Page 20
Story: Hell Sent (Demons of Ardani)
Twenty
I t was odd how cruel mortals could be, wasn’t it?
They had no need for it the way demons did. They simply enjoyed causing pain. Azreth had always thought that kin were uniquely perverted in their desire to cause pain and misery, but demons and mortals were more similar in that respect than he’d ever imagined.
He was kneeling on the floor, unable to stand. Candles flickered around him, barely illuminating the small crowd in the temple’s cellar. The iron on his skin burned, and burned, and burned. He wondered whether it would kill him before the cultists did. Could a person die from pain alone?
Perhaps he should have thanked them for saving him from the enthrallment, at least, since he hadn’t had the strength to save himself.
“ I thought a demon would be more difficult to subdue.”
“ It looks like a stray dog, shivering like that.”
“ Should we kill him? Would the dark goddess be pleased?”
“ Of course she would. She can’t love a creature this weak.”
He recognized the Priestess’s voice when it cut through the murmurs. “You cannot be a true demon,” she decided. “You lack the heart for it.”
Azreth struggled to raise his head. His vision was blurred. For a moment, he saw the eldress in front of him. Then he blinked, and she was gone.
* * *
“Azreth?”
A familiar voice cut through the pain, distant and very close at the same time. He shifted slightly, but his body felt impossibly heavy. The iron seared him when he moved.
“Azreth?”
And then her face appeared in front of him. It must have been a dream, but it was a painfully realistic one.
“Raiya?” he heard himself say, the word a hollow breath.
“It’s okay. I’m here. You’re safe.”Her voice was soft, but her eyes were furious, powerful. Her cool hands were on his cheeks, holding him, and he wanted to sink into the illusion.
Raiya’s face disappeared, and then magic swirled around him. The world tilted, and then he felt cold.
A weight began to lift off him. Slowly, the vise grip of the chains released, unraveling link by link.
Was he dead? Maybe this was the afterlife. In that case, there must have been a kind goddess watching over him.
The temple was gone. He was lying on his back on the ground. Above him was the vast expanse of the black mortal sky dotted with stars, and Raiya’s pale, lovely face.
He reached for her, wrapping his arm around her to pull her against his body. He breathed deeply, inhaling the warmth and mortalness of her. The scent roused something from the depths of his soul—something that was starving.
Energy and life pounded through him, ravenous. All of it came at once—the need to feed, the relief at seeing his mortal, and the desire to hold and taste her. He burned from the iron, but something burned inside him, too, scorching him from the inside out.
Flesh called out to him. Blood begged to be spilled. Wounds wanted to be opened.
Regaining strength, he rolled over and pinned the mortal to the ground by the throat. He pressed his mouth to her shoulder, and he savored the explosion of fear and pain as he sank his teeth in.
She screamed. The sound was a knife cutting through his mind, and he froze.
He held her there like the predator he was, trapping her with his teeth. She had gone still.Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized he should have released her, but that thought was quickly lost in a spiral of hunger, and he lapped the blood from her skin.
Stars burst across his tongue. She tasted like fire, like bliss. He sucked at the wound, needing more of her. Her blood was sweet and ripe, her skin smooth and soft against his tongue, and he realized he had never truly eaten before now. The most meticulously cultivated fruit in the world would not compare to this.
He imagined he was licking between her legs. In his mind’s eye, he saw her moaning in pleasure, her body wrapped around his as he drank from her.
And then he realized that he wasn’t entirely imagining things. Her body was still strained against him, but now she was pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.
“Azreth, say something,” she begged.
For a second, he wondered who Azreth was. The world came into slightly sharper focus.
He dragged himself away from her throat to look down at her, and his blood pounded through his veins so hard that his vision shook. Raiya was looking up at him with wide, shimmering eyes. She arched against him, her hands balling into fists where he’d pinned them to the ground. He realized that he’d summoned a dozen hands to hold and touch her, without even meaning to.Through the hands, he could feel all of her at once—her soft hips, her gently angled jaw, her lightly muscled thighs and fine-boned wrists—and it was both too much and not nearly enough.
“I want you,” he said breathlessly, but those three small words could never convey the longing and desperation he felt in that moment.
He felt her desire intensify. An invisible thread seemed to form between them, and it pulled him, drawing him to her. She nodded urgently.
His need for her built into an overwhelming force, clouding his mind, and his body moved almost without thought. His summoned hands flipped her over, pulling her against him. He found the small, tight warmth between her legs, and suddenly there was nothing more important in the entire universe than being inside that warmth. Lust had never been in his nature, but now he ached with it.
Closing his eyes, he sank into her. Her body stretched to take him, but he heard her make a pained sound.He snapped to attention again, looking down at her. She was wincing with the effort of accommodating him.
He bent over her, hugging her to him as he covered her sex with his hand and spelled her, opening her body. She sighed with relief, sagging into his hands.
“ Gods,” she murmured. “Gods, please .”
He pushed deeper into her, and she moaned in pleasure, a sound that might have been the most lovely thing he’d ever heard in his life. He felt the pressure of release building in her body as his hips rolled against hers in a mesmerizing beat. His hands closed around her thighs, pulling her against him until there were no gaps between them. When she cried out again, her climax soaked into him, thick and sweet. It drove him over the edge. Light exploded behind his eyes, blinding euphoria.
He hadn’t known it could be like this. He’d never known it was possible to feel this kind of joy. Was this what sex felt like for mortals? Was this what making love felt like?
The sounds of her rapture echoed through his mind. He was bewitched by those sounds, and he felt a strange sense of pride over being the one to cause them. He loved giving joy, he realized. He loved pushing her to the limits of pleasure and then pushing even further.
He could have lay beside her and inside of her for ages. He wanted that. He wanted this to be forever.
He dropped his face against the side of her neck, feeling her pulse beneath his lips. “You came back for me,” he said, disbelieving.
“Of course I did,” Raiya said simply, as if there had been no other possibility.
And then he smelled the fresh blood from where he’d bitten her. A chill went through him.
It was like a bucket of icy water thrown over him, sobering him instantly. Disgust sank through him, settling into the pit of his stomach.
He turned Raiya onto her back, setting her down in the grass. She looked up at him guardedly, her eyelids heavy. The bite beside her throat was shallow, but not shallow enough. It had not been deep enough to put her life in danger, but it would probably leave a scar. The thought made him ill.
He wove a spell over it, and it sealed over with new pink-brown skin. Only time would tell how much the marks would fade.
He knelt on the ground, pressing his forehead against the grass. “I lost myself. I did not mean to hurt you. I beg your forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness?” she asked, as if she didn’t know what he meant.
If someone had done to him what he’d just done to her, he would have tried to destroy them. But she accepted it as if she thought she deserved it.
Because she’s used to it, said a voice in the back of his mind. Nirlan was her mate, and he hurt her. She was accustomed to being dragged into bed and hurt. It was the one thing she’d asked him not to do. I don’t want to be bruised or bloodied.
He hated that he’d done this. He hated that this was what he was. He wished she had sharp teeth to bite him back. He wanted to be hurt.
“I have broken the terms of our agreement,” he said. “Strike me, and I will lie still while you pay the hurt back.”
She just scoffed. “I don’t want to hurt you. I will never hurt you.”
“I cannot say the same.”
“I don’t believe you.” She put her hands around his face and drew him up, then pressed her mouth against his. Azreth tensed, anticipating a bite.
But he never felt her teeth. Just her breath mixing with his. She was soft and warm and gentle, her lips lax but full enough to give a slight pressure. She stayed there for a long moment, and he remained perfectly still, his heart in his throat. It would be so easy for one of them to inch forward and ravage the other with teeth.
It was intoxicatingly intimate. He had a strange urge to open his mouth and taste her, but he didn’t move. He’d done enough to frighten her already.
Finally, she broke away, still holding his face. The look she gave him was one of utmost trust and affection, and he nearly broke.
Mortals and demons should not be together. Raiya deserved better than Azreth and his violent urges. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave. With every day that passed, he was further gone than before. Before he’d met Raiya, he would never have allowed anyone to touch him this way. He would certainly never have enjoyed it.
His enthrallment pressed him to throw himself at her feet again. Let me serve you forever, he wanted to say. I am yours. It took all of his willpower to stay silent, but he knew he couldn’t last much longer. He was a slave to the enthrallment. To her.
He wove another healing spell, lowering his hand toward her thighs. “Are you hurt here?”
“I’m fine, Azreth.”
He hesitated, his spell pulsing slightly on his fingertips as it waited to be applied. “I know you are strong,” he said slowly, not wanting to offend her. “I do not offer this because I think you are weak. I offer it humbly, as a service to you. Please accept—as long as it doesn’t displease you to have me touch you.”
She looked bemused. But after a moment, she nodded. “If you wish.”
She held still as his hand moved between her legs—almost, but not quite, touching her. He hovered there, using the spell to sense the damage, then pushed the magic past her skin. Her inner thighs were hot and slick when his fingers brushed against them.
Raiya swallowed audibly. When he glanced up to meet her eyes, she looked down. “It… feels better,” she said, nodding.
With her encouragement, he gently flattened his palm upward, cupping her body to pour the spell into her. He heard her inhale softly in surprise. Soothing magic sank into her.
For the first time, he glanced up to try to work out where they were. They were in a dark field he didn’t recognize, outside of Ontag-ul. He had no idea how they’d gotten here.
“How… did you do this?”
“A teleportation enchantment. A shortcut through the aether to move from one place to another.” Exhaling softly, she lifted her arms around his neck, leaning against his chest. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get you back,” she said, very quietly.
His heart burned.
“Inside,” she whispered. “Please.”
He slid a finger just past her entrance, stroking her softly but making no effort to urge her toward climax again. He was no longer sure whether he was healing her or pleasuring her, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her arms tightened around him, and she rocked slowly against his palm as she embraced him.