17. Vesper
Vesper
The screeching curdles my blood.
Skarix. I know the name because Valefar snarled it like a blade. The otherworldly being comes apart like shadows do when light hits them suddenly. He goes sideways and then inward, and then he is gone. Shadow particles scatter. The other two vanish
And the kitchen is left with nothing but the smell of something burnt and the sound of both of us breathing. No. Gasping.
I lower the Super Soaker.
The kitchen looks like the aftermath of a disaster. The cabinet door by the stove is hanging at an angle. There are three scorch marks along the floor tiles. The frying pan is on the floor near the island. My grandpa’s old iron knife is in the wall.
I’m going to need a spackle kit.
I turn to Valefar. He is…I don’t have a word for it. He is standing in the wreckage of my kitchen with claw marks raked across his chest and something dark at his shoulder. Oh, God. Blood. He’s bleeding. His chest is heaving, and he is watching me, bewildered, relieved, and yet…carnal.
I woke up when I heard something large hitting my refrigerator. One look at what was unfolding, and I knew what I needed. Or at least what I hoped would get the job done.
“What is this devilry?” he sweeps a hand to the water gun.
“Um. I mean, you know. Oh.” I realize he’s referring to the water, not the toy.
I set it behind the fridge, so it doesn’t accidentally spill and hurt him.
“I kept it in my bedroom closet. I had the water blessed by Priestess Anaya at the spring equinox, just as a precaution. I didn’t think I’d ever need to use it. ”
It all seemed to last forever, but it was just a few seconds.
Valefar, in the dark, with a frying pan in one hand and a knife in the other, fighting four shadow demons.
His tail caught a pot before it could crash to the floor.
His body took a hit so he could slide my grandmother’s casserole dish out of harm’s way with his foot.
Fighting things that must have felt like hellfire—all so they wouldn’t wake my daughter.
I can’t fathom it. I can’t fully fathom him, and I’ve been trying since the moment he appeared in my circle, and every time I think I’ve got the edges of him mapped, he surprises me even more.
“Bethie?” he asks, voice low.
“She’s fine,” I whisper back. “Didn’t make a sound.”
He exhales, relief flooding out.
His eyes shift to that molten, shimmering gold. I recognize the expression, like he is feeling things he doesn’t have words for. “Have I told you what a beautifully, ruinously, and catastrophically terrifying creature you are?”
A grin takes over my face. It’s so sincere, so genuine. Heat rushes up my neck. I bite my lower lip. “A variation. But I’ll never turn down a compliment.”
And then I become aware of two things. Adrenaline is still going strong, humming under my skin, still ready for a fight, uncertain of how to back down.
The second is that the super soaker splashed back, too, and my white t-shirt is wet, and I am not wearing a bra, and this is now extremely apparent.
“What else,” Valefar says, his voice dropping a register, his tail beginning its slow, curling advance toward me, “would you not turn down?”
“Um, Valefar.” I point. “You’re bleeding.”
He glances down at his shoulder as if he’s checking the weather. “It’s a flesh wound. It will heal.” He rivets all his focus on me. “You did not answer my question, Vesper.”
Un-fucking-believable.
I shouldn’t indulge this. I should take him into the bathroom, clean him off, and fry every slice of bacon in my fridge for him. I should be careful, cautious.
Oh, to hell with caution.
I hold up one finger. Then I curl it.
He goes very still for a half-second. Then he comes off the wall with that slow, predatory intention that does something insane to my nervous system, the gleam fully alight in his eye, the feral edge of his smile scrambling my brain. And setting my nerves on fire.
“Worship?” he offers.
Heat surges between my thighs. “Oh, let’s just get to the fucking part.”
He closes the space between us in two steps. His hands find the hem of my shirt—both of them, certain and unhesitating—and he sweeps it over my head in one motion.
His pupils dilate. I’m not wearing anything underneath. Or below. His gaze drops, falling all over me. And then, to my absolute bewilderment, he begins to pace. Slowly, back and forth in front of me. His gaze makes a slow circuit up and down with an expression of enormous composure.
“Uh…Valefar?”
“Shh,” he hisses.
He actually hissed at me!
I’m standing in my own kitchen, entirely naked, while a seven-foot demon regards me like a professor about to deliver a lecture, and something jolts in me which can only be described as what in the actual—
He stops. He wags his finger at me. And…I clock this with my full attention; his tail wags once, in the same rhythm.
“You were a naughty girl, Mistress.” His voice is a deep husk I don’t recognize, but it rips through every defense or debate and erupts tingles all over my skin.
“I told you to get Bethie and run.” A beat.
“I believe you were so naughty, in fact, that it warrants…” He tilts his head, his lips spreading, “…a punishment.”
The word hits me somewhere south of rational thought and slightly north of my knees giving out. My mouth falls open. “Oh, my god.” I stare at him. “Have you been reading my adult books?”
He gives me the most brazen smile I have ever seen, his teeth just visible.
“Perhaps,” he says. “Now.” His voice drops further, warm and certain and entirely wicked.
“Are you going to be a good girl, turn around and bend over that counter so I may give you your proper punishment? Or will I need to make you?”
At first, I consider being a brat. But between what he just did here, and since this is his first time trying this sort of roleplay, I want him to know how much I trust him. How safe I feel to let him…experiment.
I can’t believe I’m going Fifty Shades with a Duke of Hell. Even if that book is tame compared to what I read. Huh. Come to think of it…I haven’t read any of them since Valefar. And the only times I’ve used the toys is when he’s with me, so he may learn and explore more.
With the heat blooming in my face, and my breasts growing heavier, I slowly turn around and lower my front half onto the counter, presenting my ass, which he has described as a ripe “vessel of sin.”
Valefar wastes no time. But it’s not his hand that comes down on my right cheek.
It’s his tail!
I yelp and grip the sides of the counter.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the demon chastises me and moves closer until his heat swarms my back. “You’ll need to be quieter so we don’t break the almighty commandment of this household, my Lady. Hmm…”
The next thing I know, he’s working a zucchini into my mouth. My breath stalls, but my pulse spikes.
“It’s not as big as my cock, but you can practice.”
I moan into the vegetable, then bite down hard at the second lash on my ass, the left side this time.
My pussy grows hotter, wetter with every swing of his tail.
He doesn’t hold back, and with every burning strike, tremors shudder up and down my limbs.
My toes curl up. I bite down harder, leaving prints in the zucchini.
Another lash of his tail, but this time, the arrow slides along my pubic lips.
“Well, well,” he says low, his voice approving while I quiver from that arrow sinking deeper. “You’re not just my naughty girl, are you, Ves? You’re my dirty girl. So wet from your punishment. And now…I believe it’s time for your reward.”
“Oh, God!” It’s muffled behind the zucchini, but when his tail plunges inside me, swiping at my inner walls, stimulating my G-spot, my clit begins to throb, and I know I’m going to come soon.
A second later, my inner muscles flutter.
At the same time, Valefar palms my hot backside with one hand and the other rubs two fingers along my slippery clit.
“Come for me, Ves.”
I fall apart, riding and humping the demon’s hand as the orgasm powers through me.
It’s not graceful. My hips rock back against him, my back arches until it pulls, and every coherent thought I’ve had in the last twenty-four hours takes a severe exit.
The pleasure rolls through me in relentless waves, radiating outward from where his tail is buried inside me until my thighs are shaking and my fingers are white-knuckled on the edge of the counter.
And I’m making sounds so ungodly, they will live in my memory. A lot.
My whole body trembles.
And no sooner do I begin to float down from the high than Valefar removes his tail and replaces it with his shaft, pushing and ramming inside me in a motion so powerful, it surges a new current through me.
I ride the wave. I don’t even care when he pulls on the zucchini and plunges his tail into my mouth, prompting me to suck.
I suck that tail like it’s my last supper.
Unhinged, he fucks me against the counter, his hand gripping my curls to anchor me. I can barely move, but I ride that demon dick like it’s the mother fucking rapture, bucking and writhing, which only spreads delicious friction with my clit rubbing the counter.
He smacks my ass. “That’s right, my sweet, dirty girl. Fuck my cock. Take it just the way you like it. Ride me, Ves. Ride your demon. For I belong to you and none other.”
I moan around that tail. I love how his dirty talk is organic, like he’s just leaning into what feels natural to him. Valefar is a prodigy dom if there ever were such a thing. I can’t wait to see and hear and feel what he does next.
And…somewhere along the way—between him reading stories to Bethie and folding laundry with me and tossing me over his shoulder while we all played in the sprinkler—I have fallen hopelessly and dangerously in love with my Big Guy.