22. Karma Is the Guy Wrapped Around Me

She fell asleep with her teeth in his shoulder. Ash chuckled silently as she went limp. A deadweight sprawled atop him.

He remained buried inside her. She was in a mess. Swollen, shimmering with venom and wetness. His mouth watered. Feeling stronger than he had in years.

She looked better than she ever had in the time he’d known her. Her curves had softened the sharp angles of her hips. Her breasts were fuller. He breathed a short laugh and slid his arm under the backs of her thighs.

He hooked it behind her knees and sat up. Hoisting her up with him. He carefully climbed onto his feet. Her claws had locked together at his nape.

She burrowed closer to his chest. Chasing his chill. His smirk was smug as he carried her to what he assumed was her bedroom. Even her shadows coiled around him like a cloak, lazy as sunbathing cats.

Her body and magic claimed him even as her mouth refused to. She’d say it one day, he told himself, even as the human part of him wondered if he was delusional. He breathed her in.

Her burnt-sugar scent layered with snow-dusted citrus calmed his busy mind. His and hers, no end and no beginning. He’d sipped from the veins of humans and monsters; none of them burned like her.

Her blood was a baptism of fire every time he drank it. Still, he craved her more. He still tasted her need, the orgasm she’d dripped on his tongue. Between her powerful thighs, she was... honey, smoke, and salt.

Sliding down the back of his throat and onto the front of his mind. The dark room was empty apart from the bed and a pile of luggage he assumed her shadows had dropped at some point. He spied his stuff among hers.

He aimed for the bed. He tried to set her down, but she clung. His smirk fell off his face. There was a sharp sting in his lifeless heart, throat tightening as he studied her. She appeared so much younger while asleep.

The worry lines had smoothed out. Mouth parted slightly. Lips swollen from chewing them or kissing him. She had the chance to take his soul.

She hadn’t. He didn’t know he still had one until he felt the pull it had. Would he have just been a zombie? A walking ghost with no mind or life of his own. Only the one she gave him?

But she hadn’t taken it. He’d made her feel so much that she couldn’t do it.

That’s the problem. She doesn’t want to feel. She wants to hide. To survive at any cost.

They were one and the same in that regard. He lay down with her. Hoping to sneak out before she woke in the morning. Her exhaustion still marred her under eyes. The orgasm had stolen her under before she finished drinking from him.

He’d known. For a while now, he’d known no one had ever put her first—put her pleasure first. In all her tales about the others, the conquests, the Kings, and betrayers, it was always about what they did.

What they felt and took and stole. Nothing about what she got from it. Except for the power, the endless supply of pain she carried that came out as fury when he pushed her boundaries too far.

He’d slowly put it together as they’d trained. She’d starved for centuries, never taking enough to sate herself. Only enough to survive.

And now, she was terrified of the feast he offered her. This thing with Liora had started so he could ensure he wouldn’t get caught again. He wouldn’t have to die on a lab table, dissected in the quest for mortal glory.

He didn’t have a clue what would happen after this. He sank into the mattress, ignoring the dust adhering to his skin. The stale scent the sheets carried.

Silk again. Figured. His eyes grew heavy; the bruised light of dawn pressed against the curtains. He froze them shut.

The magic had returned to full power again. Her shadows filled the cracks as if they too knew she needed to rest and wouldn’t if she caught sight of daylight.

Ash sighed softly, letting himself drift. He didn’t plan on falling asleep, but it turned out planning your own demise, watching your demon slaughter people for you, and then fucking her all night really took it out of a vampire.

His last thought lingered until oblivion took him; she’d eviscerate him for this.

Good. Means she’s still fighting. Still trying to live...

The dream, the memory, faded like steam on a winter’s night. The other, the only other succubus—what was her name... Maya? No.

She couldn’t snatch the name from the smothering fog of a dead sleep. Just saw her and her chestnut hair bolting away after Liora informed her of the rules of her new existence.

Rules she’d never followed herself. The most important one: No starving yourself for centuries or your magic will force you into heat.

Feed and feed well to remain in control of it. Clean up after yourself and don’t upset the Balance.

The heat thing was a myth. A lie she told to fledglings to ensure they didn’t suffer the same fate she had brought upon herself.

It was murky now. Decades had passed. She hadn’t seen the woman since. The memory seemed significant. Possibly an omen, maybe, but something else made itself known.

Cold. That was the first thing that set her pulse racing. Under her hands, against her chest, and beneath her sore thigh slung across a rock-hard torso—cold and familiar.

She held her breath, mind screaming at her to flee. Waking up alone was her number one rule. Don’t stay until morning. Too risky.

Too... vulnerable. The word she thought she’d erased from her lexicon. She didn’t dare open her eyes. They flickered rapidly behind her eyelids as she tried to get her bearings.

Silk lay under her, musty with disuse and years of being away. The heavy cover draped her to her waist, a weight that felt much more significant than it should.

The slick ache between her thighs only made it worse. Her ragged inhale was almost silent as she cracked open an eye.

Shades of greige painted the dim room, and her languid shadows dripped from the walls. The massive bed felt more like a jail cell as she risked a look at the sleeping vampire.

Bergamot, blood, pomegranate, and burnt sugar. She couldn’t tell if the scent came from her or him, if it even mattered now as the changed brand on her collarbone flared hot.

No, this wasn’t supposed to—her heart spasmed, sending a lick of pain through her ribs. Lungs emptied themselves of air as she started shaking.

Get up. Now. Before you wake him.

Her mind hissed. But she was too tightly tangled with him.

She spoke with her shadows in her mind, Take me away.

They stilled. Silent and accusing as she glared at them. The inner diatribe began.

Pathetic. You are ancient. He is a child. Break his arm and be done with it.

But the command rang hollow. The demon who would have done it without a second thought was... quiet. Sated for a change. Purring like a contented kitten at the heart of the storm Ashton had provided.

Fuck. How could she let this happen? Stupid. She was older than most beasts that roamed this earth, well versed in this field, yet she was still making the very mistakes she’d vowed to avoid. Her gaze fell on his wrist, draped over her.

Eyes avoiding the marks her teeth had left on his shoulder. Only to discover something that set her entire world off its axis. Everything inside her froze and went silent as a wounded whine scratched up her throat.

She trapped it behind her teeth as she stared and stared at his wrist.

Where the bandage had been that day, she discovered she could only feed on him; a pattern lay etched into his skin. Silvered and shimmering, so finely wrought she hadn’t noticed it last night.

A tremor ran through her fingers, and a chill snaked down her spine. It was no crude tattoo etched in mortal ink. It was something deeper, as if her venom had engraved itself into his very essence.

Her VII gazed back at her.

It appeared fractured, as if viewed through shattered ice.

Thorns wrapped around it, some sharp and dark, others faded like old scars. One had already fallen away, leaving only a ghost of itself behind.

She forgot how to breathe. How to be as she peered at it without blinking. Eyes burning and throat thickening to the point of pain as her shadows reacted to her distress.

They flailed and curled close. She begged them.

Begged them as the impulse to bolt without waking him obliterated all else.

Get me out. Please. Get me out.

They murmured, where? There’s nowhere left to run.

She held back a snarl and waited. And waited. Her jaw rippled, lip wobbling as her chest ached like some God had clamped her in a press and was gradually tightening it.

Bones crushed to dust as she lay there, trapped. She had to find somewhere to think without his presence polluting it. She gave one last order, inhaling when they acted. Cloaking her in a shifting veil of darkness.

Fine. The bathroom. Just get me out of here.

They hummed and enveloped her, dissolving her into them. Frozen tiles bit at her bare feet. The chilly air was a shock against her fevered skin. Her limbs leaden and sore as she swayed.

She didn’t open the window shutters. She fumbled for the light switch, hissing as it roasted her sensitive eyes. A layer of dust and cobwebs covered the sunken tub built into the white tiles.

She waved a hand over it. Lightning scoured across the grime and destroyed it. It seemed more focused. Sharper than the magic had ever been.

Her hand dropped to her chest as she felt her magic bubbling within the well inside her. It seemed all of it had honed to a scalpel while she slept.

Her veins sang with stolen vitality.

His vitality—cloying and arctic and wrongwrongwrong. Yet her lungs didn’t burn.

None of her burned. It... thrived. Something she’d long since beaten into submission had broken out of her carefully crafted cage. The prison she’d constructed to keep herself and her hunger in check.

Gone.

She almost slid to the floor in a heap of bruised, scarred skin, and mussed copper hair. Her shadows flew faster and more sinuously than usual. Her mind howled as her trembling fingers mapped her face.

Even it had changed. The bond crackled with frost-fire heat. She’d never. She’d never experienced the wealth of pleasure she’d had last night. Dangerous. She almost whimpered as she kept touching her face.

The architecture was there. Her sharp cheekbones, sinful, full mouth, the eyes that had watched empires return to dust...it was her face but undone.

Lips swollen, bruised from his kiss. From her own teeth. And the venom had dried to a subtle shimmer on her chin, she didn’t need mirrors to see it.

She’d long since culled them from her life. All of it was a physical manifestation of her own fractured control.

She was a star exploding, super-luminous, and crammed into a matchstick body. She sank to her knees as her dark tendrils drew her a bath. Clearly, thinking her incapable as she understood what was happening.

His essence shimmered under her skin as it re-wrote her cells, just like hers had in him.

One word, one horrific word, echoed in her head, full.

Her claws unsheathed, she gazed at them like she’d once gazed at the flames and demanded vengeance from those who thought to sacrifice her. She flexed them, clean for once, and quivering.

No ash or blood. The faintest glitter of his frost webbing between her fingers was all there was. Serrated and precise, they’d slice through bone with the slightest bit of pressure.

Her shoulders curved inward, elbows tied tight to her sides, and belly rolling. Oh, Gods. Her old mantra ran through her mind, but it was worthless now.

I am hunger made flesh. I am hunger made flesh. I am hunger made flesh.

Her blood went cold. She almost flinched, tongue curdling in her mouth as if she’d licked a battery, a sinkhole replacing her sternum. She dragged in a jagged inhale, then rose and stumbled into the half-filled bath.

Steaming, scalding water lapped at her calves as she sank into it, pulling her knees up to her chest. And rested her chin on top of them. Even her body had changed.

Five centuries of starvation had honed her into a straight-razor. She was all edges, no sheath. Just a weapon, not a woman.

Her glamor’s luscious curves were cobwebs over a crypt, pretty lies spun to lure moths to her godforsaken flame.

Until now.

Now, with his cursed blood simmering in her gut, heavy as ichor and twice as wretched, she felt...

Whole.

Lifetimes of hunger had been her compass. Her cage. Now it was gone, and the silence it left behind was a riot of strangled screams and the promise of unrivalled violence.

A shudder ripped through her. The hair on her nape lifted, a chill stiffening her spine as though someone had walked over her grave.

Her shadows surged, blacker and hungrier, their edges bleeding into the air like spilled ink. Her heart raced, pounding in her ears and deafening her, a war drum urging her to rend, devour, ruin.

She blinked, rapid flutters of her lashes as if trying to wake herself up.

This wasn’t... this was complete satiation. Powerful, esurient.

Now she’d always crave more. Her breath wouldn’t stay in. It wouldn’t go down her throat. It just rubbed it raw. All of her magic reared up inside her.

A mere suggestion, a tiny tick of her eye, was all it would take, and one would act for her.

She just stared as a clamour of voices she’d long since destroyed filled her mind. She bit down on the inside of her cheek until the skin gave and blood glossed her tongue.

It didn’t help. It tasted like him.

Liora picked up the bar of freesia soap her shadows had dumped on the tub’s cream edge. At least there were no mirrors to reflect her shame back at her as she scrubbed herself raw.

Scrubbed until her skin glowed pink and even that teeny-tiny part of her that hadn’t wanted to leave the cathedral of Ashton’s body finally shut up.

He woke up in an empty bed. Hand reaching for a warmth that had fled while he slept. The rumpled silk only carried the specter of her scent.

The space beside him was cold, even for him. He swallowed a sigh, rubbing a hand over his eyes before falling still.

Where would she have bolted now? How far would he have to chase her? A sinking sensation in his dead gut weighed him down. For a moment, he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

The silence didn’t feel like just silence; it was an accusation. One he anticipated but stupidly hoped wouldn’t come to pass. His ears strained, tuning out the sound of the city below.

He heard water splashing down the hall. Something deep inside his chest loosened at the sound. The bond felt more tangible now.

It thrummed with warmth. His muscles drained out the tension waking alone had brought him.

The bathroom. The corners of his mouth furrowed. Of course.

She hadn’t run. Not all the way, at least, progress. For a monster born from betrayal and loneliness like her, this was a tectonic shift. One she wouldn’t be handling well.

Taunts and sex wouldn’t get him out of this.

But he didn’t want them to. His eyes flicked to the VII on his wrist. He hadn’t even allowed himself to think about it since it had appeared. He’d have to hide it again.

He doubted she’d noticed it the night before. That was a battle for another time. Hopefully, a century from now. He rose, every movement deliberately controlled.

Silent as a ghost as he found his bags dumped on the floor. He hunted through them until he found his jeans and pulled them on. Even the rough glide of the denim seemed like a cymbal crash in the silence.

He soon dragged a long-sleeved black shirt over his talon-tousled head. The water was running in the bathroom again. She hadn’t heard him. He straightened and left the bedroom. He was no longer the smug vampire who had fucked her on the rug hours before.

He was the hunter who had just found the one thing worth keeping.

Trickling sounds and her shadows leaked under the door as he paused outside the bathroom. He didn’t knock. He couldn’t force her out this time. Her darkness watched him.

He lifted his index finger to his smirk-free lips and mentally pleaded with them, don’t tell her I’m here. I won’t hurt her. I swear it.

Their fluid forms paused, taking his measure. Then one smokey tendril gave a motion like a nod, and they slithered back under the door. To her.

Ash leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, listening to the shaky rhythm of her breath on the other side. The drumming of her war-torn heart.

He smelled salt. It wasn’t bath salts like normal. Tears. Blended with the unmistakable scent of sex still staining the hall.

He catalogued the claw marks on the wood floor, the splotches of black blood drying to tar mixed with opalescent venom. She all but panted behind that thin piece of wood.

One kick. One swift blow, he could see it for himself.

His jaw tightened until it creaked. No, this wasn’t what he wanted. He never wanted her broken.

He wanted her awake. And she was.

Just not in the way he had foreseen. He’d expected fire and fury, shadows and spite. For her to send him hurtling through a window just to prove she could. And he’d let her. He knew what the rage meant now.

She had mountains of hurt and emptiness from a past much larger than her to exorcise. Violence was never just violence.

Even for monsters. He waited. Patient as the willow in his mother’s garden, he remembered vividly even now.

The past always bit when he let his arrogant armor drop. Nipping at his neck as if he could change any of it. But he could only change the now. What came next?

Liora. He didn’t keep track of how long it took for the clatter of feet and the slosh of water to signal her leaving the tub. He waited another handful of torturous minutes as she gained control of her breathing.

It slowed to a shallow but steady pace, and the tension in his shoulders bled out. When she finally opened the door, wrapped in a towel and her shadows, her eyes were red-rimmed but piercing.

And defiant, like always. Floral soap tried to cover up their merged scents, but it was fighting a losing battle.

He was ingrained too deep. She came to a stuttering halt as she saw him standing there.

Her back went rigid. Her mouth firmed, and her darkness coiled closer to her.

A few tendrils snuck to him, clinging to the hems of his jeans. He didn’t smile or tease.

Ash didn’t reach for her even though his hands itched to do it. To shake the glassy shine off her wounded eyes. He held it back.

He just looked at her. Really looked. His observations as he put her to bed earlier came roaring back. She glowed.

The full power of her succubus magic now showed her as the creature of seduction and pleasure she always should’ve been.

And she didn’t know what to do with it. Petrified, he felt her fear as if it were his own. Her crooked pinky quaked as she clutched the towel to her chest.

His hand moved to reach for her. He caught it before she noticed, curled it into a fist and slid it behind his back. He wanted to see her in all her glory. Horns, scales, and whatever else she hid beneath the glamor.

Soon, he swore to himself, careful to keep it from slipping into her mind. Her mental walls were shaky but back in place. He heard nothing from her.

He said, voice low, stripped of all mockery, “You feel it too.”

His statement hung like an unraveling noose over them. The air between them hummed, static sparking against his cold skin. She said nothing. She didn’t have to.

He saw it—the same realization in her that seared in him.

Their game was no longer a game. Neither could deny it now.

This was a claiming.

The art of war was still violent. A drawn-out, bloody, brutal fight. And he’d chosen her as his hill to die on.

For better or worse. For her, he’d hold the line.