32. Syrus #2
“Need to touch you,” she murmurs, sliding her hands across my chest. I arch into her touch, reveling in the simple pleasure of her soft fingers caressing me, drifting down across my stomach.
I lift my hands, sliding them over her hips, but she quickly bends forward, replacing her hands with her lips, tracing my abs with the tip of her tongue as she sinks to her knees and unfastens my pants.
“Leah,” I groan, my cock growing somehow harder in anticipation of what she’s about to do. She smirks up at me wickedly from between my legs.
“You said before you liked the mouth on me,” she says, her green eyes sparkling as she frees me from my pants. “But you haven’t seen half of what it can do yet.”
I watch, drinking in every moment, as she wraps her hand around the base of my shaft and lowers her lips to my tip. They’re plump and red from my kisses, and I mutter a stream of breathless curses watching them slide around the head of my cock.
My eyes start to flutter closed as I’m overwhelmed by the tight, wet heat of her mouth, but I force them back open, not wanting to miss a second of this. It’s too perfect. She’s too perfect, taking me deeper, swallowing me down as she works the base of my cock with her clever fingers.
I rest my palm gently on the back of her head, just wanting to touch her, to let her know how appreciative I am. She hums around me, igniting jolts of pleasure.
“Darkness, you’re so good…so good to me…” I mumble, unable to find more words as the pressure builds. I want to show her exactly how good that is—to make her feel like she makes me feel—but I’m dangerously close to coming completely undone right here and now.
“Leah…” I slide my hand down her cheek, and she releases me from her mouth with a questioning look. I steal a moment to take in her flushed face and swollen lips before continuing.
“My bedroom is just next door,” I say, my voice rough like sandpaper as I cradle her jaw.
She gets the message, her green eyes darkening as she starts to rise from her knees.
I capture her in my arms on the way up, pulling her into a messy kiss as I stand and carry her into the adjoining bedroom.
I lay her out on the bed like a gift, slowly unwrapping her.
Every trace of tiredness is gone, and I want to take my time, peppering kisses across her collarbone and teasing her peaked nipples with my tongue.
After everything that happened today—considering the worst that could’ve happened—I need to memorize every inch of her, record forever in my mind the way she feels and tastes, the sounds she makes as I slide my fingers between her thighs.
She chases my touch, moving against me with gratifyingly wild moans, but there’s an impatience to it.
“Syrus,” she whines. “I can’t wait. I want you,” she wraps her legs up around me, pulling me down against her so she can whisper in my ear. “Everywhere. Please, please just fuck me while you’re inside me, like last time. That’s what I need.”
Even if I wanted to say no, how could I resist her begging me to enter her mind and body, letting me claim her wholly and completely? There’s no force in the three realms which would have me deny her now, have me deny us this exquisite, unique experience.
“I thought you’d never ask,” I murmur, adjusting her hips to bring our bodies in line and locking eyes with her, wanting to watch her face as we’re joined together in every way once more.
I slip into her mind at the same time I thrust into her.
She gasps, eyes drifting back, as a deep, animal groan rolls through me.
For several perfect moments, we’re both frozen, lost in the sensation of each other.
She’s everywhere, wrapped so completely around my body and my consciousness, it’s hard to tell when I end and she begins.
The tight, exquisite pressure of it surrounds me, so intense I feel I might break apart for a moment, and I have to breathe slowly to ensure I don’t totally unravel too soon.
Her eyes meet mine again, her gaze sharpening as I stroke a thumb across her freckles.
“Is this what you want?” I murmur the question into her mind, knowing the answer, but needing to hear it all the same, needing to remind myself it’s safe to let go and lose myself.
“Yes,” she says, reaching for my face in a way that moves our bodies together and sends a sharp shiver of pleasure through us both. “Whatever you have to give me, I want it.”
So I give her all of it, sinking deeper into her, falling into her mind until I’m fully submerged.
I start to roll my hips, building a relentless rhythm as I thrust forward.
Soon I’m drowning in her, wondering if I’ll ever want to come up for air.
And the whole time, she clings tight to me, lifting her hips each time I drive into her, taking me with a desperate hunger.
It only pushes me harder. I haul my consciousness across her sparking nerves at the same time as my cock drags against her tight muscles, coaxing her to the edge.
She looks so beautiful lying beneath me, red hair splayed out across the sheets like a flare of flame, and I’m suddenly struck by how much I want to protect Leah—to shield her from everything life wants to throw at her.
I’ll keep her safe from fate itself if I have to—and I will have to. It’s only a matter of time.
Until then, we have this. We have each other.
Then her hands are tightening across my shoulders, fingers digging into me as she tells me she’s close. And when we come together again, blissfully in sync, so tangled up in each other that it’s like we’re one being, I know without a doubt who this demon’s heart belongs to.
Leah
I rise before Syrus, enjoying watching him sleep for a few moments until I realize I’m starving.
Not surprising, really, considering how completely he undid me last night.
I shake my head a little at the memory of it as I rise from bed.
Every muscle feels relaxed and languid, my body still riding the high of us climaxing together, bound and linked and totally consumed by each other.
It’s difficult now to remember what it was like before I was tied to him.
I was just one half of a much bigger whole, and the idea makes me feel oddly hollow.
But there’s another sensation buzzing in the background of my body.
My power.
As I wander down the corridor to the dining room, I study my palms, marveling at the memory of them bringing forth a storm of lightning yesterday. Tentatively, I try to search out that feeling again, letting the buzz of the magic move to the front of my focus.
It’s surprisingly simple, and I watch in awe as sparks crackle between my fingertips, dancing in quivering lines of white-hot energy. After a moment, I shove the buzzing away again and watch the sparks disappear, practicing it a few times to make sure I can call on it at will and turn it off again.
It’s only a little amount right now. It’s all I feel safe doing considering I’m just starting to use my magic. But a thrill runs through me as I consider trying out more in time—discovering just how powerful I might be.
When I get to the dining room, there’s no one else there, but I don’t mind. I load up my plate and get to work, shoveling in eggs and thick slices of hot buttered toast. Viz doesn’t join me until I’m practically halfway through a loaf.
“Are you ready for the meeting?” I ask, watching him flick through an even larger stack of papers than usual.
“Yes,” he says, glancing over at a carriage clock on the windowsill. “Although his lordship should be getting up soon, or we’ll be late.”
“Let him sleep a bit longer,” I say. “He had a very tiring day yesterday.”
“I don’t suppose you had anything to do with tiring him out, did you?” Viz asks pointedly.
I nearly choke on my fruit juice. “No comment,” I say, setting my glass down. Looking at it plants a thought in my head. “Hey, I don’t suppose you know if drinking the ephilium blood could’ve pushed my powers to the surface? Does it work like that?”
As usual, Viz can’t tear his eyes away from the parchment he’s studying, but he answers.
“It could have triggered it,” he says. “But considering we haven’t been putting the blood in your juice for a while, they’ve continued to develop remarkably well on their own without it.”
My brow furrows. “What do you mean? Why would you have stopped giving me the blood? I thought it was protecting me from being hurt by the possession?”
Viz shrugs, scribbling something down. “We thought it was, but then when we realized you were probably nephilim, we figured you wouldn’t need it—all the books say they’re not prone to possession-host deterioration like full humans.”
My brain is trying to do three sets of sums at once. I know there’s something wrong about what Viz just said, but I’m not quite sure what.
“Excuse me?” I ask.
Viz looks up, only now seeming to realize he might’ve said something surprising. “Oh, don’t worry. It was just a test. If you’d started to show any signs of decline, I would’ve put you straight back on it.”
“But you didn’t know I was nephilim…” I start to say, suddenly unsure. I mean, I knew Syrus had his suspicions, but they were still vague, weren’t they? I didn’t think either of us fully put it together until we spoke to Hathwell.
I look at my wrist, where there’s only a few smudges left of the rune cuff Syrus gave me.
He said it was to protect me from ephilium power. But if he suspected me of being nephilim…
That buzzing sensation—the hum of my magic—has been there in the background since I hit Kaliban with my lightning. But it was there before then too, first flexing its wings when I spoke to the ephilium at the rift, and Magnus put his hands on me.
Then I came back to Malice—and Syrus immediately put that band of runes on.
Forces beyond our control. That’s what he’d said when I told him not to be suspicious of me working with the ephilium.