SWNOVELS Prince Of Greed: Chapter 14
Embarrassment flooded my face as my dad pulled me away from Stolas, who watched with what looked like annoyance mixed with a calm knowing.
Did he know my dad would be here tonight?
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Evelyn. Slobbering all over that monster in public like a whore.”
Shock and ice plunged into my stomach. My dad had never spoken to me like that, not even in my rebellious teenage years.
“What did you just say?” The words came out weak and shaky as I fought to hold back tears.
“He’s a demon. And I don’t mean that figuratively.” His anger vibrated the walls around us.
“You’re insane. He’s been nothing but kind to me since I met him.”
The doors had barely opened when I rushed through them. I needed to get away from him as fast as I could before he made a scene in the lobby.
“Evelyn!” he shouted after me. “Come back here.”
I shoved past two men coming through the front door and took off down the sidewalk to the parking lot around the corner. Even if my dad did follow, he wouldn’t risk anyone seeing him chase down my car on foot. I turned the next corner but slammed into a solid chest.
“Evie, there you are,” Stolas said, not at all out of breath.
His hands wrapped around my upper arms and pulled me farther into the shadows of the building. The car lot was across the street, illuminated by yellowed street lamps and passing headlights. The urge to bolt out into traffic was hard to ignore, but Stolas’ hands held me firm against the cool brick.
“Stolas, I don’t know what is going on between you and my dad, but I don’t want to be a part of it. If you asked me out to get under his skin or blackmail him—”
I choked on my emotions and could feel the tears falling down my cheeks. Their hot and traitorous streams were hard to hide even in the darkness of the night.
“He told you, but you don’t believe him.” His deep voice crowded closer as he dipped his chin to the top of my head.
“He told me you were evil. That you were a monster.”
“I am.”
I blinked up at him through the tears.
What was he saying? Was he admitting that he was just using me to piss off my dad?
“I never claimed to be a good man, Evie, but he told you something else.”
His eyes somehow brightened.
It had to be a reflection from a passing car, or maybe the overhead lamp post at the end of the block, but the heat under his fingers grew painful against my skin and the dull glow behind his eyes grew brighter until I was gasping for air.
“Demon,” I managed to breathe out. “He said you were a demon.”
“That’s right. And do you know why he knows what I am? What could a popular politician have to gain from being friendly with a demonic presence?”
He was leading me to the answer, showing me what he wanted me to work out on my own.
My father had always been a likable and social man, but there had been defining moments in his life that had built up his career and catapulted him from local government, up to the state level, then on to Washington, D.C. The passing of my mother and siblings was the only major circumstance he’d faced, but I couldn’t believe that my dad had anything to do with that. I wouldn’t believe it.
“Say it out loud, Evie.” Stolas’ gruff voice was laced with eager tolerance.
“No.” I wiggled my shoulders, trying to break free of his hold, but his body pushed me harder into the wall at my back.
“You’re so close to the truth. I know you can see it. It’s on the tip of your tongue. The buried memory of a familiar face before the accident.” He coaxed me with words and a hand down my side to my hip.
My memories around that time were fuzzy at best. But that day would be seared into my brain forever, though there were chunks of time before and after that grief had robbed me of. My mother’s funeral was a blur, as was the dedication ceremony of a park in my family’s honor. I could only see flashes when I thought my hardest to piece those events together.
“Think back. Weeks before that day,” Stolas instructed. His hand cupped the back of my knee, hitching my leg on his hip.
His breath on my neck and lips on my ear lobe distracted me from the pain of remembering what he needed me to see.
The face in my father’s office about a month before my mother, brother, and sister would die on the brand-new boat.
That cunning grin and cutting, odd wit.
“We have a deal then?” the dark voice says.
I’m watching from the crack in the door, crouched like a spy while my brother counts downstairs. I need to find a hiding place before he gets to one hundred, but the way our dad is sitting has my eyes glued to him.
“I have your word. They won’t feel any pain and it’ll be quick?” My dad’s voice comes up from his desk, but his face is covered by his hands.
“Not even a pinch. Three little souls for the next step to the White House.” The other man flicks lint from his shoulder then checks his watch.
“Just three. No more. No less,” my father agrees, finally looking up to the face of . . .
“Oro.” My voice was hoarse and strained from the tension and pressure that had been building in my body.
“What did Oro and your father do?” Stolas’ lips moved over the sensitive spot under my jaw.
“They . . . They made a deal. He’s a demon, too. Just like . . .” I allowed the realization to wash over me.
“Me?”
My stomach turned into knots as he lifted me and settled his hips between my legs for our eyes to meet. I knew I should have been afraid, but we’d been alone for hours before my dad had shown up. How could Stolas have been some otherworldly monster without me knowing it? Or was I so cut off from humanity by my own bitter loneliness that I couldn’t see the devil dancing before my eyes?
“Evie, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, a softness to his voice that I hadn’t heard before, hadn’t needed to hear yet. “I know it may be difficult to understand, but I want to help you. I need you to trust me.”
“You’re a demon! You’re vile and evil.”
“What makes me more vile than any other being? How is my existence any more evil than the men who rape their own children or policy makers who willingly allow thousands of people to drink tainted water with no resolution?”
His body warmed my skin. I should have been thrashing to get away from him, but I couldn’t will myself to move.
My arms circled his neck, and I pulled myself into him, wanting him closer.
He adjusted my weight, and I felt his stiffening excitement press harder between my thighs. “Books written by men who committed some of the greatest sins known to man are never seen as monstrous as I. I can assure you that my hands have never been so bloodied as those wearing an alb.”
He didn’t sound upset, and the swell in his pants sure as fuck didn’t feel like anger. His hand slipped under my skirt and pulled my panties to the side to allow his fingers to caress the pool of throbbing heat.
“He’s hurt you in ways that I could never heal, but I would rip him apart, limb by limb, for you. Just say the word.”
He was talking about my dad. The man who raised me for slaughter.
Three souls. Not four. I was Harris Gerhardt’s last poker chip. That was why he didn’t want me getting close to Stolas. He didn’t want me giving myself to a demon before it was the most opportune time for his legacy. But there I was, on a dark L.A. street, my pussy aching and my eyes flooding with tears.
I’d known my own grief longer than I’d known most people, yet Stolas ushered me to confront a truth that I hadn’t known I was missing. A secret that burned in my core and opened a wound that should have had me unraveling. I heard the click of metal, then the down stroke of a zipper.
The head of his engorged cock nudged my entrance. Was I really about to let a demon fuck me right out in the open?
“Stolas.” I didn’t have words, just his name and the slow build of his fingers brushing over my clit to the rhythm of his breath over my chest.
“Please, Evie,” he said between my breasts. “Fuck. I need you.”
What he was asking for was more than my consent. He had that already, and he knew it.
What he wanted was me. All of me. He needed me to say it out loud, for me to offer myself willingly.
But for what?
With nothing left and everything to risk, I rolled my hips over his thick, wet tip.
He groaned and took in a deep breath. I could feel his restraint and the surge of what I was about to unleash. This ancient creature was waiting on my words, and that sort of power sent my head swimming.
His hips pulsed, and I shed one last tear for Harris Gerhardt and the family that had been stolen from me. Stolas’ lips sucked at my collarbone, and he shook with another deep sound of desperation.
“I’m yours.”
The air shot from my lungs as he pushed inside of me.
He was too big. I was already filled to my tipping point, throbbing around him. I tightened my grip around his neck for balance.
He groaned as he spread me wider.
I whimpered through gritted teeth, an orgasm ready to crash through me with the slightest change in pressure. He waited for me to adjust to his thick shaft, and my walls constricted around him. His fingers dug into my ass as he drew his hips back, then plunged into me and brought me down to his base.
“Oh God.” All my restraint to be quiet was gone as the orgasm gripped my lower belly.
“You belong to me,” he practically growled in my ear. “I will be your salvation.”
His thrusts deepened with each withdrawal. And with every grind of his hips came his name from my lips, louder and louder.
My voice echoed off the surrounding buildings.
Anyone who walked or drove by could have seen us, and that terror would have normally mortified me but sent a thrill through me now.
Stolas looked up for the first time, locking his determined gaze with mine. “Pray to me, Evie, and I will give you everything.”
My body was weak and shaking, but his almost begging tone whirled in my core.
He wrapped his arms around the small of my back, bringing it off the rough surface of the building we had made into a place of passion and need. When I was firmly seated around his hips, he circled, his pelvis grinding against my overworked clit.
“Fuck, Stolas,” I panted.
As I felt his cock pulse and jerk deep inside of me, I cried out, begged him not to stop, and finally hit the epitome of pleasure. My hips bucked, and I rode out the orgasm as he moaned and gritted out my name until his shoulders sagged and his head fell to my panting chest.
When he looked up through spent, hooded eyes, I felt the swell in my chest—a gratitude I couldn’t explain for the act we had just committed.
He gently placed me on my feet and quickly zipped his pants while I righted my clothes. His body hardly left mine before he took me into his arms and held me close, like he couldn’t bare the distance. Breathing him in, I tried—and failed—to imagine a world where he was still just human. Knowing that he wasn’t should have made my skin crawl, but I could only feel the warmth of his touch that soothed something deep and broken inside of me.
The smell of his sweat and cologne on my skin filled my lungs. Spice, musk, and sex. My new favorite scent.
“Evie?” he pleaded.
My throat tightened, though not with sadness or tears. “Take me to him.”