Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Though he heard the shower running in the bathroom, heard the sprays and splashes as Ember moved beneath the water, for once, Nyte’s mind wasn’t occupied by imaginings of her naked form. Not that he needed to imagine anymore after ten days of shared showers.
Instead, his attention was focused outside.
He lay atop Ember’s bed, staring out the window at the rapidly darkening evening sky. There were no clouds today. The last daylight persisted stubbornly to the west, bleeding from muted orange to purple to black above the buildings blocking his line of sight.
The shower turned off. What silence it left was soon enough filled by the whine of Ember’s hair dryer.
Nyte’s tail thumped on the blanket in a lazy, heavy rhythm. Humans considered patience a virtue. He tended to agree; immortality must’ve been insufferable to anyone lacking it. But his was much thinner than usual tonight.
Waiting for Ember would always feel this way.
He knew it with impossible certainty, and no part of him could dispute the fact.
Whenever she was out of sight, he felt a gaping hole in his chest, a void so terribly cold and empty that it burned.
He rubbed at it now despite knowing his touch could not soothe it.
And that feeling was exasperated by the other thing he was awaiting.
The moon.
The binding magic roiled within him, responding to the residual power of the full moon that would rise tonight, almost as though the enchantment were as eager to be dispelled as he was to be rid of it. Because once Nyte was free…
His fingers twitched, scraping his claws over his chest, and his tail slapped down hard.
Freedom… What did it mean to him now? For while he’d only been trapped with Ember for a month, his imprisonment had lasted much, much longer than that. What was freedom? What did it entail?
Choice. Ultimately, freedom was the power to choose.
Emotions swirled inside him, powerful, primal emotions that seemed to contradict one another. Light and dark, fire and ice, loud and deafeningly quiet. And Ember was at the core of all of them. She was at the core of Nyte.
He folded his hands together over his belly, pressing them down.
Lust. That was what he felt for Ember, wasn’t it? Consuming, mind-clouding lust, and he’d allowed it to metamorphose into obsession. Acting upon those desires only inflamed them.
He’d experienced a deluge of lust with Sarnessa. He knew its feel, its flavor. He recognized it in himself now, albeit a hundredfold purer and stronger than anything the succubus had roused in him.
Because it’s not mere lust, not simple obsession…
Nyte breathed deep. He could taste nightfall on the air, could feel the lunar magic of the coming moon thrumming all around him. But it paled in comparison to this thing inside him. This immense, complex emotion that had spread into every mote of his being.
This enthralling, all-encompassing thing, at once so overt and so subtle, this feeling that was unlike anything he’d ever felt, anything he could ever have conceived, that ran so vast and deep. Wonderful and terrible and frightening and inspiring.
No, it wasn’t merely lust or obsession, not even close. This was new, and though he didn’t know how to hold it, how to tend it, he knew what it was called.
This was two souls reaching for each other across an unfathomable, unforgiving abyss. Two hearts drawn together by a force stronger than any other bond, whether magical or physical, transcending even fate.
This…was love.
He recalled the word Starling had used.
Soulmate.
And tonight, when the magical tether binding him to Ember dissolved beneath the glow of the full moon, he had a choice to make. He had to define what freedom meant to him, what it would look like…
As he lay here contemplating it, he was increasingly sure of what he wanted it to be. Of what he wanted to give his dear little witch.
Tonight, he would gift her—
“My beautiful Nyte.”
That familiar, seductive voice resonated around Nyte. It swept through him, invading his senses, his body, his mind. Once, it would’ve enticed him, would’ve aroused him. Would’ve had him on his knees eager to obey.
Now it only made his skin crawl and his shadows roil.
Sarnessa’s scent enveloped him, fragrant and enticing. He felt weight pressing down on his pelvis and the brush of hair over his shoulders before she appeared over him, straddling his hips, her arms caging his head on either side.
Her pitch-black eyes stared into Nyte’s as she smiled. “Hello, my love.”
Sarnessa lowered her head, dropping her full, dark lips toward his.
Nyte shoved her off, dissipating to shadow in the same instant and rematerializing himself several feet away from the bed. His entire being buzzed with alarm, with wrongness, with fury.
She laughed, lying on her back atop the bed with her knees bent and thighs parted. All her crimson skin was on display. Curved black horns jutted from her long, raven hair, which was spread around her head.
She arched her back, clawed toes digging into the bedding as she ran her hands up her chest to cup her breasts and frame her hard, dark red nipples. “Ah, my Nyte, how I’ve missed you.”
He clenched his fists at his sides, battling the impulse to clutch at his chest, which throbbed with echoes of that old pain. “The feeling isn’t mutual, and I am not yours.”
Sarnessa stuck her bottom lip out in a pout as she turned onto her side, propping her head on her palm. “You’re still angry with me?”
“That’s much too mild a word.”
“You were in the Pit of Despair for four hundred years. Had I known, I would have gone to you sooner to rectify what happened. To explain.” Her expression turned sultry. “To make it up to you.”
“To explain?” He laughed humorlessly, tail slashing the air as shadows coalesced around him. “I should tear the still-beating heart from your chest and shove it down your throat. You can explain while you choke on it.”
Her dark brows furrowed, and she pushed herself up, slipping off the bed to stand. “Do you know what it’s like to be a slave to hunger? To feel that relentless, gnawing ache, to be tormented by an unquenchable thirst from the very first moment of your existence?”
Sarnessa approached him, her hips and breasts swaying sensually. “You sated that hunger, my love. Left me feeling so full. Didn’t you want that for me? To end my suffering?”
“What of my suffering, Sarnessa?” Nyte demanded. The room darkened around him.
With a sigh, she flicked a hand in the air carelessly. “Your pain was a fleeting thing, and it’s not like you even need a heart. That little sacrifice from you kept me sated for a century, Nyte.”
When she came close enough, she reached for him. Scorching, disconcerting heat flared on Nyte’s skin, and he teleported to the far side of the room before she could make contact.
“You do not get to touch me,” Nyte growled.
Sarnessa turned her face toward him with a predatory glint in her eyes and a shark’s smile on her face, displaying her sharp teeth.
She cocked her hip, ensuring the pose accentuated her backside before she forced another pout onto her lips.
“We’re lovers, my beautiful nocturnus. Lovers are meant to take care of each other.
Why can’t you see that’s what you did? But you fled from me and hid yourself away before I could ever explain. Before I could thank you.”
How had he not seen through it before? How had he been so na?ve, so foolish? From the beginning, Sarnessa had only sought to satisfy her own desires, her own needs. She’d spoken words of praise and caring, had talked as though she would’ve moved the world for him…but what had she ever done?
She was a black hole, devouring everything that came near, taking, taking, taking, and giving nothing in return.
The bathroom door opened. Nyte snapped his face toward Ember, who stepped out with her dry hair loose around her shoulders and a towel wrapped around her curvy body. She halted abruptly and gasped as her eyes locked on Sarnessa.
Ember’s surprised expression was quickly overcome by a glaring scowl. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m assuming this is the infamous succubitch?”
Without thought, Nyte turned insubstantial and whisked himself to Ember, reforming with his body between her and Sarnessa, hands to his sides with claws splayed.
The succubus arched a slender brow, and the corner of her mouth rose in a smirk as she chuckled. “See, Nyte? You can’t tell me there’s nothing between us when you clearly can’t stop talking about me, even to lowly mortals.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” Ember said. He could practically hear her rolling her eyes.
Sarnessa’s eyes narrowed at Ember, but her gaze flicked back to Nyte, her beguiling smile returning. “Don’t let a single moment destroy what we had. Don’t you remember how I made you feel? Don’t you remember everything we shared?”
Running the tips of her claws over her breast and down her belly, she slowly sashayed toward him.
Her fingers trailed lower and lower toward her cunt, where her exposed inner labia was swollen with lust. She lightly caressed the folds.
“I have missed your touch, my Nyte. I have craved it. Especially that wicked, wicked tongue. Do you remember the taste of me?”
Her scent strengthened, and Nyte felt the magic in it, felt its warm caress against his skin, felt it subtly trying to push deeper into him.
His mind reeled under the silent assault.
Another thing he’d failed to notice, failed to consider—Sarnessa was a succubus, and her fragrance was an aphrodisiac.
How much of his desire for her had ever been his own?
“Ugh. It’s pretty pathetic how desperate you are,” Ember said. “You reek of it.”
Sarnessa halted with a disgusted scoff. “Would you put this mortal bitch in her place and muzzle her already? Her yipping is distracting.”