Midnight
I stride over to her, reach for her chin and pull her to me. I grip hard, but run a soft thumb over her lips, parting them and brushing her tongue.
She lets a slip of breath escape, her chest heaving and eyes wide.
“I am fucking livid,” I growl.
I could reap her all over again, this time out of fury and fire and the agony she’s buried in the valves of my heart.
How could she? And yet, she’s standing here, far too alive. Far too powerful. That’s what Ignatius said… she’s unrestrained power now. A bomb waiting to go off.
A bomb, that no matter how angry I am, I still want to play with.
Fuck into submission.
Ruin for the simple pleasure of vengeance, because she broke me.
Bastien coughs in the frame of the door.
From the corner of my eye, I see Lex nudge him in his ribs then hook her hand around his arm and tug him out of the door.
“We’ll give you a minute,” she says and scoops Mortem up into her arms.
“Don’t go far,” I say through gritted teeth as she closes the door.
“Da—” Lucy starts. But I don’t want to hear it. I slide my thumb over her tongue, cutting her off and making her gag on it.
“No.”
“Hnngn mm—” she tries to talk around my thumb, but I slide it in deeper until she gags. She yanks her head away, removing my thumb.
“We should talk…” she says.
“No. You don’t get to talk right now. You forced me to kill you.”
“I’m not dead, Midnight.”
“That much is fucking clear,” I bark, “but you didn’t know that would be the case.”
I grab her arm and spin her around to face the wall and slam my hands either side of her head, pinning her in place.
“I needed to be free,” she breathes, craning her head around so she can see me.
I press my body against hers. The pressure of real, living body against body is glorious. A relief and a betrayal as much as it is a fucking revelation.
She’s warm. Too warm, but I don’t want to think about the consequences of what she is right now.
I want to own her. Make her mine all over again so that this time, she doesn’t forgive. I need to fuck the runes off her skin and leave my fingerprints there instead.
“You were mine, Lucy.”
“I still am.”
“Prove it…”
She practically vibrates beneath me. Her arms drift around to her back as she squeezes them between our pressed bodies and unbuckles my trousers. She tries to sneak her hand down into them, but I don’t budge.
“Midnight…” she pants, desperate to have me.
But I don’t want to give myself to her. I want her to feel the misery I did. Forced to think she’d murdered the woman she loves. She needs to understand the pain she put me through.
No. She’s not getting to taste me until she’s answered for what she did. I fist my hand in her hair and yank her off the wall, tipping her so her neck is bared. “Do you have any fucking idea the pain you put me through?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
But her words are meaningless. My stomach is hard as steel and hot as lava. The foaming mix seeps into my muscles. Everything is tense with too many fucking emotions and no way to release them. I need to punish her, to make her feel an ounce of the anguish she’s put me through.
A decrepit table sits in the corner of this entrance hall. I shove her towards it.
“Hands on the table.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“I’m not fucking around, Lucy. You hurt me more than you could ever know.”
There’s a switch in her gaze; the lust pooling there cools and simmers to the same bubbling poison in mine.
“You think I wanted this? Do you really believe I wanted to die? To leave you? After everything?”
“I don’t know, did you? Because you sure as shit didn’t warn me?”
She flings her hands up. “Oh, like that would have done any good. You’d have tried to stop me.”
“OF COURSE I WOULD.”
“And then what?” She points a pissy finger in my direction. “Stay trapped under Ignatius for the rest of my life? Never free? Never able to breathe for fear of what freedom he’d take from me next? Fuck that and fuck you for thinking I should live like that, too.”
Her skin is ablaze; I see shapes now. Each one glows so bright she lights up the foyer and several floors of stairs above us.
My body fizzes like I’m surrounded by static and electricity and the hum of unrestrained magic. Which… is exactly what she is right now. Completely uncontrolled power in its rawest, purest form.
If I wasn’t so fucking furious with her, I’d be able to take a moment to appreciate her sheer magnificence. The way her body is a tapestry of marble and silk and magic. The way power thrums under her skin and makes her eyes burn with the energy of a thousand souls.
The pair of us face off, breathing so heavy our shoulders heave up and down.
Both pissed.
Both determined.
I don’t know who breaks first. But one second our mouths are shouting and the next we’re charging towards each other.
My lips crash against hers and it’s the neediest kiss I’ve ever had. She pushes deep into me, our mouths bruising from the force of need.
Teeth.
Tongues.
A nip and a nibble. A breathy moan.
Hands clawing at clothes. Fingers prying and pulling at buttons and zips and robes. It’s as though we’ve never taken a breath and we are each other’s oxygen. Drinking each other down in hungry gulps of flesh and tongue.
I bite down on her bottom lip until she squeals. A warm, metallic liquid seeps over my tongue.
Blood.
She really is alive. I want to take her home. But home is where Ignatius is.
The deal.
The betrayal.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy says, bringing her hand up to cup my cheek and wipe the grimace from my expression. “Talk to me…”
The fight dissipates. But I can’t tell her, not yet. If I confess now, she’ll never agree to come back to Ora City.
While Ignatius might take her, I’ll never give up. I’ll find a way to free her from him, I’ll just have to beg for her forgiveness after.
So instead of answering, I smother the silence with a kiss. Softer this time.
Needy.
I savour every caress of her, the sweetness of her blood, the warmth of her flaming body beneath my touch.
I cradle her jaw, her neck. Pepper kisses along her throat and inhale the scent of her hair.
I drag my fingers through her tresses and wrap my hands in her locks.
She kisses my neck, nipping and licking and biting as if she can’t decide whether to kiss me, eat me or fuck me.
All three, please, gods.
Because right now, she still has feelings for me, and she won’t once she knows what I agreed to. That, this time, I sacrificed her soul for mine.
Wrong as it is, I will take what I can get from her, just in case I never get the chance to explain.
I need to treasure our time together. Cradle the memories of her body against mine, the taste of her pussy on my tongue before memories are the only thing I have left of her.
I kneel, glide my hands up her calves and bring her robe up, up, up.
Over her thighs and above her waist. I nudge her until her backside rests against the broken table.
Then I place my lips against her thighs.
Kissing and licking along her flesh. Slow.
Agonising. Left thigh, right. Kiss, kiss, peck.
One luxurious long lick and a stroke of my tongue. I drag teeth over the runes until she’s trembling and begging me to fuck her.
“Please, Daddy. I need…”
“What do you need, baby girl? Use your words…”
“Your tongue.”
I focus on her pussy, kissing my favourite place in the world. Then I push my tongue down her slit, parting her folds.
She bucks and leans against the table, moaning. “Oh fuck, more.”
But I take my sweet time, savouring every second of this fucked-up mess of a situation. I push all the rage and hurt and fear away and focus on the now.
The taste of her, the feel of her on my tongue.
I focus on her clit, sweeping down to her entrance. She’s soaked, and gods, does she taste divine. Like sweet musk and electricity. Like golden sunrises and autumn blossoms.
I moan into her cunt as I move over and over her flesh, licking up every drop she gives me. It only makes her wetter, and she drowns my tongue in her excitement.
I grip her thighs so hard I know I must be leaving bruises. But I don’t care, I want my finger marks there even when we rid her of the runes. I lick slow circles around her hardening clit.
When she’s twitching and sensitive, I switch to lighter, quicker flicks. That elicits a moan that is pure filth. I wish I could capture it. Keep the sound of her coming undone wrapped against my heart forever.
I release one of her thighs and bring my fingers to her entrance. She’s so ready for me. I push inside her and then pull out just as slowly. Her legs shake, the tremble of holding herself against the table when really she wants to come apart.
“More. I need more.”
But she’s not getting what she wants.
I will fuck her on my terms and take my sweet time, enjoying the way she soaks my tongue. Revelling in the heat from her walls and the way my fingers glide like silk through her excitement.
Fuck.
If Ignatius reaped me here and now, I’d go willingly. I want to die with my mouth on her cunt and her excitement on my tongue.
I curl my fingers and drive a little harder, a little faster, but not at the pace she wants. I will make this last. Carve the feel and shape of her pussy into my mind so I never forget.
“Midnight, please, I can’t… I can’t hold on.”
Her body shines so bright I have to close my eyes against the glare and pray to the gods that an orgasm won’t make her explode.
She moans, one of her legs slips, and she falls over the edge, crying out, panting and gripping the table until it creaks and groans under the pressure of her clench.
But I’m not done.
Not by a long shot.
We’re in the Prima Tower, there’s magic here, I could use it for…
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth as I call the tower’s magic to me. It comes easier than Finis’s, probably the connection it has to demonic magic.
This is a total defiling and misuse of magic, but I don’t care.
I pull my fingers out of Lucy’s pussy and flip her around so she leans over the table.
“Hold tight, baby girl.”
I loop the thick black ribbons of magic into a harness of sorts, tightening it around my arse and thighs. And then I reshape another thread of magic, squashing it until it’s a huge shadowy dildo. I slide it into the harness and step close to Lucy’s backside.
She gasps. “What are you—”
“Quiet,” I say and notch the cock to her entrance.
“But what if they hear?”
“Then you’ll have to keep your mouth shut, won’t you? Now be a good girl, and tell me your safe word…”
“Satan,” she breathes and tilts her arse up, making the shadows dip into her pussy. She gasps, her eyes rolling shut.
Her skin glimmers, the rune marks glowing like fireworks in the night sky. I thrust in, pushing the shadow cock right to the hilt. Her head hangs forward. Hair falls over her face as tension ripples through her arms and down into her hands gripping the table.
I slide my hands up her bare legs and under her robes to grip her breasts. She moans and arches into me. I drag my hips back and shunt forward. Lucy moans again, her body breaking out in goosebumps.
“Harder,” she pleads.
I thrust again.
And again.
And again.
Until her knuckles are white, and she trembles beneath my grip. She bites her lower lip, breathing heavy as I tweak her nipples and squeeze just hard enough to elicit a bolt of pain.
I slide one hand between her thighs and hover over her clit.
“What do you want, baby girl?”
“I need… I need to come,” she pleads.
I wrap a fist around her hair and yank her body flush against mine.
Then I drive the strap in harder, faster.
I use her hair as an anchor and pump inside her.
When her body tightens and I know she needs to come, I rub circles over her clit.
Her body glows brighter, her runes radiating a heady thrum that washes over me.
It’s an intoxicating cocktail that vibrates all the way to my own core.
Raw energy filled with a carnal need driven by more power than I’ve ever wielded. I’m flooded with it.
It tingles in my muscles and flows all the way to my bones. The scent of fresh spring buds, incense and summer warmth envelops me.
She spirals higher and higher until her mouth falls open and she whimpers, “I’m going to come.”
I rub her swollen clit harder, slide the shadowy shaft in faster and faster until she cries out my name and her skin erupts. Beams of glistening light pour out of the runes on her arms. They illuminate the walls and glare off the floor. I hold an arm against my face to guard against the brightness.
Finally, the radiance dissipates and she slumps, her body spent. I scoop her up around the waist to keep her upright.
I slide the shadowy strap out of her, rather impressed at my ingenuity, and bring it to my lips.
Her mouth curls into a smirk.
“Hungry?”
“For you… always,” I say and suck her excitement off it.
But as soon as I say the words, the memory of what I’ve done filters back in. I’ve ruined us and she doesn’t even know it yet. My hand opens, and the shadow strap dissipates before it hits the ground.
Drawing Lucy into my arms, I wrap her in tight and press my mouth to hers. It’s a kiss that whispers a million secrets.
Warm lips and hotter tongues. Pressure that demands ownership. Needy hands that pull at clothes and tug at hearts.
I want an apology from her.
But I also want to tell her what I’ve done. Confess the mistake I made.
Gods, we have both fucked up so badly. I was…
no I am still furious with her. Though as I examine my thoughts, the heat from earlier has died to a simmering hurt.
And now I’m harbouring a secret. One I cannot tell her else I risk her not coming home with me.
The irony that I am doing to her exactly what she did to me is not lost.
We can’t hide behind sex but equally, what if we face this and we can’t get past it? We both have to forgive each other, and she doesn’t even know that yet.
I’ll make up for it, though. I intend to set her free once and for all. I just need to get her home first.
I kiss her over and over, my fingers bruising her body with the need to draw her ever closer. I want to crawl inside her, to wear our kiss like a cloak.
I’m a liar, hiding my betrayal in the folds of our mouths and heat of our kiss.
She tries to pull away but I’m not done. I can’t be because once we leave here, nothing will be the same. And I just need to pretend for one more—
“Midnight,” Lucy says, wrenching herself free from me. “What the hell is wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say, and fill my expression with the most saccharine of smiles I can muster. All the while knowing it doesn’t reach my eyes, and she doesn’t believe me.