Chapter 25

CHAPTER25

Everything he promises he’ll do, he does. And then some.

I ride his cock and drink from his neck and say his name as he grips my breasts.

I swallow his length as he grasps my hair and growls my name in a desperate chant.

We fuck until I’m so filled with his cum and my arousal that it drips down my legs.

Then he flips me over and pushes slowly into my ass, his body shuddering, just the crown of his cock at first in languid strokes.

“I’m not made of glass, Reaper. I can take it,” I say over my shoulder with a wicked smile as Ashen’s hand sweeps up my spine. He shudders again with my words.

“I want to take my time with you,” he says, pushing in inch by inch until he gradually fits his length inside. He waits for a long moment, both of us breathing hard and slick with sweat. He slides back out to half his length and pushes in again, waiting. “Christ,” he whispers, his hand tracing the line of my hip and down my pelvis and through my short, soft curls until he reaches my clit.

“I thought you said no deities were listening,” I whisper as his fingers dip into my pussy to come back to my clit again. He pulls out, slow again, all the way this time. I think for a minute that he might break his word, but his fingers slide back into my opening just as he leaves my ass. He leans his head on my back and his breath spills across my skin in a stuttering cadence like he can barely hold himself together.

“I was wrong,” Ashen says as he presses in, taking his time to savor the way my rim grips the head of his cock. He slides all the way in until his hips are flush with my ass and then starts a slow and languid pace of thrusts. “There is one deity here. You’re a fucking goddess, sent to destroy me.”

And just as he promises, he takes his time. He starts a rhythmic pace that builds and builds and before long he’s pumping into me, his balls slapping my pussy as his fingers circle my clit. “You are so tight, my goddess. So fucking tight,” he whispers, over and over next to my ear as my back arches and I come, moaning his name. He spills into me, and we rest for a while only to start again, and again, until dawn lightens the sky.

Everyone is still asleep when we head down the hall to the bathroom to shower together. My legs are sticky, my body boneless and sore in the best ways, my flesh tingling beneath my skin from the blood I’ve taken from Ashen. And still when we’re in the shower we fuck once more, my legs wrapped around Ashen as he pushes my back against the cool and soothing tile and I suck the gel of blood from his fingers that softens in the warm water. One last, blinding orgasm in a night that I wish would never end.

We bandage his torn fingers then go back to the room, stepping around the cold corpse on the floor, and climb onto the sheets that smell like sex and promises. I lie on Ashen’s chest, my head tucked beneath his chin. He draws the blankets up and wraps his arm across my back, slowly running his fingers through my hair, the sound and feel of his touch as melodious as a lullaby.

“I love you, Lu. My beautiful, otherworldly, magical goddess Lu,” he whispers.

Love. He says it so easily, like it’s both a privilege and a relief. Like tossing an injured bird to the sky and watching it disappear into the distance, healed and wild and free. And though I can’t say it back, he doesn’t seem to mind. Even just knowing he’s content with waiting draws a little more of the venom from my heart. Like I once said, our blood is liquid patience. And while he waits, I can still say the things that mean as much as love to me.

“Don’t go, if you can’t sleep. I don’t want to wake up alone,” I confess, my voice tired and sluggish. Everything I don’t want to give a voice to, about nightmares and fear, about trust and comfort, hangs in the air.

Ashen’s arm tightens across my back. He breathes a kiss into my hair. “I will be right here when you wake,” he whispers.

And then I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I wake up to the sound of a whisper in my ear and the tickle of my hair moving across my neck with Ashen’s breath.

“Vampire. Time to get up.”

Ashen’s quiet request makes me want to do exactly the opposite. I wriggle in closer, sucking up his warmth as it radiates through my back.

“…No.”

“It’s almost noon.”

“Don’t care.”

“The others are making lunch.”

“I’m on a douchebag-only diet and they don’t cater to my tastes.”

“They will be wondering where we are.”

I scoff at that one and pull Ashen’s arm tighter across my stomach, still refusing to open my eyes. “They know exactly where we are.”

I burrow myself further under the covers and Ashen tries to give them a gentle tug, but my death grip on the edge of the blanket is unrelenting. I keep it pulled to my neck as I roll over and face him.

Ashen is the first thing I see when I open my eyes, and I realize in that moment that I could wake up next to him every day for a thousand years and it would still feel like an electric shock just to look at him. Those dark lashes and the unguarded warmth in his cognac eyes. The radiance of his skin and the luster of his short, dark hair in the morning light. Those lines and lines of black tattoos that flow down his neck and shoulders and disappear beneath the blanket.

Wrapped in his scent and his touch and his attentive gaze, I feel like some of the hurt and worry and anger I’ve been carrying like a noose around my neck has been set aside, at least for a little while. Like I stumbled into some healing waters and emerged a little more at peace on the opposite shore.

That’s what being in love can do, stupid, a little whisper chirps inside my head.

No, that’s what a good dicking can do, moron, I say back.

It wasn’t just sex and you know it. You wouldn’t have let him close if you didn’t feel something for him.

Shut the fuck up. You don’t even have a proper voice anymore, I snap to that persistent little whisper, and that thought jabs at my heart like a hot needle.

So why take one more thing away from yourself when so much was taken already?

….

….

Touché, you bitch.

Ashen’s gaze follows the angles of my face before coming back to my eyes. He smiles and it looks way too intuitive for my liking. “Do you ever just wake up peacefully, or do you always start your day with some kind of battle? I do wonder if the war ever subsides in your thoughts.”

I narrow my eyes. His smile grows a little wider.

“What were you thinking just now?”

“I’m not telling you.”

Ashen shifts subtly so that he’s a little more over me, his weight pressing my shoulder to the mattress. He kisses my neck and his breath sends a rush of gooseflesh across my chest. “What if I demand that you tell me? You seem to like my demands.”

I suppress a shudder of desire. “I think it’s time to get up,” I grumble, and squirm out from beneath Ashen, his hand trailing after me.

“All right, vampire,” he says as I head toward the wardrobe. I can hear the smug smile ringing in his voice. “Pass me my dagger when you have a moment, will you? You know, the one that I pulled from your hand? Perhaps we can discuss what you intended to do with it another time.”

I stiffen and turn enough to give Ashen the evil eye over my shoulder. He gives the most infuriating, teasing, adorable grin in reply. I spot the dagger a few feet away and retrieve it from the floor, flipping it end over end in my hand as I turn my gaze back to Ashen.

“Vampire...” he says in a low warning, though the smile still tugs at his lips.

The dagger flies from my hand and smacks into the headboard with a twang. Ashen looks at the blade next to his head and back to me, his smile growing wide.

“I missed,” I say, trying to toss him a glare as fierce as the dagger he pulls from the split wood.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I can try again.”

Ashen laughs. God almighty, that sound. It’s like a punch to the chest every time I hear it. But in a good way. Like, a nice punch. Okay yeah, that might not make much sense at first. It’s just that it’s not a warm hug, not like wrapping a blanket around yourself and sitting in a bay window to watch the snow falling outside as you sip hot chocolate. It’s a shock. It’s unexpected. It steals my breath and grabs hold of me. I feel the impression of it beneath my bones when it’s gone.

But why is that?

Is it because it’s so infrequent? Demon reapers aren’t really known to be blessed with easy laughter, I guess. Is it because it’s hard-earned, and I’m the one that coaxed it to life? Or is it just him? Is it that it makes me happy to see and hear the way he transforms when he lets himself go?

You idiot, it’s because you’re falling in lo-

Shut the fuck up, woman.

Ashen’s smile grows as he looks down at the dagger. “I have seen you throw blades accurately with your peripheral vision. You never miss.” His eyes slide to mine and he gives me a dark, cocky smile. I can’t decide if I want to smack his face or sit on it. “Does that mean I’m growing on you?”

I try not to blush and turn away as I slip on my robe. “Maybe. In the way that barnacles grow on whales, or fleas infest dogs, or-“

“-don’t say those weird wasps-“

“-or those wasps that lay eggs on spiders and then mind-control them into spinning crazy webs before they suck out all their spider juices and kill them. Yeah, you’re definitely growing on me like one of those.”

He’s on me before I even finish my sentence, sweeping me up with one solid arm around my middle to throw us both down onto the bed.

“You, vampire, are in imminent danger,” Ashen growls as he cages me between his limbs. He tries to look serious but I can see the warmth radiate from his eyes.

“Why? Can you lay eggs?”

I dissolve into giggles as Ashen digs his fingers into my sides in an unrelenting tickle until I beg him to stop. We watch one another with fading smiles as the laughter dies away and I catch my breath.

This is the lightest I’ve felt in days. The most unburdened. I know when we leave this room that reality will creep back in, but for this moment, I feel like the broken edges of my heart are a little less sharp.

Ashen sweeps locks of hair from my cheeks and searches my face. That light is still there in his eyes, even as his smile fades to all but the faintest trace. His hand drifts down my neck and lays over my pulse. “Do you love me yet, vampire?”

I let out an incredulous bark of a laugh. “One hundred percent NO.”

Ashen’s expression only seems to warm further despite my response. “Are you sure?”

“Did you really think I’d fall in love with you because of one night? I don’t care how mind-blowing the sex was, that’s not gonna happen.”

That cocky grin reappears on Ashen’s lips. “Mind-blowing?”

I roll my eyes and his smile only grows cockier, which I didn’t think would be possible. “Wipe that smug grin off your face. You know it was, Reaper. But the point remains: one night doesn’t change anything.”

“But it can, if you let it. The most monumental changes in life seem to happen in an instant,” Ashen says. His deep voice is quieter as his gaze wanders down to my lips and his smile dissolves. His fingers caress the line of my pulse. “Decades of time pass without change. One day bleeds into the next. They flow as a slow procession of memory and regret that becomes static and unchanging, until life is just existing. And suddenly you find yourself in an alley, face-to-face with a beautiful, brazen, bold vampire and she infuses your world with color and light. One breath of time, and you realize you have been living in monochrome and shadow. One night was all it took to change my life.”

My heart hammers at my bones and I know that Ashen can feel it beneath his palm. We watch one another and all his longing, his desire, his need, it’s unfiltered in his eyes. But there’s something in him that I haven’t seen before last night. A lightness. And determination.

My head finally kicks into gear. I swallow a thick knot and resurrect the hurt that still lives like a creature trapped in my chest. “An instant is all it takes to break a heart. And it takes time to repair something shattered. If it’s even worth fixing at all.”

Ashen leans closer, his eyes not leaving mine until he presses a lingering kiss on my lips. “I told you, my vampire. I have immortal time,” he says when he pulls away.

“Time is not enough.”

“Then tell me what is.”

“Your secrets. Truth.”

Ashen takes a deep breath as though steeling himself. “Anything you ask, it’s yours.”

I pull his hand from the bed and run my fingers over the gold and black tattoos on his knuckles. “Why is the Master of War here in the Living Realm? Alone?”

“To find you and bring you back,” he says, without pretense or delay or any emotion at all. We stare at one another as he assesses my reaction. “You are not surprised.”

“No. I figured that was why you were here. I told you as much at Club Caelum.” I don’t let go of his hand, though the admission still twists a needle of pain in my guts. I want him to know that his honesty is worth the effort.

“I did not say I would do that.”

“But you could, once we finish what Semyon started.”

“I could have already, if that’s what I had wanted,” Ashen says, and my brows quirk in a question. “The human scientist that you attacked in the dungeon? You didn’t kill him. The Council believes it was Cole that freed you on his own. They have no knowledge of Dr. Keller’s involvement. But he also has no allegiance to you, all things considered. He will do what it takes to survive, and he is still in the Shadow Realm, still analyzing the sample and working on serums. They are confident he can find a solution to finish the process of your transformation. My only mission from the Council was to bring you back alive, and I convinced them that going alone would give us a better chance of success.”

“If they wanted me alive, why send the snakes?”

“Ningish was supposed to retrieve, not kill. And now that he is dead, Zida will want revenge over any mission. She will be coming to finish you.”

“And how do I know you haven’t decided to extend your mission so you could flush out Cole, or Eryx, or the plans of the Realm of Light?”

Ashen thinks about it for a long moment, watching me. “That would be a logical assumption. But that is not why I stay, and for that the only thing I can say is you will need to trust me.”

I don’t respond to that, and it doesn’t look like Ashen expects me to. He just watches, observes. Learns. The silence stretches on until his keen watchfulness becomes a little unnerving.

“What do you expect to happen if you show up to the Council empty-handed?” I ask in a quiet voice. It worries me, and though I might not want to admit it, I’m nervous about what they would do to him.

“I don’t know,” Ashen says, and looks away as he twirls a lock of my hair around his finger. The spiral curls around his skin and uncurls again, over and over as his thoughts drift away from me. “I don’t know.”

I raise my hand and lay it on his face. For a moment I wonder if I should. But then he leans into my palm and brings his eyes back to me, and it feels right to be trapped by his gaze. “Thank you.”

A wisp of surprise flashes through Ashen’s expression. “For what?”

“For telling me these things.”

He smiles. I smile back. I raise my other hand to Ashen’s face and draw him down to me, kissing him long and deep. Our tongues make languid passes, our breath mixes with a sweet current of air. It doesn’t take long for the heat to build in the pit of longing that seems bottomless between us. Just a few more moments in this room, alone without the rest of the world. That’s all I want.

Naturally, that’s what the world wants to deny me.

A knock sounds at the door and our kiss breaks off abruptly, as though we’re both surprised that reality would find us once more.

“Listen up, sex fiends,” Ediye says from the other side of the door. I groan and drag a hand down my face as Ashen puffs a laugh. “Everything is ready to go for Romania. But we can’t get close to Magura by portal. Valentina has the whole area locked down with layers of spells. We’ll portal to Câmpulung to rent vehicles and drive there. So, finish banging so we can get on the road.”

I snort a laugh. “Yes, darling,” I call back to her.

“And by banging I mean once, not six times.”

“Christ,” I whisper.

“And don’t forget the body on the floor. The Scythe wants to harvest the good stuff before it starts disintegrating.”

“How did you-”

But Ediye is already dancing down the hall. I can hear her smug little feet. “Once! Not six!” she calls out, and I press my fingertips into my cheeks as I let out a long sigh.

“God I love her, but she’s the worst,” I say as I start to squirm from under Ashen. He catches my waist and leans in to drag his lips across my neck. “What are you doing? You heard the woman, we’ve got to get going.”

“I did hear the woman. She said ‘once’. I know better than to disobey her direct orders,” he says through kisses as his hand slips beneath my robe.

I laugh but I’m already gripping Ashen’s bare shoulders and trailing my fingers across his back. I press my lips to his throat as his palm slides down, sweeping over my breasts, flowing down my stomach until he reaches my center.

“Vampire,” he purrs, finding my entrance already so slick with arousal. He circles my clit in a light, teasing caress. “So wet for me, always.”

“Just like you’re so hard for me, always,” I say as I wrap my hand around his length. He moans as I stroke his shaft.

“Painfully so, and more often than I care to admit.”

Ashen claims my mouth in a bruising kiss as we touch and tease one another. I lose myself to his warmth and the desire that coils low in my belly. Romania, portals, cars, it all disappears until all that exists is Ashen’s hands and his mouth and this need, this need that never abates.

Ashen breaks the kiss and rests his forehead against mine, his breath coming in a ragged cadence. “If we were smart, we would do this in the shower to appease both Ediye and the Scythe with our time management skills.”

“Agreed,” I say, breathless and desperate. “But I can’t wait that long.”

“Thank fuck for that.” Ashen slides into me and we both gasp as my body envelops his warmth. His fingers still circle my clit as he thrusts into me, driving in deep and hard. I rake my teeth across his shoulder in gentle, fangless bites until Ashen’s hand lays on my cheek, gently guiding my mouth closer to his neck. “Take more,” he whispers.

I let out the breath of a laugh across his skin. “The more I take, the more I want.”

“I know.”

“You aren’t playing fair.”

“I never said I would.”

I angle my head to catch his gaze. He smiles, and though he’s teasing, he’s also being honest. And if I’m being honest with myself, I do want more. Nothing tastes the same, or feels the same. I don’t know if it’s the magic of bloodfate, or centuries of loneliness catching up with me, or a reckless desire to seize the things that I want even though they might be bad for me. But when my fangs draw down, I know I won’t decline. I can’t.

I place a kiss to Ashen’s neck before my teeth slide into his skin. I pierce just deep enough to take from him safely, and then draw in a mouthful of blood. The electric energy courses down my throat, this taste that’s so distinctly Ashen’s. It’s a delicate sweetness, a warm spiciness, a rich saltiness with undertones of copper. It fizzes like popping candy and it heats me from within, charging through my veins like lightning.

Ashen’s hand threads into my hair, holding me to his neck as I take another pull of his blood. His motion steadies to a more rhythmic pace, less thrusting but somehow more powerful. “Christ,” he hisses, the sound of his voice vibrating against my lips. “Why does it feel like this?”

I pull away and feel my brows draw together as I look into his eyes. “Like what?”

“Like you live in my veins. Like all the power of the realms is siphoning into me. Like I can feel your history, alive and vibrant, just beneath my skin,” he whispers as he sweeps away the hair stuck to the sweat misting my temples. His cognac eyes look achingly hopeful. “Is this what it would feel like?”

I’m still so caught up in what he describes that it takes a moment before I can respond. “What?”

“Is this what it would feel like if we were mated?”

I shake my head, ever so slightly. “I… I don’t know,” I whisper, and my heart fills with another kind of venom. Not anger or sorrow, or rage or loneliness or envy. It’s the painful sting of compassion. I suddenly understand how little has been truly good in Ashen’s life. The way he looks at me, like all his power and strength is resting in my answer, it’s as clear as polished glass. All this man has ever truly known is darkness and loss. What Ember once said is true. He’s looking for the light, and he’s hoping that I’m it.

“I don’t know, Ashen,” I say again, folding my arms across his back to draw him closer as I chase the release that’s slowly building in my center with every wave of motion. “Maybe one day we’ll find out.”