To Summon a Demon by Lisa Alder

into the gentle kiss, but he didn't want to hurt her. Her lips clung to his as a tear tracked down her sweet, battered face.
    A surge of power nearly knocked him down. The energy was so great his body buzzed with a surfeit until Lili lost consciousness again.

Chapter NINETEEN
    Lili lay on a bed of soft goosedown feathers, the satin slippery against her battered body. Gods, she ached. Everywhere. The region around her heart was the worst.
    Emptiness surrounded her like a cloak.
    Sorrow sucked at her heart. Warm tears trailed down her cheeks. The emotions she’d thought dead and buried with Brian wrapped around her heart and squeezed her so tightly that her breath barely passed her lips. Her last memory was of waiting for Gaap to strike her down.
    The salt from her tears stung the cuts and bruises on her face.
    The physical pain brought her an emotional comfort she needed. She deserved pain, deserved abandonment for her betrayal. He’d spared her life, an unnecessary kindness. But after her betrayal, how would she ever live with herself?
    She curled into her body and absorbed the scents and sounds around her. The covers were soft beneath her. The ocean waves shush-shushed as they lapped at the sand, and the briny scent of the sea lingered in the air. Seagulls squawked as they swooped over the crashing waves.
    The ocean. Her salvation. Surcease from her sorrow.
    As the softness finally registered, she realized that was wrong. There was no grainy, cool wet sand. No rough wool blanket beneath her, only a soft susurrus of breath in her ear.
    Her heart thudded in her chest as rough fingers brushed at her tears. “Don’t weep,” Gaap whispered, his breath warm against the throbbing bruises on her face.
    He hadn’t sounded angry. If anything, she heard a hint of sadness in his voice. She held her breath and slowly raised her eyelids. Her heart thundered in her ears and she waited for his wrath.
    And yet she hoped for something else entirely.
    She stared into the intense brown and gold of his eyes, so close that she could see the light sparkling as he gazed at her. The bright blue of the daytime sky blazed above their heads.
    She lay on her back on the beach, in the protected cove where she first summoned him.
    “How--” Why? Was what she really wanted to know but she couldn’t voice anything more as her throat closed and emotion swamped her. “You had a knife.” She remembered him leaning over her. “You didn’t kill me.”
    “I kissed you.” He grinned broadly.
    “And then you....”
    “Carried you both out of there.”
    He carried them both? “Is Leraye recovered then?”
    “No.” Gaap’s gaze shifted to the open sea. “He is still in a state of stasis.”
    “But he’s not dead?”
    “He appears to be alive, just...not aware.” He frowned.
    “And you’ve never seen this Fae weapon before?”
    “No.” Gaap stroked a rough finger over the arch of her brow. “We’re working on trying to unlock him from the prison.”
    The Demons had already been imprisoned for thousands of years. The unnatural restraint must be a horrible kind of torture. And she had brought this down upon Gaap’s friend.
    Upon Gaap.
    A wicked bruise, the size of a cantaloupe, marred his neck. Her gaze tracked over his body and took in the brutal results of the Fae’s attack. Large blue and purple marks splattered over his skin like an obscene modern painting.
    With a trembling hand, she traced light circles around the wounds and bore witness to the evidence of her betrayal. “I’m sorry.”
    He brushed his lips over the curve of her cheek. “I know.”
    She lay not quite in the circle of his arms, savoring the soft linens and his subtle touches as he kissed the other cheek so very gently.
    “Are you going to kill me now?” She had to know. Had to know what would happen next.
    He chuckled and the sound rumbled through his entire body and transmitted to hers. “I’m sure there will be days when I am ready to strangle