Blake
The shadows coil around her suspended body like serpents claiming prey, and I remain in the corner, consumed by a fury that burns as white-hot as my unbearable arousal.
My shadows.
I did not send them. I did not will them.
Yet they pour from me like water through a broken dam, drawn to her heat.
They wrap her wrists, her ankles, her throat.
They slide between the slick folds of her cunt and she gasps, arching into the phantom touch, body answering pleasure she has never known.
They fill her mouth and I watch her eyes roll back, watch her hips buck, watch her surrender to the darkness that is mine.
She convulses in pleasure instead of pain.
That should disgust me.
It does not.
She is exquisite in her surrender. Red hair spills down her back like spilled wine. Her breasts rise and fall with each ragged breath. Those impossibly deep caramel eyes fix on the shadows as if they are lovers, not demons.
She should be screaming. She should be begging for mercy. Instead she rocks her hips against the darkness, demanding more, and my own body answers with a fierceness that shocks me.
Two centuries. Two hundred fucking years as smoke and shadow, haunting this house, feeding on fear and desperation. I have seen women tremble at my presence. I have watched humans weep and beg. But I have never—never—wanted to pleasure one of them.
She is calling to me, and the shadows are answering.
Why?
The shadows draw her closer. I smell her—honey and lavender. I taste her on the air and my fangs ache with the need to pierce her skin, to drain the fire from her veins.
I watch her, paralyzed by a craving that defies my own nature, as she arches her back and lets out a raw, broken sound—a melody of desire so sharp it cuts straight through my careful control.
“Enough.”
The command erupts from my throat, a dark, subsonic tremor that vibrates through the very foundations of the manor. The shadows hesitate, swirling around her skin, but they refuse to release her; they only pulse against her flesh like a synchronized, parasitic heartbeat.
Shit! She saw me.
I abandon the chair.
The shadows part as I approach, allowing me to stand before her. I am close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin, close enough to breathe in the honey-sweet scent of her arousal. It is intoxicating. Dangerous.
I should kill her.
She turns her head slowly, eyes hazy with pleasure. They find mine and recognition, confusion, and a spark of defiance shift through them in rapid succession.
“Who are you?” she rasps, voice raw from the shadow’s invasion. “What do you want from me?”
I let out a jagged, humorless laugh. “I want nothing from you. You are the one who called me here.”
“I didn’t—”
“You touched yourself in front of my portrait,” I growl, leaning closer and she flinches, eyes going wide.
“You pressed your body against my frame and hallucinated my hands on you. You fantasized about a dead monster, and in doing so you summoned him. Every stroke, Lucille… it was a prayer. And I have come to answer.”
Her cheeks bloom with a mortified, delicious color, yet her gaze remains locked on mine. “That’s—I didn’t mean to—”
“You wanted me to see you.” My voice drops to a whisper, silk over steel. “And I did. I watched every moment of your pathetic little performance. You were desperate. Aching. So hungry for someone to touch you that you offered yourself to a monster you have only heard stories of.”
Her chin spikes upward, an iron rod in her spine. “If you saw everything, then you know I don’t regret it.”
The confession lands with the force of a physical blow, leaving me blindsided.
“You are either fearless or utterly insane.”
“Perhaps both,” she challenges, her eyes daring me to look away. “But at least I’m not the one lurking in the shadows, stalking girls in their private time.”
The air stills. The shadows around her tighten. My control frays at the edges.
“Silly little prey. If you had the faintest idea of what I am, you’d be running.”
The shadows pulse in answer to my agitation. My claw moves before I can stop it, closing fingers around her throat, hard enough to remind her who holds the power.
“You should be afraid of me,” I murmur, thumb tracing the frantic vein in her neck.
“I know. You’re the monster of the lore. The one mothers warn their children about.” Her pulse flutters beneath my thumb, but she does not flinch. “I don’t care what you were. I care about what you are now.”
“And what do you think I am now?”
She holds my gaze. “A dream. The kind I used to read about and secretly wish would find me.”
The truth slices through me. I should crush her windpipe to prove my true nature.
Instead, I stand frozen. Shadow-claws manifesting in a spray of rage, desperate to remind her who is in control.
How dare she?
I should end her.
My claws clamp harder around her throat, choking with everything I have. The pressure reminds me of the truth I hate: I cannot kill her. A ghost cannot kill a human. The curse has stripped me of the power I once wielded. I am no longer the god of darkness I used to be.
I press harder with both hands. She gasps. Tears gather at the corners of her eyes.
I cannot kill a human, but she does not know that.
I can still scare her.
She moans.
“What the fuck?” I spit.
The shadows have reshaped themselves into a thick tongue of pure smoke and are licking her cunt with long, filthy strokes. They part her folds, drag across her clit, tasting her like they have all night to savor every drop.
This is not foreplay, you stupid shadows!
We are predators.
She is prey. Lunch. Not meant to be worshiped like this.
I hiss, baring my fangs without restraint. My claws dig into her throat as I delve into the depths of myself, searching for the instinct to destroy her.
But she leans into my touch and the movement sends a shock of heat through my entire being.
I am enveloped by the warmth of her, the fragile pulse of her life, and I have never wanted to consume anything more.
This is disgusting. She is just a mortal.
I am moved by the twin hungers to feed and to fuck.
But the curse does not allow me to fulfill either instinct.
I could bite her. I could fuck her right here, right now. I would feel nothing. The curse has stolen every true sensation. I have no emotions left—only endless, unsatisfied hunger and lust.
“Enjoying keeping me hanging like this?” she asks, voice still steady despite the pressure at her throat.
“Not even a little,” I lie. I am entertained as fuck, actually. Anything is better than the endless boredom of my painted frame.
“Let me down,” she begs.
I should refuse. I should laugh and remind her that she has no power here, that she is mine to command, not the other way around.
Instead, I look into her caramel eyes, and an ancient longing stirs awake inside me.
The shadows pulse. I feel every part of them—wrapped around her, inside her, filling her with the darkness that is mine.
“Let me down.”
The shadows begin to lower her. She descends slowly, body sliding against mine as the darkness releases her.
When the last of the shadows fall away, she stands naked before me, body glowing in the faint moonlight. She is beautiful. Not the porcelain beauty of mortals. She is fierce. Wild. And utterly unlike anything I have seen in centuries.
The shadows move around us like ropes, gluing our bodies together. Stupid, horny shadows!
She reaches up, tracing the hard line of my jaw. Her touch is a brand, searing through the numbness.
“If this is a dream,” she whispers, “then I’m going to do exactly what I dream.”
She rises onto her toes. An obedient shadow solidifies beneath her heel, lifting her the final inches until her mouth crashes against mine.
The world explodes.
Her taste is pure fire—everything I have lost and everything I have never been allowed to have.
“I should not—” I tear my mouth away, breathing in ragged gasps. “I cannot—”
“Please!” She smiles, radiant.
The shadows rise, swaddling us in a suffocating cocoon, and the ache in my fangs becomes an unbearable, throbbing yearning. I want to drink her fire; I want to consume everything she is..
“I will hurt you,” I warn.
“Then hurt me.”
A savage laugh tears from my throat.
“I am not gentle. I am not a gentleman.”
I am the monster, and she is the only thing in two hundred years that has made me feel alive.
“Fuck it,” I growl.
I take her lips again like a drowning man dragging in his first breath of air, and I cannot stop. My claws lock around her, crushing her soft heat against the hard plane of my chest.
She is the first soul who has not feared me. The first the shadows themselves have chosen. That alone makes her the most dangerous creature I have ever faced.
“Sleep,” I murmur against her lips, voice weighted with the full force of hypnotic command. “Sleep, and remember nothing of this. You dreamed. That is all.”
Her eyes flutter. Her body goes limp in my arms. I lower her to the bed and watch her breathe—slow, steady, alive.
She is alive.
For the first time I have not attacked a human.
She is safe.
And I am—
The shadows recede, slipping back into the corners of the room. The solid weight of my body vanishes, replaced by the familiar cold emptiness of my existence.
The kiss was real. The touch was real. She is real. But I am not.
I touch my lips and feel the ghost of her still burning there. The warmth. The fire.
I do not understand why this mortal woman holds such power over me. I do not know what she is, or why the shadows has been stalking her.
I stare at her face, peaceful in sleep, and I memorize every line of it.
“Mine,” the shadows whisper across the walls, voicing the word locked unspeakable in my throat.
With a final pulsing surge I dissolve into the dark.