19. Midnight
Midnight
I ’ll slip into Lucy’s apartment and reap her soul.
Simple.
The campus will have my back, it wants me to do this, after all. I slip out of our apartment, glaring at Aurelia’s bedroom door as I go.
Am I being childish and petty? Yes. Do I give a shit?
No. Lucy had to know who I was. She’s Ignatius’s daughter, for fuck’s sake.
Gods. She knew that and let me fuck her anyway.
She continued to let me flirt with her, for what reason?
Some sick joke she and her father have? Use and abuse mortals.
Laugh at them while they flounder and pander to the demons.
Fuck her. And fuck him too.
I do need a walk.
I head around the building’s perimeter first, marching the energy off. I’m halfway around the mansion when Ignatius storms out the front door.
Interesting.
I reach the rear of the mansion and look up. There’s a window cracked with a light on in the penthouse. She’s in there.
Good. That’s good. I can just go and take her soul and be done with this whole Finis and Ignatius thing.
By the time I slip back inside the front door, Vetch is snoring loudly, and security guards are stationed in front of him.
Do all campus houses have security? I don’t remember seeing any when we passed House Mortis and House Vitalis earlier this evening.
The foyer is empty. I climb the stairs and head to the back of the mansion, using the secondary set of stairs to make my way up to the penthouse.
I press my ear to the door. The hissing rush of a shower drifts through the wooden panel.
I reach for the handle, but the door swings open by itself. I should be thankful. The campus is helping me fulfil my end of the bargain.
But I can’t summon the gratitude. Instead, my skin is on edge, the incessant tickle of an insect you can’t find.
It’s just one soul.
So what if I fucked her. It’s not like I care about her. I don’t even know her.
My feet carry me inside, slipping into her apartment and through the kitchen into an open living space.
I frown. There are several upturned boxes and items spread across the floor.
It almost looks like someone trashed the place and then did a half-arsed job of tidying.
A ghostly white cat pads across the hallway. I frown. It’s way too familiar.
“Hey you,” I whisper, and kneel to call it over, hoping it doesn’t make any noise.
It nudges my hand just like the cat in the city. I swear it’s the same one. It purrs, my hand slips through its body as it drifts in and out of its corporeal state.
It looks up at me and I swear it smirks. Then it sinks its teeth into me.
I have to bite down a scream.
“You little fucking b?—”
My hand washes through it as I swat it, but it bounds out of sight before I can catch him.
A moan escapes the bathroom.
And another. And I promptly forget all about the cat.
Sumptuous and deep, it’s a moan borne from a body close to orgasm.
My pussy pulses and tightens, excitement leaks into my boxers until I realise she could be in there with someone. Another person could be making her moan and gasp. The bubbling heat I felt outside morphs into something far more dangerous.
Shit.
A burning sensation grows in my chest, my stomach hardening. I push it away, my fingers sliding to my hip and the scythe I always carry.
Violence is always better than emotion. Fuck it, I’ll take two souls tonight instead of one. But even as I think it, it feels weak.
I press my back to the bathroom wall and peer inside.
Lucy.
Alone.
My chest cools, my stomach softening. Two things I refuse to acknowledge.
I peek through the gap and thank the archdemon I’m not a man. The sight of Lucy pressed against the shower wall, her legs spread bearing that delicious pink pussy would be enough to give me the kind of raging hard-on that would shove a door open.
Do it, Midnight.
That fucking voice. The whisper and scream that slithers under my skin. Crawls through my mind like a fucking maggot. Wriggling. Relentless. Pushy.
Do it.
Do it.
Do it.
It’s an ugly little hiss of a thing.
One little soul.
“Shut up,” I bark.
Lucy stops touching herself.
Shit.
I swing away, press my spine into the wall, desperately trying to slow my breathing.
The shower door opens, the sound of her heightened breathing drifting out. Then the door swings shut again. The shower keeps running.
I got away with it.
Thank fuck.
I’m more careful this time as I peer inside the bathroom. Those legs spread, her lips parted where she runs her fingers through her folds.
“Midnight,” she says.
I freeze.
Fuck me. Is she masturbating to thoughts of me? Before I can stop myself, my fingers unbuckle my trousers. It’s wrong. So fucking wrong, but I don’t care, not in this moment. Not if she’s fucking herself to thoughts of me.
She eases her hips wider, her glistening cunt spread wide. I can practically taste the sweetness of her come on my tongue. My fingers find my clit and rub. Hard. Furious.
Her lips quiver around a word over and over.
My name.
Oh, gods. She is fucking herself to me, for me. I can’t cope. My clit sings, pulses. I’m going to spill over embarrassingly fast.
Lucy slides a finger inside her pussy, and I think my mind enters the celestial realm.
It takes an inconceivable feat of strength not to fling open the door and sink to my knees for her.
She draws her finger in and out and adds a second, stretching that exquisite cunt.
Her pink lips swell as she continues fucking herself, her head rolls back, her mouth parts as her breasts rise and fall with her panting.
But it’s the sight of rosy-pink nipples hardening despite the warm flowing water that has me tipping over into an orgasm.
I jerk against the wall, my legs jelly.
The shower turns off.
I yank my hands out of my boxers and sprint for her apartment door.
I close it behind me just as she exits the bathroom.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
The corridor seems, off. Tension cloys the atmosphere. I didn’t do what the campus wanted, and it knows.
For fuck’s sake.
Midnight, it hisses.
“I’ll get it done. You didn’t set a time limit, so arguably I have until the end of term.”
A screech follows that sounds like the creak of old floors, the hissing crackle of wood in a fire and the cawing of ravens.
Tricky. Tricky. Don’t disappoint me.
But that’s the thing. I should have done it.
I should have reaped her tonight, and instead I watched her fuck herself over me.
And now instead of contemplating how to reap her, all I can think about is how much I want to make her come again.
How much I want to know every dirty dream and thought in her head.
And that is not good news.