Read Online The_Demons_Wife_ARC by Rick Hautala - Free Book Online Page A

cast by
the gloom in her bedroom because all the shades were drawn. Then, when he
pressed her naked body down onto the mattress, she got a better look over his
shoulder at the fleshy appendage as it flicked back and forth.
    She had never
heard a scream like the one she let out.
    It—like his
tail—was not human.
    It all but
took the paint off the walls, and she couldn’t help but wonder what her
neighbors would think. They probably thought she was being raped and murdered,
and as she struggled to free herself of his weight pressing down on her, she
thought that’s exactly what was happening here.
    She kept
making strange squealing, grunting, impassioned sounds as she tried to break free
of him.
    Samael, for
his part, wasn’t expending much energy to pin her down on the bed and hold her.
Even though his grip was firm, it also had a gentleness that made her think how
safe she had felt when she was a little girl, and her father had hugged her
when she was frightened by lightning and thunder or had had a bad dream.
    This is a bad
dream!
    It can’t be
real!
    The heat of
Samael’s body was…amazing. Even through her outright panic, she was amazed how
holding him—she was hugging him even as she was trying to wriggle away—filled
her with a feeling of contentment and excitement…as if he was both the source
and the relief of her panic.
    “What’s…What…How
can you…?”
    “Shhh…” Samael
said, holding his forefinger to his lips and gazing deeply into her eyes.
    She was
trembling. Her skin was slick and sticky with sweat. Exhaustion wrung her out
as if they had already been making love for hours. When he shifted to one side,
rolling off of her, the relief from the pressure of his body was almost
terrifying.
    She wanted…she
needed to have him as close to her as possible.
    In every
possible way, she wanted nothing but to have him inside her.
    Now!
    “Who are you?”
she finally managed to say, no more than a strangled gasp. Her voice was ragged
and raw, her throat on fire.
    As she waited
in the silence for his reply, she was relieved to realize that she didn’t hear
the sound of approaching police sirens because someone in the building had
heard her cry out and had called the cops.
    Her body was
tingling all over. The pleasurable rushes rippling through her made her drowsy.
She had a feeling of imminent danger but, ironically, both the danger and her
safety from it were in his embrace.
     “You mean
what am I, don’t you?”
    His tone of
voice was soothing…mellow, calming, but nevertheless, Claire was jolted by his
comment. A chill worked its way deep into her belly. She licked her lips, aware
of how dry they were…like they were on fire.
    Is that from
his tongue? She wondered.
    Her neck made
faint snapping sounds, like a string of firecrackers going off in the distance
as she nodded.
    “Yeah,” she
said, hearing the dry croak of her voice. “What are you?”
    Samael’s smile
widened, and in the preternatural light, his teeth gleamed wickedly.
    “Oh…” Samael
sighed as he lay on his side, propping himself and resting his cheek on his
hand.  “I think you have a pretty good idea.”
    Claire did
have a pretty good idea, but there was no way she could articulate it. She was
wondering when this had tipped from “normal” to “impossible,” and why hadn’t
she noticed?
    “For real?
Yes,” she finally said.
    Gazing into
his eyes was hypnotic, and looking at him—his smooth, flawless skin all but
gleaming a dusky red in the semidarkness of her room—she realized it had
started the instant she had laid eyes on him last night at the bar.
    Was it really
just last night?
    She had been
through so much since then—the attack and near rape, the trip to the emergency
room, the walk home, lunch at Dominick’s, and then the fire.
    How could so
much have happened in less than twenty-four hours?
    It was too
much, too fast.
    Samael nodded
slowly while maintaining steady eye contact with her. It was creepy,