Chapter 24

CHAPTER24

One of Ashen’s large hands is clasped around both of my wrists, locking them behind my back as he slams into me from behind. Sweat slicks my skin. My flesh is swollen around him. My legs are sticky with the cum that’s leaked from my pussy, trailing down my thighs. The bed shakes with the power of Ashen’s thrusts, his balls slapping my clit with every deep stroke.

“Say it, vampire. Say it or I will not stop.”

I smile. This is the last of our games still standing, neither of us relenting. He knows I’m getting tired. He’s taken me so many times already tonight. But he also knows I’m stubborn.

“I can’t.”

“Say it.” Ashen’s palm smacks the back of my thigh with a crack and I lurch forward.

“Dammit demon, it was on the tip of my tongue, but you startled it right out of me,” I tease, and another slap hits my flesh. I cry out with pleasure at the sting of it in my skin. Wicked thrusts pound into me. Ashen’s grip on my wrists and my hip tightens.

“Say. It. Say it, you stubborn creature,” Ashen grits out, his words punctuated by more slaps. The pace of his strokes matches my need. If I come too close to the edge of oblivion, he slows. If I slip too far away from an orgasm, he speeds. He keeps me exactly where he wants me, having just enough without having what I’m really after. Not until he gets what he wants this time. He’s made me come until I didn’t think I could anymore. He’s impaled me on his hot sex, wrapping me in his leathery wings and caging me in. He’s woken me, already buried to his hilt within my sheath, sliding in long, slow strokes as he whispered his need into my ear. He’s begged me with gentle pleas. And now he’ll keep me on the brink if he has to, until I spit out the one word he’s been asking for.

I turn my head to the side, enough that I catch him with the edge of my vision. “I’m busy. Leave a message.” It earns me a growl that vibrates deep within the demon’s chest. My resistance might seem both cruel and masochistic, but it’s worked. Over the course of the night, Ashen’s ire has subsided. His wings receded, the red rings around his irises have faded away as his rage has slowly ebbed. And with each strike of his hand against my ass and the backs of my thighs, I feel my anger cleansed too. My frustration and worries about insubordination of the Reapers. My fear about my tenuous power over this place. It all fades away like smoke in the wind.

“Goddammit, vampire. Submit.”

“You didn’t say please.”

“I’m done asking nicely.”

“Then I guess we’re in a stalemate.” That earns me yet another slap and I cackle, a roar of frustration rumbling over my back as Ashen pushes his weight onto me, my wrists still trapped in his grip. His other arm snakes around my middle, holding me in place as he rams into me.

“Just say it,” he purrs into my ear, his voice dark and rich and enchanting. “I know you suffer. I know you long to sleep.”

“This is my favorite kind of suffering. And sleep is for the weak.” My smile blooms as Ashen changes course and trails hot kisses down my neck. My pleasure ramps up with every thrust of his cock within my swollen, desperate center. “Besides, I’m not sure if you’ve suffered enough.”

Ashen huffs a laugh across my skin and goosebumps skitter up my shoulder. “I have suffered, vampire. I am in agony waiting for a single word. Say it.”

“No.”

“Say it.”

“I can’t.”

“Say it.”

“It’s not time.”

“Say. It. I will give you anything.”

My interest piques, my focus cleaving between the punishing thrusts and searing kisses. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

My smile doesn’t just bloom, it erupts. You can probably see the gleam in my eyes from space. My fangs descend and I wriggle one of my hands from his grasp so I can pull Ashen’s grip from my stomach, placing his index finger to my lips. “Do you promise?”

“Terms,” he demands, wary of my sudden interest. I laugh and he pounds into me. I stifle a whimpering moan, coming closer to the edge of my orgasm. I try to hide it, hoping I’ll come before he can stop me, but he senses the fluttering of my muscles and eases his strokes. “Give me your terms, my Queen.”

“A date.”

Ashen stills as though he’s short-circuited. If his mind were made of clockwork, it would be ticking loud enough to fill the room. “Where,” he demands.

“The Realm of Light.”

A menacing growl vibrates through my back as Ashen resumes his thrusts, the slam of his cock into my flesh even more punishing than before.

“You get some bands like Eryx—”

“Vampire—”

“And we go on all the rides. And I mean ALL of them.”

Another growl.

“And we go surfing in the Silver Sea.”

“Not that hellish water. It’s probably full of angel piss. Besides, I don’t know how to—”

“And we eat the popcorn and the churros and all the candy and we play tag with the children and the donkey and we have fun.”

Ashen groans as though this is the most burdensome request ever made.

“Or we could just fuck until we die. Those are my terms, Master of War.”

Ashen leans back and slaps me hard on the ass.

“You are a minx.”

“I am the Queen, and I will do as I please.”

Another slap. I smile.

“You have my terms, Reaper. Take them or not. The choice is yours.”

Ashen pumps into me, driving over and over, harder in his frustration, probably looking for any way out of this madness. He slaps me again one last time for good measure, the sting heating deliciously in my skin.

“Fine,” he grits out next to my ear. “I promise. I will do as you ask if you say it.”

I bite down hard on Ashen’s finger, and he hisses with the pain, his cock buried as deep as he can press into my aching flesh. I drink in his sweet essence, sealing his promise with blood. When I let go of his finger, his hand travels down my body, hovering over my clit as he waits for me to fulfill my end of the bargain.

“All right,” I say as his hips shift in a gentle sway of encouragement. “Dearest…” …long dramatic pause, which earns me a growl of warning… “…husband.”

There’s a quiet moment in which the only sound is Ashen’s sigh of triumph and satisfaction. “Finally,” he whispers, sliding out with agonizing slowness, just an inch or two, and then pushing in as far as I can take him. “Now say it again, and don’t forget to make it sweet.”

“Please, Ashen, my dearest, my eternal love, make me come before I die of want. Fill me up, husband.”

Ashen growls with approval, demanding I say it again as he thrusts with steady strokes, his finger finding my clit at last. Every time I do, his strokes get harder, longer, the pressure on my clit more intense, until he’s pounding into me, his other hand reaching around to hold one of my breasts as they bounce with the force of his motion. It takes no time at all to push me over the edge, my walls gripping tight around Ashen as release fires through my nerves. Praise and adorations tumble from Ashen as I come hard, crying out his name, and with a quaking shudder he releases inside me. He fills me with warmth, with hot pulses that take what feels like an eternity to subside.

When we’re both spent, we collapse with one another, still joined for a long while as our hearts gradually slow. One of Ashen’s arms curls around me in a hot, protective embrace while his other palm glides over the back of my thigh and my ass to soothe the skin that must be pink and swollen.

“I don’t know whether to go back out into the realm and find something else to be furious about or to never be angry again. I think I nearly died. Several times,” Ashen says next to my ear, his breath still quick as it pours through his exhausted voice.

“But you feel better.”

“As do you.”

I nod. “I do. Especially knowing we have a super fun date coming up in the Realm of Light.”

Ashen groans and grips me tighter. “Perhaps I don’t need to go back into the realm to find something to be annoyed about.”

“You’re the one who agreed to the terms, demon.”

Ashen lets out a long breath of dismay but still holds me firm in his arms. “I did.” He kisses my temple and pulls me closer. His muscles tense around me. “We don’t have to go soon, do we?”

I smile in the cage of his limbs. “For a date, no. I’m happy to save it for another time that you’re frustrated and annoyed, if that helps?”

“It doesn’t.”

“Nevertheless, I’m afraid we’ll have to go back soon enough anyway, so if we happen to go on the rollercoaster a few times while we’re there, I think I’m okay with that.”

“The Soulfate stone,” Ashen says, the levity draining from his voice. I nod against his chest. “Have you learned anything from the Book of the Fatespeaker?”

“Not much, honestly. I’ve been focused on trying to learn the Dingir in advance of finding the next stone and the gateway,” I say as I wriggle away. I shimmy to the edge of the bed and grab my robe before padding away to the living room, bringing back the book. When I settle on the bed, I flip to a page I marked in the center of the manuscript. “I did find this, however.”

“Is that the same as the doorway you saw?” Ashen asks as he points to an image of rings of Dingir surrounding a sphere at the center.

“Yes, though I think it’s more like a window than a door,” I say as I rest the heavy text on the mattress. “You can take the key and see inside, for a moment at least. But to step inside their realm, you need to go to Alahalsu. The gateway. The pathway, like the thread that spans between the beginning of a soul’s creation and its end.”

“And where is that?” Ashen says as he looks down at the text, most of it in Dingir.

“No fucking clue.” I smile as Ashen lets out a long sigh. “Yeah. There’s more.”

“Of course there’s more.”

“The book says there will be an insurrection of beings from where the gods trapped them, between the realms. The abyss. Salamu. They will be allowed into the Living Realm and will attempt to take the stones during a period of imbalance among the three realms.”

“The Nephilim.”

“Looks like it. In order to save the fates, the keys must be returned to Alahalsu and the gate destroyed.” I flip a few pages ahead to another bookmark I’ve left between the pages. “And look at this.”

“The Scepter of Ereshkigal,” Ashen whispers as I spin the book to face him. There’s an image of the same scepter on my chest in faded ink on the page. Below it, the Mace of Nergal, just the same as it appears on Ashen’s mated mark. A third symbol is drawn at the bottom of the page, a four-pointed star bordered by a circle, wavy lines fanning out between the points from the center of the star to the perimeter of the sphere. “The Sun Disc of Shamash.”

I nod, laying my index finger to the Scepter of Ereshkigal. “Light and Shadow.” My finger trails down to the Mace of Nergal next. “Peace and War.” My touch halts on the Sun Disc of Shamash. “Hope and Surrender.”

“If our mated marks are represented here, it’s reasonable to assume that someone else has a tattoo similar to ours, and they too have a role to play with the fates, somehow.” Ashen’s finger traces over the symbol before he flips the page, but the page is empty.

“Yeah. Frustrating, isn’t it. I haven’t found anything in the Sumerian or Latin entries yet that seems to relate to that page, but there’s still a lot to wade through,” I say before pulling the thick book from Ashen’s fingers to close it, leaving it on the nightstand. When I turn back to Ashen, my diabolical smile has his eyes narrowing with suspicion. I carefully back away, getting ready to run. “Do you think that third symbol means we’re jointly mated to another person? Is this a ‘why choose situation’? You know Tessa’s in one, right? I bet that’s it, yeah. And I have a good guess, Reaper. It’s gotta be Duman. Did you see any suspicious tattoos on him when you were ripping his limbs off?”

I manage to touch one foot to the floor in my bid to leap from the bed in a fit of devious giggles when the hot band of Ashen’s arm wraps across my middle, hauling me back onto the mattress beneath a spray of embers and smoke. My laugh burns away into a gasp as Ashen spreads my legs wide and descends to press decadent kisses to my clit, swirling his tongue across the bundle of nerves that are still so sensitized to his touch from our hours of pleasure. He drags his caress down until he thrusts his tongue into my pussy, his thumb replacing its absence on my bud with gentle circles as he devours me. His free hand strokes my inner thigh, painting my skin with our combined arousal.

“What are you doing, demon?” I ask in a breathless whisper as I fist the sheets.

Our eyes meet down the length of my body as Ashen releases me from his mouth just long enough to answer. “Reminding you that you need no other beast in your bed.”

“There’s not room for another anyway,” I say. My teasing smile fades as a sliver of worry slices through Ashen’s eyes. “You take up every crevice in my heart.”

I smile, and a different kind of darkness takes over Ashen’s features.

“I will show you all the same,” he says, and feasts on my flesh until all I see are stars.