TWO
Her chest rose and fell in that broken, uneven way all mortals did, after they’d come hard enough to leave their soul behind.
Silence pressed against her ears — sharp, unyielding. The room itself bore witness and waited.
Vision bled back into focus, raw at the edges.
Her fingers, still tangled in his hair, loosened. She eased away reluctantly, as if prying herself free from the pull of a tide too vast to fight.
Maybe if he hadn’t lived so long, his eyes would have widened. Maybe his mouth would have fallen open in shock.
He was surprised. He just didn’t bother to show it.
Not when this beguiling, shattered thing lay before him, piecing herself back together.
“You said my name,” he murmured, almost reverent.
Somewhere in the room, the mirror’s reflection splintered — hairline fractures spidering through Try Me, scrawled beneath a red smear of lipstick.
His lips brushed her thigh. Once. Twice.
She groaned — hazy, wrecked.
“What?”
“Not the infernal sigil scrawled in your summoning book,” he said, voice low, thick with satisfaction. “You said my true name.”
The silence didn’t ring anymore.
It cracked — heat seeping through, thick with vows unspoken.
“Do you know why demons guard their names so intently?” he asked, rising from between her legs with slow, predatory grace, settling back on his heels.
“I have no idea,” she grumbled, irritation crackling through the haze of post-orgasm bliss. “But please, do tell. My curiosity is eating me alive.”
At the slow, wicked curl of his mouth, she pressed her lips together and drew a long breath through her nose.
“Pun intended,” she muttered.
She propped herself on her elbows, glaring at him between her crooked, shamelessly spread knees.
Fully bare. Unflinching.
Oh, this one was delightful. Spunky. Defiant.
The kind of mortal who begged to be broken open, one ruinous breath at a time.
“Our names bind us,” he said — simple. Like that should explain everything.
It did not.
“I didn’t…” She frowned, the crease between her brows deepening. “I didn’t even know I said anything.”
He moved off the mattress with fluid ease, prowling toward the mirror leaning against the wall.
Picked it up. Tilted it so she could see the fractured surface.
“Well,” his voice was a slow drag of mischief, thick with satisfaction. “One thing’s for certain.”
The gold of his eyes burned brighter: molten, wicked, catching the light with a predatory, otherworldly gleam reserved for beasts.
“I won’t be returning the way I came.”
Her breath hitched.
The lingering heat of her release slid into something chilled, turning sharp and electric, humming beneath her skin.
Shit.
“This wasn’t supposed to mean anything.” Her words were sharp, bladed, accusatory.
Had he trapped her?
“Ah, I see.”
He leaned back against the wall, folding his arms across his chest — loose, languid, utterly unbothered.
“You were hoping for casual damnation. A good fuck and an interesting story.”
His smile carved deeper, wolfish, unapologetic.
“I’m sorry to tell you: that’s not how this works. You summoned a demon, not a drunken one-night stand. And that, my dear, always comes with a price.”
She opened her mouth to argue. To demand.
She wasn’t sure which.
But no sound came.
The words snagged stubbornly in her throat, refusing to form, even when he pushed off the wall.
Slow. Sinuous.
Like a man who had all the time in the world to savor the inevitable.
Like a man who already owned the outcome.
His smile had dissipated.
What remained was something else. Hushed. Patient.
Deadly.
“You called me.”
His gaze flicked to the half-open summoning circle, the one she’d forgotten to close.
“You bound me.”
No anger. No affection.
Just fact, as inescapable as the vortex of his presence.
Speaking of inescapable pulls…
Its weight flooded the cage of her ribs. Threaded down her spine. Anchored low in her belly.
Her thighs squeezed together — reflexive, useless against the slow, insidious pull drowning her senses. She caught her lip between her teeth, fisting the sheets in her hands.
It wasn’t fear.
It was desire.
Worse — like free-falling without a parachute.
A doom she refused to acknowledge, even as she plummeted toward it.
He didn’t touch her. Didn’t move.
He let the silence stretch taut. Let her sit in the illusion of control a moment longer.
Then, almost tenderly:
“I didn’t need to trap you.” His voice was a low, indulgent murmur. “You chose this.”
The burn of his gaze was patient, merciless, as he allowed the weight of that truth to pull her under — slow, inescapable — caught in the current she herself had summoned.
And somehow, that was crueler than any command: the steady, unrelenting pull of him unraveling her from the inside out.
She made a soft sound, almost pathetic.
A whimper.
“On your knees, darling.” His purr was low and indulgent. “Show me what worship looks like — and I’ll show you what damnation tastes like.”
Time itself held its breath. Her body moved before her mind caught up.
She slid to the edge of bed, hands bracing against the mattress for balance. Knees found the floor — cold, biting.
The sensation barely registered, lost beneath the static hum of want prickling under her skin.
The contrast between the cold of its touch and the fever under her skin blurred to nothing. Only the ache remained, slow and heady, winding through her veins, muting everything else.
The action was hers — deliberate.
A surrender not by command, but by want.
Her shallow breath faltered.
She should have hated herself for it. Hated how easily she fell to him.
Hated how right it felt.
She didn’t.
His gaze warmed with approval, liquid gold — molten.
Smelted. Pleased.
The silence hummed now. Low and thick, buzzing behind her ears.
He stepped closer, close enough for her to smell it: smoke and molten heat clinging to his skin.
Close enough to feel him, the weight of him, heavy and waiting behind the zipper of his pants.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
She swallowed against the swell.
Slowly, deliberately, her hand lifted — fingers trembling as they broke through the charged air, skin tingling, straining for contact.
Not from fear.
From want.
From the twist of anticipation winding tight in her chest, an ache, a hunger.
A vow unspoken, but writ into the trembling of her body. Devotion perverted: an offering placed at the feet of a demon, not a god.
The leather of his belt was warm under her fingers, supple from wear, the metal buckle impossibly heavy.
She worked it loose, slow, careful.
He said nothing.
Did nothing.
Just… watched.
The zipper followed, slower still. The sound was a rip through the charged silence, slicing clean through the thundering pulse hammering like a war drum in her ears.
His cock strained against the fabric — thick, hard, obscene.
Her mouth watered. Heat flooded her veins.
But she didn’t rush. Didn’t dare.
Fingers curled around the waistband. She tugged — not rough, not timid.
Certain.
Devout.
Offering him the reverence he hadn’t demanded but had somehow earned.
The fabric fell — soft, final — baring him for her worship.
Hard as granite. Heavy, veined, perfect.
The tip already slick, glistening with pre-cum.
She licked her lips, a slow, involuntary drag of her tongue, and glanced up at him through the veil of her lashes.
His expression hadn’t changed. He wore that patient, predatory calm like a smoke shroud.
Still waiting.
His hand slid into her hair, not tight, not controlling — just there. Steady. A promise of guidance, not a demand.
“At your pace,” he murmured, voice like a silken caress over her flushed, bare skin. “But make no mistake, darling — this isn’t for me.”
His thumb brushed the curve of her cheek. Almost tender.
Almost.
“It’s for you.”
A gift of sacrilege: hers to endure, and his to claim.
She didn’t understand what that meant. Not yet.
But she wanted to.
Gods forgive her — she craved it.
She leaned forward, her breath ghosting over the tip of him, molten, open, trembling with invitation.
He hissed through his teeth; a quiet sound that made her thighs clench.
Damnation.
She should have bolted.
Should have screamed.
Instead, she opened her mouth, slow, aching, and prayed he’d feed her ruin.
She took him in slowly, worshipfully, letting him feel the searing heat of her mouth, the wet slide of her tongue.
No rush.
No frantic pace.
An offering.
He groaned, rough and restrained, his fingers tightening just slightly in her hair.
Not forcing.
Guiding.
Her hands rose, sliding up over the hard lines of his thighs — stony, unyielding. She wrapped one hand around the thick base of him, the other bracing against his hip.
Steadying herself.
And she moved: slow, sure, devout.
His approval rolled through her, unspoken, but felt in the way he breathed — ragged, measured.
In how he let her keep the illusion of control, knowing she had none.
And she clung to it.
Pretended it was hers.
“Good girl,” he murmured, almost too soft to hear.
The words lashed through her, pleasure unfurling tight, and dangerous.
Her core clenched.
Her body ached for more.
She hollowed her cheeks.
Pressed deeper.
Drew a shudder from him — a fracture in all that ruthless restraint.
Not a god.
Not a king.
Not a monster.
Hers.
At least for as long as she dared to hold him.
Or so she allowed herself to believe.
She moved with caution, working him deeper, inch by inch, letting him feel the slick drag of her mouth.
And as she did, something shifted.
Subtle at first, easily ignored. A flicker at the edge of her awareness. A hum muted by the rush of her pulse.
It curled along her spine, crawled up the back of her neck: heat that wasn’t hers. Like molten tentacles coiling over her skin.
Beneath it.
His pleasure.
Inside her.
The weight of it pressed against her ribs, wound around her lungs. A flood of sensation, slow and inescapable. Her fingers flexed at his hip; her eyes rolled back, nails biting into the sharp jut of bone — as if she could anchor herself there. As if he could hold her steady. As if he wasn’t the current she’d invited.
She should have pulled away.
She didn’t.
Instead, she pressed into it — into him.
Closer.
Inviting it. Craving it. Consuming it.
The deeper he sank into her mouth, the deeper his hunger bled into her skin. Into her blood.
Through her marrow.
Not pain. Not even fear.
But fullness — vast and terrible — like she’d never known. It was a claiming she hadn’t agreed to, but refused to resist.
The pressure building inside her was slow at first, then turned sharp, splintering. It wasn’t just pleasure.
It was possession.
And she could taste it.
Not just in the salt and skin and heat of him, but something older. Darker.
Power, and ruin.
Mine now, the voice whispered from the base of her skull. Always mine.
She moaned around him. The mental caress sent shock waves down her spine, splintering through her bones. Perhaps the most sensual touch she’d ever experienced. Or ever would.
He answered her moan with a groan of his own — low, guttural — and the sound rolled through her like thunder, echoing inside her.
The hand in her hair tightened, but not painfully. It wasn’t punishment. It was an attempt to anchor them. Because he could feel it too — the bond snapping taut between them.
Not a leash.
Not a chain.
This burrowed deep. Not a bond, but a root sinking through bone.
Binding flesh to flesh. Soul to soul.
And she sucked harder, utterly lost to it.
To him.
To the unholy rightness of it all.
He gathered her hair into his fist, his need for control flaring — brief, searing. He pulled back; not harshly, only enough to let her breathe.
She gasped against him, chest heaving with desperation.
His thumb traced the corner of her mouth where saliva clung — a slow, deliberate sweep, as if marking her.
Not with force.
With claim.
A consecration in salt and surrender.
His eyes darkened, gleaming with something ancient and knowing.
“Do you feel it?” he asked, voice a rough caress. “Do you feel me inside you, darling?”
She should have said no. Should have denied it.
But she couldn’t. That golden gaze saw everything. He would see straight through her.
She dragged her tongue around the tip of him — slow, deliberate — and met his gaze as she whispered against his heat:
“Yes.”
Something jagged flashed in his eyes — a crack of hunger barely contained. A low, primal sound reverberated through his chest as his hips flexed forward.
Brutality thinly veiled. Almost punishment, and all for her.
Her throat relaxed for him, lips molding around him, and she let him take what he needed—
What she was already offering.
His moan thundered through her as he buried himself in the tight clutch of her throat.
Over.
And over.
Holding her deep until she was on the verge of breaking.
Her eyes watered. Her jaw ached.
She was tasting damnation — salt-slick, molten, fathomless.
And she wanted more.
The bond cracked like lightning with each thrust of his hips, sending its elemental current crashing through her spine.
It wasn’t just a tether anymore. It was a vein, pulsing heat and want between them.
He didn’t warn her. He didn’t need to.
She felt it.
In the gathering storm of tension in his body. The tightening grip in her hair. The slow, inevitable build.
And when he came — thick, molten — flooding her mouth in punishing waves, she took it.
Drank him down like communion. A sacrament of salt and surrender.
It was a binding act, solidifying his claim. It wasn’t ownership. This was something far deeper.
Her mouth sealed the pact her body had begun.
His groan was wrecked, raw. The sound of something not merely satisfied, but fulfilled.
And gods help her — she felt it too.
The bond coiled tighter around her ribs, its molten tendrils squeezing the soft, trembling meat of her soul.
Not shackles. Not chains.
Threading through her, burrowing, changing her.
She swallowed everything he gave, consuming the full weight of his release like an unholy right. When he finally pulled back, she sank back onto her heels — panting, dazed — and licked her lips clean without thinking.
His hand cupped her jaw, thumb gliding over her swollen lips like a tide smoothing the shore it would soon swallow.
His eyes were golden flame.
“Good girl,” he murmured, dragging his knuckles across her cheek — soft as ash.
His praise surged through her, heavy and hot, settling deep between her thighs.
“You don’t know what you’ve done yet, do you?”
She shook her head slowly, uncertain.
Already, something deeper stirred beneath her skin — vast, fathomless — a pull she would never escape.
His smile was wicked, soft around the edges.
Almost pitying.
Almost proud.
“You’ve let me in,” he said, voice a silken noose tightening around her throat.
“And now?” he leaned closer.
The weight of his truth threatened to drown her, and she gave herself to it.
“There’s no shutting me out.”
