Chapter 3
Eve
He is inhuman. Monstrous. And beautiful. Things inside me vibrate and clench.
I’m a soaking mess down…there.
The bones of his face catch the light like carved marble, the flames in his eye sockets like living candles. That serpent tongue that lapped at my feminine parts flies around his face, dancing and flicking and tasting the shimmering arousal I’ve left on his bony skull.
I’m feeling things I never imagined before. It’s like a fever dream.
He’s still kneeling between my legs, his back straight now, staring at me as I pant and come back from the dark pleasure place his mouth sent me.
He’s massive, wrapped in shadow and heat. So tall he had to duck every time we went through a doorway, shoulders so broad he could hold up the whole house if it started to crumble. The skull of his face tips to the side, the flames he has for eyes meet mine, and it’s like I’ve been waiting for him.
Something in the way he looks at me makes me wonder if maybe he didn’t know it, but he was also waiting for me.
I know I should be afraid. But I’ve known about monsters my whole life. Men who want and take, and offer nothing in return but cruelty and selfishness.
This demon does not lie. He is honest about what he wants. And I’m far less afraid of him than I am of humans.
“What is your wish, little witch?” His voice is low and rough, like a heavy door dragging open. The curved claws at the tips of his fingers scrape down my inner thigh, leaving an icy scratch in their path.
“I don’t want to have to leave here. Well, that’s what I thought I wanted... Now, I want something else. I want you, too.”
He makes a sound that isn’t quite laughter, but maybe it’s as close as a demon comes. I think about my answer to his question.
What do I want?
When my father died, I hated the relief I felt. His last days were worse than the years that came before. Bottles filled the kitchen sink, emptied of their toxic amber liquid. The house creaked and leaked down the chimney when it rained, and my stomach rolled and panged from lack of food.
But I kept to my room, cleaned up when he slept or went out for more liquor, leaving me scraps of whatever food he’d picked up at the bar or wherever it was he went when he left here.
Then the papers were delivered.
The sheriff taped something to the door I couldn’t read. Then Papa drank more bottles. Brought home less food. I hid more, cleaned less.
The house feels happier tonight with this demon in it. I don’t understand that, except that I feel happier with him here too.
His hands plant wide on either side of my thighs, caging me against the velvet sofa, my legs still splayed impossibly wide. The slip is bunched high at my waist as cool air skims over fevered skin, and I shiver.
“Stay still,” he breathes, cold mist filling the air. “Hands where I can see them.”
I clutch the cushions instead of reaching for him. Touching feels dangerous, but fighting the urgent compulsion to cling to him is only overridden by the fear that if I do not, I will disappoint him somehow.
He lowers his face until a breath of winter ghosts across the most sensitive skin. My back arches with the shock. One big palm presses flat to my belly and holds me there, effortless.
“Good girl,” he says against me, his voice a rumble that slides like a dark river into my veins.
His tongue unfurls, flicking like a feather against my sensitive flesh, nearly sending me off the sofa in a chaotic convulsion.
His exposed teeth mimic something like a smile in the dim light, and a new jolt of heat and desire spins through me, making me panic as his tongue retreats into the thin space between his teeth.
“Please,” I plead, like I did when the men from the bank came and told me I would need to leave.
“Please, what?” Aios hisses, and I feel his gaze on me, strangely powerful and yet tender.
“Please… don’t stop. It feels so good. It’s been so long since I felt good.”
A sound of approval vibrates against me. Each stroke pulls heat from cold until I’m panting, legs shaking, vision blurring. His hand stays on me, heavy and sure, turning every startled flinch into a surrender.
A long groan runs through the ceiling beams as warmth seeps up from the floor. Curtains lift and settle like breath.
“Look at me,” he orders.
My head tips forward, and I meet the fire in his eyes. I’m stripped bare from what I see there, and it burns away what’s left of my shyness. It makes me brave enough to speak.
“I want all of you,” I whisper. “I want to be yours.”
“You’re already mine, little witch, and I will give you what you wish for. In return, I’ll take what I want from you. That is our pact.”
Something deep in me clenches like it understands before I do. He works me harder. Not fast, just certain, until I’m floating on the edge.
“Breathe,” he tells me, and I try.
Pleasure hits all at once, a sharp white shock that rips a cry from my throat.
I grab for him before remembering I’m not supposed to.
My hands find his shoulders anyway, and the size, the cold weight under my palms, shoves me the rest of the way over.
It’s too much, and exactly enough. I come apart and stay scattered for long, weightless moments.
When I blink back, the parlor isn’t the same. Billowing red fabric spills around the windows. A low, blue and orange flame flickers from black logs in the hearth. The velvet under me is no longer dusty. The whole house feels awake… pleased.
He presses a slow, claiming kiss to the inside of my thigh, as much as teeth and bone can kiss, before lifting his head. The skull should be terrifying, but somehow it isn’t. It’s just him. His eyes drink me in like he’s memorizing every detail of my face.
“Mine,” he growls, the vibration from that single word whipping around me, squeezing, and I have an odd sensation like a crown has been placed upon my head.
I nod, wordless as my fingers test the top of my head, but there’s nothing there but the texture of my hair. He makes a sound of amused satisfaction.
“Tell me you are mine, Eve. That you understand that means your will belongs to me now. All your choices will be mine from now on, and you will do what I say. You will be a vessel for my wickedness, whether that is pleasure or pain.”
“I’m yours.” My voice shakes, my brain spinning as I try to understand what I’m agreeing to, but my heart is in his control. “I’m yours.”
“Good girl. You are so beautiful. Born for something greater than this.” He waves his talons toward the ceiling, and the dark light fixture sparks to life, spinning and casting a dancing glow across his grotesque face.
Heat blooms on my cheeks at his praise. I want to please him more than I want to do anything for myself. There’s no logic here anymore, just me and this inhuman spirit that feels so close to a father figure in a way I don’t fully understand. I do not fear him, but I fear disappointing him.
He rises in one smooth motion. A hand slides under me, and I’m lifted as light as air itself. Instinct has my arms wrapping around the mixture of bones and tendons that make up his neck.
The sensation has me shivering for a moment before the cold turns to heat. Fire and ice, just like the old stories say.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he more glides than walks toward the open door.
“Up,” he says, voice rough. “My room.”
My stomach flips, but the house seems to approve. The chandelier trembles, the fire in the hearth bursts and crackles.
“Your room?” I blink up at his bony face, swallowing hard. “What do you mean?”
“This house is mine. I spent many of your human years here, once upon a time, and as the master of his house, I have a room of my own.”
He carries me into the hall. The door swings shut without his touch. That giant phallus that he pumped with his hand earlier seems to cradle me from below, solid and curved at my back like a third arm supporting me.
As we pass, a mirror along the corridor ripples, and I see how huge he is, with me like a child in his arms.
On the staircase, I press my face to his throat. There is no skin there, just cold shadow over bone, but I can smell him like stones after a rain. I inhale, filling my lungs with him, because I want him inside me.
A low, pleased growl rolls out of him. “I can hear your thoughts, little witch. Soon enough, I will be inside you, in every way possible. You are a strange and lovely little creature, Eve.”
He’s pleased, and it warms from my center outward. Need and wetness gather between my legs as his hold tightens around me.
We pass a tall window where I stood many nights talking to the moon, waiting to scurry back to my room when I heard the sound of my father’s truck pulling down the long driveway.
Next to that window, there’s a door that’s never been here before.
It opens on its own, and he carries me through into the night air, cool and fresh around me.
I look up and see the dark sky, with clouds and lightning streaking through the blackness as a deep rumble of thunder echoes the breath I feel drawing in and out of his chest.
“What is this place? Why are we outside?”
I look down, and there is a floor, covered in a rich gold and red rug. Candles flicker around the perimeter of the space, refusing to yield to the gusting wind that blows around them.
“What happens now?” My voice is breathless as my heart speeds.
“Now,” he rumbles, “I make you my bride.”
The room is vast and dark and open to the elements: curtains blow in the storm wind around a king-sized bed beneath a carved canopy, as a fireplace flickers to life with midnight-blue flames.
Rain lashes down around us, and I bury myself deeper into his chest, but even soaking wet, I’m not cold.
“Bride?” I whisper, not sure if I heard the word correctly. “Do demons marry?”
“It is rare. In my three thousand human years, I’ve known of four other marriages, all demon to demon, though. You, my little witch, will be the first human-demon mating that I have known.”