Accidentally Married To A Demon - Mila Young Page 0,20

"Tell me about this place in its heyday. What about it inspires such... devotion from you?"

He nodded, leaning back in his seat and eyeing the sad state of the land outside. "Consider a time when there were dozens working out among the vines, caring for them, watering them, collecting the fruit and taking it out to the winery to be fermented. Decades of care and consideration for how everything is done to make the very stuff that you're tasting now. Nothing is made on a conveyor belt, and there are people there pouring blood, sweat and tears into every step of the process."

"In this case, literal blood," I noted. I still wanted to snark the hell out of him, but there was something about the way that he was lost in the moment that made me want to see this place as it had been. Though part of me wondered if him deciding to stay here and care for such a place came down to something else. Something I didn’t quite understand yet. Why else would a demon care a vinery, right? What was I missing?

"Only rarely," he admitted with a small smile. "And at the end of the day, you sit down to enjoy a bottle of wine—the likes of which only the richest in the region can afford—and know that you earned it. It's a special feeling, one that I am sure that you are quite familiar with."

I tilted my head. "I mean... I never sat down with a bottle of wine, but I do know the feeling of making myself a pitcher of margaritas at the end of a long day and feeling like I earned every single drop. A hangover usually follows the next day, but still."

He laughed. "I hear that would be the case with a bottle of wine as well."

"Sure, for the lightweights." I leaned in closer, putting my elbows on the table and supporting my head with my hands. "So what you're saying is that what you love about this place is just the amount of work that you put into it?" He had to be lying to me.

He nodded. "Something like that, although in my case, it would be over a hundred and fifty years of work, which makes me... understandably nostalgic for the way things used to be."

It was a good point, although I wasn't really in a place to reply or truly understand why he was so devoted to this place. Was it a ruse where he lured tourists before devouring their souls and it made for a good place to conceal bodies for sure.

Close as I was to him, the scent that seemed to exude from him—a sweet, heated sort of mix—was starting to get distracting. I could probably move away, out of its range, but I didn't want to. For some reason, there was a part of it that was drawing me in, making my mouth water and my head spin.

I hadn't drunk that much, at least not compared to my usual attacks on my own liver. Maybe enough to lower my inhibitions a bit, but not so that my actions were beyond my own control.

This was just a bad decision waiting to happen.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked.

A second was all I needed to realize that I was in fact staring at the demon. Maybe it was his mouth. Maybe it was that in the shadows of the barn-like building, the physical appearance that he put on was fading just enough for me to see what was hidden inside.

I reached out, running my hand over his forearm, pressing just enough to feel the power hidden underneath, feeling it sparking up through my fingers, making my head even lighter. It was hard to say what was causing the reaction, and it definitely warranted further study.

"Do you like what you feel?" Rog narrowed his eyes but didn't move away as I stood up and moved closer to him, letting my fingers trace high up his arm, inside his sleeve, feeling the heat radiating from his skin. The sensation was unlike anything else. He radiated so much power that skittered over my skin. I was captivated.

"Probably making a huge mistake," I whispered, leaning in closer and taking in the scent with a slow, deep breath. It was hard not to close my eyes and bask in the feeling that was all Rog. Maybe it was the wine going straight to my head.

I almost didn't realize that