Page 66 of Lustling

The last of the soldiers is down and coughs blood into the dust. I drag him to his feet by the collar and slam him against a shelf so his face is half-lit by candle. “Go tell your king,” I say. “Tell Zepharion he has no claim on her. Tell him that if he so much as breathes on her, I will erase him from the world.” The soldier staggers away, coughing and hollow-eyed, disappearing into the stacks.

We move out of the Archives into the ruined streets and the world tastes of ash. Blood dries along my arms but I barely feel it. Lillien’s bond thrums at the edge of me.

“Still there, Lustling?”

She checks in, small and clipped, sardonic but real. “Just making sure you are not dead,” she huffs.

“Not today, sweetheart,” I tell her, and the words are a promise I do not regret.

Cassiel walks beside me with his wings half-folded as if trying to shrink himself. He does not say what I already know he is thinking—that her eyes will not forgive him. He presses histongue to the inside of his cheek like he can hold the shame there.

“She will hate me,” he says in a voice that folds. His hands are fists that keep catching on the edges of regret.

“She should,” I mutter, not sparing him anything more. “But she won’t,” I say, because truth is a thing that cuts both ways. “She is better than us.” The fact of it sits between us like a blade.

He walks in silence after that. The guilt is eating him and I let it. Let shame be the teacher that bites harder than my hand could ever do. If he makes that mistake again I will not be there to save him. I will let him learn the hard reality of consequences of that sort of betrayal. Not even from himself will I save him next time.

THIRTY-SIX

The couch is cool against my skin, the fabric a pleasant shock after Bastion's hands and the press of his body. The apartment leans into late afternoon, sun sliding low and painting the windows a molten amber that licks across the floor. Light pools warm and golden while my blood still tastes like the fight, a low hum under everything.

I stretch and feel the lace at my hips, the new red set cupping my skin like a secret. It fits the plan I had in mind tonight: sheer, delicate, scandalous in the way it leaves so little to the imagination. I bought it for the look on his face, for the way he reads me when I dress with intent. Bastion knows me well enough to play his part. He knows what I want him to see.

The door opens and the apartment fills with movement. Bastion comes in with three women in tow, the sort you hire when you want heat without history. They are demons of the trade, bodies made to be worshipped, energy thick with practiced desire. I do not rush to them. I rise slow and watch, barefoot on the rug, the world narrowing to the way their chests lift under the light.

They stand waiting because they know how this goes. Bastion leans back on the couch as if the couch itself were his throne,shirt already discarded, the edge of his sweats sagging low. He is patient in the way predators are patient before the strike. He is not touching himself yet. He is watching, and that waiting is its own hunger.

I move among the women, an inspection that is as much about appetite as decision. My hand ghosts along the first woman's hip and she shivers, dark hair skimming a small, soft chest that is not what I want tonight. The second pulls at me with full lips and generous curves, the kind of body that tempts the eyes but not the mouth. I take them in with the same clinical attention I use when choosing a blade.

Then I stop at the third. Blonde, brown-eyed, pink-lipped. She looks like a sin folded into sunlight. Something in her is ordinary and therefore perfect, not flashy but exactly what will take my teeth.

“Yes,” I murmur, palm sliding to cup her jaw, tilt her chin up until her eyes catch mine.”What is your name, darling?”

“Celeste,” she says, and the sound is small and deceptively sweet.

Bastion chuckles from behind me, the sound big and satisfied as he dismisses the other two women. “Good choice, Hellcat.”

I step back and trail my fingers down Celeste's arm before letting go. Control, after all, is the taste I like best. “Kneel,” I command.

She obeys without hesitation, folding to the floor, thighs parting, hands resting on her thighs as if that pose were a prayer. I circle her slowly, tasting her in the space between heartbeats, letting my gaze catalog her.

My fingers find the edge of her hair, tugging through strands that smell faintly of lavender and sweat. She shivers under that small cruelty and I tell her, because praise is its own restraint, “Good girl.” I do not touch her again—not yet. Touch would be work. Power is easier.

I push. I let the demon inside me unfurl: a quiet, hungry coil that hums beneath my ribs and reaches out like a current. I do not need contact to give it life. The room shifts when I breathe it loose. Shadows lean. Heat rolls toward me in waves. I press that hunger across Celeste with nothing more than an intent and the barest pressure of will. It finds the soft places and slips inside.

Her breath shudders, a small, involuntary sound. Pleasure rakes through her in one searing line. She moans, a fractured, animal sound, and her body trembles as the orgasm takes her. I feel it as if I had swallowed lightning: bright, sharp, addictive. Her pleasure becomes a flavor on my tongue.

One swell is not enough. The dark wants deeper draws. I watch the tremor move through her, the way her hands claw at her own knees while the aftershocks roll. Bastion groans beside me, his hand moving slow across his cock as he watches us both. “Fuck, that’s hot,” he breathes.

Celeste's body catches itself again, still trembling as she comes down. I lounge back into the couch, legs parted, and let my gaze rest on her as a hunter watches prey choose surrender. “Crawl to me,” I tell her.

She moves without sound, hands light on the rug, eyes glazed and obedient. She stops at my thighs, breath warm against my skin. Bastion's gaze is a heat I can feel beside me, his hunger solid and bright.

I drag my nails through Celeste's hair and pleasure pulses through me. “Good girl,” I purr again, then spread my legs wider because I want to see the way she works for me. “Now, make yourself useful.”

Her fingers fumble at the band of my panties and pull them free with a small, eager urgency. She kisses the long, bare plane of my thigh, then descends with a steady, deliberate hunger that makes my immortal heart stutter. Her lips are warm and patient, tracing a slow, intimate path that makes my breath hitch. Whenher mouth finally finds my aching clit, she moves like both worshipper and thief. She moves in small, precise circles with the velvet point of her tongue at first, then a growing, impatient rhythm that drags the oxygen from my ancient lungs.

My fingers knot into the cushion, nails tearing into expensive fabric. My spine arches like a drawn bow, head falling against the couch as sensation detonates along a clean, electric line from my core to my fingertips. Sound fragments—the desperate scrape of fabric against sweat-slicked skin, the wet, obscene whisper of her mouth—and everything blurs into a single, searing point of white-hot light behind my eyelids. She holds me there, suspended between agony and bliss, pulling and giving, mapping every trembling inch with greedy, reverent attention until I am nothing but a broken, keening sound.