Page 45 of Lustling

Cassiel glares. Deimos growls. I stretch. And the tension? It keeps climbing. Tangling.

Humming.

Deimos doesn’t speak for a long moment. He just watches the corpse. I know what’s really eating at him. The reason he hasn’t said her name.

He wasn’t expecting to feel it. That firstfeed. That crackling tether between them. The way it rewired him on a cellular level. Like she reached inside and rearranged his bones just by touching him.

I step forward, voice dropping. “You’re really twisted up about this, huh?”

He doesn’t answer. Not with words. But he doesn’t deny it, either.

Cassiel watches him now, too. The silence says more than Deimos ever could. It's heavy, charged. Like the moment right before lightning splits the sky.

“You caught feelings,” I murmur. “Didn’t think it’d be you first, but here we are.”

His jaw tightens. The faintest tremble in his hand betrays him.

I press in, slow and cruel. “She didn’t need your help. Didn’t need your protection. Didn’t evenneedyour permission. She justtook. Like she was born for it.”

He finally snaps his gaze to mine, eyes black and burning. I lean in.

“I bet you keep seeing it, don’t you? Her mouth. Her thighs. Hermoan.”

Cassiel stiffens beside me. Deimos surges forward—but Cassiel steps between us.

“Enough,” he says, tone quiet but absolute.

I pull back, the smirk fading but the pleasure lingering. Watching Deimos unravel is its own kind of satisfaction.

He wanted to be her handler. Her goddamn savior. But she doesn’t need saving.

“Where is she?” Cassiel asks after a beat.

Deimos’s voice is rough when he answers. “I told her to go home.”

Cassiel raises a brow. “And she listened?”

A bitter scoff. “Of course not.”

I laugh again, low and honest. “She’s the sort of fire that you can’t put out, brother.”

Deimos’s glare turns lethal. “Don’t.”

But I see it. I see the hunger in him. The fury and need all knotted together.

Helikedit. He liked her power. Her bite. The blood on her lips. He’s scared of it, sure—but he’s drawn to it too. And that? That’s the beginning of his end.

I back off, just a step. Just enough to feel the air shift again. “You want me to find her?” I ask.

“No,” he growls. “She can’t possibly get into more trouble.”

I arch a brow. “Famous last words.”

He storms off, Cassiel trailing behind, both of them too wrapped up in their own mess to care what happens next.

Which leaves me and Shawn. Or what’s left of him. He doesn’t weigh much. Not anymore. Just skin and bone and the echo of a man who never stood a chance.

I hoist him over my shoulder. “Come on, lover boy,” I mutter. “Let’s take you to the fire.”