10. Aliana
ALIANA
I delve into the wine that Filia gave me like it’s Christmas and we just raided a liquor store. The warm sensation down the back of my throat makes me sigh in delight. Yes.
Bonus?
This bottle can be broken into an excellent weapon. But it would be a waste to break it before emptying it.
So I do.
I sit on top of my unicorn tapestry comforter and pick at the tightly woven fabric as I get myself very drunk.
My head lolls to the right, and I watch as the sun rises and the stained-glass windows make a kaleidoscope of patterns on my floor. The hallway outside my room stays blessedly silent while I get wasted.
No monsters come in to interrupt my buzz.
Whenever my stomach grumbles, hoping for food, I take another sip. Until there are no more sips.
“No, Diana. Don’t leave me.” I hiccup at the wine bottle as I clutch her to my chest. I named her, the bottle. She’s going to be my friend. And my weapon. My freapon. I slide my fingers placatingly along her neck before I lift her to my lips, hoping for another drop.
She’s empty.
“Fine. Be that way, bitch.” I stumble off the mattress and go set her on top of a sarcophagus. “If you don’t wanna help me out, you don’t have to.”
I turn her so her label faces away from the bed because we’re fighting. “I can’t stand your face right now. I’m going to sleep…”
The walls seem to waver as I stumble back over to bed. The tapestry is so scratchy as I crawl over it, and it takes me a second to realize that’s because I’m naked. I got drunk instead of dressed. Actually, I think I took clothes off in my drunken state.
I struggle to roll the heavy tapestry down so I can climb beneath it.
“Stupid, stupid,” I grumble at the unicorn, who does not easily bend to my will.
There’s a full two minutes of fighting and cursing before I finally realize I need to climb onto my pillow and get my body weight off the tapestry in order to roll it down.
Drunk me isn’t the smartest me.
When I finally do that, I nearly cry in relief because there are real sheets under the tapestry. I won’t be scratched to death when I turn in my sleep by the awful, thick, rope-like fibers.
I slide between the sheets with a contented little sigh. The tapestry tucks in nice and tight around me—I don’t even realize I’m moving it—as I drift off to sleep.
Chase looms over me, his eyes glowing red.
He chases me through the forest, and, though I run until my lungs feel like they might burst, he catches me.
He pins me to the ground and then flips me over onto my back.
His mouth lowers to one of my nipples, and his tongue flicks it through my shirt.
The sports bra I always wear is gone for some reason, and I can immediately feel the hot warmth of his mouth as he laps at my breast.
“Chase…” I murmur as heat threads through my body. “Chase…” His hand drifts down to grab one of my hips, pinning me in place.
I jerk awake, panting, a cold sweat running down the top of my back.
I am still so drunk that the ceiling seems a bit blurry as I shuffle myself up onto my elbows.
It might be dusk, just based on the dull colors in the room.
On top of one of the sarcophagi, my lantern still creates a happy little yellow bubble of light, but most of the room is coated in grays.
I must have kicked off the tapestry in my sleep, because it’s rumpled at the foot of the bed. My sheet is tangled around me, covering one half of my body but not the other. In fact… I see a damp spot near the top of the sheet. Did I drool?
Is that why my nipple seems wet?
I rub a hand down my face, but I must have been in some strange position because I don’t feel drool on my chin. My head throbs a little; I’m still partially drunk as I kick the covers farther off. Immediately, a chill in the air slides over my thighs, increasing my awareness of that area .
I’m soaked. “Ugh.” It must be my fertile time of the month. I always get sex dreams when I’m ovulating.
Tonight’s, though? I shiver in revulsion, just glad the dream didn’t go as far as it normally does. Normally, I come in my sleep before waking up horny enough that I have to give myself two or three more orgasms before I can think straight.
Thank fuck I didn’t come while thinking about Chase, that prick.
I lie there as my nipples pebble and my body coils expectantly, waiting for the release I’ve trained it to expect this time of month.
Dammit. This couldn’t be more inconvenient. Can’t my stupid hormones tell that getting horny right now, in a monster’s lair, is a terrible idea?
No. No, they cannot.
Another wave of heat slides down my spine, twisting and curling like those abandoned water slides at Breakwater Beach I saw once.
I listen carefully, but no footsteps echo in the hallway. I don’t hear noises outside. No monsters disrupting the ground beneath me.
No one seems to be around.
It’s still a bad idea. A very bad idea.
The sheets move—no, that’s not a thing. God, I’m drunk.
My thighs move against the sheets, the material sliding over my skin and quickening my pulse. Tempting me.
My mind flits back to the last guy I fucked, one of the rebels who was a friend with benefits. The way his dick felt as it slid over my sopping clit flashes through my head. “Fuck. I need to get it out of my system.” If I don’t, I’m going to be distracted and grumpy all day.
I can’t be distracted. I need to be on my guard. I have to focus on escape routes and weapons…
I’d better be quick.
I’d better not get caught.
I spread my legs, kicking off the remainder of the sheet so it rests down by my ankles. I let one hand travel over my belly and start to circle the space between my thighs, just letting the entire area grow sensitive to touch. My other hand begins to pluck at my nipple.
Mmm.
The effect is instantaneous.
My body’s always been quick to take its pleasure. I don’t know if that’s part of growing up in the rebellion, where quick moments are the only safe thing, or if it’s just how I was made.
But it doesn’t take long before my hand glides through wetness and my clit stands up, begging for attention.
I briefly dip my fingers into my slit, spreading it in a way that’s always made me feel wanton and slutty.
Then I drag my slick fingers back up to my bundle of nerves and slide my fingers up and down along either side, not pinching, just stroking.
Meanwhile, my mind drifts to the Devourer last night. Those glowing red eyes. That massive chest. The threat of those fingers plunging into me. Goose bumps prickle my skin, and they’re both out of fear of getting caught and longing for it.
If he saw me now, splayed out in this bed, what would he do? That fucker who thinks he owns me? Would he turn wolfish again? Grab me? Growl in my ear?
My back starts to arch, and I tug at my nipple with rapid strokes, far quicker than my hand down south is moving. I make my breast practically bounce with speed as pleasure cannons down my spine.
My feet get tangled in the sheets as my hips start to move, and panting little breaths puff up from my lips. I stare up at the chandelier as my body starts to sparkle as much as it does.
I pinch my clit.
Pleasure shoots through my body as all the coiled tension finds sweet release. My mind hurtles into outer space for a split second or two.
I move the fingers on my clit faster, trying to draw the orgasm out before it fades. But as I shift my hips, my ankles get caught further in the covers. Twisted. Almost as if the sheet itself is curling around them like shackles.
My orgasm drops away, and my head lifts from my pillow as I try to untangle my feet.
I can’t.
That’s so strange…
The sheet winds around my ankles and lower calves like it’s become a set of vines.
My heart rate, already fast from my fading orgasm, doubles.
The light flickers. Then the wine bottle from last night floats through the air, its neck pointed right at my thighs.
Oh shit.
My hands leave my body, and I shove up into a sitting position, ready to leap off the bed. But the sheets tighten further.
I’m shackled.
My heart clambers up into my throat and chokes off a scream when it tries to leap out my mouth and abandon ship.
Oh God.
Diana twists in midair in front of me, spinning around and around, her green glass glinting as the chandelier winks on and off.
Fuck.
I start to shiver. Try to kick my feet, but I’m dragged down the mattress until I fall backward. I lift my hand, intending to bat the wine bottle away, but the mattress sinks underneath my shoulder awkwardly and I fall sideways.
Every nerve ending in my body is screaming. All the pleasure and fear signals are jumbled up right now, like crossed wires. I whimper.
The wine bottle floats next to my right knee. The side of the bottle starts to glide over my thigh, a soft, teasing caress that has hundreds of tiny fireworks detonating inside of me.
I tense, my teeth clamped together. If I scream, what good will it do? Plus, I’m not exactly sure what’s happening right now. Something scary. Strange. Magical.
The bottle rolls delicately along my skin. And something about the touch makes my drunken mind start to wonder…
“Are you a monster or a ghost?” I whisper.
Above me, the chandelier flickers.
It doesn’t really answer my question.
But I did think, when I first got here, that this room belonged to someone else before. And I don’t know everything about monsters…but I haven’t seen one that can make things hover before.
The wine bottle glides farther up, and the ridge on the neck begins to slide back and forth over my clit.
Gently.
I blink, surprised, but the soft movement gives me confidence that my suspicion is correct. No monster would ever be gentle.
A twinge of sympathy passes through me for whoever’s soul might be stuck here.
Still, this situation is…odd.
Or so I think until the bottle warms. My mouth parts in shock as the bottle grows hotter with each pass it makes over me.
I gasp and open my mouth, ready to ask something of the ghost, when a thick, golden thread unravels from the tapestry at the base of my bed.
It sails up through the air and then—in drunken fascination—I watch it tie itself into a knot around one nipple then the other, the space between them connected by a taut string.
Damn.
This ghost…um… Yeah, he knows what he’s doing.
The string starts to tug at me as if an invisible finger is pulling on it. Both nipples tingle with the sharp sensation. It’s just shy of painful but so intense that I find my mind and my questions start fading.
I just feel.
That’s when the wine bottle heats up even more, blazing so much that I whimper. But the ghost doesn’t let up. The bottle angles upward until its mouth closes over my clit. Heat and suction immediately engulf my skin, and my hips jut forward.
Holy shit.
That’s better than any toy I’ve ever tried. The suction is stronger than most guys have ever given me. And the bottle doesn’t lift, but it does twist back and forth, gently adding a stroking sensation to the mix that I didn’t even know was possible.
How can an inanimate object feel this good? Oh God.
My feet kick at the sheets restraining me, and a tiny thrill shoots up my spine as they tighten their hold. The knots holding the string unravel, and sensation floods back to my sore nipples as the bottle twists in a full circle.
“I don’t know if human men will ever do it for me after this, Diana,” I croon at the bottle.
She twists once more.
I shatter. I fragment. I fall apart.
I have the best orgasm of my life in a monster’s house with nothing but a string and a wine bottle. I have to bite down on my own hand in order to stifle my scream. And as soon as that orgasm ends, in a haze of lust, I reach down and grab the bottle, moving it toward my opening.
I need penetration more than I need air right now. I slide just the neck of the bottle up inside of me.
The tapestry reacts instantly, coming to life. It floats up above the foot of the bed and then falls onto my torso, trapping my arms and making me lose my grip.
But the bottle doesn’t fall to the bed. No, it keeps moving. Keeps fucking me. It changes angles, experimenting until it finds one that makes me howl.
I try to look down, but I can’t see it. I can’t see past the weighted blanket pressing down on my chest because this tapestry is fucking huge. I just have to take it.
Some dark little corner of my brain uncurls and stands up, strutting forward.
I would never have thought she even existed. But she likes this. Taking it. Losing control. She—not I—makes my legs spread farther so the wine bottle can slide even a bit deeper.
She—not I—whispers, “God, yes. Make it hurt.”
The slam of the bottle against my pelvis is so damn satisfying that I moan wantonly. And my ghost—unlike a man, who’d be focused on his own sensations—is highly aware of my body. Mine’s the only one we’ve got, after all. He slams then tilts the bottle so he hits my g-spot.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Until I scream and black out.
When I blink my eyes open, I wonder if I dreamed it all. Because I’m lying in my bed with the tapestry pulled over me, tucked in tight.
But there’s a definite ache between my thighs.
And my nipples pulse like they’ve been used.
When I sit up and the tapestry falls away, I see a solitary piece of golden string curled on the sheet beside me.
I gather it into my palm and stand up, traipsing naked through the room to look for the wine bottle.
It’s missing.
But my closet door is cracked open. A shiver coasts up my spine and thuds inside my aching head as I cross over to the door and yank it hard so I can peer inside.
In the middle of the closet floor, Diana sits innocently, her green glass glinting. Did I finish her off in the closet and dream it all?
Did I just have a sex dream like usual? Maybe use my hand on myself?
I make a move to scoop her up but pause when I get close.
Because scratched onto her surface is the word yum .