Chapter 8 The Shackle-Soul #2
Pain melts into something else, something sweeter, more intoxicating, as his potent saliva seals the cut. My fingers twist into the sheets, my thighs squeezing together, but there’s no relief.
He doesn’t stop.
The dagger moves again, this time along the underside of my breast, then lower, skimming over the trembling plane of my stomach.
I’m panting now, my skin slick with sweat, my body alive with the promise of more. Each nick of the blade sends a jolt through me. My nerves sings and my pussy throbs.
He cuts me just above my hipbone, shallow but stinging, and before I can even gasp, his mouth is there, sucking, his fangs grazing the wound.
Pleasure and pain twist together and coils a knot of need tighter inside me.
“Lucien—gods—” My voice breaks as his hand slides between my thighs, his fingers finding me soaked, my clit swollen and throbbing. He doesn’t touch me where I need him most, though.
Instead, his fingers dip lower, gathering the wetness that drips from my entrance, then brings it up to my lips.
“Taste yourself,” he orders with a voice rough with hunger. I obey, my tongue darting out to lap at his fingers, and the musky flavor of my arousal explodes across my senses.
His cock jerks against my thigh, pre-cum leaking from the tip, and I moan around his fingers, desperate for more.
The dagger returns, this time dragging up the inside of my thigh. I spread my legs even wider without thinking, offering my most vulnerable self to him.
The blade presses against the delicate skin of my inner thigh, then—slice.
A sharp, bright pain, followed by the hot rush of blood. “Oh, fuck!”
Lucien groans, his fangs bared as he swoops, his mouth sealing over the wound. His tongue works the cut, lapping up every drop as his free hand grips my thigh hard enough to bruise.
I stifle a moan as a new, alien heat gathers within me. I’m too scared to tell him, too terrified to mention that the sigil on my spine is pulsing, a deep, insistent throb. It’s building now, stalking my heightened emotions.
I’m learning it unwillingly, know that it comes awake when I’m roused or aroused.
I don’t…can’t mention it to Lucien because I don’t want this to end. Don’t want this depravity I’ve craved more than my own breath to cease.
So I focus on the way his fangs scrape my skin, the way his breath hitches when he pulls back, his lips smeared with my blood.
“You’re dripping,” he growls, his hand sliding up to palm my pussy. Decadent, squelching sounds fill the room as his fingers slip inside me, one, two, then three, stretching me, curling just right to make my hips buck off the bed. “So fucking wet for me.”
His thumb presses against my clit, rubbing in tight, relentless circles, and I scream, my back arching, my nails raking down his arms.
Then his mouth is on me.
Not where I expect—on my pussy to drink down what he’s earned.
Instead his lips seal over the pulse point at the base of my throat, his fangs teasing, teasing, teasing once again.
I angle my head, frantic for this next sublime agony. “Do it. Please, Lucien, my love…do it!”
He groans when I call him my love. Always has.
And his fangs sink in…but only to withhold his bite at the last moment. Yet, the pain is white-hot enough, searing enough, his thick cock grinding against my hip enough. And I screamed in agonized frustration-tinged pleasure.
My vision blurs and my body flooding with heat as I dissolve into blinding orgasm, drown as it crashes over me before I can even beg for him to fuck me.
I come with a broken cry, my pussy clenching hard and my blood rushing faster as his fingers piston with inhuman speed inside me.
He doesn’t stop there.
His mouth trails lower, over my collarbone, my sternum, my stomach, dagger and fangs and tongue swirling over each wound he makes, healing them only to leave new ones in their wake.
By the time his lips reach my pussy, I’m a quaking, sobbing mess, my thighs shaking, my fingers tangled in his hair.
But the scant breath in my lungs strangle all the same, anticipation hazing my vision until he’s the only pinpoint on my horizon.
He doesn’t tease and he doesn’t ask.
Between one snatched breath and the next, his fangs sink into the tender flesh of my labia, the sting so intense I scream and come.
Then his tongue is inside me. Thrusting, fucking me like his cock, his fingers digging into my hips to hold me still.
The pleasure is too much, too deep, his fangs still buried in my sensitive flesh, his saliva mixing with my blood, my arousal.
I scream harder, come harder as my body convulses, my cries echoing off the stone walls. The sigil on my spine burns, a searing brand, sharper and more agonising but I barely felt it.
All I feel is Lucien—his mouth, his fangs, his fingers.
“Hands and knees,” he growls, his voice a dark, slurred promise of excess pleasure and unbridled violence, not against me but the thing within me.
The thing my love intends to battle.
I hesitate for the barest second before I give in. I rise, seal my mouth to his in an open-mouthed, tongue-tangling act of surrender and adoration.
Then I turn, presenting myself to him on my hands and knees, spine arched, sex bared, the sigil searing against my skin. His sharp inhalation tells me everything I need to know.
Because what I see when I twist toward the mirror—what once looked like faint shadows inked along my spine—has flared into something else entirely.
The air thickens as the sigil ignites, silver and blood-black, alive beneath my skin. It writhes like a living serpent, and Lucien goes utterly still.
Over my shoulder, I see the dagger gleaming in one hand, its edge catching the pulsing light that spills from me. In the other, his fingers flex, claws emerging, long and wicked.
He drags them down my spine, slow enough that I feel every point break the surface tension of my skin, leaving trails of fire in their wake.
My hiss is part pain, part unbearable pleasure, but my body doesn’t retreat.
It leans into it, back arching deeper, dripping pussy bared to him, trembling and hungry because it turns out, the more it hurts, the more I want him.
Lucien notices it all. Of course he does.
His low chuckle vibrates through me as he presses closer, the dagger’s flat edge skimming my hip while his claws return to trace the glowing sigil.
“There you are,” he murmurs, voice like velvet over steel. “Hiding in my beloved, feeding from her fear.” He lowers his mouth to my ear, his breath hot and unholy as his claws sink into my rump. “But I think I’ve found your weakness.”
The words send a shiver through me, not with dread, but with recognition. The certainty in Lucien’s voice stirs the thing inside me.
It hisses its protest, but Lucien only smiles against my neck. “That’s right. Sex. Blood. Emotion. The things my Elara craves. Which means they’re what you crave too, isn’t it?” His tone turns feral. “But here’s the thing. She will survive the gorging of it. But will you?”
Fire lights up my spine. “Lucien!”
“Be brave, my love,” he commands, but the faintest note of terror edges the words. “Let us drown you in debauchery.”
Our gazes lock again.
And the look in his crimson-gold eyes—dark, bright and utterly unhinged—tells me he means to make good on that promise.
Or perish trying.