Chapter 10
I would have thought a four-hour session with Logan would have satisfied me, but it only made me hungrier.
Luckily, my body eventually gave out to save us both from more orgasms. Logan might have refused to knot me, but he still had made a mess of me by the time we were done.
After a night of sleeping alone in my room—under Logan’s orders to get some actual sleep—I found myself between Kaito’s legs the next day.
I preferred to take turns between my mates so as not to wear them out. Logan was still sleeping when I checked on him in the morning.
Kaito, though, probably never slept.
“It’s useless,” I complained as I put my clothes back on and slumped into the chair.
Kaito chuckled. “Are you referring to your ability to be sexually satisfied, or my effort to fix this Death Lotus remnant?
If I had been capable of blushing, I would have.
My poor mates had been taking the brunt of my needs to keep my magical reserves high enough for two realms draining me dry.
Hell and the Netherworld were both taking their cut out of my magical hide and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it right now except survive it.
I ran my fingers over my arm, testing my temperature levels. While I maintained a low-grade state of hypothermia, it wasn’t too bad as long as I received regular… maintenance.
“You’re never useless,” I told him with a wink. I indicated the object of his obsession—when he wasn’t giving me what I needed, of course. “I’m referring to that.”
He concentrated on a piece of black glass that had been left behind in my room. I’d spent most of the past week cooped up with him in his office trying to figure out how we could make use of it. As well as doing other things.
Which was fine when we were recharging my energy reserves. That required lots and lots of orgasms.
But Kaito insisted that we try to recreate the Death Lotus while we waited for Balthazar to return. No one had seen him since he’d vanished after making a sucky deal with me.
Demons could be flaky like that. But, since our plan hinged on him taking me to Hell’s Heart, there wasn’t much to do other than wait.
I didn’t like waiting, so Kaito was doing his best to give me some sort of hope to hold onto.
“Maybe it’s useless,” he agreed as he turned the piece of glass over. I didn’t know how he had the energy to study it as if he was looking at it for the first time.
It was the same damn piece of glass that we’d been staring at all week.
He glanced up at me. “But, there’s one thing we haven’t tried yet.”
I raised a brow, not liking the tone of his voice. He sounded… intrigued.
Bad things happened when Professor Nakamura was intrigued.
“And what’s that?”
He held out his free hand. “Come here.”
I frowned. “You want to cut me with it? We tried that already.”
I still had a Bandaid on my thumb to prove it. I refused to let Olivia heal every little thing. It would heal on its own eventually.
He shook his head. “No. I want you to swallow it.”
My eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”
Okay. Now he’d lost his damn mind.
He placed the shard—the very sharp shard—onto the table.
Waving his hand over it, he released a wave of red and blue fire. The table scorched under the heat and I was afraid he’d burn right through it before the shard melted.
His brow furrowed as he worked the flames to round the melted glass into a perfect sphere.
“There,” he said, seemingly pleased with himself. “If it doesn’t work, it’ll pass through your system on its own.”
I gave him a blank stare. “Are you suggesting that I swallow it just to see what happens, and if nothing happens I need to take a Shit of Death?”
He choked at my question, then covered his laughter with the back of his hand. “If you want to phrase it that way, sure, Koneko-chan. But if it’s any consolation, I could explain to you my working theory?”
Crossing my arms, I pushed out a heavy sigh. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
He cleared his throat and straightened, which only ignited a flutter of interest through my core.
He was so hot. Figuratively and literally.
He’d lost his wings after our session, but he still retained a divine quality that made his skin shimmer.
He wore pants and an open, loose shirt, revealing perfect abs.
When I looked up, I took in his curved horns.
They glimmered behind the red and blue flames that licked through his hair.
The tattoo slicing up his left cheek still had the afterglow of our power exchange, leading my gaze to his brilliant red eyes. A ring of silver circled his irises. After his revelation as a Fallen Angel, I understood the silver, now.
He’d been trying to tell me what he really was all this time.
“I’ll tell you if you stop looking at me like you’re going to eat me,” he said with a wry smile, revealing sharp teeth.
I grinned, but kept my arms crossed. “If I recall, eating you is exactly what I enjoy doing lately.” I tilted my head. “Or should I say drinking?”
Now it was his turn to blush, because the easiest way for me to absorb magic was by drinking his blood and his cum. While crude, it was effective.
And Kaito certainly had no qualms about “helping me” in that regard.
Logan, however, was too tender with me lately, and far too apologetic for knotting me, to allow me to pleasure him. He would let me cut him and drink his blood, if I asked, but it didn’t feel right.
It didn’t matter how much I assured Logan I had enjoyed being knotted by him, he still was struggling to accept his wolf in its full capacity. He’d denied his nature for so long, it felt like a sin to indulge.
I understood. The moral lines could be blurred between us and I was confident we’d still figure it out.
So, Kaito picked up the slack while I enjoyed tender sessions with Logan.
Not that I was complaining. The dual experiences were absolutely heavenly.
If it weren’t for the deadline hanging over my head, and the fact that my other mates needed rescuing, I would have quite enjoyed being the Incubus King’s prisoner indefinitely.
“Well, in this case, I suggest you eat this remnant,” Kaito suggested. “My theory stems from what you told me of your time with Azrael in his divine cherry orchard. The cherries are poisonous to non-divine creatures, and the pits were poison.”
I nodded. “Yes, but nothing happened to me when I ate those cherries. And when Azra ate the pit, he…” My voice trailed off, not liking the memories of how he’d almost died.
The cherry pit had looked like a pure black diamond.
Because the universe required balance.
There was no Ambrosia without a Death Lotus.
There weren’t angels without demons.
And there wasn’t a divine fruit made of only purity. A tiny pit of evil rested in the center, because none of us could escape sin. That was something my mother had learned to accept.
As a Princess of Hell, it was my duty to understand how to manage sin.
“It allowed you to mate-bond with him,” Kaito said after a moment of silence.
I swallowed, remembering how everything had unraveled when Azra had placed his life in my hands.
“It was belief magic that allowed him to finally bond with me,” I clarified. “He didn’t believe himself worthy unless he sacrificed everything for me. Only then would the mate-bond function.”
Kaito hummed in agreement. “Yes, as an angel that makes sense. But you are only part angel, Koneko-chan. Your belief magic works differently. I suspect you only need a shadow of hope rather than a solidified belief to make it work. A leap of faith, if you will.” He gestured to the little black sphere.
“If I told you that you could absorb the power of the Death Lotus by digesting this, would you believe me?”
I knew what Kaito was doing and I didn’t like it. “Are you suggesting that I can trick my magic into working on the placebo effect?”
If I was anyone else, perhaps I could pull it off, but I—Lily Fallen—tended to get too stuck in my own head.
If only I was someone else… just for one day. Maybe everything wouldn’t go wrong all the time.
He shrugged. “Like I said, it’s just a working theory. And there’s no downside to testing it.” He scooped up the sphere and pried my arms apart, then dropped it into my palm.
“Other than a Shit of Death,” I grumbled.
But I found myself popping it into my mouth.
Because I wanted Kaito to be right. I wanted to be able to do something about my situation.
I swallowed, working the hard object down my throat with a wince.
He held up a glass of water to help me wash it down. “Cheers.”