Free Demon Lover by Bonnie Dee

burned. A tiny droplet, like a pearl in the gloom, glistened and fell through the darkness. Only when it touched her neck, did she realize it was liquid.
    Her happiness froze in a frown of incomprehension and compassion. She couldn’t bear his sadness, if that was what it was.
    “What is it?” she murmured urgently. “Please…”
    “It’s time,” he interrupted. His fingers slid out of her body, making her gasp at the sudden delight of the motion on her over-sensitized pussy. “We have a lot to do tonight.”
    Her skirts fell back around her legs, swished against the straw littering their small floor space. He stepped back, leaving her cold and hungry and anxious.
    She said, “I haven’t paid yet, have I?”
    It was what gave her hope of relieving his inexplicable sadness. Perhaps he, too, recognized that they’d never meet again. She’d told him she’d be faithful to the king when he was her husband. Perhaps he, too, regretted the ending of—whatever this was. The idea made her warm and cold at the same time.
    “No,” he agreed. “You haven’t. You said you’d pay whatever I ask.”
    His voice was oddly distant after the husky intimacy of only moments ago, when he’d murmured hot words into her thrilled ears.
    She said, “I will.”
    She didn’t know what he’d ask. He’d said fucking her was not his price. But whatever sexual favor he required, she was more than willing to pay. To take his sadness away, to give one perfect moment of joy as he had given her.
    They still had hours.
    He stood behind the spinning wheel stool, unmoving. She inclined her head and stepped in front of him to sit.
    “Begin,” he said, bending to lift and bundle straw into her lap.
    For a time, they worked in silence. He helped her as before, bringing her the straw, removing and replacing full bobbins.
    Once, she said, “What is your name?”
    “My name? What does that matter?”
    “I know nothing about you. I don’t know your name, who or even what you are. I don’t know where you live, what you look like…”
    “You don’t need to.”
    “I would like to,” Gwyneth said, leaning back to let him place more straw in her lap. “You’ve saved my life, brought me to more wealth and dignity than even my father could ever have hoped for in his wildest fantasies. And more than that, you make me…”
    “Make you what?” he prompted, but as if the words were dragged from him. As if he didn’t really want to ask them.
    Gwyneth stared deep into the glinting gold threads flashing past her eyes. “You make me feel what no one else does. You—touch me.”
    He swung away from her, pulling down the next bale of straw. “I won’t touch you again.”
    Startled, her gaze flew after him. The wheel spun, empty of straw. Won’t you?
    Hastily, she reached for more straw. “I meant you move me.”
    The demon turned, dropping the bale on the floor at her feet. “As you move me. And yet you will marry the king. And I will break your heart.”
    Blindly, she wondered if he already had. These few days had all been so strange, encompassing the heights of happiness and depths of despair, fear and security. She’d lived in a palace by day and worked her fingers to the bone by night. And yet the nights had been her strange, dark joy. She hadn’t felt the rush of fresh air or the sun’s kiss on her skin since she’d come here. She suspected she’d lost all sense of reality and proportion. But right now, this dark, unknown, magical creature who made her spin faster and faster, seemed the most important thing of all.
    “Where do you live?” she asked.
    “In darkness.”
    She waited, but he said no more, merely reached across her to remove the full spindle of gold thread. She caught a whiff of his distinctive scent, and her whole body tingled from the lightest brushing touch of his arm against her shoulder.
    “Do you have a family? A wife? Children?”
    “No.”
    “What’s your name?” she pleaded.
    “Spin faster.”
    The