Wicked Game by Bethan Tear Read Free Book Online Page B

slamming the door behind him with such force the glass in the window panes rattled. She rushed to the door, locking it, and with an afterthought locked her window too.
                  She switched off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. She tried to expel him from her mind, and ignore the guilt gestating in her gut. She might as well have tried flying to the moon or walking on the ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes she saw him. He was weaved into her thoughts, interlaced with her dreams and desires, making it impossible to focus on anything else, especially when she could feel the flutter of his heightened emotions coming from across the hall. She anticipated that this wouldn't be the last she heard about the sleeping arrangements that seemed to aggravate him so.
                  She flipped over onto her stomach and saw that he wasn't as close as he had been that morning. He was topless again, but kept his distance, whether because he didn't want to alarm her or because he didn't want to incur her wrath and be kicked out of bed, she didn't know.
                  “How do you do that?” she whispered, mesmerised and terrified, knowing instinctively that both door and window were still locked.
                  His eyes flashed entirely black. It must have been a trick of the night.
                  “Magic.”
                  But she didn't believe in magic, or at least she hadn't until this handsome, frustrating stranger, this jaw-droppingly gorgeous demon had been dumped, naked and aroused, in her basement.             
                  “What do you want from me?” she asked tersely, turning over, tears starting to sting her eyes. Everything she had shunned, everything she had bottled up, everything she had kept hidden from her mom and tried to ignore was coming to the surface, bubbling up like boiling water, fresh and painful and inescapable.
                  He cocked his head to the side.
                  “What do you want from me?” he reciprocated, his voice oddly emotionless, his whole face alien and inhuman.              
                  She wasn't in the mood for playing games, though she suspected he wasn't playing any.
                  “Nothing.”
                  They both knew it was a lie.
                  They lay in silence, she not flinching or recoiling when his hand began to stroke the curve of her cheek, his skin as soft as satin on silk. There was something strangely calming and yet devastatingly soul destroying in such a simple action, an affectionate gesture that would have meant so much coming from a human, that meant so much more coming from a demon.
                  “Why are you here?” she asked despondently, staring up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the hot tears sliding down her cheeks.
                  “I may be the answer,” he spoke solemnly, sitting up and staring down into her eyes. His swallowed the darkness, though for once they were open, truthful and honest.
                  “But only you have the question.”

Chapter Four
     
    It was the tingling sensation that made Hazelle stir, the deep, dissatisfying ache down below that brought her back to the brink of consciousness. She didn't open her eyes, instead she lay in darkness, letting her other senses expand and guide her, relying on touch, taste and smell, enjoying the intimate sensation of something hot, wet and firm between her legs, probing her most precious of places.
                  She'd never felt the touch of a man there before but had always daydreamed what it would be like to do so. Whoever this was, whoever touched her so profoundly was practised at the art of pleasing, knowing exactly where to touch her, knowing precisely how much pressure to apply to make her gasp, to make her