Chapter 10
TEN
Shawn’s hand is iron around mine as he pulls me away from the bonfire, deeper into the woods where the trees swallow the light and noise.
The music and laughter fade behind us, replaced by the crunch of leaves underfoot and the hiss of the wind curling through the branches.
My heart beats faster with every step, though I’m not sure why.
The air here feels heavier. Close. Like someone is watching.
He shoves me against a tree before I can speak.
The bark bites through my sweater, rough and unyielding, and his mouth is on mine, wet and crushing.
The gasp that escapes me is devoured before it can turn into a protest. His hands roam over my body, rougher than usual, more demanding.
Heat flickers through me in strange, uneven bursts as his fingers slide up my thigh, pushing the hem of my skirt higher.
His knee presses between my legs, forcing them apart.
I moan despite myself when his fingers slip into the top of my panties, under my stockings.
He slides against my slick folds with an ease that should thrill me.
This should feel good. This should be what I want.
I reach down out of habit, fumbling at his jeans, freeing him, wrapping my fingers around his cock.
And then everything changes.
The moment my skin meets his, something inside me recoils.
My stomach twists. Nausea rises. The hands on me feel wrong, not just clumsy but foreign, as though I’ve been playing at intimacy with a stranger wearing a mask.
The dark presses in from all sides. The trees feel too close.
Too silent. My pulse spikes, quick and frantic.
Why am I so aware of how far we are from the fire, from anyone else?
Shawn grips my waist and jerks me forward, his breath hot and sour.
Shawn’s grip tightens like a vise as I try to pull back.
The bonfire glow is long gone now; the only light is the thin silver of the moon cutting through the trees.
My pulse pounds against my ribs. “No, Shawn. I changed my mind.” My voice cracks, brittle and small in the empty woods.
He goes still. For a heartbeat, nothing moves.
“Changed your mind?” The words spill out of him, dripping disbelief and contempt.
His fingers bite harder into my arm before I can twist away.
Then he spins me, shoving me chest-first into the tree.
The impact knocks the air from my lungs.
Bark bites through my sweater and scrapes my skin raw.
“You don’t get to toy with me for months, tell me no, and then pull this,” he snarls into my ear.
Cold fear snakes up my spine. “I don’t want this anymore. Stop!”
He doesn’t stop.
The sound of tearing cloth rips through the night.
My stockings. My panties. His fist tangles in my hair, yanking my head back.
The angle exposes my throat, stretches my neck painfully.
Normally I might like the edge of pain, the roughness of being handled, but not now.
Not here. Everything feels wrong. Then his hand presses my cheek hard against the tree trunk, grinding splinters and grit into my skin until I feel it tear.
A hot sting blooms across my face, and I feel the slow trickle of blood slipping down toward my mouth.
It tastes like iron when it reaches my lips.
“Shawn, stop!” My voice shakes, rising with panic. “Please, don’t—”
He ignores me, breathing hard, his words a low, venomous hiss in my ear. “You don’t get to say no now. Not after everything.”
My stomach flips with nausea and rage. My hands scrabble against the bark, splinters biting under my nails as I push back uselessly. He is too heavy, too close. My cheek burns where it’s pinned, my hair twisted tight in his fist, the scent of sweat and cheap cologne choking me.
“Stop!” I scream, twisting against him. My voice echoes in the trees, swallowed whole.
And then he is gone.
One heartbeat he is behind me, and the next he is ripped away as though a storm reached down and plucked him off the ground. I spin around, breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.
The man standing between us is enormous.
Dark hair tied back from a face built for war. Golden eyes glowing in the moonlight. His body is a wall of muscle and fury, his lips peeled back in a snarl. Power radiates from him like heat from a furnace. “I believe she told you no.” His voice is low and terrible, more a growl than speech.
He tosses Shawn aside as if he weighs nothing. Shawn hits the ground hard, scrambles upright, mutters something about me not being worth it, and runs. Cowardice stinks in his wake.
I exhale shakily and stare up at the man who saved me. A beautiful brute. A predator.
And then I feel them.
Two more shapes step out of the shadows. My breath stumbles when I see the one in front. “Deimos,” I whisper.
He grins, violet eyes gleaming with something between hunger and delight. He gestures lazily to the man who had thrown Shawn like a rag doll. “This is my brother, Bastion.”
Bastion’s golden eyes remain on me, intense and unreadable. His presence is heavy, his gaze a weight pressing against my skin. Deimos motions toward the third figure, the one who stays just outside the ring of firelight, watching me with a stillness that feels inhuman.
He is breathtaking. His jaw is sharp, his golden-blond hair falling in loose strands around a face carved too perfectly to be mortal.
But it’s his eyes that pin me to the spot—silver-blue, glacial, and assessing, like blades sliding beneath the surface of water.
“And that,” Deimos says softly, “is Cassiel.”
My pulse hammers in my ears. The way they look at me—like they already know me, like they’ve already decided something about what I am—sends heat coiling low in my belly. My thighs press together instinctively, a reflex I don’t even think about. I should be backing away. I should be running now.
But I’m not.
I’m rooted to the spot like prey beneath the eyes of something far older, far more dangerous, than man.
Why am I aroused?
Deimos steps closer, the heat of him pressing into my skin even though he doesn’t touch me.
His scent curls around me—smoke and something darker, older, cloyingly sweet like rotted fruit and crushed flowers.
He braces a hand against the tree beside my head, boxing me in, and I swear the forest holds its breath.
“I never got your name,” he murmurs.
My breath catches. “Lillien.”
“What was that, Lustling?” His voice is silk soaked in sin, a wicked amusement licking at the edges of every word.
I swallow hard, my throat bone-dry. “My name is Lillien.”
His smile tilts sharp and cruel, as if he already knew. “Well then, Lillien…” he drawls. “It’s time for a game.”
Before I can ask what he means, Deimos steps closer. Closer than he’s been. His violet eyes gleam in the low light, catching the blood on my cheek. He studies me for a heartbeat, nostrils flaring, the corners of his mouth curving in a slow, knowing smile. He doesn’t blink. He just breathes me in.
Then, deliberately—like he’s been waiting for this—he reaches out. His hand cups my jaw, not gently but firmly, his thumb resting at the hinge of my jaw while his palm presses possessively against my cheek. It’s a grip that says I belong to him already, whether I admit it or not.
And then he leans in.
His tongue drags across my cheekbone, hot and rough and unhurried, right through the thin, wet trail of blood still trickling from the scrape Shawn left. The taste of me on his tongue. The sound of his breath against my skin.
I gasp, every muscle going taut. It’s not gentle. It’s not comforting. It’s possessive.
He laps up the blood like it’s sacred, like it tells him everything he needs to know about me. When he pulls back, his lips are stained a faint red. His violet eyes have gone darker, deeper, burning with something I don’t have a name for.
“Sweet,” he murmurs, his voice a low growl.
My whole body trembles. Something coils inside me, hot and wicked and shamefully eager. I hate how much my thighs press together, how my pulse pounds, how the scrape burns under his tongue like a brand.
Deimos tilts his head, still holding me as he glances at his brothers. “She tastes like fear,” he says, almost amused. “And hunger.”
Bastion makes a low sound behind him, a rumble in his chest. “I feel it,” he replies.
So do I. God help me—I feel everything.
Deimos leans in even closer until his breath grazes the shell of my ear. “You’re going to run, little lamb, while my brothers and I chase you.” His voice lowers to something silkier, heavier. “And when we catch you, we’re going to make you ours.”
My stomach tightens. My thighs clench harder. “What?” Panic and raw, unfiltered arousal mix in my voice.
Cassiel steps forward just enough for the moonlight to strike his eyes. His voice is soft, but it carries through the trees. “If you’re caught too easily, you don’t get to choose who takes you first.” The words land heavy, like a sentence passed down. “Let’s hope you make it interesting.”
Bastion’s growl is low and guttural. “He said run.”
Deimos pulls away, violet eyes locked on mine. “Run.”
And I do.
I run into the woods, heart hammering, breath sharp and fast. Fear claws at me, cold and sharp, but it is layered with something else—something molten, something wrong.
Hunger unfurls in my chest like a living thing.
Branches whip my arms and legs, scratching, stinging.
One lashes across my thigh, leaving a wet warmth that slides down my skin. My lungs burn, but I don’t stop.
The bonfire is gone, swallowed by darkness. I don’t know where I’m going. I only know I have to move. Because they are coming. I can hear them. Not running. Not rushing. Just moving. Slow. Deliberate. Taunting.
They’re stalking me.
The thought should terrify me. It does. But the terror is tangled with desire, molten and wicked in my stomach. Sweat drips down my spine. My thighs tremble. I am soaked, and not from fear.
What is wrong with me?
Leaves crunch behind me, closer now. Bastion’s low growl. Deimos’ mocking laugh. Cassiel’s silence. They are letting me think I have a chance. They are enjoying this.
I push harder, panting, heart racing, muscles screaming. The woods blur. My vision swims. And then—
“Found you,” a voice rumbles.
Something slams into me from the side, knocking me off my feet. The ground rises to meet me, cold and damp, leaves flying up around me as I hit the earth. My breath is knocked from my lungs.
Deimos is on me before I can move. His weight pins me down, grinding my hips into the dirt.
His breath is hot against my neck, his hands prying my thighs apart with ease.
Cassiel appears on my left, his fingers wrapping around my wrist and pinning it to the earth.
Bastion looms at my right, his massive hand curling around my other wrist, holding me as if I weigh nothing at all.
I am stretched open. Exposed. Trapped. And soaking wet.
“Don’t,” I whisper, breathless. The word sounds weak even to me.
Deimos laughs low, dark, triumphant. “Don’t?” he echoes softly, his voice velvet and ash. He straddles me fully, his body a furnace of heat and danger. His fingers move to his belt, undoing it slowly, taunting. His eyes never leave mine as he frees his cock.
My breath catches. He is massive, thick and heavy, the head already slick. His hand wraps lazily around it, stroking. “What was that?” he asks again, voice soft.
“I said don’t,” I stammer. “Please.”
His grin widens. “She begs. How quaint.” He leans down, mouth brushing my ear, his breath a hot ghost along my neck. “You may be a virgin, but you smell like sin.”
My whole body seizes, heat and fear and desire colliding inside me. Then he thrusts into me. The sharp, tearing pain is drowned in a flood of pleasure so intense it feels like being split open by light. I scream. “Oh God!”
Deimos growls, his hand snapping to my chin, forcing my gaze to his. His eyes are violet fire, fury, hunger. “There is no God here,” he snarls. “I am your god, Lustling. And you will praise me, not Him.”
Beside me, Bastion lifts his head slightly, nostrils flaring.
His gaze drops to my thigh where the branch scratched me.
Blood beads along the cut. With a low, hungry sound, he leans in, tongue dragging along my skin, lapping the blood into his mouth like it’s sacred. His golden eyes darken. “Sweet.”