Chapter 7
SEVEN
Ipace the length of the room like a caged animal, my boots striking the floor with a rhythm too sharp to be casual.
Each breath feels shallow, ragged, too loud in the heavy air.
The fire crackles in the hearth, throwing restless light across the walls, but it does nothing to burn off the storm forming inside me.
I can feel their eyes on me. Bastion sprawls across the couch like sin incarnate, his long legs spread wide.
Cassiel is a shadow near the window, arms folded across his chest, the pale spill of moonlight catching in his hair and eyes until he looks like something carved from frost. They don’t speak. They’re waiting.
So I give them what they want. I tell them everything.
How she stepped into the confessional. How her voice shook when she said my name—Father Deimos—like she’d been waiting her whole life for someone to give her permission to fall.
How her fingers slipped beneath her skirt while I watched.
How I fed on her pleasure. How I came, harder than I have in months, because of her.
And more than that—how she fed on me. How I felt something inside her shift, like a coffin cracking, something dying or something ancient waking up.
Cassiel doesn’t speak. Bastion tips a bottle to his mouth and snorts, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “So?” His voice is a drawl, eyes gleaming with amusement. “You jerked off to some good little church girl discovering masturbation. Thrilling.”
I stop pacing. Turn. My voice comes out low and sharp, steel sheathed in velvet. “She fed off me. Like a succubus.”
That gets their attention. Cassiel’s shoulders go still. Bastion’s smirk falters, just a fraction. “A virgin succubus?” Bastion scoffs after a beat. “Come on. That’s not a thing. Succubi are born dripping in sin, not repression.”
I glare at him, heat pulsing beneath my skin. “You didn’t see her. You didn’t smell her. You didn’t taste what she gave off. Her denial makes her hunger stronger. It’s like she’s been starving herself since birth.”
Cassiel’s voice is soft, but it cuts through the room like a blade. “She doesn’t know?”
“No,” I bite out. “She has no fucking clue. Her mind’s locked. I can sense her emotions, but I can’t get in. I’ve tried. It’s like she’s warded from the inside out, but she didn’t do it herself.”
Bastion leans forward, elbows on his knees, his eyes narrowing, the lazy amusement gone. “You’re serious.”
“She’s dangerous,” I say. “Or she will be.”
Cassiel studies me with a gaze too calm to be human. “And what are you planning to do?”
I don’t hesitate. “I’m going to force her transformation.”
Silence descends, thick and heavy as ash.
Bastion’s mouth twists into a feral grin. “Now that’s the Deimos I know. How?”
“By killing her.”
The words fall like stones into the firelight.
Cassiel doesn’t move, but I feel the ripple of tension across the bond between us.
Bastion laughs, low and biting. “Or,” he drawls, “we could break her without killing her. Chain her to the bed. Let her starve on the edge of climax until she begs. Hell, let me fuck her while you watch. That’ll crack her open. ”
I move before I think. My fist slams into the wall beside his head, wood splintering under my knuckles. Bastion doesn’t flinch. He grins wider, like he’s entertained by the violence trembling in me.
“No,” I growl.
His voice drops, testing. “Why not? Too far?”
“Not far enough,” I spit. “That’s too easy. That’s brute force. Pain fades. Fear fades. But what I want? I want to take her apart from the inside.”
I lean in, close enough to feel his breath, my voice a snarl of silk and fire. “I want her to thank me for the chains I wrap around her. I want her to cry for the very thing that will ruin her soul. Not because she’s scared. Because she’s mine and she knows it.”
Cassiel’s voice cuts in then, low and cold. “You want to save her.”
I laugh, sharp and twisted. “No,” I whisper. “I want to be the one who damns her.”
A flicker of unease crosses Cassiel’s perfect, icy features, but he doesn’t challenge me. Bastion chuckles, slow and dark, licking whiskey from his thumb. “Damn, brother. That’s poetry. She doesn’t stand a chance.”
I walk away from them, fire licking through my veins. Her scent still clings to my skin. I swear I can still feel her breathless moans vibrating against my cock. My hand twitches with the memory of her. If someone else touches her — if he touches her — I’ll rip their soul out through their throat.
Whether she’s human or demon, virgin or succubus — it doesn’t matter. I’m going to ruin her. And she’ll beg me for it.
The dream hits like a fist to the sternum.
One breath I am alone in the dark, the next I am inside her, all fever and scent and liquid heat.
Candlelight trembles against stone. Incense curls in the air and the room smells of things that should be forbidden and are, by some brutal mercy, exactly what I want.
Her skin is soft beneath my hands. Her thighs part for me, trembling.
Every small sound she makes is a vow written in flesh.
She whispers my name and there is no pretense in it, no fear.
Only want, sharp and immediate. Her hips press up against me as if gravity itself has learned the shape of our bodies.
I feel her surrender like a current through my palms, like smoke pulling toward flame.
It makes something in me unclench, something I have been keeping tight for centuries.
I lean forward, fingers curving into her hair, and press my mouth to the hollow of her throat because I want her to know, to remember, who she belongs to.
A voice cuts through the heat. It is wrong and it is patient.
I feel the flames gutter as the air tightens.
The candles dim. Shadows peel back and there, behind her, a thing steps into the failing light.
Horns like black branches twist from its skull.
The presence of it is older than hunger, older than oath.
It moves as if the dark itself has chosen a shape.
When it smiles, the world tastes like iron.
‘She does not belong to you,’ the voice says. ‘She is not yours.’
Rage is a physical thing under my skin. It boils up like molten metal and I lunge for it, teeth bared, claws wanting and ready. I will tear that thing from the shadows and feed it its own fear. I will show it every consequence of touching what is mine.
Then the room ruptures and I am awake. My heart hammers as if it has been forced into new form.
Sweat sticks to my chest. My cock is painfully hard with need that no waking hand can still.
For a moment everything is the afterimage of the dream—incense, the hollow press of her throat at my lips, that grin splitting the dark. I taste it in the back of my mouth.
He was there. Not in some half-remembered corner.
Not a phantom of my own longing. He was there in her dream and in mine, watching, waiting, claiming.
The thought slams into me with a clarity that is almost holy: this is not a creature to be bargained with.
This is something that keeps appointments.
This is a predator that marks its hours.
No. She is not his.
She is mine.
If he touches her, I will not only break him. I will make him watch while I bury myself inside her and erase him from her memory. He will remember only that she belonged to me and that, when I had finished, there was nothing left of him but the echo of a stupid, frightened noise.