Chapter 8
The fire of emotion dulled within me, yet I did not pull away.
Asmodeus’ scent wrapped around me, both stirring and soothing—a fragrance sweet and sharp, like a burnt offering, or a charred prayer.
It filled my head with feverish want, as thick and cloying as the fog of incense in a sealed chapel.
I was dizzy with it, overcome, and without thinking, I opened my mouth and pressed my lips to its flesh.
By then, of course, I had long since abandoned modesty. There was no veil left to draw about myself, no robe to adjust, no collar to tug back into place. The body I had once treated as a battlefield had already been surrendered. Now, it stood bare, unguarded, and waiting. And I took what I wanted.
I traced my tongue over its chest and pressed my lips to the reddened peak of its nipple, my hands wandering reverently across its strange and living stone of a body.
Asmodeus sighed—softly, sweetly—a sound I had never heard from it before.
My heart pounded, wild with some long-denied ache.
From my time with Vassago and Oliviero, I had come to understand how deeply I cherished the act of giving pleasure, not merely receiving it, nor existing as a vessel for another’s desire.
I found joy in this moment, where I moved with intention, where my touch had purpose.
My body, once a source of shame, had become an instrument I could wield, and with it I drew forth sounds like that soft gasp from the parted lips of the Prince of Lust himself.
What a wild and wondrous thing I had become.
I twisted one of its nipples as I suckled the other, then dragged my chin slowly through the hollow between its firm pectorals.
There, in that tender valley, I let my head rest, cradled against the warm expanse of its chest. Its flesh was like blood-warmed marble; motionless and hardened, yet undeniably alive.
I looked up at it with something like puppyish eagerness, my intention caught between a hunger for innocence, a plea for praise, and the aching desire to be undone beneath the full weight of its lust. It watched me with something like tenderness.
I found myself believing I could read emotion in the flicker of its flaming eyes—that the subtle shift of its light bespoke a kind of tenderness as it regarded me.
That suspicion was confirmed in the way it stroked my hair, with a reverence so gentle it nearly shattered me.
I was learning to read it. We were entering a new intimacy, one that reached beyond the sexual, beyond the sacred offering of my life and soul.
This was a quieter understanding, the sort that blossoms only with time, the kind of knowing that comes from loving someone across long, unspoken years.
My heart thudded at the thought. Time in Hell was a strange thing.
Perhaps it had been a century since my death.
But even so, it felt presumptuous to think this way.
Too soon. Too much. Too human. Yet the thought came, unbidden: Do you wish to love this demon?
Do you wish for it to love you in return?
And love—true love—was far more perilous than adoration, more naked than desire, more undoing than lust. It was so raw, so consuming, that I could not even answer myself. So I turned inward and focused on the one part of my body that could always, inevitably, be coaxed toward arousal.
I recalled the way Asmodeus had touched me when at last I ascended those infernal stairs.
I mulled on how hollow I had felt when it withdrew from my hole, how sharply frustration had bloomed the moment it told me to stop squeezing between my legs.
Wasn’t it all some grand and drawn-out ritual of denial, stretched across death and damnation like a taut string, vibrating with want?
A cruel, exquisite game where desire was never quite fulfilled, only prolonged
Yes, in truth, I had been edged from the instant it left that monastery and summoned me to Hell. No other demon had managed to satisfy me fully—not when my life, and all that remained of my soul, had already been laid at Asmodeus’ feet.
With that pulsing and eager arousal, I stared at it. Beneath my chin, I could feel the slow rise and fall of breath within its body, though neither of us had needed breath in some time. That struck me as strange.
Was it anticipation that made the Prince of Lust tremble beneath me, or only the echo of my own yearning, reflected in flesh I longed to study like sacred text?
I wanted only to be close, to pull on that tether anchoring the two of us.
"Will you take me now?" I asked, my voice raw and unsteady.
I had not meant to sound so desperate, but once the words left me, the want surged like a tide, unchecked and overwhelming.
My cock throbbed, proof that my body had long outrun my thoughts.
It moved ahead of reason, already certain of what was to come; my very flesh was convinced it was about to be claimed by the Prince of Lust. So, when Asmodeus remained silent, offering no answer, frustration bloomed hot beneath my skin.
I spoke again, unbidden and too bold. Near growling, I asked, "Won’t you finish what you started? "
And I did not mean only that recent moment against the pillar. I meant long before, back to the beginning, when I had first summoned it. I meant the night it had taken me, unmade me, ruined me so utterly that no mortal touch could ever satisfy me again.
My fingers drifted down the inside of my thigh, to the place where it had marked the tender flesh with its teeth. The puncture wounds remained.
It had said, “You’ll think of me every time you see them. Every time you touch yourself, I’ll be there.”
I remembered how I’d screamed mercy, writhing, weeping, impaled on its cock, certain I would die from the force of it. How Asmodeus stopped, kissed the blood from my lip, and told me I was doing so well.
So, so well, little priest. Let yourself go.
But I did not want mercy now.
I wanted what had come before: fear, ruin, the razor’s edge where death dressed itself in ecstasy. Now, as its consort, I craved more. I wanted Asmodeus to test the limits of my newfound immortality, to see just how far I could be pushed before I shattered.
“Well?” I hissed.
It growled in reply, the sound more laughter than wrath.
It offered no words nor clarification, only placing its hand at the back of my neck and tilting my face upward.
The heat of its palm spilled through my spine, steadying and commanding all at once.
I shivered beneath its touch, a flicker of awareness stirring as I remembered we were not alone.
But when my gaze dared drift toward the watching Kings, Asmodeus’s grip tightened.
Look at me, it murmured. Not aloud, but inside my skull, a voice that brushed over my mind.
I obeyed without thought, fixing my eyes to its burning one. And the longer I stared, the less certain I became of what I saw. I blinked, and for a moment, it wore the form from that first summoning: two eyes, a face almost human, red flesh, a tail. Familiar. Almost mortal.
Then I blinked again, and the illusion slipped. The beautiful monstrosity returned. Its strange mouth curved into something close to amusement as it descended.
And then it kissed me.
It was a kiss that burned, a conflagration pressed to my lips. Heat roared to life inside me, total and consuming, and I inhaled as though drowning; lungs frantic, body alight. It felt as if it was stealing the last of my soul, and I gave it willingly.
It no longer mattered that I was no longer human, that breath was no longer necessary, that I had crossed the threshold into immortality.
My mind still clung to the memory of flesh, and the animal that once needed air took me over.
So, I chased my breath now, gasping into the kiss and pressing myself as close as possible, as though proximity alone could fill the need in me.
Two warring instincts moved within me. One yearned for the demon to breathe life back into me. The other, darker and more honest, wanted Asmodeus to draw the breath from my body, to consume the whole of me. I hoped it would somehow inhale my flesh, too.
Another dizzying wave crashed through me. My knees gave out, and I collapsed against it, trembling and feeling absurd. My cock stirred, aching faintly, but there was something greater than lust within me now—adoration, awe, an almost unholy disbelief.
I was shocked, still, that it wanted me, that everything I had given up to be here was about to culminate. Asmodeus must have sensed the unravelling in me. I was perilously close to tears, undone not by pain but by the sheer magnitude of it all.
It cupped my face in its hands and sighed against my mouth as it kissed me once more. Slowly, so slowly, as if sealing a vow.
Its tongue pressed against my lips, and I parted them without hesitation, offering what it asked for.
We kissed slowly, though my heart pounded with infernal urgency.
With my eyes shut, I tried to taste all of it.
Asmodeus in full. The inside of its mouth carried the copper tang of blood, the salt of sweat, the damp chill of ancient stone.
Yet beneath it all, I tasted hunger, fierce and familiar. It mirrored the shape of my own.