Free Demon Lover by Bonnie Dee Page B

see the straw, the gold or the demon.
    “Don’t,” she pleaded. “If you were ever good, please don’t ask this of me.”
    “It’s asked and promised. You must pay.”
    “Please!” Desperately, she dashed her fine, silken sleeve over her eyes. “Anything else!”
    “I don’t need anything else.”
    With the last of the straw spun, the wheel slowed and stopped. Gwyneth’s hands fell numbly into her lap.
    The demon stirred. “Since you care so much, I’ll give you a way out, but you have to find it for yourself. If you know my name by the time I come for the child, you may keep the infant.”
    “Your name?” She stared at him, torn between hope and outrage.
    “You wanted to know it. Find it out. You have at least ten months, after all.”
    A way out. It was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. But she grabbed at the proposition eagerly. How hard could it be?
    With that most pressing problem alleviated, her wayward mind returned to her companion, to what they had done together and what she had offered. He had turned away from her, preparing, she was sure, to vanish.
    “I’m ashamed,” she whispered, hugging her sore hands to her breast like a talisman. “I believed you wanted me. I wanted to believe that. And I threw myself at you like a wanton.”
    He paused, without turning. “Some things we do because we want to. Others because we have to. There should be no shame in either. Not for you or for me.”
    He glanced back at her over his shoulder and she imagined she could see his eyes burning inside the cowl. “You need to live. I need your child. The rest…the rest was desire, both dark and sweet. And for all of it, we both must pay.”
    And yet you will marry the king. And I will break your heart. She hadn’t understood, hadn’t listened to his words. But even if she saved her child from him, it felt as if her heart were already broken, bound together only by her galloping hatred for him, beating still only through outrage at his deceit, at his abuse of her which was surely worse than the king’s.
    She opened her mouth to tell him so, but without warning, he erupted in front of her in a violent puff of sulfurous smoke. When it cleared he was gone. And the door of her golden cell was opening.

Chapter Six
    And that was it. Those three strange days and even stranger nights were what brought her to this, to spinning through heavy blackness with her child to the demon’s surely terrifying lair.
    On discovering his third room full of gold, the king had been overjoyed and married her with almost indecent haste. Gwyneth’s feet hadn’t touched the ground as she’d spun into a world of dressmakers and designers, desperate to be allowed to make her clothes and her linen, to refurbish her bedchamber and her sitting rooms. Noblemen who despised her birth had kissed her hands with elaborate respect and undressed her with their eyes. The ladies of the court watched her with envy and vied to be her friends.
    Her father, now in charge of all the royal mills, had given up drinking apart from special occasions, like her wedding, and limited his boasts to “my daughter the queen.” There was really no more he could say.
    And Gwyneth herself had kept the promises she’d made to herself the night of her third encounter with the demon. She’d encouraged her father to diligence in his duties, had done everything she could to influence the king and bring to his attention the plight of the poor and the sick. With Midas himself, it must be admitted, she had limited success, particularly since her child had turned out to be a mere girl. But with those ministers and stewards to whom he’d delegated, she could often arrange things more to her liking and the people’s. It gave her some satisfaction to be doing some good in the end, but it couldn’t fill up the void in her life. Only Brea had done that, although from the instant of her birth, Gwyneth had lived with the fear of the demon’s