“Not far enough,” I spit. “That’s too easy. That’s brute force. Pain fades. Fear fades. But what I want? I want to take her apart from the inside.”
I lean in, close enough to feel his breath, my voice a snarl of silk and fire. “I want her to thank me for the chains I wrap around her. I want her to cry for the very thing that will ruin her soul. Not because she’s scared. Because she’s mine and she knows it.”
Cassiel’s voice cuts in then, low and cold. “You want to save her.”
I laugh, sharp and twisted. “No,” I whisper. “I want to be the one who damns her.”
A flicker of unease crosses Cassiel’s perfect, icy features, but he doesn’t challenge me. Bastion chuckles, slow and dark, licking whiskey from his thumb. “Damn, brother. That’s poetry. She doesn’t stand a chance.”
I walk away from them, fire licking through my veins. Her scent still clings to my skin. I swear I can still feel her breathless moans vibrating against my cock. My hand twitches with the memory of her. If someone else touches her — if he touches her — I’ll rip their soul out through their throat.
Whether she’s human or demon, virgin or succubus — it doesn’t matter. I’m going to ruin her. And she’ll beg me for it.
The dream hits like a fist to the sternum. One breath I am alone in the dark, the next I am inside her, all fever and scent and liquid heat. Candlelight trembles against stone. Incense curls in the air and the room smells of things that should be forbidden and are, by some brutal mercy, exactly what I want. Her skin is soft beneath my hands. Her thighs part for me, trembling. Every small sound she makes is a vow written in flesh.
She whispers my name and there is no pretense in it, no fear. Only want, sharp and immediate. Her hips press up against me as if gravity itself has learned the shape of our bodies. I feel her surrender like a current through my palms, like smoke pulling toward flame. It makes something in me unclench, something I have been keeping tight for centuries. I lean forward, fingers curving into her hair, and press my mouth to the hollow of her throat because I want her to know, to remember, who she belongs to.
A voice cuts through the heat. It is wrong and it is patient. I feel the flames gutter as the air tightens. The candles dim. Shadows peel back and there, behind her, a thing steps into the failing light. Horns like black branches twist from its skull. The presence of it is older than hunger, older than oath. It moves as if the dark itself has chosen a shape. When it smiles, the world tastes like iron.
‘She does not belong to you,’ the voice says. ‘She is not yours.’
Rage is a physical thing under my skin. It boils up like molten metal and I lunge for it, teeth bared, claws wanting and ready. I will tear that thing from the shadows and feed it its own fear. I will show it every consequence of touching what is mine.
Then the room ruptures and I am awake. My heart hammers as if it has been forced into new form. Sweat sticks to my chest. My cock is painfully hard with need that no waking hand can still. For a moment everything is the afterimage of the dream—incense, the hollow press of her throat at my lips, that grin splitting the dark. I taste it in the back of my mouth.
He was there. Not in some half-remembered corner. Not a phantom of my own longing. He was there in her dream and in mine, watching, waiting, claiming. The thought slams into me with a clarity that is almost holy: this is not a creature to be bargained with. This is something that keeps appointments. This is a predator that marks its hours.
No. She is not his.
She is mine.
If he touches her, I will not only break him. I will make him watch while I bury myself inside her and erase him from her memory. He will remember only that she belonged to me and that, when I had finished, there was nothing left of him but the echo of a stupid, frightened noise.
EIGHT
The days blur together until time feels like water slipping between my fingers. Sleep comes in ragged scraps—ten minutes here, an hour there—and every time it does, he’s waiting for me. Deimos. No longer a hazy figure at the edge of a dream but a constant, heavy presence. It isn’t just a dream anymore. It’s a tether. A pull I can’t explain. I wake up gasping, my skin damp, my heart a runaway drum, his name on my lips and heat curled low in my belly. My body remembers him even when my mind tries to forget.
And the worst part is, I’m not sure I want to forget.
I sit curled on the edge of my bed, knees hugged to my chest. The curtains are drawn, the lights off. Penny’s out—thank God—but her absence doesn’t make the silence easier. The room is too still, too loud with my thoughts. It feels like a sanctuary and a cell at once.
My head throbs from lack of sleep. My thighs ache. My pulse is a constant flutter under my skin.
Tomorrow is the bonfire party. Everyone else will be excited—texting friends, planning outfits, picking who they’ll flirt with, who they’ll fuck under the stars. And me? I’m a nervous wreck, spiraling into moral crisis mode like the dutiful little preacher’sdaughter I was raised to be. I tell myself this shouldn’t matter. That sex is just sex, a first time like any other. People do it every day. I’m not special. I could just get it over with. But the truth tastes bitter. It is a big deal to me. It always has been.
Ever since I stepped into that confessional—ever since his voice pressed against my mind and his hunger tangled with mine—something inside me has been unspooling. Something dark. Something hungry.
Shawn is safe. Predictable. Normal. The life I should want. If I sleep with him, maybe I can reset. Maybe I can snap myself back into the shape of the girl I used to be.
But what if I can’t? What if I do it and still wake drenched in sweat, Deimos’s voice whispering my name into the dark? What if nothing mortal ever feels like enough again?
I close my eyes and breathe out slowly. When I open them again, the room pulses once—like a heartbeat that isn’t mine. My stomach flips. My fingers tremble. Warmth trickles beneath my nose, and when I wipe it away, my skin comes back streaked red. Blood.
For a second I just stare at it, wondering if I’ve finally cracked—if my mind has split clean open.
I rub my palms down my bare thighs, restless. My skin still tingles as if someone else’s hands were just on me, as if they belong there. God, what’s wrong with me? One second I want to rebel, the next I want to curl up in shame and pray the craving away. I want to forget him. I want to go to the party and drink too much and fuck Shawn until my body forgets the shape of Deimos’ mouth and the sound of his voice. But the closer the night gets, the more I know I’m lying to myself.
Because I don’t want Shawn. Not like I want Deimos. And that truth terrifies me more than hellfire ever did. I bury my face in my hands and groan, a low, helpless sound.
