39. VIII

Her scales slid beneath her reforming glamour as they appeared in the penthouse, shadows like smoke clearing away. She stormed down the hall, dragging Ash with her to the bathroom, darkness aiding his steps.

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, talons hidden, jaw rippling as she clenched it. Her tendrils took over, holding Ash after her tail unwound from his waist and vanished. The brand on her collarbone bled black ichor.

It had started as they traveled home—the sore skin hadn’t split or broken, it just bled. The scent of spoiled meat lingered in the air, but she didn’t stop to find out why.

Too focused on getting him safely in the bath. The sound of water pouring from a faucet shattered the quiet as her weakened shadow snakes drew a bath. In the next second, they locked themselves inside the bathroom.

“I can walk, you know,” Ash said as he leaned against the wall.

She added freesia soap and bath salts to the steaming water as it rose halfway up the tub. It turned milky as she shook her head.

“You’ll trip and fall. I can’t resurrect you twice in one night.”

Ash chuckled, but it shifted to a groan, his head thudding back against the wall. She looked over at him as she stripped off her leathers. He’d paled even more, becoming nothing more than a ghost in corporeal form.

Her heart thudded a useless marching beat behind her ribs as her mouth twisted to the side, teeth grinding. She scoured the empty vault of her mind for something, anything, to fix him. He’d need feeding badly, but she needed him clean first.

She had to wash away the stench of hunters’ blood, antiseptic, and the greasy tang of dread from him.

His veins were still black with Mara’s poison. She curled her hands into fists as the urge to claw it out of him threatened to consume her. He just watched her, sagging, dull silver eyes tracing her horns—the only things she left out of her glamor.

Her braids ached. She finished undressing, scalp burning as she hurriedly unravelled them. She unsheathed a single claw and approached Ash.

He arched a brow, but stayed quiet. It was more unnerving than any truth or insult he could spit at her. None of his quips came as she sliced through the cotton of his borrowed shirt.

Letting the scraps drop to the floor as she did the same to his trousers. He clumsily toed off his boots, no socks to contend with, good. He let her grab his arm and drag him to the sunken tub’s edge.

Her thinning shadows guided him into the hot water. He hissed as it hit him, face screwing up as his fangs glinted. She didn’t breathe again until he was safely sitting down, water lapping at his scarred chest.

She sat beside him, not feeling the water’s heat as her fingertips numbed. Her demon twisted and clawed at her insides. Eye twitching as she grabbed a washcloth and soaped it up.

She scrubbed the hunter’s filth off him herself. No mercy as her talons unsheathed and scraped his silver scars.

Ash took it, sensing the edge she was on. Her shadows purred where his and Liora’s skin touched.

Her fingers trembled as she rubbed the cloth over him, heartbeat elevating as her breath came faster with every new mark she found on him. Ash couldn’t stop the joke from falling into the steam-clogged air.

It was all he could think of doing to ease her. “The kinky nurse act is new. Is this a fantasy of yours?”

He nearly swayed, rocked by the panic, the possessiveness he found in her swirling eyes. His mouth snapped shut. The bond sang in his chest as she ignored him and kept cleaning him.

Water splashed as her hand landed on his shoulder and pushed him forward so she could reach his back. He stiffened, bones on fire inside him as Mara’s essence gnawed at them.

He swore. Unable to stifle it as she let him lean back again.

“Hurts?” She asked, her pulse stuttering and distracting him. Fangs burning to sink into it, throat trying to close. Her VII brand looked infected, he thought. The surrounding flesh inflamed.

He pushed it aside for now and nodded. “Like Hell.”

“Good.” She gripped his jaw with cold talons, galaxies churning in her eyes, and a voice rougher than steel wool. “Remember the feeling. Then avoid it.”

He laughed, wincing as it aggravated the aches in his body, and half-healed sores on his wrists. “You’re bossy tonight, Nyxarrah.”

He watched as she shivered, a claw tracing his throat in a promise he wanted to have now.

“You’re mine to break. They don’t get to do it.”

Water sloshed as he leaned into her blade, a smirk forming as he whispered, “Jealous demon is my favorite demon.”

She growled—he laughed. The sound smothered as she submerged him. He was still smiling when she let him back up, wiping water out of his eyes as he feigned a cough.

The urge to claim her pooled inside him, arousal following behind it as her burnt sugar scent began rising in strength. He let her work after that.

Sensing how little control she had, how much she needed to do this to prove to herself he was still hers. His heart bruised, stinging at the thought. His eyes closed as she washed his hair, talons scraping his scalp in a way that made his cock stir.

His throat was a desert where even her name turned to ash. The agony of it chewed through his grip on his control. He listened as she cleaned herself quickly, focusing on the mundane to ignore his instincts.

He must’ve dozed off, the world going soft and dark, only to blink and he found himself leaning against the wall of her bedroom. She paced like a caged panther ahead of him.

Her shadows devoured the sunset’s bruised light as he tracked her. Every inch of her silk robe-covered body thrummed with the same tension that hummed in him.

Black blood beaded on her covered clavicle, blooming through the white fabric. Her heart still ran too fast. This was going to be a very long, violent night. He smothered his celebratory smirk before she could see it.

Liora muttered in Russian under her breath as she and her shadows tried to fathom a way to get rid of that traitors essence. Their sharp edges had changed to loose onyx threads wriggling in the air. There were rituals, spells she could perform if she hadn’t almost exhausted her magic.

She didn’t have enough left to aid her in it, and waiting until it refilled was a luxury she couldn’t afford. The impulse to tear at her hair almost made her scream. Her demon kept chattering as hunger gnashed its teeth at her ribs.

Mark him. Feed him. Burn Mara out and make him ours again.

Liora inhaled slowly, head cocking. Maybe the succubitch was right. It was all she could think to do, too. Her darkness writhed as she sighed, teeth chewing her bottom lip when she turned to him.

He was awake again, thank the useless gods. His knowing quicksilver eyes followed her edgy movements as her claws quivered.

Every moment she hesitated was another moment the other succubus had a claim over him. She halted in front of him. Acting before she could doubt herself.

She sliced her wrist open, using her good hand to hold Ash against the wall. Claws sinking into his shoulder. Her blood welled bright, splashing on the floor as the signs of bloodlust crept across his face.

The sunken eyes, sooty thumbprints under them, and more blackened veins branching his flesh as his attention squared on her pulse. Heat flooded her. Vision honing in on him.

Her sneering snarl ricocheted off the plaster as her shadows pinned his hands to the wall on either side of his head. “Open your mouth. Now.”

Ash smirked, pallid, pupils fragmenting into black and silver starbursts. Her entire body shuddered, her heart pounding, pushing more blood out of her wrist. It hovered near his lips.

“Funny. That’s not what you said last—“

She shoved her wrist between his teeth.

He choked, spluttering as her blood soaked his tongue. His mind was wide open, she tasted it as though she were the one feeding. Pomegranate, bergamot, and her lightning scorching through him.

She loosed a breath when his fangs immediately sank into the wound. She stared as his body reacted. His back arched, muscles locking, and he growled against her skin. Mara’s essence fought back.

A vine-like blackness trailed up his chest and neck. He gagged, trying to get away, but Liora seized his jaw.

“Swallow,” she growled. “Or I’ll peel her out with my claws.”

Ash choked again, but he swallowed her fiery blood down. His eyes widened as Liora’s shadows moved, slithering into his mouth, sliding down his throat, scouring him.

They wriggled inside him as her blood roasted him beautifully. The ice in him cracked and melted as he grunted and shook. Her dark tendrils hunted until they found what they were looking for.

His entire body arched off the wall. Mara’s essence screamed as her magic shredded it. Agony and rapture, ambrosia and acid, the world grew blurry as Liora’s venom seeped into his cells.

His veins flared gold, her gilded touch as her power claimed him. He shook like a child, throat bobbing, strength slowly returning.

Ash gasped against her slit wrist. “Fuck—you could’ve warned me!”

Her low, lethal voice was a rough caress down his spine as her shadows loosened their hold on him. She repeated what she’d said at the hunters’ base. “You’re mine, not hers or theirs. Fucking act like it.”

Her heartbeat ran rampant, grave dirt obscured her seared sugar scent, but he sensed the emptiness in her. Bigger than that carved out space had been since the night they met. He laughed, teeth snapping at her retreating wrist.

She yanked it away, but he was faster. His hand fisted in her loose, damp hair, pulling her close. Her gasp, her thighs clenching together, ignited him more.

“Yours? You kept me waiting, Red. I was rotting in that lab.”

Her claws pricked his hips as his fingers tightened in her hair, tugging it to bare her throat. Her blood throbbed under her paper-thin skin, and he licked his lips, tasting her, wanting more of her.

“And yet here you are,” she said, spitting it at him.

He grinned as he returned, “Here you are. You couldn’t stay away.”

Her shadows pinned him again, and he didn’t resist. He lowered his head, teeth grazing her ear. “You like that I need you. Don’t deny it.”

Liora jerked away. Her chest constricted. Something primal, something animal, roared inside her. Heat and want and hunger and violent need battled with knives and fire—she didn’t know what to do with it all.

Every part of her was on the verge of exploding.

“I like that you’re useful. There’s a difference.”

He laughed brightly, glad to see her returning to her usual form. “Liar. You’re shaking.”

She was. Her claws prickled with the impulse to reclaim, scar, and rewrite Mara’s taint with her own. Even her teeth vibrated to bite hard. Her tendrils tied his wrists to the wall, slowly healing now her blood infused him.

It wasn’t enough. She had to suck the poison out so the wound could heal. He was already naked; she hadn’t thought to dress him before trying to heal him. Her shadow fangs formed as she crowded his space.

He watched her with a gaze of pure, undiluted obsession. As if every star in her supernova-eyes had aligned to spell out his name. Just as the stars she’d wished on had transformed into his smirk all those months ago.

He still didn’t know that. She moved without thinking. Her fangs sank into his freezing chest, right above his dead heart. Her temperature increased as her lips numbed against his gelid skin. His blood was an icy deluge, but his flavor hid from her.

She growled, teeth biting deeper as her claws pierced his ribs. Her shadows slackened on his wrists, and his hands tangled in her hair, dragging her nearer in.

“You taste like her,” she said, glaring up at him.

Ash panted as she drank, fingers hooking into her roots and tugging. Sending a delicious, rippling sensation prickled across her scalp.

“Fix it then,” he rasped, voice dropping.

Her venom engulfed the bite, seeping in as she sucked him into her mouth. Her legs rubbed together, liquid heat pooling between them as her blood thundered in her ears.

His hips jerked against hers, a moan tearing free from somewhere deep inside his chest. Her fangs scraped bone, but he only grew harder as he pressed into her hip.

“Still holding back, Red?” He taunted, tone the rough crumbling of sandstone.

She bit harder, speaking into his mind as the taste of Mara grew thinner and his vivid flavor became dominant. Her entire body went loose, heat licked across her face as her grip on her tattered control slipped.

Beg, and I’ll consider mercy.

Ash shook his head. Mercy was for those too weak to withstand her. Hell, hunters, and witch mirrors, nothing could hold her. But he could.

Liora’s fangs pierced the scarred flesh above his heart, her venom searing through him like liquid hellfire. He arched into the waves of pain pulsing in his chest, shivering, her name a jagged curse on his lips.

Her smoky tendrils bound around his thighs, pinning him to the wall as she drank. Ash’s cock strained against her silk-covered hip, aching and furious, dying to feel her cunt milk him dry.

He ground into her, teeth bared. “Fucking—do it properly, Liora. Or are you scared to claim what’s yours?”

She tore her fangs free, black blood and opalescent venom dripping down his torso.

“You’re nothing but a tool,” she hissed, even as her claws sliced runes of spite into his torso, darkness lashing the walls. His cock sprung free, hard as iron, when she stepped back.

She spat venom onto her palm, elegant fingers wrapping around his length and stroking him roughly. “A stupid, reckless tool.”

Ash’s laugh strangled into a groan as she squeezed and twisted her wrist. A white-hot wire snapped taut up the length of his spine as pleasure drenched him.

Her venom added a slick, warming buzz that made everything sharper, more intense.

“Then hurt me. Break me, Red. Try.”

Her shadows wrapped around his cock, warm, and unyielding, teasing him. Their spiraling pulse mimicked the clench of a fist, starting at the root and swirling tightly to the tip.

Leaving behind a near-painful trail of ache and want. Their seamless vice-grip vibrated, and it moved with a mind of its own. His thighs corded, every muscle tensing, fighting her bindings to feel the pressure of their restraint.

She watched his face as he moaned, vision bleaching at the edges, head crashing against the wall as he flung it back.

It caused him no pain. A low electric current gathered in his groin, sparking alight with every pass of her darkness. Her breath hitched as his hips bucked wildly.

The sweet, heavy ache in him tautened to an unbearable point, teeth gritted as his body convulsed.

“You’d let me ruin you,” she said, murmuring, venom glossing her mouth. “You’d beg for it.”

“Already am,” he said, voice snarled beyond recognition, breaking the shadows on his arms.

Dragging her into a biting kiss. She tasted of war as his tongue flicked hers. Her wildfire heat roasted his front as she pushed closer. The hollowness he sensed, as if it were his own, yawned wider as she bit his lip bloody.

“You want to purge her? Do it. Take the damn safety off—I can take it.”

She panted, face flushed and body undulating as the temperature in the room rose until the windows steamed. His fangs slashed her throat.

She let him, black blood streaming down her neck to stain her robe. It was complete annihilation. The loop needed closing. Sex was just the method.

He grabbed her and shoved her to the floor, the wood splintering beneath them. Ash’s fingers clawed at her robe, tearing it open.

Gelid hands palmed her breasts, thumbs circling her nipples until they peaked. Frost, a cruel caress, she arched into. She rolled them, not going down without a fight.

She straddled him. Her cunt glistened, swollen, and slick—her arousal feeding his own. Her need was a weapon he’d honed, wielded, and now adored.

“Look at you,” he mocked, dragging a cool finger up the seam of her. “Wet for the leech you still pretend to hate.”

Liora smacked her palm over his mouth, her shadows wrenching his wrists above his head.

“Silence.” She sank onto his cock in one brutal thrust, her inner walls clenching around him like she intended to keep him there forever.

Ash’s groan vibrated against her hand, tendons in his neck popping as her infernal heat swamped him, hips snapping up to meet her. Her shadows held him down, forcing him to take every punishing grind.

“This isn’t for you,” she lied, her venom dripping down her thighs, burning where their bodies joined. “This is purging her.”

Ash’s laugh was as raw as an exposed nerve. “Bullshit.” He twisted his wrists free, grabbing her hips to drive himself deeper and making her choke. “You’re fucking me because you crave it. Because you’re terrified someone else almost got a taste.”

She punched him, knuckles crunching into his jaw. He only grinned, blood on his teeth, and flipped her onto her back. The thud of her body meeting the splintered wood shook the penthouse, her shadows thrashing. He trapped her, cock sliding back into her scalding cunt.

Her legs locked around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, lifting her ass and steepening the angle. His blood, her venom, and her wetness dripped onto the floor as he set a punishing pace.

Claws speared his shoulders as she whined. The nipping pain only added to his animalistic need to prove he owned her.

Prove to her she was his as much as he was hers. Her inner walls clamped down as he struck that spot high inside her and stole a wail from her. His eyes latched onto her damned brand.

Still bleeding. The second notch had appeared thicker not too long ago. Now, it split as more blood wept from it. Her keening as he fucked her made him preen. She’d never told him the VII’s meaning.

He’d pieced it together while locked in that cell. The fright in her eyes as she noticed where his attention had gone confirmed it.

Liora howled as he plunged deep, back scraping off the cracked floor. Tension curled inside her, tightening every time he slammed home.

Her rabid heart seemed to stop beating abruptly, skittering off again a second later. Her claws quaked even as they drove into his flesh.

“Stop staring, leech.”

She couldn’t get enough air in as he shook his head. Stomach tensing, mind screaming, and cunt dripping around his thick cock. His smile spread wide, wicked, shameless as her belly dropped.

“Don’t…” she whispered, heat stinging behind her eyes as her lungs knotted and her demon cackled.

She didn’t know why she thought he’d listen. Leave it alone. He never could. He stopped fucking her, bending down. Their scars synced, humming a dissonant harmony to the blood flowing in their shared veins.

“Velthara Nyxarrah,” he growled, cold forehead pressed to hers, “eighth of your name.”

Gold flooded the cracks as she shook her head and tensed herself around his hard length. The mark burned hotter, spiderweb fissures threading the old vow as her back bowed.

“You’re mine. You’re never re-writing yourself again. Say it,” he demanded as pain and pleasure and a sensation of rightness wreaked havoc inside her.

His thumb swept over the blood marring her collarbone, smearing it into the fault lines. The brand activated. Light speared the room.

More molten gold poured into the fractures as it irrevocably reforged itself into the VIII she’d kept hidden.

Liora’s scream clattered off the walls. Her shadows shrieked with her as the sigil settled into her skin, radiant and eternal on her clavicle.

“Ash—Ash,” his name spilled from her lips unguarded, a claim of its own. She had no venom left to armor it.

He stilled. Eyes wide. She quivered, tears flowing from her lashes into her ears as her head thrashed. His chest caught, a bud of warmth growing behind his sternum.

His cock remained buried to the hilt inside her, as she rolled her hips and whimpered. Her horns called to him. If he touched one… she would melt.

He kissed her instead. “I know,” he said, in between her tongue menacing his. “I know… Give me everything. Prove I’m yours.”

Her succubus power surged, hellfire haze erupting from her skin. She raked claws down his spine, tearing him to ribbons, and hitting bone. The siphoning of his pleasure grew stronger, sucking at his arteries and drinking his every curse and shout.

Wood groaned and complained, crackling as her heat forced its expansion. He moaned, sensation detonating at the base of his spine, hips jerking into her.

“That all you’ve got, demon? Stop holding back. I’ve pinched myself harder than this.”

She attacked him, talons tearing his shoulders, scales speckling her neck and jaw as she marked every inch of him she could reach. More invisible fire lapped at his torso.

Perfect, he grinned, as her shadows ruthlessly invaded him. Slipping under his skin, tendrils hooking into his ribs, his mind, snaring his heart.

He trembled with her. Every thrust into her was a punishment for making him wait.

“You want proof?” she said, sibilant, darkness yanking him deeper into her. “You’ve belonged to me since I carved myself into your corpse the first time.”

The doubts he’d had while trapped in that cell fled as her truth echoed through the room. She winced as his next thrust shunted her over the cracked wood. His frost rebelled, blizzarding in his veins, hailing her skin, melting against her clit as she gave a throaty cry.

Her thighs clamped his waist as he slid his arms under her, settling back on his knees and lifting her into his lap. Rising to his feet, eyeing the mattress to his left. He aimed for it, sick of the floor making his bones creak and leaving splinters in her flesh.

He sent his internal question through the bond for her to hear.

Why do you have a problem with using a damn bed? It’s right there.

She laughed, copper hair a tangled mess flowing around her face, strands winding her horns.

The luscious sound vibrated in the hollow of his throat, making his cock jump inside her. He sat on the edge of the mattress, her knees sinking into it on either side of his hips. She wriggled in his hold, his hands framing her waist, icy lace leaking from his palms as she fluttered around him.

Then her shadows manacled her wrists, drawing them up, lashing her to the overhead beam of the four-poster bedframe. An animalistic noise left him as they moved in tandem.

She pulled herself up by her restraints, a gradual tense slide of her scorching cunt squeezing his cock. He brought her back down hard and savored her pleased moan.

Every tendon in his body drew tight, shuddering, thrumming as his looming release short-circuited his thoughts. All he had left was the need to make her come before he did.

She was close; her burnt sugar scent clogged his nose. Her dark tendrils branded him with her heat as they twined around his throat.

Her eyes had blown fully black as he fucked up into her, inner walls clenching and unclenching faster and faster.

His hand rose from her waist to her temple as her repeated mental promise resounded in his own head.

No one else. No one else. No one else gets to touch you or taste you.

He doubted she’d meant for him to hear it, but he answered it as his fingers curled around her horn. She arched and sobbed, back bowing as he twisted his fist around the obsidian spire.

“Do you honestly think I’d let another taste me?” He said, and bucked his hips, grinding so deep she struggled for air. “I’m yours, Red. Always. Fucking. Yours.”

She gripped him so tight, a scalding fire branding his cock with her essence, muscles spasming in time with her hammering pulse. Her inner walls changed to a ridged, slow spiral, and he cursed, eyes trying to roll back. She pulled him impossibly deeper inside her, stealing a broken plea he never meant to say aloud.

“Don’t you dare leave me again. Let go, Liora.”

“You’ll die mine,” Liora swore, her cunt flickering around him as venom surged in her veins.

Her heart flittered like a frantic raven behind her sternum. As her orgasm soared close, her stomach tensed, nerves firing under her skin. Her throaty cries and sawing breath blended with his grunts and murmurs of approval.

His frost bled over her horn as he squeezed his fist. Bolts of purest, hottest pleasure shot straight to her clit again and again.

Her release abruptly ripped through her unapologetically. A sensation akin to boiling water submerged her whole being.

Arms fighting against her binds as her spine arced, inner walls refusing to let him retreat. Lightning and shadow and ice fusing together inside and around them both.

She drowned him with her. He brought her down, holding her still, impaled on him, as he spilled into her.

The familiar cold shock of his spend finally let her believe he was hers again. Her shadows reared, violent and possessive, as their climaxes fused.

The dregs of Mara’s tainted essence seared out of Ash’s pores in wisps of black smoke, replaced by Liora’s venom. Golden threads stitching his veins back together, tattooing him inside and out.

She collapsed against him as her darkness freed her, eyes closed, her forehead pressed to his as he fell onto his back. Her heart raced and beat itself bloody, as if trying to break free of her and burrow into his chilled chest.

Ash’s hand grasped her horn, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“Still pretending you don’t want this?” he said, voice ruined and breathless.

Liora licked the blood from his lip. “I want you dead.”

He laughed, rolling her beneath him.

“You need to try harder, Red.”

She thought they both knew the truth. The phrase she’d spoken as a threat all this time had become a twisted sort of endearment between them. She’d meant it literally once.

She’d promised herself she wouldn’t let him in, wouldn’t let him possess her or see her monstrous side. Now, even she saw it for what it was.

She never revoked Ash’s access to her mind as he hauled her up the mattress and settled behind her. His cool, firm body wrapped around her like a frozen, soothing blanket. He burned her, not like the fire she’d once wished for. He was the only thing that could feed her, hold her.

I want you dead—but only by my hand, only when I deem it. You are mine until the end.

Liora’s vow travelled from her mind to his, speaking nothing aloud. Her weight sagged back against him, her claws finding and piercing his thigh to anchor herself.

Ash’s grip on her tightened, feeling the uneven rise and fall of her chest, the slowing flutter of her pulse. The warmth of his gratitude that they were both still alive unfurled inside him.

Gratitude that they clung to each other in the aftermath of everything that tried to break them, unbowed and unbroken. It was worth more than anything money could buy.

The room reeked of them. Burnt sugar, bergamot, venom and iron. He smiled into her sweaty hair, inhaling their merged scent. Her shadows slowly knitted his wounds shut, back pleasantly sore as they worked.

For once, he was glad Claire had turned him. To find this, he’d go through it all again. His human self wouldn’t have lasted a minute with Liora.

No mortal could survive the love they’d forged, even if they hadn’t said it yet. Good thing they weren’t human. He broke the hushed silence just to tease her before sleep could overcome them.

“Liora, what do you see when you come for me?”

She exhaled as she shifted and settled into the cradle of his body, claws still nicking his thigh. He thought she wouldn’t reply, or she’d call him a sentimental fool for wondering something so trite.

Her ragged whisper made him chuckle. “… Stars.”

He hummed, fingers tracing his initials into her ribs, feeling her heartbeat speeding up again. Her answer was a lie then. He let it slide.

“Make a wish next time.”

She huffed, and he almost heard her eyes rolling before she lifted her head and turned to look at him. Her raw gaze fastened on his, too many emotions whirling in them.

His throat suddenly turned thick, made worse by her response. She kissed him, and it was soft, no, tender, breathing the words into his mouth.

“They’ve already granted it.”