Chapter Fourteen
Emily
Ibarely registered the kisses along my neck and across my collarbone, but when teeth teased my nipple and exposed it to the cold inside the room, I huffed and got ready to lay into whatever asshole I’d brought back that thought he had any right to touch me while I slept.
Then everything came back to me.
Fingers teased between my legs, and I clamped a hand in slick red hair, yanking hard enough to make a point. “Z…” I growled. “I was sleeping. Some of us need to.”
His snickering was annoyingly cute, but I refused to give into him. There were few things I loved more than sleep. Food, mostly. So I tried to turn over, but a hand stopped me from going far.
“I’ve been a good boy, yeah? Don’t I deserve a reward?” he whispered between searching kisses. Their path had started to travel closer to my waist, so I stopped him with a hand. In a fluid movement that even this snake monster hadn’t foreseen, I was on top of him.
I stared down at his beautiful naked chest and felt the strain of his erection against my ass. His hands went to my hips, but I smacked them away, and they went up in mock surrender, his mouth slanted in a sneaky smirk.
“We do this my way. You had your fun,” I whispered, tossing my hair to one side. His eyes followed it, then glided down my neck until he reached my breasts. “You’re not allowed to come until I give you permission,” I told him, deliberately softening my voice.
His reptilian pupils had nearly overtaken the yellow. “Yes, ma’am.”
I licked my lips, thinking it was probably wise to address the elephant in the room—or in this case, the demon. “I assume you’re all done with tidying up?”
Amusement was in every line of his face. “Yes, ma’am.”
I leaned over and pressed my breasts against him, putting my mouth directly next to his ear. “That’s a good boy.”
“Fuck me. You don’t know what you do to me, Viper,” he murmured, his hands going to my hips again. I slapped them away and bit his ear in punishment. The ripple of his muscles under my thighs told me it was more pleasure than pain for this monster.
“Oh, I do.” I slipped back and buried the length of him inside me without warning, and his soft groan was my prize. “Snake monsters aren’t so different from humans. You all like your dick getting wet.”
His throaty groans fueled my movements. I used my legs and arms to ride on top of a massive dick even as it pushed my stomach out every time I fell onto it. I set our pace to slow and traced the hard lines of him with my hands, not in any hurry to give him what he wanted.
For interrupting my sleep, he’d pay.
The asshole was gorgeous, and I didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t anymore. Every firm brush of my nails across his pecs and abs said so.
With a low snarl, Zelus was up and maneuvering me onto my hands and knees. I would’ve complained, but he didn’t hold back. He slammed into me hard enough for sensation to burst through my waist.
Pleasure ripped through me, and I whipped my head back into a cry. I couldn’t catch my breath as he angled me so that he hit that sensitive spot every fucking time. Pleasure so good it was painful.
“You’re so bloody tight, pet. Your cunt doesn’t want to let my cock go,” he rasped in a husky tenor he reserved for sex, and it always hit me between the hips.
I swung up and pressed my back into his front, enjoying the way I could feel the hard contraction of his muscles against my skin.
With my arm around the back of his head, I drove down on his length with a moan.
His body tensed and one of his arms locked around my waist. When I turned my head, he didn’t hesitate to claim my mouth in a searing kiss.
I groaned through another few thrusts, the swell of him suggesting he was close, and then I whispered in his ear, “Come for me, birdie. Fill me up with your cum.”
“Ah, bollocks,” he swore, pumping into me a few more times before stiffening. His finger was already rubbing circles around my swollen nub, tearing the orgasm out of me only a half breath later.
I pressed back into him harder, squeezing around his shaft in stuttered pulses. He continued to pump his seed inside me, and our heavy breaths filled the air. It could’ve been forever for all I knew that he spent pouring himself inside me, but it was probably only a minute or two.
Done and fully intending to go right back to the bliss of sleep, I tried to crawl away, body fully satiated, but his arm stiffened to keep me there. My rage overpowered everything, even when my legs were embarrassingly shaky and my whole lower half numb.
“Songbird,” I warned, voice pitched low. “Get your fucking arm off me. I want to lay down.”
As if he hadn’t meant to do it, he released me. I started to reach for the usual towel, but his hand caught mine. “No need for that, love. Another perk of buggering a snake monster.”
Suddenly, I wasn’t leaking cum. I peered at him from over my shoulder, still a bit out of breath. “I like these perks. Do they do laundry, too?”
His laughter warmed a place I refused to acknowledge still existed, one I’d buried when I was thirteen. “Why? Is that something you’re into?”
I rolled my eyes and laid out on the bed, determined to enjoy the after-sex calm. He took the spot closest to the door despite there being less space on the bed on that side. I rose an eyebrow at him, but he shrugged like he didn’t think it was weird.
His arm swept under my back and rolled me until I was laying on top of his chest. The thud of his heart was reassuring in a way I didn’t expect. Not sure what I thought, but some part of me wondered if he even had a heart. It was nice to know he did.
I peeked at the time and was surprised to find it was barely seven. The window outside had been so dark earlier, I could’ve sworn it was later.
Fingers brushed through my hair as I dropped my head and decided it wasn’t worth the brain power. I’d sleep when I damn well pleased. I didn’t have a job that woke me earlier anymore. Monster sex was a whole-body affair, and it left me weak and tired in a way no other sex I’d been a part of had.
“Emily, we should talk…” Zelus started, but my phone’s ringtone cut him off.
I glared at it, but then remembered I had a best friend on vacation with her hot boyfriend. Maybe they’d pulled themselves out of their sex stupor and decided it was time to check in. My first mistake was not checking to see who it was before picking up.
“Hey bitch—”
“Evening, Emily,” Darcy’s baritone greeted, instantly souring my mood.
“Stop texting and calling me, Darcy. I don’t work for you guys anymore. Kay, bye,” I said into the receiver. I nearly hit the end button before he spoke again.
“The partners are asking to meet with you tomorrow!” he nearly yelled in his haste.
Zelus’s smile was impish as I glanced at him. He had one arm bent behind his head, while his other hand continued to play with my hair. “Partners?”
I sighed and covered the receiver. “Yeah. I’m a lawyer. Well, I was. Doesn’t matter.”
I put the phone to my ear, tempted to throw it and claim I broke it by accident, then get a new phone, new number, new life. But that curious little part of me won out, so I asked, “What do you mean they want a meeting? What for? I tendered my resignation, Darcy.”
“That’s why they want to meet. Can you swing by around nine in the morning,” he started, but I laughed.
“Get up early to talk to you guys? Pass. Have a nice life—”
“Two in the afternoon. No, whenever you have time. We’ll work it out however you need to,” he quickly asserted.
Desperation was a new look for someone like Darcy.
Even though we were both senior associates, he was closer to making partner than I was.
Well, and also because he was a fucking man.
Our law firm had never—never—put a woman in a partner position of any kind.
It didn’t take a big brain to figure out why.
Chauvinistic pricks.
In a distant past self, I had aspirations for being one. But after seeing the true world of law, I no longer pined for a position of power. I wanted out.
Problem was, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t intrigued by the idea of seeing the bastards sweat and fall all over themselves after realizing who was doing the real work.
Zelus still had that sly smirk of his when our eyes met again, and I asked a question without muttering a word. He’d said we should live dangerously, and if they were that desperate to meet, then I’d go purely for the reckoning.
“Should we make a date of it, pet?” he asked, confirming my suspicions that he was a perceptive fucker.
“Are you with someone, Ems?” Darcy asked, making me instantly cringe over the use of my nickname.
He’d only ever heard it once and then took it upon himself to use any chance he got. As if using it alone made us familiar. The asshole was still hung up on me, and it was a level of gross I stomached purely to keep my fucking job.
Well, no more.
With his beast hearing, Zelus picked out the nickname without any trouble. His smile had faded the second Darcy said it, and I couldn’t name the emotion that swam in his beast eyes.
But he shed it a blink later. One side of his mouth hooked up and his thumb brushed across my lower lip. “Could be fun, Ems,” he whispered low enough so that Darcy wouldn’t hear him.
Delicious shivers skittered down my spine with the husk he used to taint my nickname. He’d slathered it with nothing but sweetness. Instead of wanting to slap him around a bit for the audacity of using it, I was very close to forgetting I was on the phone and sticking my tongue down his throat.
“See you at three,” I told Darcy before hanging up.
Zelus stared at me, his yellow eyes beaming. “A lawyer, is it? That fits you, love. I bet you destroy men in the courtroom.”
A smile crept across my mouth. “You’d guess right.”
“So, you quit?”
I put my phone on the side table and laid my arms across his chest, dropping my chin on top of them. “I did. A few days before we met, actually.”
“Any reason in particular?”
I couldn’t help but sour at the thought. “Too many reasons.”
I expected him to pry, but he didn’t. And when the quiet stretched between us, I decided to do something I promised myself I wouldn’t do. I asked him a question in hopes of getting to know him better.
Outside of Dom, he’d be the first guy I bothered to get to know. I didn’t want to acknowledge what that suggested, so I conveniently blamed the fact that he was not only a monster, but the one who said he’d protect me from whatever bullshit I’d gotten myself into.
Least I could do was get to know the dude who was willing to use his fancy claws to punish my enemies.
“So, when a snake monster isn’t protecting some helpless damsel in distress against demons, what does he do?”
His grin broadened, eyes sparkling with delight. “Suppose he does whatever the fuck he wants.”
“Must be nice.”
“You should try it.”
I rolled my eyes and glared at him. “Some of us have bills.”
“Bloody capitalism.”
Laughing, I laid my cheek on his chest and felt his arm wrap around my back to pull me closer.
“That’s why I quit. I’ve been saving for a few years so I could.
I wanted to do something I chose for myself and not what was chosen for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a damn good lawyer.
The best they had. But everywhere you go… men.”
His muscles tensed. “Did they—”
“No, nothing like that. I mean, Darcy is a real fucking tool, and sexism in that place is rampant, but other than uncomfortable comments about my body, none of them were stupid enough to touch me. I’d have them by the balls in every legal sense, so they only ever toed the line.
Thing is, no matter how smart or good at my job I am, I’ll always be just a little woman to them. ”
Zelus hummed and resumed playing with my hair. “Well, you have a snake monster in your employ now. I don’t have any qualms with making a few humans disappear.”
I tossed him a scowl of distaste. “I’m still a lawyer, Songbird. I’m meant to follow the laws.”
“You and I have met very different lawyers then,” he quipped astutely, and as much as I hated it, I couldn’t argue with him.
I’d seen plenty in the business cutting corners or exploiting their power and influence. It was part of the reason I hated being around them.
No matter how much I tried to stick to the letter of the law—Asha’s misadventures aside—there was always some asshole out there bending it to his liking. And really, it was what we were taught in school, how to exploit the laws to help our clients win.
His eyes picked out the agreement in my contemplative stare. “And I think you and I both know who those laws were truly meant to benefit, love.”
Again, I couldn’t argue, so I just glanced at my phone. “Guess I’ll go see what they want and enjoy the show after I tell them to shove it up their asses.”
The tickle of his laughter under my arms pulled at my own lips. “Can’t lie, pet. I’m looking forward to it.”
I huffed in agitation. “You can’t come, Z.”
“Who says?”
“Me.”
“Well, tell ‘me’ I’m coming, anyway.”
I hadn’t met someone as stubborn as I was since Asha. Now I had two difficult children to deal with. “You’ll wait outside then.”
“That’s hardly fun, is it?” he rumbled, his eyes dancing when I lifted mine, prepared to go to war.
I growled. “I don’t need a man to fight my battles for me.”
Odd coming from me, since I was, in fact, letting this snake monster fight my battles for me. But that was with demons. Demons I didn’t have any hope of defeating. Arrogant men, though? That was my field of expertise. As long as it didn’t become an all-out brawl, I’d tear them to verbal shreds.
I expected him to laugh, but his smile faded. “I haven’t any doubts about that, Ems.” The way his voice graveled out added strength to his next words. “And I plan to watch every second of it.”
“Fine!” I caved, as I always did with Asha. That woman could set fire to my life and I’d ask her to do it again. “But you’ll keep your mouth shut. You’re just the purse I’m bringing with me tomorrow.”
His laughter was back, and when he leaned in to kiss me, I didn’t pull away or punish him. I hauled myself closer and deepened it.