7. Sins of the Flesh
Deyva
S earing iron, my flesh burning like incense in offering. I knew better than to thrash, to fight against the binds, knew the way the coal-hot metal would sizzle and peel away at my skin, but this was wrong . I wasn’t meant to be here. I was safe.
“Deyva, Deyva,” he taunted. “Playing children’s games with me? Hiding in holy nooks and crannies as if I can’t find you. My little lost treasure.”
I panted, pulling on the chains, whining as the cuffs ate down to bone, arching away from the acid-washed stones nipping at the flesh of my back.
“I am impatient, my Deyva.”
His hooves scratched over the floor, closer, closer, whispering warnings.
“It would be better if you returned before my impatience becomes anger .”
He hasn’t found me. I am hiding. I am safe.
“Deeyyyyva.”
“Deyva.”
I woke with a gasp, a massive figure framed in the door, shoulders wide enough to fill the space, fire at his back. I scrambled back on the couch, down to the floor, ashamed of my own terror, but not foolish enough to let him get his hands on me a second before I had to.
“Whoa! Deyva, hey. Hey, it’s me.”
He stepped into my room and I growled. Hands went up into the air, a mild gasp sounding.
“Deyva? It’s Stavros.”
Stavros. Sanctuary. My hand wrapped around my ankle and I moaned, falling forward and hiding my face against my knees. I wasn’t burning. Kimaris had found me, but only in dreaming.
“Shiiiit,” Stavros breathed softly, and he scuffled forward, dropping to his knees.
The idiot didn’t have enough of Zach and Kais’ caution.
I was still feral, still the animal from the dream, but he scooped me out of the corner and into his arms, pressing my bundled form to his chest. He smelled clean, soapy, like he’d just come from a shower, and some of my tension unwound.
Nothing in Hell smelled like a freshly-washed Stavros.
“I didn’t think you’d be sleeping,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to be.” But I was fucking tired.
It’d been a few days now since I arrived.
A few days of pacing in boredom, taunting Zach with theology arguments until he got too prickly and took off.
A few days of Kais watching me like a hawk, aware there was a larger predator in his territory, and not certain of what he wanted to do about it.
A few days of Stavros, circling me, scenting the air with curiosity, shame, and thick desire. As if that shit didn’t just make me hungrier when I was already approaching starving.
“I’m good, you can let me go,” I said in a rasp, but I couldn’t pull away. I didn’t like the flavors on Stavros right now, pity was a saccharine taste, and it was especially so when I knew it was directed at me.
He ignored me, lifting me from the floor with a soft grunt, rising to the couch and continuing to hold me. It was an odd kind of embrace, his arms banded around me but hands not quite touching.
“You want to talk about what was going on just then?”
“No.” I turned my head, resting my head over Stavros’ heartbeat, listening to the steady drum, the way it picked up as my legs loosened and I leaned into him, pressing my aching feet against the warm leg of his pants. “Why are you here, Stavros?”
He sighed and one hand slipped up my back, cupping the back of my neck, thumb brushing absently in the hair at my nape. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“I have days still before you need to worry.” More if he’d come to my room like this and let me soak up this strange buffet of feelings. Desire was rising gently, but so was guilt.
“Deyva, I think you should feed off of me.”
I stiffened, but when I tried to pull away the hand on the back of my neck held me still, grip careful, but firm. Desire flashed, but this time it was mine. I was hungry and tired, and Stavros was a meal .
“No. Let me go.” My own reluctance surprised me. This was what I’d been hoping for, but I didn’t want it out of pity. And I didn’t really want Stavros to give in to his self-loathing, as if he were meant to be a sacrifice to me.
“No? Then why did you come here?” He eased up and I slid off his lap and onto the cushions, the fluorescent light of the hallway still falling through the open door enough to illuminate the frown he was wearing.
“Because you were...better than where I was. I meant what I said—”
“And I meant it when I offered you sanctuary, Deyva,” Stavros said, hunching and meeting my eyes. “If you want to survive, I am the best option. I know firsthand what you are, what I’m...offering. And I’m...well, let’s just say sins of the flesh are something we have in common.”
Don’t be an idiot, just ride him like the meal ticket train he is, the hellion in me said.
A softer, older, neglected part of me wanted to say yes for an entirely different reason. One completely unrelated to my survival.
I sat up, and Stavros did too, holding my stare.
His tongue flicked out over his lips as I shifted, straddling his lap, settling myself just over his crotch, but resisting the urge to grind and watch his thick eyelashes flutter with that first fall from grace he was asking for.
Stavros thought he was irredeemable, like his irrepressible craving for affection—for offering it—made him the same as me.
His throat flexed as I settled my hands on his shoulders, my hair falling forward as he arched back, head against the back of the couch, chest rising and falling with quick breaths.
I held his gaze as I kissed him, as the soft groan of satisfaction echoed between us as I licked around his lips.
I grasped his head and Stavros’ hands gripped low on my waist, fingers digging into the top of my ass.
It was a kiss, but also a feast. He had washed himself for me, anointed himself in oils, perfumes on his freshly-trimmed beard, like an offering.
A sacrifice. I sucked on his tongue and his hips rocked beneath me.
Finally, I fed, pulling on the storm of desire, the twisted satisfaction he got by giving in to what he considered his sins, and that secret craving of his to be cared for.
Underneath it all, was pure Stavros, a heady, dense pool of him, his life and pains and pleasures.
This is what I couldn’t get from dreaming, what was missing from the souls who descended to Hell, and was entirely absent from the hellions I’d been surrounded by.
I wanted to devour it all, suck him down like an alcoholic with their first bottle in years. It was far more than I needed to survive, but it would be orgiastic to consume. And Stavros would be left a husk.
My chest ached at the thought. I took a morsel instead, a tiny spark. It warmed away the cold in my bones, the burn of my injured feet, and the pounding in my head. There was still hunger, still exhaustion, but that was less too.
Stavros' arms had circled me in the kiss, he held onto me like a clamp, moaning against my lips, chasing them as I lifted my head.
He wasn’t tired, his eyes were bright. He was panting a little, but that probably had more to do with the fact that I’d been sucking him down, not giving him an inch of space as I kissed him.
“Fuck. Deyva ,” he sighed out. And then he arched for more.
I paused him, my hand on his throat. “It’s done, Stavros. Thank you.”
He blinked, forehead folding between his eyebrows. “Done?”
“I only took a little. It’s enough for now.”
“But…” He looked to the door and I thought he might listen, slip out and go back to the priest house like I was suggesting. He straightened and lifted his chin. “You can take more. Like you do in the dreams.”
“I did take more than I do in the dreams. The sex is fun for me, but it isn’t necessary, Stavros. We can keep it simple, like this,” I said. We could even skip the kiss , but I would’ve missed that too much.
Stavros swallowed, eyes falling to my mouth, and then to my breasts where they were pressed against his chest, just peeking out the collar of the t-shirt.
“What did you really come for, Stavros?” I asked, combing my fingers into his hair, smiling at the rumble in his chest that answered.
“To...to help you.”
“You have.”
“I thought you’d want more, or just—”
Fuck. Just let him go. Let him think the sex was just a dream thing.
“What I want is to strip out of these clothes and have you pin me to this couch like you would in your dreams, Stav. But I don’t need that to survive—” Not literally, at least. It felt pretty fucking necessary at the moment as I felt his cock jumping against me through our clothes.
“—and you’ve already done enough. Anything more would be… ”
“Selfish,” Stavros rasped. “I came here to be selfish. Because I wanted to fuck you so bad and—”
And have it be my fault, what I needed him to do, rather than what we both felt like, just for fun. Just to be selfish.
His arms loosened, but only to slide his hands down to my ass, squeezing tight and making me gasp as he ground me over his stiffening cock.
I pressed my lips together, swallowing my whine of need, and Stavros leaned in, biting at my throat, swirling his tongue over my pulse, one hand sliding down the back of the shorts to grope at my flesh, passing over my ass and just barely grazing at my sex.
“This is what I want, Deyva. I want my fucking dreams to come true,” he growled. “You can feed on me whenever you want, just give me this. Please .”
Begging, as if I had it in me to refuse him.
I growled, the animal in me snapping, but Stavros was quick, hand sliding up my waist. The t-shirt rucked up and over my breasts and he yanked me forward, sucking roughly on my flesh as if he’d been the starving one the whole time.
The pull of his mouth on my nipple, and the scratch of his beard on my skin, shot right down to my pussy, making me clench and twist in his hold, poised too high to do anything but rub myself against his chest like a cat in heat.