Chapter Fourteen
ARCHIE’S PARENTS WERE out tonight, according to Grace, the maid.
The winter festivities were starting to come into full swing as the nights got colder, and he quickly lost sight of which of their friends’ townhouses they were visiting each night.
The house being fixed up was the perfect excuse for them not to host anything and get invited to everything instead, which must have made his mother happy.
He thanked Grace and mentioned he wouldn’t need anything else for the rest of today, suggesting that the servants take an early night. She beamed at him and pressed his cheeks before taking her leave, which she certainly wouldn’t have if she’d known why he wanted to be alone.
Damaris? As Archie called out to the demon, he wondered how rarely it was he who initiated the conversation with Damaris.
It was always the other way around, the demon observing Archie’s actions and making commentary on it, unwarranted, and often judgmentally.
A magical nudge at the edge of his mind, like a questioning note in the air, indicated that Damaris was surprised too.
Is the Earl Lymond form more effort for you than existing as your natural state? asked Archie.
The answer materialized as an image in his mind, that it was not so much the specific shape of Damian that was difficult, but the idea of permanence, that Damian of Lymond was supposed to look the same all the time and that humans would find it strange if his appearance shifted and it meant he had recall what Damian was meant to look like.
Not only did demons recognize each other by their magical aura, whether they decided to have scales one day or fur the next, but they also tended to show their dominance by appearing bigger.
Being confined to a size of a human when he could appear taller was tantamount to humiliation.
Back in the demon realm, were you bigger than— Archie tried it himself, sending the thought half as words and half as an image held in his mind. It was easier than he’d thought it would be. The image was of Damaris, as the swirl of shadows he’d first manifested as, then the shadow with the antlers.
You could have considered me the equivalent of a Marquess, said Damaris.
Or perhaps an Earl, but certainly not so low as a Viscount.
He seemed to find no small amusement in equating things in human terms for Archie to visualize.
He sent a memory of the time he had met with one of the eight Demon Queens, not one related to either of the princes, and Archie’s mind failed to comprehend it entirely.
The only thing that filled his head was a shifting swarm of blackness, a spider-like being made entirely of a thousand legs and ten thousand unblinking eyes — and next to it, barely the size of even one of those legs, was an antlered demon.
Archie promptly shut the window in his magical mental tower and pondered the revolting image for only a moment. “Well, I hate that.”
Damaris cackled, manifesting as a fizz of lightning at the back of Archie’s throat. The Demon Queen of Uncountable Desires. She is the originator of my line.
Your… grandmother? asked Archie, horrified, as he tried to parse the non-verbal thoughts Damaris handed him.
Something like that. There was no exact equivalent for it, as demons were created out of the mingling of demon’s magics rather than begotten and born, but it was close enough. I suspected she was considering eating me, thus the immediacy needed to cross the border between our worlds.
Archie was not going to ask about that one. His thoughts turned, instead, to the antlers. Would you show me?
The sensation felt like a breeze drifting over his skin, as Damaris peeled out from him, the air deepening into smoke.
Archie watched, fascinated. He’d never actually seen the process of Damaris appearing in front of him before.
The wisps of smoke gathered together, pressing closer and closer until Archie had to look up to see his face.
Damaris stood around seven foot tall, broad-chested, his skin tan.
The only part of him that seemed completely solid.
Instead of feet, his form tapered after at the waist into legs that turned into a mass of dark tendrils that occasionally wafted like the curl of cigar smoke, somehow misty and yet solid at the same time.
His features were reminiscent of Damian, as if Damaris had tried them out and decided he liked them, but the eyes were a gleaming gold and occasionally the tip of his nose changed and darkened and Archie suspected it might be a soft felted feel if he reached out to touch it.
His neck shifted constantly, from a regular human’s to growing a full mane, mottled brown and green.
Fur and moss, Archie realized when he looked closer.
He reached out a hand and then hovered just shy of touching.
“Come.” Damaris caught his wrist and pulled him forward so that Archie fell against him, one hand in the impossibly soft mane and the other against the firm bare muscle of his chest. When Damaris’s arm curled around Archie’s back to steady him, the hand was large enough it spanned his entire waist, the fingers long with too many joints.
And, of course, the antlers. Enormous and majestic, erupting from Damaris’s head, almost as wide as Archie’s arm span.
It should have been… monstrous. Damaris’s body shifted underneath him, the demon shedding and changing his skin with a mere thought, his shadows milling around Archie’s ankles and calves.
And instead, as the skin rippled right in his line of sight, Damaris’s chest became more human, forming nipples, and Archie choked on his laughter. “Oh gods!”
I do not understand why human men have these, said Damaris, bemused.
“Me either,” confessed Archie, his face red.
Yours are very sensitive.
Archie could feel his ears going red. He tried to pull away, but Damaris’s arm kept him in place.
The demon didn’t say anything, but when Archie looked up, Damaris was watching him intently.
They both knew that Damaris could sense the desire on him, no matter how much he tried to hide it. Archie closed his eyes.
Slowly leaning forward, Archie let himself go. He sank against the demon, his bare cheek pressing against Damaris’s chest, his fingers dipping into the soft fur, until Damaris held all of his weight. The tiny hairs along his arm prickled, as Damaris inhaled and breathed him in.
Damaris’s legs formed fully, he felt the broadness of the thigh solidify, and when he looked down, they were elongated like the hind legs of a beast. He thought he saw feet, and then cloven hooves, and then long furred claws with a raised ankle, tilting his knee forward so his legs were interspaced between Archie’s own.
He was naked. Of course he was, but Archie had been successfully ignoring that until he was confronted with the fullness of it rising against his belly.
Archie cleared his throat. His mouth was suddenly, inexplicably dry.
He’d had his chance to run screaming, the moment that Damaris manifested as a mass of tendrils all those weeks ago.
He hadn’t. Not because he was weak in the face of temptation, but because this was what he wanted.
That demon who had come to him then and pressed him to the bed and touched him in his most intimate places, forcing him to confront his own pleasure, he hadn’t found that monstrous then. And he still didn’t now.
And yet, the words stuck in his throat. Knowing, acknowledging something in his heart was not quite the same as having the courage to say it aloud. At least not yet. How long can you maintain this form?
For the feast I can see it will give me?
As long as you can stand it. Damaris leaned down, curling his fingers into Archie’s hair and gripping it so tight that Archie moaned, rising onto his tiptoes.
When he kissed Archie, it was with a mouth full of too-sharp teeth that pressed like sharp pinpricks against his lips, each one a burst of pleasure.
Damaris threw him backwards onto the bed. Archie gasped as he sprawled against the mattress with the perfect view of Damaris in the whole, his cock erect. “You want it like this?” asked the demon, his tone goading heat into Archie’s gut.
“Yes.”
“Or like this?” sneered Damaris and suddenly his shadows rearranged. His cock was thicker, fatter. “Or this?” It changed again, this time curving upwards. “Or this?” Oh gods, were those ridges against the underside?
Archie could hear his own breath, wet and panicked and heavy. He wanted it. He wanted it all, so badly that his entire chest ached. “Yes.”
Laughing, the demon descended and devoured him.
As he fed on Archie, Damaris became more solid, heavier, warmer as he emanated real body heat, crushing Archie into the bed, and it was all Archie could do to hold on, clinging to Damaris’s shoulder, his neck, the antlers.
In return, Damaris spread him wide, held him open with fingers so tight they pressed bruises into his skin, raked his teeth across the sensitive skin of his neck, licking his sweat and desire u at the same time.
Archie wasn’t sure at what time he finally slept, but he awoke with pinpricks in his right arm and someone in his bed for the first time in his life. It was still dark so Archie drifted, relishing the warm weight pressed against his back.
You’re still here. He thought muzzily, half at Damaris but half a wondering thought to himself.
He turned, to relieve the pressure on the numb arm he’d fallen asleep on, and saw the hulking outline of Damaris half draped on top of him.
The antlers were reshaped, not gone but the smaller, tufted kind and rotated more towards the front of his head so that they fit in the bed.
Cute, thought Archie in his half-asleep state, and then giggled silently at himself.
Exhaustion overtook him again now that his arm was no longer buzzing, and Archie pulled Damaris’s arm more securely over his waist. As he drifted off, he could have sworn that he felt the gentlest of touches, a whisper of a kiss against his shoulder.