Demon King (Claimed By Lucifer #1) - Elizabeth Briggs Page 0,27
soon as I realized she was shivering, I waved a hand at the fireplace and it ignited, instantly. Then I snatched a velvet throw from the chair by the fire and covered her with it. As I tucked it around her shoulders, she finally moved her eyes upward, focusing on something behind me. I whirled, expecting to find someone there, but we were alone.
As I returned my attention to Hannah, I realized her wide-eyed gaze was glued to my wings. I tucked them away quickly, making them vanish.
“I was planning to show you my wings, and prove to you all I’d been saying,” I said in my softest voice—the one I reserved only for Hannah—as I squashed all the fury still roiling inside me. “But not like this.”
She jerked her gaze to my face, and her perfect little mouth formed an o. “It’s true. It’s all true.”
“Yes, it is.” I reached up to stroke her cheek, but she flinched back from me and I stopped myself. “Do you know what happened back there? How you fell?”
She shook her head silently, her eyes still wide.
“Whoever attacked you will pay.” This time, I wasn’t able to keep the menace from my voice, and she recoiled again. I drew in a sharp breath and regained control of myself. “Hannah. You have nothing to fear from me.”
Hannah’s chest began to heave under the blankets as she took rapid breaths. “But you’re the devil!”
Without waiting for a response, she threw her blanket to the side and kicked her heels off. Her red dress rode up her legs with the movement, revealing inch after inch of pale, soft skin. My cock twitched as I remained ever aware of how perfect she was, inside and out, even in the midst of an existential crisis. I averted my eyes.
“God,” she whispered. Ah, she’d discovered the larger implications of me being…well, me. “Does God exist? What about the Bible?”
“I’ve known many gods in my time, and I’ve been a god or two as well, but I don’t know if the God, an all-powerful and all-knowing deity, actually exists. No one does.”
She jumped to her feet and scurried across the room, but she didn’t leave, which was promising. I had a sliver of hope I hadn’t completely scared her away. “And the other demons you keep talking about. Imps, succubi, incubi…. Those are real too? What about angels?”
“Yes, all real. Everything I’ve told you is true.” I wanted to reach for her, to help her through this difficult realization, but I stayed back. She was still here. She knew where the door was, and she hadn’t left. That was the important thing.
Hannah stopped pacing and stared at me with her jaw hanging open. “But…how?”
“Demons come from a…” How to describe it? “Parallel universe of sorts, known as Hell. Angels came from another realm known as Heaven, and fae come from Faerie.”
Her eyebrows rose with every sentence I spoke. If I carried on, she’d lose them somewhere in her hair. “Fae?”
“Let’s focus on angels and demons for now and worry about the fae some other time.” I walked over to the bar and poured myself another whiskey. Sometime in the last few minutes I’d downed mine without realizing it. “Drink? If there was ever a time for alcohol, it’s when you realize your entire view of life has been upended.”
“No, thanks.” She walked over to the armchair by the window and collapsed into it, completely unaware of how the dress had shifted on her frame, exposing those thighs again, not to mention most of her midsection. Another inch and I’d see the lower curve of her breasts. Not that I was complaining. “The last thing I need is for this revelation to be muddled by alcohol.”
“Many humans find life preferable when muddled by alcohol. Alas, it has no effect on me.” I took a sip of whiskey anyway, mainly because I liked the taste. The burn reminded me of Hell.
Hannah finally realized she was holding a glass of water and took a sip. A tiny bit of clarity returned to her eyes, and I could almost see her thoughts working inside that smart brain of hers. Her true nature would allow her to accept these revelations easier than a normal human would—some of them never recovered from learning about supernaturals. I had no doubt Hannah would be fine by the end of the night. She always was.
She turned those big blue eyes on me, peering at me from under her soft