Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

Petra didn’t quite scurry under the covers, but she wasn’t exactly relaxed, either, as she slipped between the sheets and laid down as far from him as she was able.

Not that it mattered. His shadows were a second mind, a second body. They draped over her, molded to her lush shape, as she lay rigidly beneath the blankets. Through them he could feel her racing pulse, the tremble of her thighs as they squeezed together, the pucker of her nipples against her nightgown, and the intoxicating buzz of her magic just beneath her flesh.

A new hunger roared in him as he sensed that deep well of power just beyond his reach — not for the power itself, but for what it represented. That magic was her soul, just as the shadows were his, and it chafed to realize it was hidden away from him.

They both lay there in the dark for several long minutes, their breathing harsh in the quiet. Outside, beyond the thick walls of the cathedral’s living quarters, cars rushed by.

He thought he would feel more content with her in the bed, but the opposite was true. Silas was more tightly strung than before. His erection throbbed angrily in his rigid grip and his instincts spun in a dizzying circle, unable to settle on what they wanted him to do.

Eventually, one need won out over all the others.

“Relax,” he snapped.

Petra’s voice took on its own sharpness when she replied, “A bit hard when I’m being smothered to death by shadows.”

He traced the tense profile of her face with his gaze. She lay stock still beneath the sheets, arms at her sides and legs straight, near enough to the edge that any small nudge might send her off the side.

Not that his shadows would allow that. No, she was anchored to him now, though he doubted she knew it, and until he worked up the desire to release her, she wouldn’t be going anywhere.

But her clear discomfort made the oily, squirming feelings reappear, tempering the sharpest edge of his lust.

“What do you know about a demon’s shadows?”

Petra’s eyes swung in his direction. He wondered what she could see in the blue-black darkness. Did he look like a monster or a man? Silas couldn’t decide which he wanted more.

“I know they’re an extension of a demon’s will,” she answered, a bit tart.

Finally feeling like he wasn’t going to spill at any moment, Silas slowly eased his grip on himself. “They are. Mostly. They have their own magic, though, and are connected to our instincts more than our higher minds. That means sometimes they act independently of what we want.”

“Are you trying to say you aren’t controlling this?”

He shrugged, though he wasn’t certain she’d see it. “Right now, it’s a little of column A and B.”

It was a good thing he had no trouble seeing in the dark, otherwise he would have missed the absolutely withering glare she sent his way. She wriggled a bit under the sheets. “Was that supposed to make me feel better about this?”

“No,” he answered, shuddering anew at the sensations the shadows fed back to him, “but you might be interested in the fact that a demon’s shadows are almost indestructible. Right now, you’re basically wearing full-body armor. Not even a bolt gun shot could hurt you.”

Silas cast the bronze symbol of Glory hanging on the wall across the room a venomous look. Not that anyone would get the chance to get a shot off before he slit their throats, but it settled something fundamental in him to know she was safe even in enemy territory.

I’ll feel even better when she’s in my den.

He hadn’t considered sharing a space with her before, but now that the thought was there, it seemed like the most sensible and enjoyable choice. Locking Petra away in his warded, booby trapped, and guarded home where she could sleep in his bed, draped in his shadows?

Fuck. His hand snuck down again, squeezing his abused cock hard enough to bruise.

“But that also means I’m at your mercy.”

Petra wriggled again. The shadows weren’t pinning her down, but he knew she felt something when they touched her. Perhaps she felt confined and that was why she wouldn’t stop fidgeting. As if a little wiggle would ever stand the chance of freeing her.

Silas scowled. “You’re at my mercy regardless. Might as well get used to it.”

Her eyes, mostly sightless in the dark, still managed to flash with temper — and no small amount of magic. “I thought you said I had power. That doesn’t sound like it.”

The urge to cover her with his much heavier body, replacing the shadows with his flesh to pin her to the bed, was almost as strong as the one he felt to nip her proud nose in reprimand.

His voice took on a dry, strained quality when he replied, “You do. If you didn’t, I would be inside of you already.”

By some miracle, he wasn’t even touching her, despite being only about a foot away from all that lovely golden flesh. Despite every rousing, furious instinct, he remained on his side. And if his hand happened to be on his cock, it was only so he didn’t make a mess of the sheets involuntarily rather than to covertly take his pleasure beside her.

The idea might have had appeal if the animal part of him could stand the thought of being so near to her and not… well, doing anything. At the very least, his basal instincts demanded he throw off the sheets and let her watch. Preen for her.

A novel impulse, that. He’d never felt the need to impress anyone in his life. How galling.

While he wrestled with that revelation, Petra went very still again. “Is this you respecting my boundaries?”

He really didn’t appreciate the note of incredulity in her voice. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

“So you’re not going to try anything?”

His eyebrows lifted so high, his clan’s matriarch would have said they were touching his horns. “Is that disappointment I hear?”

“No,” she answered, too quick. “I was just making sure you planned to keep your word.”

“No sex unless you say so explicitly.” He propped his head up with his palm, narrowed eyes locked on her glowing face. His eyes and nose worked in tandem with the shadows, telling him everything she refused to say.

Her heartbeat was elevated, her breaths short. Her cheeks were flushed. Her nipples were hard. The rich, spicy scent of her desire was a curl in the air — as real and tantalizing as the incense smoke she used in her services.

If he wanted to test himself, to drive them both insane, he needed only to use a slight amount of will to nudge his shadows between her thighs, where he was absolutely certain he’d find her wet and needy.

Lust was its own beast in his mind, but it had a new shape. Silas wasn’t just desperate to relieve the painful pressure in his balls, but to satisfy her.

She needs me, the suddenly pitifully desperate demon side of him wailed. She needs me!

Silas was at once split in two. One half roared with vicious pleasure at the thought of righteous High Priestess Zaskodna squirming with need for him, while the other was certain it’d die if it didn’t fix the issue immediately.

His clan had gone on and on about a demon’s famed devotion to a mate, how they prided themselves on their care and comfort, their impeccable instincts, but since he had no mate, the impulse to please was very confusing. He’d never sought to please anyone in his life.

Suddenly needing to claw back a bit of the power over himself, Silas used his coldest, silkiest purr when he said, “Baby, if you want me to fuck you, you’re gonna have to beg.”

There was a slight pause as she absorbed the sudden shift in his demeanor. “That isn’t going to happen. I don’t need to beg for anything.”

“Oh? Even when your cunt is wet enough to drip down those pretty thighs just by being next to me?” He had no intention of informing her that he was in a similar state, if not considerably worse off.

“No,” she answered, back to using her cool priestess voice. “If I wanted sex that bad, I wouldn’t need to beg you for it. I could find someone else to?—”

He didn’t make the choice to move, nor command his shadows to act, but it happened anyway. Silas wasn’t even sure if she finished her sentence. He couldn’t hear a damn thing over the sudden roar of blood in his ears as he dragged her back to his front. One hand still held his head up and the other pressed hard into the mattress in front of her navel, caging her in while his shadows did the rest of the work of keeping her there.

“Watch it,” he hissed against the shell of her ear. “Demons don’t share, little goddess.”

And a demon on the brink of rut would kill anyone who tried to touch what was his. Aggression ran furious and wild the closer they got to the hottest months of the year, though the exact timing of one’s rut varied based on a variety of factors like genetics, environment, and exposure to certain delicious, musky pheromones.

Those same pheromones clouded the air around Petra. They were heavy on the back of his tongue — complex and rich like the finest wild honey he loved to eat by the spoonful as a child.

Silas canted his hips against the soft curve of her backside, fitting them together like two pieces of a puzzle, but he still kept his hands to himself when he warned, “If you want me to kill someone, keep taunting me. If you want me to make you come harder than you ever have in your life, then beg.”

He had to hand it to her. Petra had a spine of steel. That was the only explanation for how she could turn her head to look at him over her shoulder and snarl, “No.”

Silas was not a man to lose control. That implied he was a slave to emotions he just didn’t have, no matter how hard he tried. He’d never flown into a jealous rage, never felt the impulse to possess another, and never wanted to howl with rage at the thought of his partner challenging him.

Not until then.

Because Petra’s no wasn’t a denial. It was a challenge. She was exerting her power over him because she knew what he wanted. This was both a dare and a punishment. If he didn’t keep his word, the fragile trust between them would be shattered, even if sex was truly what she was angling for. If he did keep his word, she would do this again and again — a worrying prospect when his rut seemed to be hurtling toward them faster with every second.

What she wanted, he realized, staring into those eyes blazing with a hair-thin ring of pure light, was for him to beg.

Before he could come up with some way to punish her for that, Silas was knocked off-guard by the one-two punch of Petra squirming against him and the sudden, shocking pleasure of feeling the bare flesh of her ass against his cock.

She’d hiked up her nightgown, dislodged his loose waistband, and, with the help of his over-eager shadows, parted her legs just enough to let his cock slip between her thighs, which she promptly snapped shut.

Silas hissed, claws digging deep holes into the mattress in front of her, and bucked his hips involuntarily.

“See?” Petra’s voice was breathy but absolutely dripping with superiority when she used quick, efficient touches to press him between the slick, swollen folds of her cunt. “I don’t need to beg you for anything, demon. I can get off without your help, or anyone else’s.”

The witch had the audacity to rock her hips, allowing him to glide between her wet thighs and over the hot little pearl of her clitoris.

Fuck. Silas’s instincts, already wild, were whipped into a frenzy as he comprehended her challenge, the fact that his cock was sliding through her slick with every taunting roll of her hips, and that losing this game was absolutely, entirely unacceptable.

He guessed that she’d be hot as fire, but feeling it…

Gritting his teeth against the searing friction — too much, not nearly enough — he fought for control enough to speak into her ear. “You want to get off, baby? Go ahead. But I’m not touching you, no matter what you do or the sounds you make. My hands are staying right here.” He couldn’t help but fist one hand in the soft strands of her hair, forcing her to arch her neck as she ground into him, but the other stayed put, claws buried in the mattress.

Just to make things fair, he made sure his shadows bound her hands to her sides, making it impossible for her to reach an orgasm in any other way than by the use of his cock.

After a moment of half-hearted struggle, Petra’s breath hitched and her eyes slid closed. “Fine.”

It was adorable that she thought he’d settle for fine.

When she eased into a rhythm, Silas pressed his lips against the smooth skin behind her ear and breathed her in, tasting her desire on his tongue as she used him. “Pretty little goddess,” he whispered, determined to see her unravel before he did, “do you like the feeling of demon cock sliding between your thighs?”

She ignored him. Petra’s brows drew together in an expression of pleasure-pain. A soft, nearly inaudible noise escaped her throat as she angled her hips, her thighs tightening around his shaft, and picked up her pace.

Silas fought the compulsion to assist her — and himself — by rocking his hips into hers. Letting her take the lead was torture. But she asked for this, he reminded himself. She wanted to play this game, so she’s going to find out what happens when she challenges me.

“Ah, there you are. I think you do like it. I think you’re imagining what it would be like if I were inside you right now.” Gods know I am. “But my little goddess isn’t ready to beg yet, is she? So you’re going to get a sad little orgasm, like all the ones you’ve had before. You know what I’ll get?”

“What?” She gritted the word out, but the way her hips moved faster, the stuttering beat of her breath… She likes my voice, he realized, grinning.

He licked a short trail from the curve of her jaw to the lobe of her ear, tasting the thin sheen of sweat that had accumulated there. Speaking directly against her skin, he answered, “My demon come all over Glory’s precious High Priestess.”

Her rhythm stuttered. A low sound escaped her throat as she desperately tried to find it again, but her movements were too frantic. Petra chased her orgasm like it was hovering just out of reach, taunting her. She moved like she needed help. Like she needed him.

She needed him to take control of it, of them, her.

Silas’s chest sawed with every deep breath. It took every ounce of self-control to hold perfectly still. He didn’t lift up her thigh and slide into that ready, hungry cunt. He didn’t grab her hip and jerk her forward and back as roughly as they both needed. He didn’t turn her head and shove his tongue so far down her throat, she’d never be rid of the taste of him.

He lay there, his own orgasm building in painful lurches, as their bodies made slick, sloppy noises against one another. Silas rumbled words in her ear — mostly taunts, but those gradually gave way to demands. He couldn’t use his hands or his cock to wring the brutal orgasms out of her like he wanted, but the demon in him wouldn’t be denied.

It knew what she needed and it’d be damned if he didn’t see her satisfied, even partially, by the end of this.

“Faster,” he bit out. He refused to thrust, but he gave into the impulse to cant his hips at a slightly different angle, making it easier for her to grind the head of his cock against the most sensitive part of her soft pink cunt. “Petra, move your fuckin’ hips. Yes. Yes. There you go. No, I didn’t tell you to stop. Move!”

He doubted either of them could pinpoint exactly when her power play became his, nor when she started eagerly obeying his commands, but it didn’t matter.

In that moment, there was nothing more important that the desperate little sounds she made, so hushed and secretive, like she was afraid she’d be caught, and the way they fit together so perfectly even as they tried their damnedest to torture one another.

Petra began to tense. Her heartbeat thundered in her chest. He could feel it through her back, through his shadows. They were connected skin to skin, but they were also linked by a potent, drugging force neither of them could really control.

“Give it to me,” he ordered, fingers tightening in her hair until the back of her head touched his shoulder. Silas crushed his lips against her jaw, a snarl contorting the touch into something too brutal to be called a kiss. “Petra, I want that orgasm now. Give it to me!”

A noise not unlike a muffled sob bubbled from her as she bore down on him, her thighs pressed tight and drawn up a bit, as if she were trying to get him as close as possible without her hands.

And then she snapped. Her spine bowed, releasing her from her curled position, and her hips rolled erratically as she gushed over his tortured cock.

He almost missed it over the sound of blood rushing in his ears, but no, breathed out on a long, low moan, was his name.

Telling her my name was the best fuckin’ decision I’ve ever made.

Baring his fangs against her skin, triumphant and miserable all at once, Silas at last closed his claws over the soft swell of her hip and jerked her backward. Petra was pliant and perfect as he used her, rutting between her thighs and rumbling like an animal until he came, lashing her perfect flesh with pearly release and his unique musk.

For a time they lay there like that, tangled and sticky and panting. He’d won, he thought, savagely pleased as he dragged his hand through the mess he’d made. Silas spread it as far as it would go across her thighs and stomach. When she complained, voice scratchy, he shushed her with a quick nip of her ear.

“I get to have this,” he told her. “Next time, if you don’t want a mess, you can beg me to come inside you instead. If you’re good, I might even say yes.”

He suspected she was too tired to fight and that was why she simply let out a heavy sigh and relaxed in his arms. Still, she asked in a voice thick with sleep, “Why are you so obsessed with me begging?”

Silas fixed her nightgown over her thighs before he banded his arm around her waist, drawing her even more tightly against his front. He took his time answering her. When he finally decided on what to say, she was already dozing off.

Whispering into the crown of her head, he answered, “Because if you don’t, I’m pretty sure I will.”