20. Don’t Blame Me, Bloodlust Made Me Crazy

The air crackled. Heat and rage stained her skin. She wanted to knock him out. But her duties—refreshing the wards on this place—were imperative. She scowled.

Her voice came out in a low sibilant tone as she said, “stay here. Don’t die. I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”

“Sure thing. But if you vanish for days again, you better scatter my ashes in Portland.”

Her eyes almost rolled into the back of her head. He had an answer for everything. His mouth wasn’t smirking. Good. She stalked through the archway into the dark hall.

She paused. Her vision adjusted as she muttered the words under her breath.

“Læt þis stow beon swolwen. Þær is nān weg þurh hēr. ”

Let this place be swallowed. There is no way through here.

She stared straight ahead. Not looking back at his chair.

Not meeting his gaze, she felt burning on her back as she aimed for the front door. She wasn’t leaving despite everything in her telling her to flee. To find a way out of this mess.

A static charge in the atmosphere lifted the hair on her nape and scattered a hail of gooseflesh across her skin. Her claws held steady as she slit her wrist and painted Thurisaz on the white door.

Another rune went under it. Sowelo. Then Tiewaz. Her blood dripped black onto the hardwood floor. A thick gray rug, narrow but long, ran down the center all the way to the end.

She heard him moving. The leather chair creaked, the sound like thunder in the distance. She sighed through her nose. Painting one last sigil there that she created on the spot. Thanks Barbatos.

Now you can’t observe me. Asshole.

“Sit down, leech. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

He chuckled. Her demon joined in. Her throat thickened, and she tensed her jaw as she listened to her worst side.

I told you he was starving. Stop running away. You just want to torment me.

Liora didn’t respond. Ashton’s scent flooded her. He was hungry. Dangerously so. His hands were bloodless fists. His warm olive skin tone had melted away like spring snow on the beach.

All vampires were pale. When fed well, their natural coloring from their human lives returned. She’d learned about vampires on her travels, but had done her best to avoid them.

She hadn’t had to cull any. They were low on the food chain. Few aimed for great heights. They made great cult leaders for a time. But they always reached too far, destroyed by the very followers they’d once entranced.

She didn’t need to lift a manicured finger. Ashton didn’t play by their rules. He didn’t act the way he was supposed to act. Ashton was—he was different.

“I won’t. You smell... empty, Red.”

She froze. Eyes narrowed as she turned on him. Her heart pounded. Her sweetened hellfire scorch mixed with his ice-kissed citrus. Laurels and pomegranates blending together.

His eyes had gone dark. Pupils fractured and splotched the silver black, attention glued to the blood she’d spilled. Their shine dimmed. Dark and bioluminescent veins crawled across his skin. Fuck.

She hadn’t seen this up close. Only heard tales of it. Bloodlust. Her pulse kicked off even faster. He took a step back. She subtly arched her neck. Copper hair sliding over her shoulder.

Her gaze flew to her wrist. Shadows slowly healed it, but blood seeped through their dark sutures, too drained now. She had to pull the power up correctly the next time she used it. The show on the docks was a risky move she normally wouldn’t have made.

She refused to look too closely at that.

“You act as though I’d give you a chance to fill it.”

Her denial fell on deaf ears as she shifted on her feet. A fluttery feeling between her thighs as a wet heat kindled there.

Her mouth filled with sweet venom. She knew he smelled it. Craved it.

His smirk was perilous. “Try again, Sweetheart.” He wasn’t breathing. “I know what this is. Succubi hunger.”

She scoffed, eyes rolling again. “You have delusions far above your grandeur, leech. I think I know better—”

“—it’s not about blood. It’s about surrender.”

Her mouth snapped shut and tensed. She blinked. Inhaling sharply. Her heartbeat seemed to ache in his ears.

“So you can read books without pictures? Big deal.”

He shook his head, smile broadening. Oh. She didn’t like this. She didn’t know why he was so determined to understand her.

Why couldn’t he just follow the script all the others had? He closed the distance. She held her ground.

“No. I knew how you fed and how your venom killed everything else. Except me. This I learned as you trained me. It wasn’t just to fight, was it?”

She went rigid. A bridge burned and buried. “Confess, Liora,” he said, voice lethally low. “You were training me to fuck you better.”

Her growl ricocheted off the pale walls. Her blood still smeared her wrist and the door. It would be an irritant in his nose. Did it smell like his or hers? It didn’t matter.

“Your fantasies are worrisome. As if I’d—fuck!”

Her back slammed into the wall, his frost-gloved hand necklaced her throat. Ice sparkled down her chest, freezing the air in her lungs. Her inner wildfire blazed as a flickering empty sensation yawned inside her.

Her inner demon crooned, I told you. Let him ruin you.

Ashton grinned. She knew he had heard it. Fangs grazed her jaw. A bead of black blood welled. He licked it, and she suppressed a shiver. Groaning, he tilted her head to the side.

Mouth lowering to reopen his bite. Her claws buried in his shoulders as his teeth stopped just shy of biting down.

He scraped a fang down over her thudding pulse. She shuddered, unable to smother it. Heart beating loudly against his chest as her caramelised scent strengthened.

A single thought of his entered her head.

I’d offer her whatever’s left of my soul for just one last taste.

She studied him until his mental voice faded away and she heard no more.

Black veins marked his neck, hands, and under eyes. Only the incessant, primal need to drink from her existed in him. She pressed closer.

She swayed as he suddenly stood four feet away from her. He scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. He muttered something under his breath. Her shoulders wanted to slump, mouth pursing as she shook her head.

He flexed his hands at his sides. She’d never heard of a vampire able to fight the beast of bloodlust. Liora laughed. The sound was bitter as the lemon in the ice water she’d down later.

“There it is. That cruel hunger. But you’re still holding back.” Her head cocked, gaze raking him. “Do you think I can’t take it?”

She huffed. Stance defensive.

He glowered at her, chest heaving and eyes wild. “I’m not trying to kill you. Are you insane? I don’t want your death. I want your—” he cut himself off, choked on it.

She frowned as he gritted his jaw, a visible shake in his hands as he fought with himself. Her blood raced faster. Heat swept from her toes all the way to the crown of her head.

“Do you think I need your protection? I don’t need you to hold back. I need you to take. Or are you all talk, little bat?”

Ashton eyed her too closely. She wanted to sigh. She was offering him the very thing he wanted, but had wrapped it in a challenge. Her shadows coiled around him almost in invitation. She wasn’t rejecting him.

That stupid human worry fell away like a snake shedding skin as she watched him. He straightened. He moved deliberately, slowly, predatory. His chilly hands cupped her face, twisting her head to the side as he stared into her.

“You want me to take? Then stop fucking fighting me for every inch.”

Then his mouth was on her throat, claiming as his fangs sank in deep and she jolted. Her claws dug in, pulling him closer and then pushing against him. She couldn’t decide what she wanted to do.

He swallowed, greedy, and instantly hardened as she pressed her thighs together to counter the ache between them. Her own veins glowed gold. Her back arched a little.

He stopped feeding as he said, “You’re hotter here when you’re trying not to scream.”

She gasped as he tore the neckline of her blouse and bit down on her collarbone. He ground against her hip. His cold hands slid under her lilac shirt. The fabric was gossamer and soft as it rubbed against her sensitive skin.

His frosted palms splayed and roved all over her back. Sliding up and down her spine. Down the curve of her ass, crouching at the knee as he cupped the backs of her thighs.

Ash split them apart. He straightened to lick the droplet of blood that jewelled her collarbone. The VII brand blazed through her glamor. Iridescent scales surrounded it. Her pupils were gone.

Dilated to the edges of her iris. Abruptly, he dropped to his knees. He yanked her skirt down. Her underwear too. She was already wet as he drew a finger along the seam of her.

Liora vocalised her shock. Claws scratching off the walls. A thick layer of dust covered everything. His gelid breath washed over her hot cunt.

“What—what are you doing?”

The hardened tip of his tongue traced the shape of her clit. Liora moaned. Her succubus was absolutely delighted.

See! I told you. His tongue is— Shut up. No more.

Liora snarled back.

Her mind had prepped for violence. Glorious, lust-sparking violence. She expected the brutal thrust that split her open, the invasion that ached as much as it aroused.

She expected to bleed and break and burn. The first language she was fluent in. He seemed to speak it from the start. She got reverence instead. His fractured gaze met hers.

“I’m doing what I want, Red. You never specified.” Then he began devouring her.

Her claws sheathed on instinct as she gripped his raven hair. The bristles of his stubble added a tantalising layer of contrasting sensation as he sampled her venom-drenched wetness straight from the source.

Her mind spun. Body shivering and stiffening. Unsure how to react or if she wanted him closer or to kick him off her. No one had... no one had in centuries. It killed them too quickly as her venom was purest there.

Ashton groaned, and his mouth sealed over her clit, sucking it into his mouth whole. The sound’s vibration wrung a gasp from her lungs. Her head cracked off the wall. A braid of shadows collared his throat.

Dark tendrils lashed the ceiling, shaking the dust loose, and it stuck to the sweat beading on her forehead. His hands pinned her thighs wide. Frost spread out from his palms.

It wove over her hips like wedding lace, tempering the heat for a luscious second before it melted to dew. Fire and pressure built and built within her, heat swamping her.

His icy touch only fed the flames roaring in her veins. She stifled the sounds slipping out of her, freckles scorching under the glamor, despite her hips chasing his bristling mouth.

She wanted to shove him off, to save herself the trouble this would bring. The disgust. The fear that sent them running away screaming. But Ashton was drinking her down as if he were dying of thirst, and she was the first rain in a century.

He looked up at her, silver eyes still fragmented and wide, as two cool fingers slid inside her as he spoke against her slick flesh. Her spine arched, knees weakening. Tension coiled inside her, winding tighter with every lewd suck, every graze of his teeth over her clit.

“Stop thinking, Liora. Let me hear you. I need to know what you taste like when you fall apart.”

Get out of my head, she muttered internally, knowing he’d hear it. She scrambled to haul the wall back up, but he crooked his fingers and pulled. All she could do was cry out and yank his hair to keep him from backing off.

His tongue flicked her clit as his hand moved in tandem, pushing her to an edge she wasn’t ready for. Frost turned to steam as her inner walls gripped them tight.

She almost slid down the wall. He caught that spot high inside her that sent her wetness flooding into his mouth. Her startled shout made him chuckle, a third digit added to give her the slight sting of pain she always needed.

Her wild keen would shame her later, but the tension kept coiling. The heat and pressure eddied out her mind. His chill, his winter-spun power only heightened the pleasure threatening to break her.

It robbed her of breath. Throat tightening to the point of pain as she pushed it back. Scarred thighs trembling, sweat trickling down her neck and stinging where it met his fresh bite. This was bad. This would get her killed.

She should run. Allowing this was a mistake. She should—

“Let go,” he commanded. The vibration of his words against her clit was both a punishment and a promise. “Or I’ll stop.” His tongue flicked once, like a devastatingly soft threat. “Stop pretending this will kill you. The only thing dying here is your fucking self-control.”

Her claws unsheathed, to harm or defend, she didn’t know. He didn’t care; he moaned as they scraped his scalp and redoubled his efforts to destroy her.

Her heart rattled like a marble in a jar, pulse jumping as she dripped around his busy hand. His mouth, that infuriating, too quick, and clever mouth feasted, frost spreading through her pelvis like a benediction.

The tension tightened until her back bowed, legs quaking as a sob worked free of her bared teeth. Her dark magic tore at their clothes, shredding fabric and tossing it away.

Her lilac blouse and his black, bloodstained shirt and trousers lay tangled in a heap. He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like approval as her release came crashing down in waves of scorching heat.

Her wordless keening sliced the air as he took what she gave him. Her moan followed his every swallow, demanding more. The orgasm shattered the last dregs of her denial.

The bond was unbreakable. She couldn’t see a way to sever it. If there were a way out of this, sex would still feel hollow. She wouldn’t feel as though she were too big for her body, too small for the height of the pleasure he wrought in her.

Her sob wasn’t entirely one of orgasmic bliss, but Ashton suckled and drank until her claws dug in to push him away. Her chest heaved, sweat and want cloaked her like a second skin as she rode her climax out.

As she shook, as she tried and failed to reel herself back in, Ashton muttered, mouth wet against her trembling inner thigh. “I know you need it to hurt, but you didn’t need training lessons to feel pain, Red... you could’ve just asked.”

His teeth sank into the sensitive skin. Her hips snapped as he drank a mouthful of her fiery blood. The pain of it was an electric shock that twined with the lightning in her veins.

The exquisite and ruinous pulling sensation dragged a low moan from the back of her throat. Her heavy-lidded eyes blinked, and he stood tall before her. Crowding her against the wall as his hands found her peaked breasts.

She knew she should stop him. Stop herself from giving in to this. Her body wouldn’t let her. The brand on her collarbone pulsed as she arched into his glacial touch.

Her demon whined, don’t you dare. That wasn’t enough. Stay, or I’ll take over. You won’t like that.

She swallowed hard, a lump in her throat as the two halves of her warred. The aching emptiness still cried out for more. Her feet remained rooted to the spot, wetness trickling down her inner thighs.

Her eyes darted, clocking the sheen of her own essence glazing his chin. He rolled her nipples between forefingers and thumbs, silver gaze recording her gasp. His voice slipped into her mind again.

Still want me to take it? I need to hear more than a gasp, Sweetheart.

Why? Most men just grabbed and fucked her when offered the chance. Took their own pleasure without caring for hers. Why did he need...

His cock pressed into her hip, hard and insistent. Colder than the death waiting for her when he betrayed her. She couldn’t answer; her shadows did it for her.

They wove around him, pulling him flush against her, his hands bracketing her waist. A tendril curled around his cock, making him laugh.

For once, he didn’t speak. He hoisted her up, her legs locking around his hips. The cold crown of him slid through the scald of her slippery cunt in an aggravating tease. She couldn’t stop the whimper that left her as her claws sank into his shoulders.

He grunted, pinning her between him and the body-warmed brick. With one hand fisted in her loose hair, the other disappeared from her sight as he lined himself up with her entrance.

The violence she’d expected earlier now came to life as he sank inside her in one ruthless grind. It shunted her up the wall. The rough texture abraded her scarred back.

Her howl echoed off the ceiling and harmonized his cursing. “Fuck, Red. You’re the first real thing I’ve felt in years.”

Lies. Total lies. She had died a hundred times. It never stuck. Now it could. The pain and pleasure battled inside her as his thick, cold length stretched her inner walls, engulfed in her molten cunt’s roasting grip.

Blood dripped down his back as her talons scored. Her eyes slammed shut as Ashton finally fucked her. The slow, rough drag of his cock against her tense flesh snatched a whine from her.

High-pitched and feral as he withdrew, almost all the way out before lunging back in. Something irreversible shattered inside her with each thrust.

Her shadows went wild. They spiralled along their arms, legs, torsos and refused to let either retreat. The gloating sound of her inner succubus drowned her sob out.

See little martyr? Why abstain from such pleasures when they’re offered so freely?

She didn’t bother replying. Her darkness hummed along with the voices in her arteries. Her hips rolled to meet him, breasts aching and heavy as she took it. His freezing breath was a cruel caress down the column of her neck.

She siphoned his pleasure, his groan as he felt the invisible pull liquefied her spine. Her mind flashed between revelling in it and rebuking it. Her magic and the void inside her snarled at the mere thought.

Her cunt convulsed around him like a live wire. Centuries of starvation still shrieked through her veins. Ashton’s moan vibrated against her jugular, fangs skating over the pulse she didn’t need but ached to give him.

“Fuck your shadows,” he snarled as her dark tendrils tightened their binds, hips snapping. His every withdrawal dragged frost from her walls, every plunge melted it to steam that reeked of her caramelized desperation. “Fuck your scars. You’re mine now. Scream it.”

Fire and ice spiralled down her torso. Tension and pressure rose to merge with it. Fast, too fast. Her breath came in hitched pants and choked moans. Sweat crystallised under his glacier chill, legs quivering around him.

Claws, hands clinging to his shoulders as rot bloomed in her chest. Locked in a wrought iron cage, she’d almost forgotten the festering thing she’d buried under glamor and stolen youth existed.

It unfurled tendrils through her ribs as his rhythm shattered, and his fangs at last breached her throat. The feed loop ignited. Her blood, black as pitch and hotter than magma, surged into him.

His cold ecstasy crashed into her in turn. Her glamor peeled back in sour pomegranate-scented ribbons. Her freckles scattered corpse-pale across her cheeks. She’d hidden them after Lisbon burned.

Her heart flew into her mouth as her claws warped. Brittle as sun bleached bones and weeping rust. Venom filled her mouth, wetness sluiced from her as his cock plunged into her again and again.

The skin of her temples thinned, a piercing pain shot through her skull as she fought to keep the horns buried. No, not like this. Never like this. She’d sworn it.

But worst of all? Her shadows whimpered, sticking to Ashton like they belonged there as pleasure annihilated her. His tongue swept over the wound before he lifted his head and stilled.

She yanked her glamor back up. He chuckled, grinding deeper as if to watch her eyes glow amber and violet. Any hope he hadn’t noticed her slip died the second he opened his mouth.

“There you are,” Silver eyes devoured every crack in her composure. “Funny. You only remember how to be human when you’re about to come.”

She growled, “I’ll fillet you—” He kissed her, swallowing her threat.

Her cunt clenched around him as he braced a hand on the wall beside her head and the other slipped between them. Frosted fingers found her clit without looking as though he’d always known her body.

She opened with a gasp for him. He tasted of her as his tongue slid along hers. He rocked into her and taunted her with butterfly swirls of his fingertips. The pressure within her kept building despite his shallow movements.

Tension and flame twisted in her core, drawing her skin too tight and making thought impossible. Fangs pierced her bottom lip, marking her more as she arched in a slow slide to force him to move.

His laugh tasted like hell as her shadow wound around his cock and urged him to fuck her too. She needed to come and leave before he ruined her in a way she’d never come back from.

She bit back a whine as he broke away. He stopped tormenting her clit, but his stillness ate at her firing nerves. Just filling her, erasing the ache of hunger, was all she could think about.

She’d laugh if it weren’t so pathetic. Five centuries of conquests, and this... this ridiculous runt-vampire with his perpetual smirk and ice-kissed hands reduced her to a shuddering, leaking wreck.

Ludicrous—all of this was ludicrous. She circled her hips to stir him inside her, inner walls clasped so tight around his cock she feared she’d never let him leave.

They always left. They always died. She always survived. He watched her as though he were putting a puzzle together.

He gave her one brutal thrust as he murmured, “You’re thinking again.” Another delicious lunge into her greedy cunt that made her shadows thrash. “Remembering every corpse you rode before me? Good. Let them watch. Maybe they’ll learn something.”

She raked her claws down his chest as he gave her what she wanted. He fucked her against the wall. Each thrust sealed her fate. Theirs.

The hand not braced on the wall found her clit again as the tension within her reached a new level of intensity. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her blood fired through her veins so fast her head spun. Exactly what he wanted.

His frost evaporated the moment it touched her overheated flesh. It crackled up her cervix, her shadows wailed as they fused with the hoarfrost wreathing up his spine.

His thrusts, his fingers pushing her to that edge, the frantic, feral beat of her heart—it all carved her deeper. Flaying lies she’d grafted to her bones.

I need no one. I want nothing. I am hunger made flesh.

He was a storm she couldn’t control, a tempest of mortal recklessness and newborn vampiric rage. Yet when he groaned her name, it sounded like a prayer older than her sins.

Her cunt flickered and clamped down on his cock as her second orgasm rose from the ashes of her many denials. She keened and whined, suffocating the noise as he was drinking it in.

He swirled clumsy fingers around her soaked, swollen clit, eyes narrowed and mouth not smiling for once.

“Scream,” he ordered, fangs stained with her black blood. The brand on her collarbone burned scarlet as his gaze dropped to it. “Scream, or I’ll fucking make you—”

His hips stuttered as his cock jumped inside her. She tasted his need to come as if it were hers. It just heightened everything. Her shadows slammed him into her. The tension snapped. The pressure turning her bones to dust imploded.

Their climaxes collided until she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. She came so hard her hips cracked. Body bowing as the orgasm hit like a wildfire meeting a glacier.

It was a cataclysm of steam and fury that scoured the earth clean and left a new world smoking in its wake. The freezing sensation of his spend marking her inside only made her cunt clasp him harder. A world she had stupidly invited in.

No refunds. Their bond was an Ouroboros of need: her shadows in his veins, his defiance in her throat.

It was a loop no god or monster could sever. It would kill her. He would kill her. He dragged her down onto the floor as she shuddered. Someone was whining. Someone was babbling in Russian... she only realized it was her when he kissed her and it stopped.

He rolled her under him as the aftershocks rattled and jumped under her limp. Legs still wrapped around his hips. She tolerated the kiss for a short time before she turned her head.

She hadn’t bitten him. She hadn’t stolen his life force. Only his pleasure. The succubitch stirred, and her eyes stung, heat spreading behind her cheekbones as she dared to open them.

Liora trembled beneath Ashton. Her body slick with sweat, blood and his spend, her own need. Her shadows still bound his throat and wrists, keeping them tethered even as she glared up at him.

Her cunt still fluttered, still held him in. His silver eyes glinted, triumphant, as his thumb wiped a drop of venom from her lip. Her inner demon purred, more.

She whimpered and shook her head, trying to shove her away. Her chest tingled, hyperaware of every inch of him pressing into her. His smirk returned, slanted and knowing. Her pulse was a rabbit caught in a snare.

His voice was a ruined rasp as he said, “Look at you. You’re still clenching.” He licked the venom off his thumb with a sigh of pleasure. “Five centuries and you’re still hungry. What is it you like to say? Pathetic.”

Liora hissed, shadows lashing his back, but he just leaned into the hurt. “Don’t. You’re a means to an end, nothing more.”

He laughed, hips rolling. He was still sheathed inside her. The needy sound that left the prison of her teeth cut her useless, hollow denial off.

“Liar. You’ve never been this full, have you?” His hand slid to her throat, possessive, as her darkness drew tauter. “Say it. You want more. You want to own me. To keep me.”

Liora tried to snarl, but her hips jerked. Her heart galloped, and the old familiar empty ache opened inside her again. Friction. She needed friction. He was rapidly hardening again.

Part of her wanted to vanish. The rest of her wanted to see this through to its bitter end. Her body wouldn’t let her lie, not as he ground deeper and her eyes fluttered.

She bit off the ends of the words as she spoke. “I want you dead.”

Ashton nipped her jaw, drawing blood and consuming it. He played dirty. That subsonic growl thrummed in the hollow of her throat. Weaving through her insides and resonating in the darkness it found.

“Same thing, Sweetheart.” He ground deeper, cock already hard and nudging that ruinous cluster of nerves high inside her. “You’re just too scared to say it”

Her mind screamed at her body to get up. It wouldn’t listen. Ashton was breathless, victory like an invisible dark crown atop his raven hair as he grabbed her and dragged her up.

His wintry tone slithered into her ear as her inner walls tightened around him. “God, you’re greedy.” His blunt human teeth tugged her earlobe. “Is overstimulation a thing for you? Rhetorical question.”

He flipped her onto her knees, manacles of ice pinning her wrists to the floor. And she didn’t fight it. She let him do it. Her stomach tensed and relaxed, a tremor shook her muscles.

All thoughts of control and self-preservation fled the building. More wetness joined the mess glossing her inner thighs. His voice dropped to a low, taunting tone.

“Let’s find out.”