Chapter 3 The Demon’s Devotion #2
"It feels—" My voice broke as one of the phantom touches skimmed the curve of my breast through my sweater. "It feels real."
"It is real. To your body, sensation is sensation. It doesn't matter where it comes from."
The touches multiplied, cascading over my shoulders, my arms, my stomach, my thighs.
They were everywhere at once, soft and teasing, never lingering long enough to satisfy.
I was trembling now, my breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
Between my legs, I could feel myself growing wet, my clit throbbing with a need that had no physical source.
"I could make you come," Azrael whispered, and the words themselves seemed to vibrate through my body. "Just from this. Just from the suggestion of pleasure. I could make you feel things you've never imagined—ecstasy so intense you'd forget your own name, bliss so complete you'd weep from it."
"Then do it," I gasped. "Please—"
"No." The phantom touches vanished, leaving me cold and aching and desperate. I opened my eyes, spinning to face him, and found him watching me with an expression that was equal parts hunger and restraint. "I want to hear you beg first."
My face flamed. "What?"
"Beg." His golden eyes burned into mine. "Tell me what you want. Use your words, Lizzie Saltz. I want to hear you say it."
I should have been offended. I should have told him to go to hell and stormed out of the room. Instead, I heard myself say, "Please. Please, Azrael. I want—I need—"
"What do you need?"
"Touch me." The words tumbled out, desperate and shameless. "Really touch me. I can't—the phantom touches aren't enough. I need to feel you."
Something shifted in his expression—a crack in that careful composure, a glimpse of something raw and hungry beneath. He reached out and cupped my face in his hands, his palms cool against my flushed skin.
"Since you asked so prettily," he murmured, and kissed me.
It wasn't like Lucien's bruising intensity or the imagined passion of Darius's inevitable claiming.
Azrael kissed like he was memorizing me—slow and thorough, his lips soft and searching, his tongue tracing the seam of my mouth until I opened for him with a gasp.
He tasted like midnight and honey, like something ancient and sweet and utterly intoxicating.
His hands slid down to my shoulders, then my arms, leaving trails of cool sensation in their wake. When he reached my wrists, he lifted them, pressing them gently against the wall on either side of my head.
"Keep them there," he said against my lips. "Don't move them."
I nodded, my fingers curling against the cool plaster. He stepped back, his golden eyes sweeping over me with an intensity that made me feel utterly exposed, utterly seen.
"Beautiful," he breathed. "You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?"
Before I could answer, the phantom touches returned—but different this time.
Sharper. More focused. A finger—invisible, intangible—traced the outline of my lips.
Another skimmed the sensitive hollow of my throat.
Another brushed the underside of my breast, and I arched into the sensation with a broken moan.
"That's it," Azrael murmured, his real hands remaining at his sides. "Let yourself feel. Let yourself want."
The touches descended, sliding over my stomach, my hips, the tops of my thighs. One ghosted between my legs, pressing against the seam of my leggings, and I cried out, my hips bucking into nothing.
"Please," I gasped. "Please, Azrael, I need—"
"What do you need?" His voice was calm, controlled, utterly at odds with the chaos he was creating in my body. "Be specific."
"I need you to touch me. There. I need—" I was babbling, my mind dissolving into pure sensation.
The phantom finger was circling my clit now, feather-light and maddeningly indirect.
I could feel myself soaking through my underwear, could smell my own arousal thick in the air between us. "I need to come. Please let me come."
"Hmm." He tilted his head, considering. "Not yet."
The phantom touches intensified—more fingers, more pressure, circling and stroking and teasing until I was writhing against the wall, my hands still pressed flat where he'd placed them, my whole body trembling on the edge of release.
I could feel it building, a tidal wave of pleasure that hovered just out of reach, and every time I got close, the touches would ease, retreat, leave me gasping and desperate.
"Azrael—" His name was a sob. "I can't—please—"
"You can." He stepped closer, his real hand coming up to cup my jaw, tilting my face toward his. His thumb brushed away a tear I hadn't realized I'd shed. "You're doing so well. So responsive. So beautiful like this."
The phantom touches returned with renewed intensity, and I felt myself cresting, rising toward a peak that promised to shatter me completely—
And then they stopped.
Everything stopped.
I sagged against the wall, my legs barely holding me up, my body a live wire of unfulfilled need. Azrael caught me before I could fall, his arms wrapping around me, cool and steady.
"Shh," he murmured, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "Breathe. You did so well."
"I didn't—" My voice cracked. "I was so close—"
"I know." He pulled back, his golden eyes soft with something that might have been affection. "But not tonight. Tonight, I wanted you to understand what I am. What I can do. And I wanted you to know that I would never take from you without giving something in return."
I stared at him, my body still trembling, my mind a chaos of frustration and arousal and bewildered gratitude. "That was torture."
"Yes." His lips curved in that faint smile. "But you enjoyed it."
I couldn't deny it. Even now, aching and unsatisfied, I felt more alive than I had in years. More awake. More real.
"Next time," he said softly, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, "I'll let you finish. If you still want me to."
"Next time," I repeated, my voice steadier now. "There's going to be a next time?"
His golden eyes held mine, ancient and knowing and strangely tender. "I find myself hoping so."
He guided me to the door, his hand gentle on the small of my back. When we reached the threshold, he paused, turning to face me one more time.
"Go to bed, Lizzie," he said. "Rest. And tomorrow, if you're still curious about the ledgers, come find me. I'll show you what you want to know. No more sneaking."
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He pressed another kiss to my forehead—soft, chaste, devastating—and then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows of the corridor like he'd never been there at all.
I stood there for a long moment, my body still humming with unspent pleasure, my mind spinning with everything that had just happened.
I'd come to the ledger room looking for information.
I'd left with something far more dangerous: an understanding of what a desire demon could do to a willing human, and the absolute certainty that I wanted him to do it again.
Next time, he'd said.
I walked back to my room on shaking legs, every step reminding me of the ache between my thighs, the emptiness that cried out to be filled. When I finally collapsed onto my silk-covered bed, I pressed my hand between my legs and found myself soaked, swollen, desperate.
I didn't touch myself. I didn't give myself the release I craved.
Because somewhere in the darkness of the manor, I knew Azrael could probably sense it if I did. And somehow, impossibly, I wanted him to be the one to finish what he'd started.
I fell asleep still aching, still wanting, still burning.
And I dreamed of golden eyes and phantom touches and a voice like velvet whispering, Next time.