But then—she sees me.
Even amidst the frenzy of pleasure, her gaze lifts. Finds mine.
And just like that—I unravel.
Her hand reaches out, trembling. Blood on her thighs. Sweat on her skin. Her lips parted in a gasp. She is divine and unholy and utterly real.
“Cassiel,” she says, voice wrecked and raw. “Come here.”
My heart stutters.
Deimos glances over her shoulder, amusement flickering behind his smug smirk. Bastion doesn’t react, too lost in the moment to care. But she’s watching me. Only me.
“I don’t want to force you,” she whispers. “But I will if I have to.”
And fuck, part of mewantsher to.
Wants to be commanded. Owned. Ruined by her will. But more than that, I want to choose this. I want togivemyself freely.
I step forward slowly, caught in the gravity of her pull.
Her lips curve in satisfaction. Fingers flex. She grips me through my pants—tight and certain—and I choke on a groan. She frees me with a few sharp movements, then drags me closer until I’m standing right beside Bastion, my cock now in her hand, aching and exposed.
She leans forward. Her lips part. And then shedevoursme.
The first flick of her tongue nearly steals my breath. The wet heat of her mouth wraps around me, and I swear the world tilts. My fingers find her hair, trembling as they sink into the tangled silk. But I don’t pull. I don’t fuck her mouth. I justfeel.
Because gods, she’s holy like this.
Not gentle. Not soft. But sacred in her ruin.
Her horns curl back from her forehead, black and gleaming. Her eyes burn—gold and violet and endless. Her claws rest against Bastion’s chest as her body rides the rhythm of both him and Deimos. She is split wide. Full. Worshipped. Her power coils tighter, pulling at all of us, wrapping around our spines like smoke.
Deimos thrusts harder. Bastion moans her name.
She moans around me, and the vibration wracks through me like lightning.
My wings flare behind me, reacting instinctively. Pleasure spirals up from the base of my spine, white-hot and unstoppable. I try to hold back—try to savor—but I can’t. Not like this. Not with her.
I come with a shudder, spilling my cum into her mouth as I groan her name, broken and reverent. She drinks it down like the sacrament it is.
Moments later, Deimos and Bastion reach their peaks, groaning into her skin, their movements rough and frantic. She takes them both. All of us.
And in that moment, she feeds. Not just on our bodies—but our loyalty, our devotion, our damnation.
Sheownsus.
And I know, even as I pant through the aftershocks, even as my soul trembles from the inside out?—
I am hers now. In every broken piece of what’s left of me.
FORTY-FIVE
The courtyard is quiet in the way a graveyard is quiet after the priests go home, only hotter and smelling of ash instead of lilies. We lie like animals mid-hunt, spread on the black stone with the sky above us bruised in orange and violet and ash. The clouds look as if someone has dragged a coal across the horizon and then breathed the color out in a sigh. Flames wink and gutter at the edges of the court, casting our bodies into the soft, shifting relief of bronze and shadow.
No one moves at first. My hands rest on my stomach, my breath coming in a slow rhythm. Bastion is a warm weight at my shoulder, his arm over his face, the long slow rise and fall of his chest the only motion beyond the flames. Cassiel’s profile is a study in lines that should not belong to anything so mortal.
Deimos is nearest, on my right, the one I can feel without looking. The bond has been loud tonight, a rope pulled too tight and then allowed to breathe. It hums under my skin like a trapped insect.
