16. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Rayven

A rustle outside the cage made my eyes snap open. It was probably just Leviathan, back to ogle me while I slept. That or possibly hand-feed me more oysters, but I needed a few more hours of unconsciousness to mentally prepare for whatever he had planned for me.

I promptly closed my eyes and remained still, pretending to be asleep, but then, a familiar voice sent a bolt of adrenaline through my veins.

“Rayven…”

That voice, that rumbling baritone as deep as Hell and as sweet as arsenic.

My eyes shot open to see a hooded figure with antlers decorated in silver chains approaching. He pulled back his hood, and the shadows receded, revealing Belial’s familiar masked face. He crouched beside the cage, and his black mask vanished in a spark of blue magic.

Reaching through the copper bars, his knuckle tenderly stroked my cheek.

“My treasure…” His voice softened. “I’m so fucking sorry I let them take you.”

“Belial…” I could barely believe my eyes.

He’d come for me. He was here to take me back to Limbo.

“What are you— How did you—” My sharp whisper was cut off by the screech of metal as he took the cage bars in his hands and bent them with ease.

“Wait!” I whispered sharply, worried Leviathan would come running if he heard the commotion.

The creaking and groaning of metal being contorted tore through the cavern, and my head swiveled, searching for any sign of the serpent demon. There was none. His bed lay empty, the cavern eerily still.

Had Belial killed him while I slept? Or had he ventured off, confident I wouldn’t be able to break out of my prison?

“I’ll always be able to find you, my little treasure,” Belial answered me, the volume of his voice indicating he wasn’t worried about being heard. When he’d bent the bars wide enough for my body to slip through, he reached inside and offered me a hand. “There’s nowhere in the nine realms that could keep you out of my reach.”

I took his hand and stepped out of the cage, all the while gaping at his beautiful, marred face. My mouth hung open as I drank him in, relief flooding me as the shock of seeing him here eased.

“I don’t understand,” I muttered, blinking up at him. He was wearing his favorite white shirt with lantern sleeves and black pants that left nothing to the imagination when it came to the bulge in the front.

I wanted to laugh, to cry. After everything I’d been through, seeing him was pure ecstasy.

His arms banded around my waist, and I collapsed against his hard chest. The sweet smell of ripe strawberries invaded my senses, soothing my nerves and quieting my frantic thoughts.

“You’re here. You’re really here.” I closed my eyes and clung to him, his subtle warmth seeping through his clothing, heating my naked body. As much as I wanted to get the fuck out of this place and never look back, I wanted to enjoy this moment. The pain and heartache of everything that had happened bled away, leaving nothing but relief and gratitude in their wake.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again, stroking my hair. The touch was surprisingly tender. Careful, like I might break. “I shouldn’t have left you alone. I was stupid, so stupid to let you run off…”

“It’s okay,” I assured him. How could he have known his brothers would betray him, kidnap me from under his nose, and drag me to the bowels of Hell? I was the one who ran off. If I would have stayed with him, if I had just gone back to the ball instead of having a meltdown, none of this would have happened.

I’d still be in Limbo, in his castle.

I’d still be home.

“It’s okay,” I repeated, pulling back to look up at him. I’d never seen so much sadness in his eyes. His cocky, aggressive demeanor had diminished, revealing something that had my stomach tingling with butterflies. “What’s wrong, Belial?”

“It hurts to be this close to you but not be able to save you,” he said, so low I nearly missed it.

I cocked a brow, wrapping my arms tightly around him. “I…I don’t understand. You’re here with me. You did save me. Let’s go.”

I took him by the wrist and tried to guide him back to the Styx, but when he wouldn’t budge, I spun around with a confused expression. “What are we waiting for?”

“Rayven,” he said, the sound of utter despair making his voice crack. “None of this is real.”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re dreaming.”

Dread sank through me like a stone, settling in the pit of my stomach. It threatened to bring me to my knees. Tearing my gaze away from Belial’s, I studied the details of the cave, searching for anything out of place, anything to prove this wasn’t real.

The ocean waves crashed against the shore. The stone walls of the cavern glistened, illuminated by the pale green moonlight spilling in from outside and a single torch hanging in the corner. Nothing looked amiss, and Belial… He felt so real.

“How can I be dreaming?” I asked, running my hands down his arms, over his chest. I stroked my fingers over his scarred lips, reveling in the shudder that followed.

“Do you remember the dream you had after you ate the plum? The one where you bent over in my throne room and showed me every part of you?” His eyes turned darker, lust replacing the sadness that had been there moments ago. “When I told you to show me all that I own?”

Heat scorched my cheeks. How could I not remember? That image had been burned into my memory, branded on my soul ever since. I nodded.

“It was magic that allowed me to visit you in your dreams,” he explained. “To come to you now.” One of his hands dipped to cup my bare ass cheek. He squeezed, and even through his glove, I could feel the warmth of his palm. I wanted his rough, calloused hands all over me. “This is a dream.”

“But I haven’t eaten another plum.”

“You don’t have to. One was enough. The spell never fades.”

“I…” I didn’t want to believe it. He was here, right in front of me. All I wanted was for him to take me far away from this place. I didn’t want to sink deeper into Hell and out of his reach.

My stomach flipped like the ground had suddenly disappeared from beneath me. I felt like I was falling, even though his arms kept me upright.

“Don’t worry.” His fingers came up to lift my chin, his storm-colored eyes grounding me. “I’m coming for you. I’ll destroy the nine realms if I must. I’ll cut down anyone who stands in my way to get to you.”

With that, he closed the last bit of distance between us and pressed his lips to mine, immediately sweeping his tongue into my mouth. It was slow, powerful, unlike how he normally devoured me any chance he got. When he pulled away, there were tears in my eyes.

“Belial, I’m…scared,” I admitted. Being this vulnerable with him was new, but then again, so was being trapped in a cage in the pits of hell, waiting for the god of death to rescue me. I didn’t want to seem weak, but in this moment, alone with him in my dreams, I knew I could be vulnerable. “What if… What if you don’t get to me in time?”

His voice turned sharp like a knife. “That won’t happen.” Then, it softened just as fast. “I will find you. I’m already on my way, Rayven. You just have to be brave for a little longer. Can you do that?”

I nodded.

He slowly let me go and turned to walk away. The air caught in my lungs and I thought my heart might shatter. Was he really leaving me alone? Just like that?

“Wait!” I ran after him, stopping short when he paused next to the bed. “Don’t leave me. Not yet.”

Rather than disappearing, he moved to grab something off the floor. It had been tucked away, just out of sight beyond Leviathan’s bed, and when he lifted it, a gasp tore from my lips.

It was an enormous femur bone that had probably once belonged to some hellish monster. At least eight feet long, one end looked to have been fashioned into an oar. The other end was jagged and bloody, a makeshift pike where he’d stabbed three severed heads, stacked one on top of the other. Shriveled and blackened, they were burnt to a crisp, but I could still make them out: one bull, one goat, and one human head with clumps of flaxen hair.

“Are those…real?” I didn’t know what else to say as disbelief turned my insides.

He nodded, watching me carefully with a hooded expression. “They’re real, alright. It’s the least the bastard deserves.”

My throat swelled with emotion. “So he’s gone for good? His soul…?”

“Demons don’t have souls. So, yes. He’s gone for good.”

My sigh of relief had Belial’s brows furrowing, and the shadows behind his eyes were stark with a peculiar cocktail of violence and concern. “He touched you, didn’t he? Rayven, if he—”

“He shoved his cock in my mouth. That’s as far as it got, and I made sure he regretted it the second he did it.”

“Are you alright?”

How was I supposed to answer that? I wasn’t hurt, but it felt like my nerves had been thrown into a blender and pureed. “I will be so long as you get me. Soon.”

“Soon,” he agreed.

He moved to prop the oar up against the cage I’d escaped from, making sure the eyes were facing Leviathan’s empty bed, before grabbing my hand and dragging me into him again.

“Do you have to go now?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice level. I didn’t want him to leave, not yet, but the way he clung to me made it feel like he was getting ready to say goodbye.

“Not yet.” He led me backward to the bed, laying me down on the mountain of silk sheets Leviathan slept on. He made a show of crawling on top of me, his hungry eyes trained on me. “First, I have to show you exactly what you’ve done to me…”

I stared up at him, blinking. “What do you mean?”

“When I found out you bit off the Lord of Lust’s cock…it took everything in me to keep myself from coming at the thought of it.”

The demon settled between my thighs, his bulge pressing against my dripping center. My arousal soaked the front of his pants, which made his cock twitch.

He kissed his way around my throat, his tongue dancing over my skin. He didn’t care that I was filthy, covered in blood and sweat and who knew what else. I expected him to sink lower, for his mouth to dip to my breasts to tease my nipples with his teeth, but he pulled back, his eyes meeting mine.

“I need you, Rayven. Gods below, do I fucking need you,” he said, his voice low and soft. The unguarded reverence in his eyes surprised me, scared me.

He’d given me glimpses of what lurked beneath the various masks he wore, but I was much more used to the cocky, arrogant Belial who teased me into knots and left me begging, desperate for more. The softer side he tried so desperately to cover up had me just as wrapped around his fingers.

“Fuck me,” I said, my voice husky and rife with need. I wiggled my hips beneath him, lips parting as the rock-hard erection rubbed over my center through his pants—leaving me desperate for more friction.

He didn’t move. Instead, he bent down, his antler charms softly clinking as he pressed his lips carefully to the corner of my mouth.

I sighed against his gentle warmth, reveling in how real this felt.

“I’m going to fuck you…but that’s not exactly what I mean when I say I need you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need you. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anything before, more than I ever thought I was capable of. I told you before, caring is new for me, but this…” His voice trailed off as his eyes locked with mine again, his hand coming up to cup my cheek. “Understand when I tell you that you’re the goddamn air in my lungs. When you’re not with me, I can’t breathe. I can’t think. In three days, you have gone from the little thief I found rooting around in Catherine’s tomb to the entire reason for my existence. I want you to know, down to your marrow, that I am coming for you. Because if I don’t have you close, if we’re not together, I don’t know how I’ll go on.”

I swallowed thickly, my chest tight and my heart thrumming so hard, I could feel it in my mouth. “I understand.”

“Good.” He kissed me on one eyelid, then the other. They were two of the gentlest kisses I’d ever received, packed with the kind of love I didn’t think this man was capable of three days ago.

This moment was not unlike the first plum dream I’d shared with the Lord of Bones, in that it was intense and I’d never forget it. At the same time, it was completely different. This time, it was a sweet and tender moment we shared.

But it changed as he pulled back, his quiet smile morphing into something dark and hungry in an instant. “Now that you know that, I need you to know you make me fucking feral. You’re so sexy, so terrifyingly stubborn, and so bloody cutthroat when you’re cornered.”

He dropped his mouth to mine and licked my lips, chuckling. “I still taste Asmodeus’ blood on your mouth. I’d pay good money to have seen his face when you bit off his pride and joy.”

What happened with Asmodeus was traumatic, but the trauma of it all eased beneath the brilliance of Belial’s eyes as they beamed with pride. “You’re every bit the queen I mean to make you.”

He rose on his knees, tugging the shirt off over his head and tossing it to the floor. A beat later, he was naked, the viridescent moonlight framing his perfect body in a sinister glow. My heart fluttered in time with my pussy as he crawled back on top of me.

When he settled between my thighs again, his mouth was on my throat, raining down an assault of hungry kisses. Then, he kissed my shoulders, down my arm, until his lips reached the three cuts he’d gouged into my wrist.

He worshipped them with his mouth, each revenant brush of his skin a juxtaposition to the memory of when he’d cut into me, all three moments seared into my mind forever.

Belial had been right from the beginning. He’d delivered the pain he’d promised to bring as my punishment for robbing Catherine’s grave. What neither of us had counted on was how much both of us would come to crave the agony.

I turned my head on Leviathan’s pillow, my eye catching on the barbequed heads skewered onto the oar.

“Are they going to watch while we….” I trailed off as Belial drew back to look at me with that panty-obliterating smile. He got the picture.

“Don’t you want them to watch?”

Against all odds, I found myself grinning ear to ear. I almost wished Asmodeus was still alive to see his brother fuck me, but this would do.

“I do.”