but the spring’s heat on my freshly terrorized nipples caused me to suck in a lungful of water.

I came up sputtering. B?k didn’t wait for me to recover. He stalked away, leash held firm. I had to move fast to keep up. The silt gave way to hard pebbles and coarse sand. When we made it ashore, the breeze was even colder. I whimpered.

“On your knees, Ero.”

I dropped carefully, unsteady without my hands to guide my landing. The sharp pebbles dug into my skin. I winced.

His eyes met mine. “Were you afraid I was going to let you down, kitten?”

I didn’t know if he meant with Aelith in the fire or just a moment ago in the water by turning the punishment to pleasure, but my answer was the same either way—a hurried, “No.”

“Liar.”

The strap lashed out, catching my arm and licking around across my shoulder. The pain was perfect. It beat back the fog that’d chased me all day in favor of a single, tangible strip of searing red. I melted into it.

“All you wanted today was someone to blame you,” he murmured, sounding deep in thought as he circled around behind me. “To tell you how badly you’d fucked everything up. How your weakness got people killed.”

Knowing that B?k could read my desires and having him prove that he’d tuned in when I was busy having my darkest private feelings were two totally different things. My cheeks burned. The urge to argue—to lie, even though he knew damned well that he was right—rose like bile.

“But you’ve made them love you, haven’t you?”

I stiffened at the accusation. That hollow ache that’d eaten at me all day lit up like a poked cavity.

None of them loved me. At best, they enjoyed me.

But when we reached camp and their real loved ones rolled out of the woodwork—who even remembered that I existed?

And who should have? I was nothing to them. No more than their demon’s musical pet.

I might have gotten lost in my spiral again had his compulsion not torn an answer from my mouth. I shook my head, choking on the word. “No.”

Three rapid strikes to my ass scattered my thoughts and took my breath away.

I tipped forward, instinctively trying to evade the pain, but he laced his fingers through my hair and closed his fist, holding me there.

Although he’d unplaited the braid, the dregs of my enchantments lashed out.

He didn’t flinch as they tore at his fingers. Drops of his blood hit my back.

I panted, chasing a breath I couldn’t catch.

“They love you, Ero,” he said evenly. “So much that they won’t even blame you for letting the siphon go?—”

“I didn’t?—”

“But I will.”

He released my hair and shoved—pitching me forward with no way to break the fall. I turned my face so one cheek took the brunt of the impact.

I tried to push up and sit back, but his hand rested heavily between my shoulder blades, and he growled, “Keep that ass in the air, kitten. I have plans for it.”

“I didn’t—” I gasped, “— let him go.”

Three more quick strikes rained down on my ass, too hard and fast to be pleasurable—delivering pain that elicited a strangled cry.

“You killed me with one blow,” B?k mused in a dark, warning tone, raking his fingernails lightly over the fresh lash marks, eliciting more goosebumps and whimpers. “Are you suggesting that the siphon is stronger than me? Harder to kill?”

“No.” It came out a strangled, pitiful cry. “But I— I couldn’t?—”

“Like you couldn’t let me finish the Huntress’s soldiers?” he pressed. “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

“I couldn’t!”

The fingers tormenting my welts pulled away suddenly, and my whole body clenched.

It didn’t help. The next blow landed lower than anticipated.

My thighs lit up with white-hot pain. A sob tore from my chest. I was ready to plead—to lie, to let ?his version of the truth reign if it meant he would stop even for a second so I could catch my breath.

But of course he knew that. He walked away, leaving me there with my whole body trembling.

I didn’t move. I listened, trying to gauge where he was and what he was doing. He stopped about ten paces away and fumbled with something on his horse’s saddle. I took several slow breaths, trying to calm myself.

Did he really think I’d let the siphon go on purpose?

He couldn’t possibly. He was playing with my mind.

But the accusation still tugged at a loose thread in my psyche.

I should have been able to handle Van. I’d cooked Wendlin’s insides, for fuck’s sake.

I’d killed B?k. Why did my tendrils go weak when it mattered?

It was only then—questioning them—that I realized how quiet they’d been since B?k had pulled me into his saddle back at camp.

I groped for them, suddenly frantic. But they were right where they were supposed to be.

Relaxed, inert. Like I was lounging in a pub instead of ass up and hands tied at a demon’s mercy.

A jagged suspicion gnawed at me. After the rock toads, B?k had put his dampeners on me before he would touch me again—concerned that my magic would lash out and ruin his fun.

That’s why I’d not been able to fight when the Huntress’s soldiers came for me.

So how did he know it wouldn’t be a problem this time?

And why were my tendrils proving him right?

A bloom of anger ignited. Which was unfortunate, because I wasn’t exactly in a position to use it. It was infuriating to think B?k knew more about my magic than I did—that he was learning faster.

B?k’s footsteps announced his return. I tensed, but he didn’t stop behind me.

He settled within my narrow field of vision to the side—leaning his back against a boulder with his Fated-issue cloak in his hands.

He fished a knife from the cloak’s pocket and used it to dig at the threads holding his sewn name patch in place.

A gust of wind whipped the cloak against his body, raising steam from the contours of his muscles. Despite my anger, a wave of desire tugged at me when my gaze landed on his cock. It was already hard, and I was more than ready. My pussy ached—clenching at empty air.

And then I saw his smirk. Haz’s fucking tits. I hated that he could read my desire.

He didn’t even mock me for it this time—too busy with whatever arts and crafts bullshit he was doing.

From behind the sewn name patch, he extracted a sliver of stone.

He turned it over in his fingers. I couldn’t make out what it was until he flicked a ball of fire onto a pile of logs at his feet.

The flames were too close to my face for comfort—hot enough to make my jaw tick—but they lit him up beautifully.

If he looked alluring in the dark, he was art in the firelight.

I didn’t even bother trying to rein in my ripple of want.

B?k crouched down, touching the burning log until the fire turned a more intense blue. The stone plate in his hand was a black rock with metal inlay spelling out his name. An enchantment emanated from it—something soft and protective.