21. …More

He fucked her slow. It was agonizing.

Every thrust was intentional, a gradual grind inside her tight cunt. Withdrawing with equal slowness just as she tensed.

Her heart wouldn’t calm down. Her claws curled into the fibres of the rug beneath her, knees abraded by it as Ashton moved within her.

Her shadows hovered, shivering and whispering, as she sank her teeth into her lip to keep from demanding he fuck her properly. But the tension inside her, the heat scouring her veins—it twisted and tightened.

It was a coiled spring, becoming tauter in increments. Sweat dappled her skin despite his frost-bitten hands gripping her hips.

Blunt nails carving her flesh. Wetness glossed her inner thighs and the sensual scent of want fragranced the air. Her first involuntary shudder rippled down her spine, arched like a steeple he’d assailed and toppled.

“There it is,” he said as he withdrew completely, and she smothered a whine at the denial of another orgasm. Her hips jerked, chasing the loss. “That’s the first crack in your foundation, Red. Let me hear it.”

“Fuck you,” she spat, voice rougher than the carpet under her.

He laughed. The sound laced through her nerves and pooled at the base of her spine.

“Already on it.” He slammed back into her in emphasis.

She choked on a sob, body bowing, teeth bared and gritted as her shadows went feral. They licked up the walls and the ceiling. Dark witnesses to the destruction of her. Her demon gloried in it.

His grunts and groans dropped like jewels into the bitch’s hands.

You brought this on yourself. Take it. Keep him. Ruin him. Take it all.

She didn’t have the mental capacity to rein her in. To shut her up. Ash taunted her with deep lunges of his cock. Her inner walls clasped around him to stop him from leaving again.

Her mind wheeled as he buried himself to the hilt and stilled. His hands slid down the steep slope of her back, frost spreading in their wake as she quivered. Hips rocking backward to steal the friction she needed.

She couldn’t stop the whimper that left her as his hand slid into her hair. Fingers hooked into the roots and pulled. Her head lifted, eyes screwed, limbs trembling as he tugged it again.

The creep of prickling pain that tingled over her scalp dragged another desperate sound from her. Heat was all she knew, despite the coldness of him splitting her cunt. The heat eclipsed it.

Her body rolled forward and back, trying and failing to make him move. Her entire being intently focused on the feel of his thick length filling her, stretching her. A second pulse pounded between her slick thighs.

He let go of her hair, and she slumped, face hidden in the musty rug. He dragged a finger down her spine. His icy touch eased the fever for a second.

“You want it? Say my name. Claim me,” he crooned, grinding deeper to watch her quake.

She shook her head, sweat dripping from her temples. Salt and musk and burnt sugar saturated the air. She had no escape from what he was doing to her. Only able to feel, drowning in it.

She snapped, “Never—”

“—Wrong answer.”

He moved. Fingers digging in mean, retreating from her taut clasp, then dragging her body back onto his cock. Settling so deep, he knocked the sense out of her. He picked up the pace, not fast, but enough that her dark tendrils clawed at the walls as the tension climbed too high.

The dim hallway became a battleground of her denials and his need to break them. His hand slipped from her hip, around her front, finding her clit as she keened. Frost nipped as his cruel fingertips swirled over her.

Every breath became a war as the pressure swelled. Her stomach tensed, cunt fluttering, trying to pull him deeper. The oxygen thinned as she gasped, and her release crested.

His fingers kept circling, cock hitting every spot she’d been denied for centuries. Just as the spring inside her coiled too tight, he stopped. His hand fell away from her. He massaged the plush flesh of her ass as she shook.

Her entire face scrunched up. Muscles locked and inner walls convulsed around him. She couldn’t stop the tremors. She couldn’t stop the disgruntled groan that snuck through her teeth.

“Your body is much more honest than your mouth, Red.” A shallow thrust inside her, her shadows yowled as her chest hitched. “It begs so prettily. It knows what it belongs to.”

She shook her head at his claim despite her cunt dripping from him. Liora had thought she’d known every facet of pleasure, but this...this was almost intolerable. Almost. She heard his smirk even if she didn’t see him.

“I’ll carve that smirk from your face and wear it like jewellery, leech.”

Her threat had all the venom of a hissing kitten. His voice entered her mind without invitation, and she had come too unraveled to stop another violation.

Go on. Threaten me. It only makes you wetter. You’ve always loved a good fight.

Frustration ate at the fine strands holding her sanity together. The ice chaining her wrists had long since melted, yet she made no move to take control.

Madness or indulgence, she didn’t know the difference. Doubted it mattered, the bond sang in her chest every time he sank inside her. It spoke louder than her mind.

Louder than him. His body blanketed her, hard and freezing as he pressed her into the abrasive rug. He spoke directly into her ear.

“You’d try to carve it off. But you like what it does to you.”

His arms slithered under her, banding around her chest before he hauled her up. She blinked, swaying at the abrupt change. With her back glued to his cool chest, his wintry hands palmed her peaked breasts.

Ice crackled around her nipples, shattering and melting as she arched and bolts of pleasure shot straight to her cunt. Making her clamp down on his cock. The angle had changed.

Disastrously so, she felt him in her stomach, in her bones. Her head snapped back against his shoulder, and a moan tore loose. A flush crept up her jaw and across her cheeks. Pathetic.

He didn’t think so. “That’s it. Take it. It’s yours anyway.”

Her response died in her mouth as his fist wrapped around her neck. A blizzard spread from his palm down her throat and along her collarbone, fingers pressing on the veins and cutting off the flow of blood.

She gave a choked gasp when he let up, and a golden, dizzying rush of euphoria obliterated the aches in her bones as she moved to help him fuck her.

Turning her into a barbarous, whining thing, claws anchored in his thighs between her straddling legs. His freezing, bergamot-soaked blood spilled over them and making her mouth water.

He moaned as her talons twisted deeper. His mental voice just wouldn’t leave her alone.

Your turn. Show me how a tyrant takes her due.

She snarled but obeyed. Her thighs quivered as she pushed up, the rough drag of his cock drawing a curse from her. She dropped back down. His murmur of her name only fed the wildfire roasting her alive inside.

His free hand slid down her torso, slow as a blade being drawn. Her shadows echoed her throaty cry as he teased her clit with featherlight strokes of his fingers, and she found a bouncing rhythm that sent her spiraling higher.

Her loose hair was damp with sweat, silken strands clinging to her neck as he swept it aside. His fangs jittered over her frantic pulse as she impaled herself on his cock again and again. Never quite breaking the skin.

She panted and sobbed as the tension built again. Skin tingling, chest heaving, and inner walls clenching tight. Every nudge of him as she bottomed out knocked the breath out of her.

It was both too much and not enough. He worked her into a frenzy of smoky darkness and suffocating heat. Gasping, aching, and cunt drenched for him. His rime evaporated before it could firm up and cool her down.

She was a ship without rudder or mast, aimless and adrift, amidst the swelling sea of scorching desire raging in and around her.

Her soul-stealing power stirred under the force of it, a surge of magic she hadn’t used in a long time. The sucking, invisible pull of it brushed the torn edges of Ashton’s. It was ragged.

Five years dead, still stinking with the dregs of his humanity. Still there for her to take, despite what the humans believed. A sharp lump formed in her throat. One breath.

It would take only a single breath, and she would own it.

He leaned forward until she saw him from her periphery, offering his stubbled mouth. “Go for it,” he dared, frost crackling in his veins. “Prove you don’t need me.”

She could take it. He wouldn’t feel a thing. It was a kiss she’d given to many. But the thought resonated in her mind like a warning.

She recoiled. Heart hammering and eyes closed. Shoving the power down, down, down.

“I thought so,” he said as the flare of her oldest magic faded.

His statement was an indictment she’d never get out of. She tried. Oh, she tried.

“It’s not worth the effort,” she said, tone buckling as tension and heat twined within her.

He cut off her air; the hand circling her clit alternated between that and pinching it incessantly as her inner walls constricted around him. Close, so close she tasted it like copper at the back of her mouth.

His gelid chuckle raised gooseflesh as it tip-toed down her neck. “Liar. You’re terrified of this.”

She hissed even as she slammed down, hips swirling without her command.

“Terrified? Of what? You—”

Another pinch made her arch and cry out, pleasure firing into every nerve and setting them all ablaze as he twitched inside her. Venom and essence saturated them both, like dry ice where their bodies joined.

“No. Of feeling something.” There was a treacherous pause as the tension threatened to snap her in two. “How many times did you wish for this? To be ruined by those not worthy of being in your bed?”

His fangs finally pierced her throat. It was a punishment, to rouse her even more. But his words were a key to a vault she’d sold. The full memory Barbatos had returned struck like a match.

Her plea to the stars months ago. The banker, yet another hollow feed. The rooftop. She’d been half drunk on despair and loneliness. Sick of it all.

It was a moment of weakness that had shamed her so thoroughly, she’d tracked down the cryptomancer the very next day. Now it came screaming back. The smirking constellations.

The stars and her shadows had laughed at her. The memory disintegrated as her stolen orgasm rose to claim her. She didn’t know if he’d seen inside her head.

She didn’t respond to his questions, too unsteady even to consider it. Reeling internally as she realized she’d asked for this. He held his tongue for once.

His frost scalded her thighs, a brand and a balm, as if winter itself had learned to fuck. The vulgar racket their bodies made filled her roaring ears.

She whimpered, pleasure singing through her veins. Venom dripped from her teeth, pooling on the hand squeezing her breast.

He lifted it to his mouth and licked it off, saying her name in a way that made her succubus purr. The demon’s voice was a mantra she’d heard a thousand times.

See, he’s made for us. He’s not afraid. Let him fill you.

She sensed the razor’s edge she was on. The climax that just might end her. Now they were bonded, he could truly kill her. The thought nagged.

There was only one solution to ensure she had some say in it. As she chased release, she did something she’d never confess aloud.

Liora regained some control the only way she knew. An invisible golden thread spun from her caged hummingbird heart to his cadaver one.

It intertwined with the bond; he wouldn’t notice it. Not yet, at least. Tying it tighter than her cunt as she clamped down on his cock.

She didn’t let herself think about what she was doing lest he hear it. He was too busy tormenting her. Her movements stuttered as her entire body clenched to prepare for the orgasm he’d denied her.

His hand relentless between her glistening thighs. So sensitive now, she flinched with every swipe across her clit.

Her mouth opened to scream or curse; she never found out. He lifted her off him before she could fly off the precipice and shatter herself.

She growled, inner muscles spasming, and her claws sliced his chest as he spun her around to face him. His grin was triumphant despite the black blood trickling from the wounds she’d inflicted.

Silver eyes fragmented and liquid. A real sob worked its way into the electrified air between them. She felt her fervent pulse in her marrow.

A second heartbeat that throbbed and sent waves of fire licking through her. She had very little control over herself as he brought her down onto his cock.

The grateful, raw moan she let loose only made his smile widen as she straddled his lap. Her shadows wound around him and her, urging him to let her come. In her head, she yelled; I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

She didn’t know why she bothered trying to refuse him. Another violation of her mind followed his chuckle.

You can try to hate me all you want, but your cunt doesn’t lie. It kisses me every time I pull away.

“Stop it. Just—stop thinking at me!” Her voice was ragged. She didn’t recognize it.

Her words were followed by her glamor failing. Freckles and scales surged forth and crawled up her neck. Hair flashing between copper and void tendrils. Shadowy horns flickered on her temples, not surfacing yet, but close.

Ashton reveled in it. Eyes wide, reverent, and recording every crack in her composure

“That’s it. The real you. The monstrous, magnificent creature hiding under all the lies. Let me see her.”

Now he was the liar. She was rotten. She was ruin. Monster. She veiled herself in patches, the glamor slow to cloak her from his glittering gaze.

His face was thunderous as she gained control of it. Her response to his claims felt more like a surrender than anything else as he held her still, glacial hands bruising and ending the tiny shifts of her hips.

“I’m not... I’m not magnificent. I’m a rotting cancer.”

His voice dropped to a low, vicious, worshipful whisper that hurt more than a blade or his fangs ever could. Her head shook even before he finished.

“You’re not rotten, Liora. You’re distilling.” Her throat closed, body undulating as she avoided his piercing eyes. “You’ve been storing all this power, all this pain, for centuries. Just waiting for someone strong enough to bottle the lightning and drink the storm.”

Her demon sighed, drunk on him. No thrall, no fear, just claret-soaked defiance.

He speaks the truth, sweetling. Listen to him.

But she couldn’t. History was too thick. Too long. The evidence that spoke otherwise tried to flood her mind, but she wasn’t ready for him to see it. She would never be ready to relive it through his eyes.

Her inner walls still gripped him like they wanted to milk him. The urge to move, to banish the ache caused by his stillness, was primal.

Impossible to ignore. He looked like he wanted to convince her. Something on her face must’ve stopped him from yanking at the barbed thread of her monstrosity.

Whatever it was, she was grateful for it. Sweat trickled between her breasts, every inch of her aflame in a pyre of her own making. The brand on her collarbone burned scarlet as he offered her a deal.

“If you admit you want this. Want me—I’ll let you come. That’s all you have to do.”

Her hips ground down, seeking friction as her jaw rippled. “Never.”

His expression turned dangerous, and her stomach dropped. She had the sudden notion she should beg for mercy. Proven right when his lethal tone cut through her panicked, lust-addled thoughts.

“Let’s see how long you last, then.”

She should’ve taken that for the threat it was. He helped her fuck him. Frost and fire. Control and chaos. He edged her for hours. Hours.

If she snarled, he slowed her down. Teasing her with shallow strokes of his cock as she tensed and mewled in frustration.

If she thrashed, he grabbed her hips and held her trapped, buried deep. Not allowing her the friction she needed.

He’d murmur, “beg,” gelid lips grazing her collarbone. Repeating the move until her shadows begged for her.

When she lied, he helped her drive him hard and fast, hitting that spot that sent her into a tailspin. But he didn’t touch her clit. Wouldn’t let her do it either. On and on it went.

Until her bones filled with hot water, until her shadows scratched glyphs into the wood floor, and her talons tore at his shoulders. She lost count of how many orgasms he refused to give her.

She lost count of her moans and his groans. His pervasive chill only heightened the chaotic and destructive pleasure and pressure stealing her wits.

“Why won’t you just—just take it and be done?” She asked at one point, hardly able to think around the incredible, obliterating climax he withheld from her.

Every touch of his icy hands on her oversensitive flesh was a jolt of adrenaline to her overwhelmed system.

He moved with her, slow and deliberate, his other hand slipping between her legs, fingers frozen and cruel as they swiped over her clit.

It sent waves of violent pleasure crashing inside her. His response both gutted her and sharpened her torment.

“I don’t want your submission. I want your surrender. There’s a difference. One is given, the other is won.”

The aftershocks of her last failed release still jumped on her nerves. Her inner walls fluttered so wildly she worried it was permanent. The air thickened, clogged with bergamot and burnt sugar.

Her humid arousal was a smothering veil. Her lungs squeezed as their supply of oxygen thinned.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think—lost in sweat and a tidal wave of sensation that would sweep her away once it hit her. She took it anyway. Lust, a lead weight in her belly, eyes bleary from its intoxicating influence.

She gaped, grinding down, gasping and tensing herself. Her voice held no real demand. It was a fractured, threadbare whisper stripped of all armour. And she barely heard it over the crash of blood rushing in her ears.

“Stop...

please. Stop playing.”

Only raw nerves, unrelenting need, and utter delirium composed her, making everything seem dreamlike.

He kissed her fast, harsh. Over before she could think twice. Her head slumped, hair drenched with sweat as his hand threaded into it and forced her to look at him.

“Tell me, Red. What do you need? If you won’t claim me yet, at least tell me that.”

Her chest filled with fire, tightening and cracking, smoke in her mouth as her body shuddered. Her darkness calmed and lapped around their bodies.

Her succubus held her breath. They were waiting for an answer, too. The need to come was all she had. Every part of her throbbed and thrummed. Every thrust up that met her sinuous slide down was a lightning strike.

His cock claiming her cunt like he’d claimed her. Why had she allowed it? It was a phantom pain in her ribs.

She didn’t mean to say it. A furious tear clung to the fringe of her lashes. The word, the splintered plea, slipped out anyway. “...

More.”

Ashton let out a feral, triumphant sound. It was part groan, mostly laugh. It resounded between her thighs, a jolt of electricity straight to her clit.

“Finally. The truth. Good demon.”

He kept his word. He gave it to her, unleashed it. The pace became punishing. His hands did all the work as he lifted and brought her down, hips snapping into her. The vulgar noises they created were the chorus to her breaking.

Her breath serrated her throat, and a frenetic energy ran rampant through her muscles. Her eyes rolled back, his voice urged her along. Tension coiled and coiled. How it could tighten more, she didn’t know.

She was out of control as logic fled. She thrashed, shadows like geysers as they peeled away from the walls. Twirling and coalescing into something monstrous.

They wound his wrists and slipped around her waist as his arctic power spread higher. Liquid flame simmered and trickled down her abdomen.

It ached there, and every stroke of his cock only drove her wilder. Her mind emptied, heart racing so fast her head grew light as he pushed her to an edge that sliced her in two.

Even her hair seemed too sensitive. The whisper of his breath and the draught slinking through the hall were more like a rough hand skidding over her overheated flesh.

His voice strained as he said, “This—This is what you are, Liora.” Every word landed like a physical blow. “You’re not a monster, or a saint. You’re need. Pure, undiluted, divine need.”

A shiver, dosed with a pleasure so weighty it stung, danced down her bowed spine. Her clawless fingers slid around her swollen clit in focused sweeps.

She didn’t have time to gird herself before the orgasm hammered into her. She thought he’d killed her.

Her scream started out silent, then out came his name without insults or pet names—just, Ashton!—it was a shockwave of sound that pummelled into the wards.

They trembled to contain it. Her demon howled as it tore through her like a black sun devouring its twin.

It was a corona of teeth and silk. Her veins mapped constellations gone supernova. She became the void between stars.

Hungry, infinite, blaspheming the night with its own darkness.

Liar. False poet. Monster. M

—words failed her as her mind went blessedly blank and Ashton came with a snarl of her name.

She collapsed against his chest, boneless and exhausted, cunt grasping and draining his cock for all it was worth. Face hidden in his neck as his shaking hands smoothed down her back before gliding back up.

Feeling every thrill that ran through her, tracing every scar as her dark magic formed a cage around them. Blotting out the world and braceleting his wrists as her leaden body refused to move.

His cold skin warmed to her temperature as she panted and quaked. He didn’t speak. His fingers found her hair and gave it a gentle tug.

She reluctantly allowed it, meeting his gaze with a bravery she didn’t yet possess. She wanted to find a place to hide, to pretend this hadn’t happened.

She stayed, doubting her legs would work if she tried to run now. Lip curled and daring him to taunt her. He didn’t.

His mercurial eyes locked onto her thumping pulse. She whimpered, still clenching around his spent cock as his teeth sank into her throat. The sharp sting of his bite only fuelled the pleasure wracking her.

When he fed from her, it did not feel like selfish consumption. It had changed into something else. Communion, her shadows anointing him the priest of her apocalypse.

His fangs burrowed deep as her claws sliced his shoulders, drinking her down and making her toes curl.

Her shallow breathing worsened as he groaned, the sound shivering along her clavicle and crumbling her bones. She almost couldn’t withstand it.

A feral need, sharp, irresistible, and undeniable, overtook her. The scent of his blood, of bergamot and every bad dream she’d ever had, was a siren’s call she was too unraveled to resist.

Her mouth was on his shoulder, obsidian fangs sinking into the flesh her claws had torn and her shadows had sutured. His blood, a frozen storm of power and memory, flooded her mouth.

It was a violation of her own rules. Another taste of the very dependency she swore to avoid. She drank, but it wasn’t the claim he wanted. It was a capitulation to the hunger he’d stoked to an inferno.

A dark, victorious moan rattled his chest against hers. Her thighs trembled, body glazed with sweat.

Got her. The thought was his alone. It was an exultant cry she didn’t hear.

She sensed it in the possessive way his arms fastened around her. Holding her to the source of her own undoing. The new, unsettling sensation of fullness kept her demon silent.

She pushed the thought aside, not ready to face that truth. Undetectable to all except her, the VII seared scarlet, burning as the eighth notch bled into the seventh.