7. Slippery When Wet

His teeth found her throat first.

It was a blasphemy.

Liora let him think he'd won the first strike, even as her shadows pinned him to the silk. She let him taste the lie she'd spun into her veins. Saffron, pomegranate, and hellfire scoured sugar.

He groaned. The sound was a quill scoring parchment, ink blooming where it pierced her skin. Lifetimes of hunger.

It was always transactional for her. Take, discard, survive. His scent, she finally caught it. Bergamot, ice, and dark amber.

No.

It was just a bug in the fabric of his blood. It had to be. As was the taste of it moments ago. She'd smelled a hint of it in the alley before she materialised, too. Had thought it was just the poison playing tricks with her nose.

She should've known better than to assume by now. Countless years of feeding, never had she imbibed in something so synergic.

It was as though her teeth in his flesh opened a channel to him, not from him. She gave a hard swallow that she knew he felt as he sipped from her. Mind cycling through every way he would betray her.

Snare her in his false charm, wit, and by provoking the volatile sexual energy she required to live.

There was a litany of reasons she should stop this. Yet, she couldn't. Arousal, hot and slick, pooled between her thighs. His fangs left her skin. Then his tongue, warmed by her blood, licked the wound clean.

He pressed a surprisingly gentle kiss over the tiny wounds as if to seal them in. Flame coiled low in her belly, her inner demon urging him on. Part of her, the part not controlled by her hungers, railed against it.

The sullying of her favored body with a fledgling vampire's cock and blood.

That she could consume without roasting her innards. The mystery within that, she couldn't look into it. She got an electric shock every time she tried. Her heart began racing faster and faster.

Her mouth watered, shadow fangs forming, all of her aching.

Teeth itching to sink into his throat. Her claws raked down his back. He didn't yell and run away. Nor did he curse her as Hell's cursed cunt.

His groan told her he wanted more. He ground into her thigh, hard and frozen. He lifted his head to look at her flushed face.

His weight pressing her into the mattress. His cold, firm body had a grappler's build. Tall and lean.

It was a body built for surviving and running. He still smirked as she held her breath.

It was a veneer, an insincere expression he'd never let drop while with her. She traced the side of his face with her claws.

She studied the stubble. Thick, the perfect amount just before it gets messy. His effortlessly tousled, overgrown, wavy black hair. His silver eyes. The pupils swallowed the light, black as a starless, moonless sky.

There was no mortal dilation in those eyes. A man or woman truly overcome by seduction would show a physical reaction. She'd memorized them all over the years.

His visage gave none of the usual signs away. She ground her teeth as she hunted for it. She saw no flush of adrenaline, he held no warmth.

Only the glacial certainty of a hunter who'd waited to strike when she was vulnerable.

When she was on the brink of shriveling up if her succubus didn't get enough to curb the tremors soon. He laughed. He seemed to laugh at everything.

Ashton leaned into her claws, throat bared, mockingly. "See something you like?"

Her eye twitched, pulse skittering, and claws tensing to carve the truth out of him.

"I see a performance. One I've staged for longer and better than you."

Her talons tapped along his steady jaw, thumb drawing across his bottom lip. Her vain attempt to provoke a reaction.

He only arched a brow, voice low, cocky, and abrasive.

"Staged, sure. But this?" His thumb brushed her frantic pulse, like a moth trapped in a flesh cage. "This isn't stagecraft, Red. This is auto-fiction."

How many marks had he drained and slept with since his changing? It didn't matter. She wasn't keeping him.

Her shadows tightened around his wrists on either side of her head. But he didn't flinch, not even a goddamn blink. She swallowed a sigh. Liora let her restraints loosen their hold on him to see what he would do.

"I'm not the only one performing, Liora. The difference is, I'm not plotting to kill you. Feed. You're starving."

And how did he know that?

Your falsehoods are many. You saved him twice. You. Who saves nothing?

Her demon crooned.

She mentally chastised the claim, refusing to acknowledge the truth it carried. The long night had hardened and well-chiseled his face. His eyes were polished knives, relentless, as they stabbed hers. She looked away.

"Don't you want to know how I feed? It's two-fold."

His smirk was a viper, ready to strike. "I know enough. Feed and fuck. At least you show them a good time before they go."

He didn't know it all. Not every succubi drank from the vein. Only those who lived long enough to learn how did.

He bared his throat again, a hand slipping between their shifting bodies. Her blood rushed, roaring in her ears as her stomach tensed.

Her mouth opened as he slid it under her trousers' waistband. And found her naked, stripped of all hair underneath.

He let out a midnight chuckle as his fingers found her dripping wet and scalding. Under her glamor, her cheeks burned, unable to ignore how much she needed to be touched.

To use him until the abyss inside her stopped eating her firing nerves.

"Yep. Starving. Drink. I'll handle this."

The timbre of his voice, the nerves in her spine, recognized it. Embers sparked and burst in its wake.

They flared up her back and around her abdomen. Heat and flame licking her into an untameable blaze.

Oh, fuck. Her body betrayed her the instant he gave her what she wanted. Two long, cool fingers abruptly slipped inside her.

A relieved moan escaped her, quiet, but heard like a thunderclap in the strained silence of her bedroom. She rose the last inch and her mouth closed over his offered neck. She didn't break the skin yet.

Her breath hitched as the ache in her subsided enough to think around the overwhelming need to feed. His lack of a speeding pulse was disturbing.

His arousal was a grotesque version of what she was used to. She huffed through her nose. A sparkling sensation sprinkled down her torso as she rode his hand.

His fingers moved in and out of her cunt, finding no resistance. Inner walls soaked and gripping him in a taut hold. He murmured filth she couldn't hear over the thrumming need in her.

His thumb found her clit. Her shuddering inhale brought forth a genuine smile from him.

His breath ghosted her jaw, her throat. Just shy of his teeth making contact. He hadn't seemed so confident, so sure of his abilities, before she brought him to her suite.

Another reason she knew he was a threat to her. He'd let his jester's cowl slip to reveal the carnal maestro beneath.

He'd transfigured into a virtuoso of venomous want, tangling her until discipline frayed. This was the only thing still hers.

This body, unsullied by the hands of others. It was a secret she'd kept locked in the reliquary of her shadows.

She'd let no one taste its marrow.

Why hadn't she shed it and cloaked herself in the skin of something already corrupted?

Why did it feel like a confession? She bit down in retaliatory denial of it.

The gratified whine she poured into his veins as his blood flooded her tongue gave her away. One tendril of darkness curled around Ashton's wrist, guiding his fingers deeper.

Their attraction to him trilled through her, a song she hadn't composed. He was a liar, false poet. A monster.

She should've let him die. She should've... Her eyes fluttered closed.

His flavor was both a revelation and a curse. Bergamot and winter pine, hoarfrosts gelid crystals underscored by the dark chocolate of his desire. So he wasn't immune to her.

The knowledge didn't ease her. The intimacy of his breath in her ear almost shattered her.

"Go on. Let's see if I bleed acid after all. If I do, I'll let you carve your name in me—right over the last one."

At his words, beneath her silk shirt, her VII brand on her collarbone flared, burning and flashing scarlet light. His teeth grazed her ear, making her mewl as tension coiled inside her.

Then his hand left her body. Her whimper in response elicited a lethal chuckle from him.

He slid his slick fingers up her infuriatingly clothed torso. All the way to the nape of her sweat damp neck.

He pushed his hand against her head, forcing her fangs deeper into his throat.

"Or are you scared?" He rasped, "that my blood is better than anything you've had and not the rot you assumed I'd be?"

She growled, but didn't stop—she pulled him into her mouth. Her shadows screamed in agreement with him. It took more effort than usual to leash them.

She couldn't easily restrain the quake in her claws, the jumpiness in her muscles, and her undulating hips. Performative arrogance. That's all it was.

His laughter was a poorly rhymed couplet, veiling whatever elegy he'd etched into his cadaver heart. He rocked his hips into her.

The friction, the thick cock trapped behind black cargo pants, making her want to beg. She never begged for a damn thing. Her high-pitched keen would shame her later. Wet, aching, and so needy, she couldn't withstand it.

She flew in a tempest of delirious desire and the smell of smoke. The shake in her hands as she lit the pyre of another mistake.

She let him go at the reminder, still starving for more.  Needing the cool relief from the hungers heat. It was life or another temporary death if she didn't feed on the lust now.

The need rose within her like a hangman's ledger. Its pages tallied every gold coin she'd denied him for centuries. The debt now paid in the singing, searing bite of the blade as it severed the rope. Fuck or die.

Her existence was an esoteric jape. One she never escaped. Sweat dappled her face.

The demon inside her writhed and whined so loud Liora flinched. She grew white hot inside.

Temptation surged well above her threshold to resist it. She melded herself against him. Shadows writhed, their clothes vanished under their influence. At last, skin pressed to skin, and she breathed a little easier.

His flesh didn't prickle under her claws. It was as cold as the grave he'd defied. His movements were precise, practiced, and sharp as he gaped at her with faux surprise."Well, that makes things easier. Nice trick. Consent not your thing?" He said, a goad as his heavy cock slid through her wetness in a frustrating tease.

Her voice wavered as she said, "You made your choice when you drank from me. If you regret it, you can leave. I will find a mortal instead."

An animalistic noise ripped from somewhere deep inside his still chest. His eyes were polished mirrors as he glared at her. The lupine lilt to his plush mouth made her shiver involuntarily.

She turned away from the sight of herself in his penetrating gaze. The warped vision of the weak thing she used to be was too much to bear with everything else that roiled in her because of him.

She had come unhinged by her own stupidity. The succubus ruling her. Her punishment for forgoing feeds to prove she held the reins."No," he said, an order.

One word. One word coated in grit and coarse want. It was an invisible collar snapping around her throat. He didn't have the right to command her. Her talons sank into his shoulders.

He moaned as his blood trickled down his back. Ashton pushed deeper into her blades.

Her hips rocked into his, wetness trickling from her to soak the sheets beneath her. She wasn't playing the shy maiden tonight.

She grabbed him and shoved up hard, flipping them. The dim room spun as he grunted, his smirk transforming into a grin as she took the lead. She had the queerest notion he'd hoped for this.

Liora didn't care what he schemed as she settled astride him. Her shadows twined around his arms and dragged them above his head. They pinned him down as she reached back.

Her clawless hand wrapped around his cock as she dripped her need on him. She lined him up with her. Screw foreplay, she was in charge.

She sank down, her molten heat engulfed his length in one vicious glide. His laugh died mid breath.

She took the first deep inhale she'd had in days. Her eyes glowed amber and gilded his chilly skin. And a strangled, helpless sound left his fibbing mouth. The first truth she'd witnessed in him.

His hips jerked up into her, chasing the friction of her tight cunt bound around him. Her tendrils pinned him harder."Fuck," he cursed, and the word crunched like a champagne flute under a stiletto.

Liora's eyes glowed brighter. Fissures of violet flashing like lightning as they painted his face in an abstract portrait of charcoal and light. His pupils swelled as they quivered.

They fractured into silvern starbursts. An almost mortal reaction she claimed as hers. Her peaked breasts swayed as she arched her back and enjoyed the tickle of her hair on her lower back.

She eyed his rippling jaw, teeth clenched tight behind his lips."What's wrong, leech?" She rolled her hips, slow, rehearsed, and spiteful.

It was a mere suggestion of the heaven she could inspire to make him forget he had buried himself deep in Hell. "Am I not the meal you expected?"

He bared his fangs. She tensed herself around his cock in reaction, ignoring the tingles low in her abdomen as he settled deep. She hummed, blood hammering in her neck.

He shook like a leaf under her. His silence didn't last. Even death hadn't gagged him.

"Oh, I'll feast, Red. Just... adjusting to the atmosphere."

His words would have sounded confident. Ominous, if his voice hadn't broken. It was an audible quiver, her succubus bathed in.

His cock jumped inside her. Still ice, but he twitched like the tremors of mortal hunger would. It was the truth, one he couldn't hide from her. His hands struggled against her shadows.

Knuckles bloodless as he fisted the sheets. They tore with the gasp of a slit throat, its threads curling like severed arteries.

"Careful, little bat," she purred, talons scraping down his muscled chest. "You're almost starting to look edible."

He chuckled, but it dissolved into a groan as she lifted and dropped back down.

"That's why I'm here, right? Your personal all-you-can-eat buffet."

It was her turn to chuckle. Lies. Such a beautiful liar.

His veins glinted faintly black, her black. The VII pulsed once. Hot as an iron held over a forge, and Ashton's breath hitched.

Its heat carried the acidic tang of his blood. Bergamot infusing the mark as she gave into the urge to ride him.

Her thigh muscles barely strained as she rose, lifting almost all the way off his cock before slamming back down.

Her sigh could not compete with his rough, animalistic moan that fed the insatiable beast living beneath her deceivingly fragile skin. His temperature never rose.

Even as she burned, the chill radiated off him and numbed her thighs.

It was a dizzying paradox. Pain and pleasure and spite braided into a noose that looped loosely around both their necks.

She'd felt nothing like it. Warlocks, witches, Lords, Kings and goddamn Queens. She'd fed on them all.

No one had ever been this volatile. Good, bad? She didn't know. She shoved it down, talons engraving his ribs, and picked up her pace to outrun it.

She moved with the precision of a surgeon and the cruelty of a conqueror. He looked handsome now, but he'd become divine once she made him crumble.

Made him beg. Her shadows cinched tighter around his wrists, his throat, all his flatlined pulse points.

Hers made up for his lack. It rattled like a cemetery gate in a gale wind. Another groan rumbled from him, her pleased noise making him shudder.

"There it is," she said, watching his fragmenting pupils fracture further. "You're not so glacial now, are you, leech?"

His laugh was a whetstone rasp.

"Glad you're enjoying—the thaw, demon."

Her answering scoff only made him tense more and chase the scorching friction she offered.

Demon. That's more like it."Thaw? You're a sarcophagus with a terrible sense of humor," she said in a silken tone.

He arched up into her. The cold, fat crown of him struck a cluster of nerves high inside her and stole a loud gasp from her. Her glowing eyes flickered, mouth falling open, and her brain abruptly blanked.

It was only for a moment, but his silver eyes caught it."

There," he breathed, a parody of her taunt. "I knew you weren't all bite."

She smacked her palms down on his chest. His breath heaved and her cunt fluttered as she said, "And you're not half as clever as you think you are—" He took advantage of her distraction, hips thrusting up again, cutting her off with a choked moan. She couldn't understand how he defied her so effortlessly. Wetness slipped from her and glazed her inner thighs.

Her shadows wobbled, their grip on him slackening against her will.

"Oops," he smirked, gold veins branching beneath his skin. The gold he stole from her. "Slippery when wet, Red?"

Mockery saturated his voice. But his cock twitched inside her, again, it was a morse code confession he couldn't keep from her. He wore a sardonic lover's guise.

She saw through it as it snapped back into place. She panted, mouth snarled, knees turning to water as she moved.

His arms tugged against her smoky restraints. Muscles and tendons standing out, jumping, and bunching as he rubbed his wrists raw.

She circled her hips, stirring his cock inside her to distract him. It wasn't enough. His mind's voice catalogued it.

Her shadows want this, adjust grip and twist. See if they'll bind her too.

She stiffened, fiery blood roaring through her veins. Was he studying her? Trying to learn how to ruin her better? She leaned forward and grasped his jaw, claws nicking.

"You presume to study me, leech?"

His hips jerked, making them both gasp, unrepentant as he said, "I can't help it. You're a fucking masterpiece."

Her comment from the restaurant, back to roast her. She gave a mad laugh, inner walls flickering and dripping around him.

Liora resumed riding him, dismissing his insanity. She savored the slight burn in her thighs as she siphoned his pleasure for her own.

It was a feast she hadn't expected. The succubitch rejoiced.

You were wrong, darling. He doesn't taste like death. He tastes like salvation.

Her focus split as she growled back, So did Byron, once. You've got a taste for poisoned wine. Doesn't make it holy.

He was a mistake. A mistake that wouldn't stop. He tore free of her dark manacles. His cool, calloused hands framing her hips and slamming her down so hard her teeth rattled.

"Still performing, Liora?" His voice dropped, gravel and quicksand. "Still planning to kill me? Or are you finally feeling something?"

She spat, "Rot," even as her claws pulled him closer.

"False." He reared up, teeth nipping her collarbone, drawing blood. "Rot doesn't taste like lightning."

She glared at him as she quaked. Internally cursing her shadow as it formed into a delicate hand. The hand of a seventeenth century courtesan she'd long since drained.

It stroked his pulse points, seeking something that would never be there. She called it back to her, her own hands trembling. Her mind was abuzz with whispers to end this before it ended her.

She did nothing and just took it. Ashton and she moved in sync. He lifted her and brought her back down, hips slamming up to meet her.

The light in her eyes intensified, gold and purple light refracting off the silver in his gaze."You think you're adapting? To this? To me?" She clenched and unclenched herself around his cock in time with her rapid heartbeat in emphasis.

Her heat scalded him as he sobbed through his teeth. Her voice held more venom than her veins as she said, "You're just a tourist. A mayfly in a bonfire."

And yet, she was the one burning as tension and heat twisted and twisted within her until her every muscle strained like a harp-string resonating the final plucked note.

She still savored the falter in his actors smirk. The click in his jaw. Then a bead of sweat, a convincing trickery she couldn't understand, trailed down his temple.

He met her next slide down with a brutal thrust up into her. Fingers digging into her hips, bruising deadly nightshade into her creamy flesh.

"Mayflies," he gritted out, fucking her so hard she cursed, swayed, and almost lost her balance. "Thrive in wildfires."

He bucked, rolling them mid-thrust. Her shadows streaked free of her control.

Their whispers merging into a chorus of, let him win, just this once, as they lashed her to the bed. Wrists restrained above her head.

She thrashed as they tied her to him, tying them together. His hands braced either side of her head again, and his dark bindings knitted with hers."Traitors," she said, outrage coating every letter as Ashton fucking chuckled. Again.

Just a predator's gambit, she told herself. That sound would be used to torture her one day.

She was certain. Her legs locked around his waist as he moved inside her. Every lunge of his cock splitting her in two as he growled at her.

"No. They just know a better offer when they see it. Your move."

But she couldn't move, or wouldn't. She didn't know the difference as he drove into her like she owed him.

The demon cheered him on.

Feel that little martyr? This is feeding and communion like we've never seen.

Liora sobbed, unable to get enough air as her shoulder blades prickled. It was a bone-deep twist, like screws ratcheting into the marrow.

She shook her head, biting down on the inside of her cheek until liquid copper drenched her tongue. She'd buried that cursed ache ages ago.

She drowned it out with violence. Her claws ripped through the sheets, hips snapping to meet his. Her back bowed like a bowstring drawn too tight. Pleasure, dark, dangerous, and annihilating, swelled too high.

Her mind spun with it. The void inside her siphoned every grunt, every gasp, every lewd slap of flesh on flesh as he pushed her to the brink of orgasm.

It built like a storm-front. Inevitable, electric, and hers to command. He couldn't have it if she didn't give him it. Liora locked her jaw. Her heart fluttered uncontrollably.

Her claws pierced her own palms, pain anchoring her as Ashton observed her struggle. Her inner muscles constricting so tightly his smirk bled into a deep moan. Her shadows twined around the bedposts as she fought the tide.

He didn't laugh, but it was clear to hear, anyway.

"Your lies don't work here, do they?" He plunged even deeper, her drenched cunt taking it all. The cold shock of him hitting a place that roasted her, remade, and left her unmoored. "Denial just makes you predictable. Come on, show me what centuries of repression looks like."

How did he know? What was happening? She couldn't think past it. He hauled her up into his lap so she straddled his kneeling thighs. Her quaking knees sinking into the ruined sheets.

Her serpentine darkness let him. Both moving in tandem. His hips meeting her inelegant, bouncing as her talons sheathed. Nails scoring crescent moons in his back.

His fangs buried in her shoulder to punish her. Her back arched against her will, a broken noise falling out of her mouth as pleasure smothered her.

"There you are," he snarled, teeth coated in her blood as his hand slipped between their slick bodies, deliberately circling her clit as her climax rose to swallow her. "That's better. Stop lying, Liora."

Her shadows formed into blades and flew for his throat. He only moved faster, fingers merciless as they pressed on her clit, cock grinding so deep she felt him in her stomach and couldn't breathe.

"Do it," he said, a dare, eyes searing through to the soulless heart of her. "Kill me. Prove you're still in control."

There was a pause as her release hung like an axe over them both. She screamed through her teeth as her magic refused to sever his head from his body.

She couldn't do it, a chill fought with a shiver, dancing down her back. Heightening everything she felt until her mind fractured. His chuckle as he worked her clit and let her fuck herself on his cock was a refrain she'd never get out of her.

It was too late. He pressured her clit and she lost all hopes for regaining control.

She arched, and a wounded howl ripped from the bottom of her lungs. Unable to reconcile all she'd ever known with all that rolled through her now.

Her dark serpents shrieked. They thrashed the walls. Plaster cracked as pleasure erupted.

She'd planned to give him the pretty, performative snapping of an ancient seductress. But he got the wet, splintering rupture of something real. Her magic muttered warnings in tongues much older than him.

Volcanic and violent, it was a surrender that felt like a bone breaking. Her entire body electrified by it. Her claws unsheathed without her command. Sinking deep into the muscles of his shoulders.

Every part of her shook as her black tendrils slashed the ceiling. The light flashed off and on as they wove a canopy over the bedframe. Ashton followed with a roar, his cock buried deep and he spilled inside her.

His winter cold meeting her infernal heat in a way she'd never forget. She caught a hint of his thoughts as it surged through him.

The glamor flicker happens during high intensity moments. Orgasm, sex, feeding, vulnerability, maybe? I'll test— She frowned as it disintegrated, and he dragged her down on the bed.

He collapsed into sleep instantly, a deadweight of tangled limbs and sweat-sheened skin flattened atop her. She'd never been so grateful for her venom and its sedation after this.

The hunger still gnawed, but its razor sharp edges had dulled to a butter knife's scrape. It had never... she'd never experienced that before. Gods.

What had she done?

An acidic scream crawled up her throat and lodged itself in her vocal cords. It strangled what little breath she had. Her betrayal-honed instincts urged her to flee.

Her shadows slithered over the vampire's back, drinking him in and healing the wounds she'd inflicted. She yelled at them to stop. They crept away from Ashton like beaten things.

In the ringing silence, her demon gorged on the aftershocks and sighed.

You're still not full. You'll crave him again. Sooner than you think.

Liora hissed, "Never."

The lie tasted like his blood.