Page 24 of Wicked Bonds (Serpentine Academy #1)

Twenty-Two

Soren

Drifting closer, I feel her dream become aware of my presence. There’s a moment of resistance, the fake Soren trying to maintain its shape, but I’m the real thing and he’s just a cheap knock-off. I slip into him, feeling his form dissolve and reshape around my consciousness.

I notice everything. The way her skin is hot beneath my hands, the way her pupils are wide with want. I can feel her neediness.

“Tell me what you want,” I whisper against her ear in the dream.

“You,” she breathes.

My mouth crashes against hers, and she melts into me, her tongue darting to meet mine.

She tastes like sweet, dark chocolate laced with poison, addictive and dangerous.

I pin her to the bed, my fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips as she arches against me, her breasts pressing hard against my chest. When I take her nipple between my teeth, tugging just enough to make her cry out, she claws at my back, gasping my name like a prayer.

Her thighs part eagerly, and when my fingers find her slick heat, she’s already dripping wet, her hips bucking desperately against my hand as I circle her swollen clit.

She’s slick and greedy for me in that perfect way that makes my control unravel.

I press two fingers inside, slow, then deep, feeling the way her body takes me like it was designed for my hand.

Her hips chase it. Her throat tips back, a helpless little sound punching out when I curl my knuckles just right.

“Use your words,” I murmur against her throat. “Tell me yes.”

“Yes,” she gasp. Then again. “Don’t stop.”

Good girl.

I slide down and devour her. No teasing, no gentle little flicks of my tongue over her pussy, just full contact, full intent. I lock my mouth to her and suck her clit like the starving demon I am. My fingers keep the rhythm inside her, pumping slow, then faster, then slow again.

Her thighs lock around my head, hard.

The feeding begins without conscious thought. I draw her energy into myself. It starts as a trickle, just the surface pleasure of skin against skin, but as she responds, as her want increases, it becomes a flood.

Sexual energy is unique among the emotions I can feed on.

Fear is bitter, anger is sharp, but desire?

Desire is pure sustenance, especially when it’s this potent.

Rose’s pleasure fills me like liquid starlight, every gasp she makes, every time her cunt clenches around my fingers, pumps it through me.

I’ve fed from hundreds of dreamers over the years.

Rose’s energy doesn’t just feed me. Her magic is so tightly wound with her sexuality that drawing one means dealing with both. It’s like trying to drain a lake through a straw. Every pull threatens to overwhelm my carefully maintained control, to smash the defenses between feeder and food.

I deepen the feeding, pulling harder as I drive into her harder with my hand, my lips around her clit as my tongue works it.

Her back arches off the dream bed, her hands clutching at the silky sheets.

The energy pouring off her is almost too much, it burns through me like holy water.

But the pain is exquisite, almost bordering on transcendent.

This is what addiction feels like, I realize.

This is how mortals destroy themselves chasing the next high, the next hit, the next moment of feeling truly alive.

Because Rose’s energy doesn’t just fill the hungry void inside me, it makes me feel things I thought I’d burned out of myself centuries ago.

“Please,” she gasps, and she’s close now, so close that the entire dreamscape shimmers with the force of her approaching climax.

I don’t lift my head. I speak to her from my mind to hers. “You’re mine, Rose. In every dream, in every waking moment, you’re mine.”

She shatters, soaking my hand, shaking and sobbing.

Her energy doesn’t just pour into me, it erupts like a volcano.

And fuck, it feels incredible.

Every nerve ending in both my dream form and my physical body fires at once. Back in the chair, my actual body convulses, hands gripping the armrests hard enough to leave gouges in the wood.

I take, and it’s too much, and not enough. It could never be enough.

Stop, I tell myself.

I pull back off her clit, lick her through the aftershocks while I shut the feed down to a thin trickle. My fingers stay inside her, easing, coaxing. She is still shivering. “Good girl,” I whisper against her belly. “So good.”

That’s when I feel it.

It’s not supposed to happen. Feeding is meant to be one-directional, me taking from them, nothing flowing back. But as I watch, something solidifies, like a cord in the space between dream and waking.

A connection. An actual fucking connection.

I’ve heard of this happening, in the old stories.

An incubus who feeds too deeply, takes too much, and accidentally creates a bond with their prey.

It’s considered a weakness, a failure of control.

The kind of thing that gets you killed in my world, because connections can be exploited, used against you. The only way to fix it is to kill it.

But looking at Rose, still glowing with the blissful after effects of her climax, I can’t bring myself to sever it. I don’t want to sever it.

Instead, I withdraw carefully, gently, easing out of her consciousness like pulling off a bandage slowly to minimize the pain. The dreamscape begins to fade around me.

When I open my eyes, I’m back in her room, in the chair, my body still buzzing with the aftermath of the feeding.

Rose is still in her bed, but she’s moving now, soft sounds escaping her lips as her body rides out the physical manifestation of her dream climax as she comes down from the orgasm she just experienced.

The sheet has slipped further, and I can see the way her panties are soaked.

She’s incredible.

I should leave. The feeding is complete, more than complete. I’ve taken enough energy to last me weeks, maybe months if I’m careful. The right thing to do would be to slip out as quietly as I came in, leave her to wake naturally, pretend none of this happened.

But then I sense him. Lucien. Three doors down and closing in, his vampire senses probably picking up on Rose’s release, the smell of her sex. Or maybe he’s just doing his nightly stalking rounds, checking on his assignment like the good little soldier he pretends to be.

I could leave. Could dematerialize and be back in my own room before he gets here. It would be the smart play, the one that keeps things simple and clean.

But what fun would that be?

I settle back in the chair, adjusting my posture to something deliberately casual.

Rose’s breathing changes, becomes less deep. She’s surfacing from sleep, her body still trembling with small aftershocks. Her hand moves to between her thighs, pressing there like she’s trying to hold on to the sensation, and a small whimper escapes her lips.

The door handle turns. Vampire stealth means it doesn’t make a sound. He’ll step through that door in about three seconds, find me here, see Rose in her current state, and draw all the right conclusions.

The thought makes me smile, and it’s genuine and wicked.

Rose’s eyes flutter open just as the door swings inward. She’s disoriented, caught between dream and waking, her body still throbbing with pleasure she doesn’t quite understand. She sees me first, and the confusion in her eyes changes to recognition, then desire she can’t hide.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I say, letting my gaze travel over her deliberately, taking in every inch of flushed skin and tangled sheet. “Sleep well?”

That’s when Lucien steps fully into the room and all hell breaks loose.

His eyes take in the scene, with me in the chair looking freshly fed, Rose in bed looking freshly fucked, the room smelling like magic and sex, and I watch the rage flood his face.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

I lean back in the chair, lacing my fingers behind my head, and give him my best shit-eating grin. “Just checking on our girl. Someone should, don’t you think? Make sure she’s properly attended to.”

Rose sits up, clutching the sheet to her chest, and I can see the moment full awareness crashes into her. The dream, the pleasure, the fact that both Lucien and I are now in her room while she’s still throbbing from an orgasm.

“Get out,” she says, but her voice shakes, and I can feel through our new connection that she doesn’t entirely mean it. “Both of you. Get the fuck out.”

I stand slowly, making sure Lucien sees how steady I am, how powered up, how completely satisfied. “Whatever you want, Rose.”

I move toward the door, forcing Lucien to step aside or touch me. He chooses to step aside, but the look he gives me promises violence later.

I’m looking forward to it.