Page 14

Fourteen

A zreth thought of the eldress as he fiddled with the bracelet on his wrist.

The behelgi on the edge of the camp snorted softly behind him as he willed his glamour to change. The illusion of human skin on his hands pulled away, leaving blue behind on both, even his summoned arm. He turned the hands over, then back again, studying them.

With another thought, he removed the runes on his palm, too. Then he smoothed away the various scars on his fingers.

He stared at his palms, frowning.

He had thought to give himself a moment of self-indulgence, to imagine that he was wholly himself, untainted by the marks other people had left on him. But the more he changed, the less this body felt like his. He was accustomed to his scars, and taking them away didn’t make him feel whole—it only made him feel like someone else.

But it didn’t make him like the scars any more, either. If he disliked both his real self and his illusory self, where did that leave him?

Footsteps swished through the grass, and he quickly brought back his human color.

It was Raiya approaching. She slowed as he looked up. “Azreth? What are you doing out here?” He had thought she would be impatient, but she mostly seemed concerned.

“Nothing,” he replied. He didn’t get up.

She came to sit beside him. She began to reach toward him, then paused. “May I touch you?”

Remembering the way he’d snarled at her the first time she’d touched him, he felt foolish. He hadn’t realized how freely mortals touched each other. She’d only been doing what came naturally to her, and reacting so explosively had only revealed a vulnerability of his. “You don’t need to ask.”

She took his hand. Azreth waited, but she just sat with him, curling her fingers around his. He had seen a few of the other people in the camp holding hands this way as they sat or walked together, like they were reluctant to part with each other. He had thought it was a gesture of affection, but now that she was doing it to him, he wasn’t sure.

“We’re safe here, you know,” she said. “You shouldn’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” he said evenly, staring toward the dimming bonfire.

Raiya said nothing, but tilted her head in front of him to force him to look at her. She searched his face, looking into one eye and then the other. The wind blew strands of her dark hair across her face, and he caught a hint of her scent—not her emotions, but her body.

“Be at ease,” she said, and he realized she was repeating his own words back to him. And this time, her voice had no mocking tone. She thought he was in need of comfort.

She could have spent the evening with the other mortals, laughing and dancing like the rest of them. She could even have shared her body with one of the other human men here if she craved companionship. But instead, she was here, with him.

“The glamour makes you forget what I am,” he commented.

“I have not forgotten,” she assured him. “Would you rather I cringed away in fear?”

“No. Your passion pleases me more.”

Her expression was guarded, but he saw her draw a slow breath. An invisible heat pulsed from her, a shiver in the air. She stood and tugged on his hand. “Come.”

The more time he spent with her, the more he was beginning to feel like he was her prisoner, not the other way around.

* * *

They returned to their tent for the night so that Raiya could feed him. As soon as the door to the tent was sealed, he let his glamour fade. Raiya watched him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. Her emotions were muddled.

He wanted her, selfishly. He wanted to give her pleasure so that he could feel what she felt. He wanted to take her joy for himself, like the parasite he was.

He moved close to her. “May I begin?” he asked.

She put a hand to her face, and he heard her swallow nervously. “Yes. You’ll have to give me a minute…”

He pulled back a little. That wasn’t how he’d hoped she would react. “To do what?”

“To try to get in the mood. It’s not that easy to do, sometimes.”

He frowned. He had thought she might not be enthusiastic, but he hadn’t thought she would have performance anxiety. “You do not need to do anything. I will take what I need from you, as you’ve requested.” He brought his hand between her legs. The sooner he began, the sooner she would stop feeling this stress.

“I know, but—” She sucked in a surprised breath as he touched her, and her body went rigid, but she didn’t move away.

He got the feeling, as his fingers homed in on her, that mortals didn’t approach intercourse in such a straightforward way. But she didn’t seem to dislike it. “You may relax. We’ve established that I can bring you to completion.”

She started breathing again. He had worried she might have changed her mind about letting him touch her, but then she leaned into him slightly, resting her hands on his forearms. Warmth thrummed through his chest. He wasn’t certain if it was her emotions he was feeling, or his own.

Feeling her arousal in the air, seeing the way she excited from his touch—it awoke a now-familiar desire in him. His body wanted hers for more than just feeding. He couldn’t pretend it didn’t.

“I enjoy touching you,” he murmured, though he knew it was strange for him to appreciate a mortal this way.He expected her to react to that confession with disgust or fear, but the emotion he felt coming from her was more akin to interest.

“Do you?” she asked, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. Need pounded through him.

He put his arm around her, pulling her up against his chest, and he carried her to the floor and laid her on her back. The outline of her body was only faintly visible through her thick clothes, which she needed to protect herself from the cold. He’d never encountered people who wore as many clothes as the people in Uulantaava did.

It had the curious effect of making her even more enticing. He imagined peeling off her clothing piece by piece to reveal more of her skin, to see how she reacted when he touched it.

He leaned close to her, letting his lips brush the cloth over the crux of her thighs. He still wasn’t sure what she would allow. He knew he could bring her to new heights of pleasure with his tongue, but he was certain it would frighten her. He’d seen the wary way she’d looked at his teeth.

“I will feel your skin now,” he said. “I will slick my hand with what is gathering between your thighs before I make you come.”He glanced up at her, uncertain. She looked surprised, but she nodded. Fire went through him.

“Remember the rules,” she said quickly.

He was already pulling off her trousers and underclothes. “I have not forgotten.” But he did forget himself a little as he roughly flipped her onto her hands and knees. He heard her gasp as he jerked her hips back against him.

His breath caught as the curve of her backside pressed into his thighs, his hardening cock nestling against her from behind his sarong. Instinctively, his hips locked and he thrust against her as his hands held her tightly in place.

This was too much. His attraction to her was unnatural. He’d never heard of someone behaving this way with a mortal. There was a difference between being fed and being seduced.He was meant to take joy in the weakness of mortals because of his power over them, not because he found beauty in their softness and gentleness.

It wasn’t that he enjoyed this because she was his for the taking—he enjoyed it because she allowed him to take her. Her consent and trust were an unexpected, taboo thrill. He had never seen a mortal earnestly enjoy what a demon did to them. It hadn’t occurred to him that it could be done this way.

They had both been forced into this arrangement out of desperation, but at that moment, there was only willing pleasure.

It was with no small amount of shame that he continued, unable to convince himself not to. He ran his hand over the soft, warm flesh of her hip, creased where her thighs bent. He could feel muscle beneath the surface, but it was cushioned by a layer of velvety skin. It was like she’d been made to be touched.

Absently, he summoned a third hand to run through her hair. It was slightly tangled from their time on the road, but it still felt as silken as it looked.

Raiya jerked, her fear spiking. She turned to look back at him accusingly, and then she saw his summoned hand.

It occurred to him that she’d never met his hands before, other than the one he used to replace his right arm. He directed the disembodied hand—the same transparent magenta as his arm, cut off at the wrist—to float in front of her where she could examine it. She looked surprised, but not displeased.So he made more of them.

The summoned hands touched her in all the places he couldn’t reach, all the parts of her that he wanted his hands on while his flesh-and-blood fingers crept between her thighs.A shudder went through her. Her head bent toward the floor, her body pushing backwards against him. All the fear and reticence was gone, and only wanton need was left.

He imagined freeing his cock and sinking into her. The thought sent fire over his skin, and also repulsed him. For an instant, he was transported back to the hells. Strong, rough hands forced things into his mouth, wove disgusting spells into him, touched and stroked him until he was forced to take pleasure in violation.

Bile rose in his throat. He could not tolerate being touched. He had only been able to complete intercourse with Nariel because she used magic to keep him ready.

He focused on her body instead of his: The softness of her bare skin. The quiet gasps she made. The way her muscles tensed and released beneath his touch.

She was nothing like any of the demons he’d met. She was content to let him give her pleasure without ever trying to take his. She didn’t demand anything in return. She didn’t push back. She didn’t bite.

It was his own selfish desire, rather than desire to please her, that drove him to press a hand against her entrance until she allowed his finger to slip into her. She gasped, her hands clenching, and the inside of her body felt as hot and strong as molten metal. She began to choke out a word, but it became a whimper, and she leaned back, pushing him deeper.

Her climax washed over him, airy and thick and perfect. It sank into him through her sex, through every part of her that was touching him.

He closed his eyes and saw stars. It was beyond anything he’d ever felt with another person. It was so good that it frightened him, because surely something this good couldn’t come without a cost.

A minute passed as she panted, her limbs trembling. Azreth took at least as long to recover, but he eventually released her, letting his summoned hands disappear.

And then… the sweet taste of her pleasure turned to ash in his mouth as another feeling quickly replaced it.She had suddenly become deeply unhappy. He watched her curl up on the floor of the tent, her face to the ground.

A jolt of fear went through him. Had he hurt her?

It shouldn’t have mattered. He should have drunk down her sadness just as easily as her lust, the same way he’d devoured Eunaios’s despair as he died. But he couldn’t. Some meals always made him sick. Maybe he had some illness that prevented him from digesting them—a birth defect, like his arm.

There was something familiar about her melancholy. He realized he’d felt it before. It was the same muddled anger, sadness, and shame he always felt when intercourse was complete. He hadn’t realized there were other people who felt that, too.

Was she recalling bad memories, like Azreth was?

After a time, she rose, sitting back on her knees, as if determined to pretend away her own regret, but she said nothing. Azreth knew how to make a mortal come, but he had no idea how to fix unhappiness. He thought of grabbing her and commanding her to stop feeling this bad feeling.That probably wouldn’t help.

He wrapped his arm around her, seeking her warmth and softness, but he knew that his own body was harsh and heavy and could not offer her the same comfort in return.

“Be at ease, Raiya,” he said helplessly.

To his surprise, she rested a hand on his arm, hugging him against herself. “I am,” she said, but it was a lie.

Truthfully, nothing about any of this should have been surprising.

He was a demon, after all. He was made for breaking things.