her, caging her in as he leaned over. “Because I was angry…and it made me smile. So. Please. Tell me again how you’re afraid of the monster inside you.”
He expected her to cry. He was rather hoping for it. He wanted her to whimper and understand how paltry a death or two on her conscience really was in the grand scheme of monsters. He was a demon. She was not.
He expected her to be angry. Maybe slap at him, demand he get off her, and scold him for such violent outbursts. He had thrown her to the stage rather roughly. He hadn’t quite meant to, but he felt no regret for it either.
He expected her to tremble in fear. Trapped inside her ennui of indecision, locked at the crossroads, and faced with the terrible, grinning fiend that wanted to chase her down the path he wished her to take.
Cora was an unpredictable creature.
Someday he’d learn that.
Her hands grabbed his hair and yanked him down to her. The sudden movement threw him off balance, and he fell hard to his elbows. Pain lanced up to his shoulders, but he paid it no mind.
Because she was kissing him. Kissing him with a fire that melted all his showboating and evil glee like a snow cone in the August sun.
He moaned against her lips. His moment of shock quickly wore off as she was already tugging at his belt, yanking his hips to hers as she spread her legs to wrap them around him. His body surged in response, instantly answering her call.
My, my…
He finally got to have her on his stage and remember it. Last time, he had been lost in a fit of madness, and he couldn’t recall a blessed thing. That had been all his doing. It had been a violence she accepted because she wanted it.
But she was shucking his clothing just as fast as he could remove hers. This was desperate. Needy. Violent only insomuch as it was frantic. His little hellion clawed at his back, begging him to make the world simple again. Begging him to make her feel anything but the strife and anguish that pulled her in two directions.
He hesitated before filling her, teasing her. She writhed beneath him, arching her hips to his, wordless sounds quietly pleading with him to be kind. Merciful.
When had he been anything of the sort?
Her head was resting on his forearm, and he tilted her head to her ear, tonguing the lobe slowly before whispering to her, “Am I a monster, Cora?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” came her reply.
He grinned. “And it makes you want me, doesn’t it?”
Her body arched to his, bare breasts against his skin, challenging his resolve. “Yes.”
“And because of it all, you love me, don’t you?”
She turned her head to her cheek in surrender. “Yes. I love you, Simon.”
He rammed into her then, sheathing himself to the hilt inside her eager body. He snarled as she wailed, her body contracting around him in her sudden release. He never, ever would get sick of that. And if I have my way, we’ll have all of eternity.
“Then let me love the monster in you, Cora…”
Gray eyes, wide and wild in disbelief, met his. Questioning his words. Wondering if he said the three little words she so longed to hear. But he hadn’t. He grinned viciously, withdrawing from her until barely anything was left, only to slam home. Her eyes rolled back into her head in bliss.
She would perform tonight. She would perform to a tent packed with awed onlookers. And she would do so thinking of him. And wondering if what she wished for could possibly be hers. It was manipulative. It was cruel. And he relished it.
I am a demon, after all.
But she loves this devil for his sins.
I won’t give that up without a fight.
What in the name of sweet buttery Jesus Christ on a pogo-stick is wrong with me?
That was what ran through Cora’s mind as she stood in the little changing room in the back of her tent, staring at herself in the mirror. She was wearing the outfit Elena had made for her. It looked like a stretchy one-piece bathing suit. The body of it was black and blue vertical stripes. Matching arm warmers reached her elbows, and stockings ran up to her thighs. It left enough skin to tease, but not be profane.
The back of the bathing suit dipped down to her waist. She couldn’t wear a