19 #2
“Look …” His tone softened and I melted into his touch as he caressed my face.
“Your magic … I just like it adapted to you, I think it’s adapting to me.
I can do some of the same things you can, but …
some things are different. I keep having these dreams about death, these nightmares where I attack you with my magic, and in the end, I’m hovering over your dead body with my bloody hands.
This isn’t a joke, Theo. I can’t be with you because if we stay together, you’ll end up dead. ”
“You don’t know that.” I held his hand in mine. “It’s just a dream.”
“It’s not, Theo. It’s a warning. I feel the pain every night I relive the horror. If the only way to keep you safe is to push you away, then I’ll live with the consequence of you hating me.”
I sighed, kissing his hand as my anger fizzled out. “You know, Caspian once told me to follow my heart, not my magic. Magic can be deceiving, but what you feel in your heart is true. I know what my heart wants, Ren. You.”
Ren dragged a hand down his face, exhaling a long breath. “I’m not sure I trust my heart either, Theo.” He steadied his breath, contemplating how much he wanted to share.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Ren. You've been through a lot and you’ve already told me so much. I shouldn’t be yelling at you for this. I get this isn’t easy for you. If you need time—”
“It’s not time I need, Theo,” His words weren’t harsh, but truth rang through them.
He took a beat before continuing. “The first person I fell for was a man I met a few years after I left the demon realm and moved here. My heart said he was a wonderful man. He didn’t care that I was a demon.
He spent all his time with me, cared for me when I got sick, and after just a few weeks, I found myself falling hard for him.
My attachment to him became trust, and that trust became surrender.
“That night his phone started buzzing. I picked it up to bring it to him in the other room, but it kept going off. I looked down to read the messages lighting up the screen, and it was a group chat with his friends laughing at him and teasing that they didn’t think he’d be able to put up with me that long to get into my pants.
It turned out he had lost a bet and as punishment he had to play nice with a demon and coax me into having sex with him.
They had bets going on how long it would take.
It was all fake, and so cruel. I disgusted him, and he used me. ”
“Ren, that’s awful. I didn’t know.” I scooted close to him, laying my arm around his chest as I pulled him close and rested my head on the pillow next to him.
“My last girlfriend? We went out for a full year. It turned out her magic ability was mind manipulation. She made me feel things that were never there because she was spying for the Syndicate. The only reason I found out was because I infiltrated the Syndicate myself and saw her at a meeting, badmouthing me and complaining that she wished her mission was to kill me, not pretend to love me.”
“Ren …” I stated firmly. “Please tell me you don’t think that little of me. I’m not them.”
Ren pulled me closer. “Of course not, Theo. But that’s just the thing.
You’re the exact opposite. You’re absolutely perfect.
You’re smart, you’re caring, and even after all the shit I put you through, knowing what I did to your family, you still carved out a place in your heart for me.
You even offered me our fucking soul. It scares me, Theo.
It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, it’s that I’ll destroy our relationship if I am. ”
“So … don’t let it.” Sincerity rang through my words. I pushed myself up to stare directly down at him. “Just because your past haunts you, doesn’t mean your future has to as well. Answer my question. What is your heart telling you right now, Ren? What does it want?”
“It wants you, Theo. It’s always wanted you.” His expression hit me like a blow. The pain was still there, the strain of what might become of us, but underneath it his eyes were dark, heated, and full of an insatiable hunger that was locked onto me.
“Then take what you want, Ren. I’m right there.” My heart was racing, my breath fast. “I’m all yours.”
Something inside Ren snapped, and he surged forward, mouth crashing into mine with a force that knocked me back against the headboard.
His kiss was desperate, messy, all teeth and tongue and pent-up desire finally breaking free.
I groaned into it, hands flying to his hips, yanking him closer until he was straddling my lap, knees bracketing my thighs.
“Fuck, Theo—” he rasped against my lips, voice wrecked. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I know exactly what I’m asking.” I bit his lower lip, tugging the silver ring between my teeth until he hissed. “What will you do about it?”
His hands trembled violently, palms scorching, branding my ribs as if they were claiming territory.
He dragged the fabric off in one savage pull, hurling my shirt somewhere onto the floor.
His fingers were everywhere, mapping me and possessing me, his thumbs dragging roughly over my nipples, greedy and worshipful.
I returned the favor, yanking at the hem of his shirt.
He lifted his arms without hesitation, letting me strip him bare.
His pants followed in a frantic tangle. The silver barbell piercings through his nipples caught the low light, already hard and straining from the cold air and teasing we’d traded earlier.
I lunged forward and sealed my mouth over one nipple. I sucked hard and with greed as my tongue lashed at the metal piercing. A guttural, shattered moan ripped out of him. His hips snapped forward, grinding the thick, aching length of his cock against my stomach.
This wasn’t enough. I was desperate for more, and I wanted him unraveling.
I pressed his shoulders down, urging him onto his back.
He collapsed willingly, chest heaving, eyes clouded with lust and something dangerously close to awe as I shed the rest of my clothes and slid down his trembling body.
I kissed and bit a burning path over his sternum, across the frantic rise and fall of his chest, until I knelt between his spread, shaking thighs.
“Theo … what are you—”
I didn’t speak. I fisted the base of his cock, already hot and leaking, and dragged my tongue in one long, deliberate, filthy stripe from root to dripping tip. Ren’s hips bucked so hard the bed creaked. A broken curse tore from his throat. His fingers knotted brutally in my hair.
“I never got to taste you last time,” I rasped against his skin. “I waited almost three months for this and I’m not losing my chance now.”
I swallowed him down, slow at first, savoring every thick inch.
The heavy weight stretched my lips, the sharp salt of his precome flooded my tongue.
I swirled around the head, teased the slit, then sank deeper until he hit the back of my throat.
The sounds spilling from him were wrecking me—low, half-choked curses, desperate whimpers that set my own cock throbbing painfully between my legs.