Page 89 of Craving Demons
“I’m not saying I want to share your bed every night and take you away from the others. I’d be happy to stay in a spare room. My intention is only to be closer to you.” He took both my hands in his and his dark eyes were filled with steadfast affection, not his usual soul-sucking avarice. “The closer I am to you, the less my void consumes me. When I’m near you, I feel… fulfilled.”
I blinked. “Fulfilled?”
Oh.
Wow.
He’d said stuff like this before, but this time, with him asking to move in, I knew it was serious. Heartfelt. True.
He smiled. “Yes. I’ve been searching all my life for something that fills my void and… and I’ve finally found it. It’s you, Anais. So… I want to be as near to you as possible. I’ll… I’ll do anything. I can help out around the house. I’ll cook. I’ll clean. I’ve never done laundry, but I can learn. How hard can it be? Please Ana, whatever you need, let me be that, as long as I’m near you.”
I stepped away from him, looking him up and down. “Who are you and what have you done with Grey? You want tocleanfor me?”
He smiled tenderly. “Yeah… I actually do. I’ll do anything to be closer to you. Screw all my businesses. I don’t care about them.” He grimaced. “Well, except for the shelters, I care about them, but you get the point. I care about youmore. So, I want to put as much energy into you as I have into my businesses. I’ll become your domestic god. Doesn’t every woman want that?”
Well… yeah… but I’d never have expected this from a hard-edged, rigid, mega-billionaire.
“What do you say?” he asked softly. He even got down on one knee as if proposing, my heart fluttering just a little at that.
What could I say?
“Yes?” I hadn’t meant for it to sound like a question so I tried again. “Yes.”
He leaped up and hugged me. “Thank you, Ana. You won’t regret this!”
And just like that, a daemon prince became my live-in house servant. He lived up to his word, cooking and cleaning and doing laundry. Everything really. Reia and Donny were a bit taken aback by his presence and domestic fervor, but they adapted quickly enough. Fen and Ramsey were jealous, but only until they realized everything Grey was doing, then I think they were just as confused as I was.
And finding out I was a daemon, then having Grey move in with me… that was only the beginning of the strange things that happened that October.
Eva returned home, but that was more awkward than strange.
Then Grey’s sister moved in with us, and that’s when things started to get really weird.
Then there were the zompires.
Had I mentioned the zompires yet?
No?
Oh… well… that’s a wholeotherstory.
EPILOGUE: FEN
A graveyardat midnight wasn’t my first choice of places to be. But then, the man I was meeting had always been eccentric and dark of mood, not to mention, he actually lived here… in the ramshackle caretaker’s hut, hidden behind a few trees off to one side of the cemetery.
Well, technically my half-brother, Nari, didn’t actually live in the hut. He lived in a whole complex built underground, dark and secret, just the way he liked it.
I knocked on the creaky wooden door and waited. Several hidden cameras would be checking me out, but I didn’t wave. I didn’t want to be here, except his letter had made it sound urgent.
And yes, it was a letter. In the age of smartphones and email, he’d still sent a letter.
The door creaked open and there he was, gray-as-death skin drawn over a skeletal frame with dark sunken yellow eyes and a mop of messy black hair.
“Brother,” he whined, but not because he didn’t want to see me, that was just his tone, he always whined. “So glad you could make it.”
He didn’t ask me to come in, but that didn’t surprise me. I’d only seen his subterranean lair once, when it was being finished. Since then, he was all sneaky secrets. Instead, he stepped out of the caretaker’s hut and joined me in the brisk fall evening.
“What’s this all about?” I asked, a bit annoyed.