Succubus Unchained - Heather Long Page 0,67

“You weren’t then. You were isolated, alone, and fighting to survive against everything and everyone, including us. Or maybe…” He eyed me for a long moment. “Maybe especially us.”

“I didn’t want to be a vampire. What does this have to do with what that thing was?” Because really, I wanted back off this subject before it pissed me off all over again and he reminded me what an asshole he was. The fact that he was being so nice to me was really throwing me off.

The corners of his lips twitched as if he were privy to some joke he didn’t plan on sharing. “Shadow demons can leave a piece of themselves behind, they can implant it in a person, let it continue to feed their misery, aggravate them, and in turn, that misery gives the demon pleasure.”

“Implant it?” Disgust curled through me. “Like the critter in Alien?”

’Cause that was fucking disgusting.

“When you all said taint, you meant I still had some of Dorran in me.”

He inclined his head in a slow nod. “Yes. Infusing into your cells. Shadow demons can, if given enough time, consume their prey until they are a mere shadow of themselves and then…then they become like them.”

I’d been turning into a shadow demon.

A full body shudder crawled over me, and Alfred tightened his grip to pull me closer, and fuck if I didn’t just lean into that grip. “I didn’t want to be a vampire,” I said, gritting my teeth to get the words out. “I lost that fucking battle. I would rather die than be a shadow demon.”

His gaze sharpened on me. “I will not let you die,” he told me, ice in his tone. Inflexible. Arrogant. Haughty. Asshole. There it was. I needed to hold on to that. “I will not let the shadow demon take you either.”

“Why the fuck does he want me?” Seriously, I was not that great. “I’m pissy. Temperamental. I do not like most people. I would rather just do my own thing and ignore the rest of the world. I’m no great catch.”

Another of those laughs escaped Alfred, warm, heady, and masculine. It left my pussy soaked and need clawing up through me.

Fuck. Me. He’s an asshole. I had to remember that.

Though it grew difficult when Alfred studied me with soft, enigmatic eyes and the color seemed to shift in them. Darkening and then growing lighter again. Like they were a stormy gray shifting and changing with the weather.

“You’re stunning, Hellion,” Alfred stated as if it were fact. “Stunning. Powerful. Unique. Taking you now would be next to impossible. You were already fighting him off when I got there. More, you were fighting his possession of you, even though he pushed himself into you again.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Is he dead?”

“Sadly,” he continued, sobering. “He is not. What was done to Anton is what he wanted to do to you.”

“Wait, he infected Anton, and he was possessing him that way?” It hadn’t felt like a real possession, but Alfred nodded regardless. Sucking at the inside of my lip, I shuddered again. “Poor Anton.”

“He will be properly avenged,” Alfred said. “I will deal with the shadow demon myself so he understands there is no claim on you he can make.”

Avenged. I kind of felt bad about Anton. I didn’t know him, hadn’t really wanted to know him to be honest, and now he’d been… “What did you do to him?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alfred said. “We have strayed from the initial point.”

“Um, it kind of does matter, because you did something in here, too. When the inky heartburn cloud from hell showed up.” I studied him, looking for any twitch or change in his expression. “You said you had something else you could try, then you kissed the hell out of me.”

I paused for a second as he began to chuckle and then groaned. I hadn’t meant to make a pun. Stroking my thigh, Alfred’s touch climbed higher with each pass, and when he drifted his touch to where my thighs met, I slid them apart.

“Pleasure is anathema to a shadow demon,” he told me. “They need pain and torment.” Dorran had definitely taken pleasure in me in the cell, but he’d also inflicted pain. It kind of sucked because on some levels, I’d actually liked Dorran. Granted, he was a means to an end.

Alfred slipped a finger along my labia and traced the slickness. Shivers radiated through me that had absolutely nothing to do with the cold.

“We were discussing