26. Fan Me Off (Heated Surrender)

Liora stirred, the fog of a dead sleep clinging to her like a shroud. Only twice in the last century had she slept so soundly. Both times in this bed. With him. The thought didn’t sink its teeth in.

Her mind resembled congealed porridge, where every thought was hazy and ephemeral. Cold radiated against the forge of her back, Ash’s chest pressed to her spine. His arm was a vise around her waist.

She froze. Déjà vu slapped her. Not again. She should’ve left before the dawn broke. She shouldn’t have closed her eyes in the bath.

The sheets had tangled around their legs, the slippery fabric sticking to her damp skin. Something scalding wove through her insides as she lay there and cursed herself.

This is shameful, Liora. You let him carry you to bed. You let him hold you. And he has your true name. Remember this when he cages you.

She was pathetic, weak, and foolish. But her body stayed where it was. Her shadows wreathed around them both and didn’t appear worried.

Her heartbeat galloped. It was a stallion, whipped and set loose. Oh, gods. He was too close.

She was too close. His cold had seeped into her bones and helped to soothe the ever-rising heat within her.

It thrummed at a low simmer. What was wrong with her?

Why did she feel so adrift? Something inside her had shifted. Her fault or his?

Both. You’ll never cut him out now.

Her mind hissed.

You don’t want to, do you? You can’t.

The litany of self-loathing had begun right on time, sharpened by the ache between her thighs. Last night’s battle...the fight, the stabbing, the bath. It all flashed behind her eyes.

His hands scrubbed blood from her skin. His voice stripped of all its usual parody:

You’re precious.

She tensed, listening for any sign he was awake. He had wrapped around her like a chain, so she couldn’t turn her head to check.

Ash’s breath feathered her nape. His cock, hard and insistent, nestled against her thigh. He was asleep.

She risked a short exhale. The hollow, liquid ache inside her honed to a razor’s edge. Heat bubbled up under her skin. What was happening?

Her mind drifted back to the last time they’d fucked. How he’d made her body howl.

No. Stop it. He’s dangerous. He’s a crutch.

But her hips shifted, just a tremor, and his arm tightened.

Scent analysis: ozone, bergamot, burnt sugar, and saffron. Arousal confirmed (91%). Hostility threshold: moderate. Proceed with caution.

His lips brushed her shoulder. “You’re thinking loud enough to wake the dead, Red.”

She stiffened. “And you’re suffocating me.”

His laugh vibrated against her spine. “Funny. Your pulse says otherwise.”

“I’m imagining stabbing you.”

“Liar.” His hand slid down her stomach, deliberate as he could. “But don’t worry, this will speak your truth.”

His fingers found her wet. Predictable.

She snarled, shadows lashing. “Touch me and lose the hand.”

“You’ll have to catch it first.” He circled her clit, torturously slow. “Starting to think you like losing.”

Her hips jerked as he taunted her. “I’ll cut a cunt from your—” He withdrew. She quivered, whimpering and gasping. Hips rolling, thighs rubbing together. Fuck, he hadn’t expected this when she woke.

He’d expected more running. His own arousal honed to a knifepoint in answer to hers. He ground himself against her. She whined.

“Leech—”

“Try honesty.” His teeth grazed her shoulder. “It’s refreshing.”

She hissed. “I want you to stop.”

“Another lie.” He thrust two fingers inside her, curling just so. Thumb circling her clit. “Your body’s shit at bluffing.”

Her cunt was tight around his hand. Scorching hot. Hotter than normal. Her whole body was a good ten degrees warmer than it usually was. He filed it away.

Maybe their conversation last night and her injury had something to do with it. He didn’t know, just kept touching her. Adding a third finger as she rocked into his hand.

He realized too late that she’d been on the brink from the moment he woke. Her thighs were already drenched. It took only a few moments.

She came in a sharp, silent burst as his thumb pressed against that tiny cluster of nerves. Back arching, claws shredding the sheets as she hid her face in the pillow.

Ash chuckled, pulling his hand free of her taut, flickering grip. Licking her essence from his fingers, savouring her salt, honey, and smoke flavor.

“One for me. If you want more, ask, and stop lying. We’re past that now.”

Liora trembled, thighs clenched together as the aftershocks of her too-quick orgasm burst like hot coals under her skin. His statement resonated like a death knell, but its clang died out as her body wouldn’t cool down.

A restlessness settled in her as she tried to calm herself. She dragged in a lungful of burnt sugar and iced-citrus hazed air. It did nothing to help her one-track mind.

Sex was the only thing her brain seemed capable of focusing on. She shook her head. No. Not now. She needed to move. To clean.

She needed to sort herself out, reorder her thoughts. And put some space between them.

Even if only for a little while. Ash seemed to sense the tightrope was on, and he kissed her sweaty neck.

“Ask me later, then. Go.” A horrible pause that made her want to stay right there, tangled up with him. “Run if you need to.”

She growled at the understanding in his voice. As if he knew her inside out.

He does. He learned us, the voice in her veins muttered.

“Shut up. Just... shut up.” She hadn’t meant it for him, but she let him think it was.

For once, he listened. Whether it was her order or the fraying, the guttural tone of her voice—he listened. He stretched, arms above his head, naked, hard, and shameless as he winked at her.

The heat twisted inside her, but the release he’d given her helped her beat it down a bit more. Strange.

She hadn’t experienced this before. Was she getting sick?

Had his mortality destroyed her immunity to such things?

She would pluck out his hair strand by strand if so.

Get up, she ordered herself.

Her muscles were jelly, but firmed up enough to move. Liora threw back the covers, loosing a sigh as the chilled air hit her blazing flesh.

Back tensing and claws twitching, she rose on watery legs. Snatching the first items of clothing her shaking hands could find from the open suitcase on the floor. She left Ash in her bed and sought sanctuary in the bathroom.

It wasn’t until she locked the door and stared at the drained tub that she realized safety had fled even here. Her sliced-up leathers and his bloodstained clothes lay crumpled on the floor. The room felt more like a crucible now.

She bit her lip and dove into the walk-in shower. The freezing tiles warmed the instant her feet touched them. The frosted glass didn’t steam as she turned the water on to the coldest setting it would go.

She stood under it for an indeterminate amount of time, but it only cooled the surface. The wildfire still roiled beneath it. She washed herself down as quickly as possible and got out, dressing without drying herself.

Her leggings clung unpleasantly, and she buttoned her shirt wrong. It was light enough not to worsen the fever. Was it a fever?

Everything seemed dreamlike. Her dark tendrils fluttered around her as she braided her hair into a single cable that hung down her back. Wet hair dampened her shirt as she brushed her teeth and rinsed her mouth.

His taste was still on her tongue. Liora tried not to savor it as she left the room and went to the kitchen. The small area seemed to grow smaller as she took it in.

Before Ash, she could not recall being here. Not for years, at least. She pulled open a cabinet.

The hinges creaked, cobwebs decorated the shelves full of glassware, and grabbed a dusty tumbler. She frowned at it and then at the rest of the room.

Years had passed with no one cleaning the obsidian counters. More dust and other debris coated them in a thick layer. She drew a finger through it, and her lip curled at the black fuzz coating her skin.

Clean. She had wanted to clean. She moved to the stained sink and opened the cupboard beneath it. An array of filthy cleaning products and a stack of old cloths greeted her.

She huffed and hauled it all out. Her shadows tried to help; she repressed them. Giving them an order to stand down. They sank back like scolded dogs as Liora turned on the tap and rinsed a cloth under the icy stream of water.

She scrubbed the sink clean and filled it with soapy water before she attacked the counters. Her movements weren’t of her usual fluid grace. She was a blade, honed to over-precision.

Ash traipsed in as she washed the grimy dishes by hand and came to a halt. His silver eyes tracked her every shallow breath. Brow arched as the scent of citrus and bleach saturated the air.

“I thought your shadows took care of this? Didn’t think you’d play the maid,” he joked, tone like a calloused hand stroking down her arched spine.

Her legs weakened as she rinsed the last glass off and filled it with cold water. Downing half of it to punish the demon and fire twisting in her core.

“I didn’t think l’d end up playing house with a vampire, so I suppose we’ve both got a lot to get used to,” she said, muttering.

He laughed and said, “Need a hand?”

Why did his laughter melt like a caress against the cradle of her skull? She shook her head. No.

Stay away. I don’t know what I’ll do if you come

—she cut her mind off.

“No. Just stay out of the way and I’ll let you keep your head another day.”

He scanned her, mouth grinning as she put the dishes away, slamming the cupboard doors shut after she did. His gaze recorded every hot and unsteady inch of her.

His expression closed. “Fine. I’ll go do some hunting of my own since you’re occupied.”

He turned and walked out. Her mouth opened as if to call him back. Her pulse raced. Hands curling into fists, jaw locking so tight her teeth ground together. Was he leaving the penthouse?

A jolt of adrenaline shot through her. He couldn’t, not with the hunters on the loose. But the sound of the front door opening and closing never came.

A thud came from another room, and her shoulders relaxed. He had padded to the living room.

Good, stay there, she thought. And moved on to organize her bedroom.

She worked for hours. Fighting the warmth back inch by inch. When sweat dappled her forehead, it was from the exertion of hanging all her clothes, and stashing all her weapons in places easy to reach.

Her shadows watched, stalwart and accusing, waiting for a chance to aid her. She disregarded them as she pulled a stack of clean, floral-scented sheets from a case on her closet floor and set to making the bed.

Ash had clacked away on that cursed machine of his in the parlour. He’d tried to explain it to her a week ago and she had zoned out. Something about offshore servers or firewalls.

The only thing she knew about offshore was her many bank accounts. He alternated between that and wandering in and out of her bedroom all day.

He would stand there, a pale, eternal shadow in her doorway, casual as a summer Sunday morning. He watched her flit around, throwing comments at her like darts.

“Is all this just to avoid me? Or do we have royal guests coming that you’ve forgotten to tell me about?”

She had rolled her eyes, her back to him, skin prickling as the heat rose again. It got worse whenever he appeared.

She wanted to move closer to him. Sliding the trunk of throwing knives under the bed, she had kept tidying things away.

“Don’t flatter yourself. If I wanted to avoid you, I’d leave. I want to do it right, okay?”

That’s a lie! You’re hiding from him. And from the truth boiling inside— Liora strangled the succubus and huffed as Ash laughed.

She sent a thank you to the universe that she couldn’t hear his thoughts. The mental wall she had dragged up between their minds shook and tried to fall. She patched it with threads of stolen witch thread. It held, but barely.

He’d come back again only an hour ago. She’d been in the middle of scraping the grime off the skirting boards.

Crouched on her hands and knees on the floor. Cursing herself for wasting precious time when she should be out scouring the city for the hunters’ primary base.

She shouldn’t be scouring the house by hand. With the smell of lemon bleach heavy in her nose, it blocked his redolent scent out.

He’d quipped, “I have to say, you’d never know a demon lived here. I can’t even smell the sulphur anymore.”

She’d gone rigid. Her fiery body reacted to his proximity again. Fuck off, she had wanted to scream. Something else came out instead.

“I never smell of sulphur, leech. Only those of us too feral to blend in do.”

He’d made a noise in the back of his throat, part growl and part delight. “Yeah, yeah. You like to curate your scent, don’t you?” There had been a dreadful, stomach-churning pause. “The whole house reeks of pomegranate and caramel. What’s wrong, Red?”

There was genuine concern laced in that last question. Concern that made her shadows hook around his ankles and curl around her wrists. She didn’t respond.

Trying to reel herself in and smother her own fragrance under the grave dirt of fury. She couldn’t bring the fury out.

It was hiding. He waited. Patient and immovable and cocky as ever.

She sensed his stare as though he had a hand wrapped around the back of her neck. The want to lean into almost overrode her need to keep going until she collapsed. She almost collapsed when he spoke again.

“Cat got your tongue?” He asked, and the question scratched at her liquescent brain in a way that seemed important.

She promptly forgot when he excused himself.

“I’ll go shower then. If you need me—for anything— give me a shout.”

His tone had been oddly serious. But when she’d turned to look, he’d already left. Her shoulders had slumped, heart rate higher than it should be.

Her chest constricted as she shook his earlier offer and the constant threat of his unremitting attention off her. She continued with her tasks until well after the sun fell below the city skyline beyond her window.

She finished making her bed as her mind refocused on the present. Hands trembling, wet heat flickering between her thighs as she stared at the maroon silk. Maybe sandpaper would be better, she mused.

She straightened, back sore, as his familiar footsteps tipped down the hall and stopped at her doorway yet again. His shadow stretched across to mingle with hers. She didn’t turn, but her body was so attuned, she didn’t have to.

He had been a specter all day, a silent diagnostician charting the course of her fever. Every quip, every innuendo had been a calibrated probe.

His retreat each time was a test of its pull. He was waiting for the moment the gossamer threads holding her together would snap toward him.

She glanced out the window as he held his tongue. The moon had bloomed without her noticing. What time was it? Fatigue was a lead weight in her honeycomb bones.

Her eyelids drooped, head spinning as the weight of the day slammed into her. Undressing helped her ignore him. Thankfully, he didn’t speak. He watched her with eyes that saw too much.

Mercurial eyes that branded her worse than any scar ever had. She fumbled with the buttons of her shirt and yanked it off, tossing it on her shining hardwood floors.

Her leggings and socks soon followed. She slid between the cold, clean sheets of her freshly made bed.

She turned her back to the doorway, where he still stood. The heat was a patient beast, curled up with the demon low in her belly.

Sharpening its teeth and talons for when she grew weakest. For now, she had caged it with order, defiance, and lemon-scented bleach. But as sleep pulled her under, she knew.

She knew, as a shiver of pure, glacial dread twined around her spine, that the locks would not hold.

The dream was of a feverishly realistic and utterly devastating forest fire. There wasn’t a part of her that didn’t feel it. He was everywhere.

Above, below, behind, and all around. The air in her lungs was kindling. One spark of memory—his laugh, his hands—and she was alight. Burning from the inside out with a fire that fed on the very oxygen of her thoughts.

She was the sacrifice and the altar, the priestess and the flame. The divine blaze blasted away the mortal dross until only her demonic truth remained.

It was torturous and suffocating, absolutely impossible to control.

Then came relief, so potent she nearly cried.

Ash, cool fingers pushing inside her or wrapping around her throat. Easing the furious heat with every touch.

Ash’s mouth, cold and worshipping even as he bit deep. Even as he crooned filth to her, that only made the fire hotter. Suckling her clit, drinking her flowing wetness like the finest whisky. Making her tremble.

And Ash’s cock, thick, relentless, carving her open and making her scream his name. Oh, she screamed. The cold shock of him filling and stretching her was the only thing she could focus on.

Pitiful. Centuries old, brought low by a vampire’s cock.

So real and intense, she scented his skin, heard his breath catching, and felt his every pore under her fingers. Every rough drag of his solid length as he moved inside her like he belonged there was a perfect recreation of him in real life.

Again and again, the fevered visions changed. Positions switching and twisting.

Both locked in a battle of cock, cunt, claws, and clashing canines. Heart beating out of her smoke-filled chest. His teeth in her thrumming vein.

Shadows writhing and aiding their movements. Pinned, tied, strung together, and choked. Everything she loved. Tension coiled higher and higher until her entire body vibrated with it.

It ended as abruptly as it had started.

She woke drenched—sweat, and slick arousal streaming like a river, the sheets soaked. Body spasming, on the brink of an orgasm that might just unmake her.

It might remake her. She didn’t know. She couldn’t think. All rational sense and order had vanished.

Only her base instincts existed in her. It took her a few minutes to see clearly as she writhed and whimpered, teeth bared.

Through the smothering scarlet fog of heat and desire, she noticed. The space where her shadows should be was a void.

Her heart stuttered in her chest, a wretched whine slipping out of her as she rubbed her thighs together. Her quaking hand trapped between them. She circled her clit, human fingers rapid and ceaseless, but nothing happened.

Her eyes stung, heat spreading behind her cheekbones as the realization struck her like a blow. Someone else had to do it. No matter how hard she worked that bundle of nerves, only frustration surged.

Her inner walls clamped around nothing, and the ache in her burned. Had her darkness avoided her because of her stupidity? For thinking she could control this?

“No,” she groaned, but it sounded more like a sob.

They were in Ashton’s room.

Ash woke to a shadow coiled around his cock. Blinking sleep out of his eyes.

“Well. This is new.”

He grunted as it moved, stroking him with a warm, tight, starving, desperate pressure. He wanted to lie back and enjoy it, but it pulsed around him when he tried.

Static fizzed along his hard length and shocked him fully awake. Liora.

Her strange behaviour that day.

The heat rolling off her he had felt even rooms away. As though it were under his skin too. His mind hurriedly put the pieces together. The cleaning.

The dusting, organising of their things... as if she were nesting. He ran through his mental archive, all the knowledge he’d gathered on succubi before and after meeting her.

It clicked like a pulled trigger.

Oh, fuck. Adrenaline shot through him like a concentrated dose of her venom. She’d lost control. Lost her grip on her own magic.

The shadow slithered off him like it knew he understood and beckoned him as it slid along the floor. He leaped out of bed and followed it.

He could smell her from the second he opened his door. Fire scoured sugar, and a tidal wave of pomegranate smacked into him. So dense, it choked and soaked the hallway.

The whole penthouse had risen to a balmy, heatwave temperature. Shit.

This was bad. Despite his vampiric grace, he couldn’t move fast enough. He ran to her door, kicking it open as the bond electrified to the point of pain in his chest.

Wood splintered and clattered to the floor. He paid it no mind as he stepped inside. The tether between them pulled so tight he couldn’t breathe. His entire system absorbed her need and transformed it into his own.

“Red. You’re—”

Jesus H. Christ.

She sprawled on silk. It had tangled around her shifting body, supple thighs glistening. Talons shredded the mattress as she gritted her teeth against it.

Her scars glimmered with veins of gold cracking her porcelain skin. Her eyes were infinite black holes, her voice was a broken snarl, and a shiver fizzed down his spine.

Liora wasn’t here. She was all demon.

Nothing of her usual self remained. Her thoughts were wide open to him, and all he heard was her succubus shrieking inside her.

Her feral gaze narrowed on him. He braced for a bolt of lightning to strike him or something. He doubted she controlled her magic in this moment.

Proven right when she just growled.

“Get. Out.”

He chuckled. No way. He stepped closer, body reacting to her obvious need. The urgency to fuck her until neither of them could see straight nullified every other instinct.

He smelled her wetness, tasted it in the back of his throat. He approached the side of the mattress. Before he could touch her, she bolted out of the bed faster than he’d ever seen her move.

His supernatural eyesight tracked her, arms reaching out to grab her. She slashed her claws at his chest. Opening a seeping cut. He dropped his arms, hissing as the small hurt stung, and watched her flee out of the room.

The thud of her frantic steps sounded down the hall, as fast as the fervent beat of her heart, before the door opened and shut. Her shadows went with her; one urged him to follow.

He cursed, “Fuck!” And sped to his room to get dressed. He dragged on his jeans and boots, snatching Liora’s jacket off the hanger by the door as he chased after her.

Liora raced down the stairs, a blur of shimmering copper hair, and wide amber and violet sundered eyes. The saw of her breath echoed as she reached the bottom floor and aimed for the emergency exit. Throwing herself at it.

The door slammed behind her, hinges wailing like a banshee’s lament. Her clothes had shadow-forged around her body. Liora didn’t remember harming Ash.

She didn’t remember how she’d got out of the penthouse.

She only had the tremors in her thighs, the sweat pooling between her breasts. The noise—that infernal, screeching need her demon hadn’t stopped shrieking since Ashton’s cold had seared through her in the dream.

No! You’re going the wrong way. Turn back, crawl to him, let him split you open— “Quiet,” she bit out, talons tearing brick as she careened into a night-dark alley.

The warm smog clung to her skin, a poor substitute for the cold that had lived in her bones with Ash. Her shadows lashed the air, frantic, as if trying to stitch her ruptured composure back together.

It was a mistake. A mistake letting him see her. Letting him taste.

Her knees buckled at the mental image that fractured thought brought up. Ash on his knees, sipping covetously from her dripping cunt. She nearly fell as her inner walls convulsed.

She caught herself against a rusted fire escape, the metal hissing where her palms met it. Smoke curled upward. She panted, head shaking. The heat was worsening.

Succubus heat.

It was supposed to be a myth. The lie she told to fledglings to scare them into feeding their hunger. After witnessing a female cat in heat as a youngling, she’d pondered her own fate, and felt a strange sense of sympathy for the little creature.

She’d thought it nonsense only a year later.

Yet here she was. A primordial thing reduced to a mere animal by a child with a martyr complex, all too seeing eyes, and a tongue she could never predict.

But you liked his tongue, the demon purred, uncoiling, and stretching in her gut.

You like his coldness.

You feel safe in it. Safe enough finally to burn. I told you we should have kept him.

Liora retched, bile splattering the cobblestones. Sweat had soaked through her clothing. Her reflection in the puddle wavered, scales exploding through her glamor, freckles bleeding to ash.

She smashed her fist through the image as a scent cut through the rot. Frost, bergamot, and iron wound closer.

She whirled, shadows coiling into blades. Ashton leaned against the alley’s mouth, backlit by a flickering streetlamp. Shirtless, boots scuffed, the cut on his chest still leaking black where she’d clawed him. His grin was a scythe.

“You left your coat,” he said, dangling the bloodstained leather. “Also, you’re on fire.”

She frowned and glanced down. Embers glowed beneath her skin, cracks in a dam. The air warped around her.

“Leave,” she commanded.

He stepped closer. “Or what? You’ll kill me?” He laughed, low and reckless. “We both know that’s not what you want. Stop repeating your threats. Keep it interesting.”

The demon roared. Liora wanted to join her. Her shadows lunged, faltering as he lifted his wrist, dark veins stark under moonlight. It was an offering and a taunt in one.

“You’re hungry,” he said. Expression unreadable despite the smile. “And I’m feeling generous.”

Her resolve severed. She was on him in a breath, slamming him against the wall. Her palm steamed against his frostbitten flesh. His head cracked off the brick, but his grin never died.

“Arrogant leech,” she spat, fangs grazing his flat pulse. “You think this ends with a meal? That I’ll owe you?”

His hand slid up her spine, frost cutting through the fever. She shuddered, body leaning into the touch, craving more of it. His fingers splayed wide between her shoulder blades.

“No,” he said, stubbled jaw sharper than her claws. “It ends with you admitting you want more than my blood.”

She struck. Fangs pierced his wrist, his groan reverberating through her. Any other vampire would be vinegar and rot, but his blood was a blizzard in her mouth and veins.

It was a shock of frozen pine and clean air, banking the inferno. Her shadows went still. Her thighs shook.

Dangerous... he was too dangerous.

She tried to pull back. He fisted her hair, holding her in place. “Don’t stop now, Red. You’ve only just started.”

Her demon keened, not in hunger, but frustration. She wasn’t siphoning his life, wasn’t taking. Her eyes stung. She was... surrendering, completely.

She tore free, his blood smeared across her lips. “This changes nothing.”

He cupped her jaw, thumb brushing the scar beneath her mouth. The brand on her collarbone flared white-hot. It was a relic.

It was her failure.

“Liar,” he whispered.

Her glamor unraveled.

Scales and freckles. Eyes like dying stars. Copper hair morphing into antimatter tendrils. Shadowy horns flickered in and out of her temples, but never fully breached her skin.

The wings too stayed hidden, both buried under layers of magic she couldn’t peel back in this state.

She waited for his revulsion as the beauty stripped away. Old habits die screaming. But he never did.

He laughed, bright and brutal and awed. “There you are. It’s about time, Velthara.”

The heat crested too high at the sound of her true name on his velvet-gravelled tongue, smothering her. She gasped loudly.

Her thighs snapped together, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. Needing friction, nerves fired down her torso and went straight to her weeping cunt.

She moaned, half desolation, half pleasure, all agony. Her knees buckled, but his arms tied around her.

Cold, steady, anchoring as she melted into it. His lips brushed her temple, voice a calving glacier’s rumble.

“You have to let me in, Liora. Let me help.”

Her claws sank into his shoulders in a silent plea. No words would come out of her mouth as it opened.

Her shadows went wild. Thrashing and forming a net around them so nothing could sneak up on them.

He held her tighter as she jerked in his arms, a savage pulsing between her useless legs.

“Ash—”

“I know, Sweetheart.” He lifted her, her legs wrapping his waist and locking together. “I know what you need. But you’ll need to take us somewhere else. There’s a team of hunters a few blocks away.”

His words registered like stones in a shallow pool. Dull thuds in the crimson haze of her mind. Her umbral vipers acted for her. For them.

The alley transformed into satin midnight, strangling heat, and the feel of her body wound around his gelid frame. Her stomach lurched, a sound of fabric tearing.

She didn’t really see where they ended up. Some trees, some grass. Lots of green swaying under the crescent moon’s glow, all she could take in. The fire in her rose so high she keened.

Close to begging him to fill the scorching emptiness.

Liora’s teeth found his collarbone as he carried her through the crumbling archway—some derelict temple to forgotten gods, now a nest of rotten rafters and rusted chains. Her hips rolled against his, seeking friction even as she tore at his shoulders.

Black blood streaked the moss-eaten stones behind them. He didn’t feel it.

“Here,” Ash growled, laying her on a slab still stained with sacrificial brown. “Don’t hide the real you. I want to fuck her.”

She gave a laugh like shattered glass, but the hate had melted from her face. Beautiful monster. No wonder she’d survived so long. He was hard as steel.

“You’ll beg—ah!—before I’m through with you,” she said.

She arched, claws rending his belt, her cunt already slick and scorching against his thigh.

Ash knotted his hand in her hair and wrenched her head back and said, “You can try. You can’t hurt me half as much as I need you to.”

He jammed his thigh between hers, letting her take the edge off as he sensed her release waiting to spark. It took only a few more seconds.

The first orgasm ripped through her like a grenade as she rubbed herself against him. She came screaming, back bowing as her shadows detonated.

Disintegrating the remaining stained glass clinging to their old window frames. And they stripped their clothes right off their bodies.

Ash barely heard the shards rain down. Her heat was a live wire in his veins as he grabbed her legs and pried them apart.

Settling on his knees between them as he angled her how he wanted her. He teased the crown of his cock through her slick folds.

Her dripping arousal smeared across his rigid length as she writhed, so desperate for him he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. A weird, unsettling sensation when he didn’t fucking need the oxygen.

“Again,” he ordered, leaning down and biting her scaled breast. Her face was still bare of them. “You let yourself starve too long. Centuries of dieting weren’t your style, Red.”

“Fuck you—”

“Working on it.”

He thrust up, seating himself to the hilt. Her inner walls clamped like she wanted to keep him there forever, squeezing as if to wring him dry.

The nuclear heat of her short-circuited his brain, a ragged moan tearing free of his throat. She howled, nails gutting the stone beneath her.

Ash snarled, fingers circling her swollen clit—rough, punishing—as he plunged into her. Frost glittered, sprinkling from his hands and evaporating away with every touch.

Every glide of his cock inside her taut, wet hold made relief flit across her face. Each retreat had her thrashing her head and sobbing, cunt spasming out of time with her raging heartbeat.

“You want more?” He dragged her up, hand slipping between them, and palmed her breast. Pinching her nipple until she cried out. “Then take it.”

She did.

Her third climax came with teeth—fangs sinking into his neck as she fluttered around him, greedy. She pulled him in again and again. Then she absolutely seized around him.

Ash hissed, fucking her through it, her demon’s voice a chorus in the ruins:

“Mine. Ours. He stays. Bind him, break him, keep him—”

“Silence!” Liora roared, but her shadows disobeyed. Ebony tendrils speared Ash’s wrists, chaining him to the altar beneath her. They soothed the pain too fast for his liking.

He had hardly any time to enjoy it.

He grinned, blood on his teeth. “There she is. Magnificent.”

She rode him after that, a tyrant astride her frozen throne. Each bounce of her hips cracked the air like thunder, her claws raking his chest, which made his cock jump inside her. But his release never rose.

It was only then that he realized he couldn’t come until she was done with him. Ash watched her glamor disintegrate further—scales erupting gold and black over her face, freckles burning through them like cinders.

The brand on her collarbone throbbed scarlet with every sinuous swirl and drop of her hips.

“Seven’s your lucky number, demon?” He bucked up, wrists still trapped by her magic, hitting a spot that made her choke. “I’ll be your eighth.”

She slapped him. Glowing eyes going wide as heat hazed the air around and between them. He wasn’t wholly sure why it pissed her off. He had an inkling.

“I’m close to figuring it out, aren’t I?” He prodded, listening as her pulse thudded impossibly faster. His eyes dropped to where they were joined.

He moaned at the obscene view of her split cunt swallowing his cock whole again and again. Both of them glistened with her venom-spiked essence.

Her darkness gagged him with a tendril.

“You always talk too much,” Liora panted, ramming herself down harder.

Ash’s groan vibrated against the shadow-flesh in his mouth. He should ache. He should burn alongside her Her demon preened, intoxicated by his arrogance. The sensation of his frost biting through the scald of her scales. The way he knew exactly what she needed before she did.

How he reveled in the onslaught of her need. It was unfair. But it felt too good; every inch of him seemed designed for her. She stopped caring about what all this meant.

What would come after it. She came four more times before the tremors began. Sweat and arousal cloaked both of them, skin and bones shivering as the heat gradually trickled away.

Ash tasted her exhaustion first, sweetness curdling to brine on her tongue when she kissed him. He broke the shadow bonds easily now, rising to flip her onto hands and knees.

“Last round,” he murmured, dragging his cock through her saturated folds. “Give me everything.”

“I’ll give you a grave—”

He sheathed himself to the root.

Her scream shook dust from the destroyed ceiling.

He fucked her like vengeance, a pounding, primal rhythm that cracked her armor with each thrust. Scales scalded his cold palms as he gripped her hips.

They were rough, like velvet brushed the wrong way, but glossy, too. The see-through horns he’d seen in the alley had vanished after the fourth orgasm. He wanted the real thing.

He wanted to fuck the monster in all her glory. For now, this form was enough. She rocked back onto his length. The telltale sparkle of heat spiralling down his spine told him his own release would follow hers.

His skin drew tight, aching with the need to come. “You’re mine,” he rasped, hand fisted in her hair for more leverage. “Just as I’m yours. Deny it. I dare you.”

She couldn’t. Not after this.

He let a hand slide from her hip, rime-glazed fingers finding her clit to push her over the edge she clung to. She jolted and gave a warbling moan of his name the instant he touched her.

The vulgar racket as he moved inside her resounded off the moss-lined walls. Her gasps of “Ash...more” bound around him like a crown. He gave it.

He was gasping for air himself, muscles trembling. Admiring the sight of her steep, scaled arch as she rippled and rolled into him.

His bedraggled shout of her true name as she clasped violently around his cock, and his whirling frozen fingers were the last spark she needed.

Her final release was a supernova.

Scales illuminated with opalescent, molten light, flickering briefly before sinking back into softness. Her glamor flashing in and out of place as it ricocheted through her.

It solidified as her vision turned to snow. All her muscles went rigid then loose, as she lost all feeling in her limbs. Shadows shrieked. The VII brand blazed crimson as Ash spilled inside her.

His frigid spend doused the last flame in her core. His bite reopened on her throat as he collapsed on top of her.

Drinking her pleasure, only pausing as he twisted them around, so she lay on top of him. She’d never find out how he’d done it. They had fallen in a tangle of sore limbs and bloodied whispers; the heat receding like a tide of ash.

Her demon sighed, settling down low in her stomach to sleep, satiated. She buried her talons in his chest, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Her eyes closed. Too exhausted to care that she clung to him like a lifeline. He let her. He never so much as twitched as her body became a lead weight and her breathing deepened.

Liora slept within minutes.

Ash held her, letting out an inaudible sigh, muscles relaxing now he knew she was safe. From herself, at least. If anyone stumbled across them here... he eyed her swirling darkness.

They still caged them in, but tendrils curled around them both. Dawn gilded Liora’s scars as he spoke to the shadow collaring his throat.

“I need to get her home. Feel like helping me?”

He held his breath as they all fluttered and buzzed, talking to each other in a language he didn’t know. It lasted only a second but seemed like an eternity to him as he massaged her scraped-up back with his bloodstained knuckles.

Before he could brace himself, they sank down onto him and Liora, swaddling them in deep night’s embrace. He nodded, a warm sting in his chest as his arms tightened around her. They took them away.

They trusted him. He’d known for a while. Probably since they’d first slept together. They always gave her away and snuck to him.

But as the shadows carried them through the ether, Ash had never felt so sure of anything.

He belonged here.

Liora’s last coherent thought before dreams of glaciers claimed her offered a terrible, dark revelation...

She needed him.

The truth of it, wordless and stark, echoed down the bond between them just before she fully went under. Ash’s arms tightened around her in silent answer to a confession she might never speak aloud.