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Gwen

T he sluggish disorientation of waking up quickly vanished.

Gwen supposed there wasn’t anything more sobering than realizing she had been literally fucked awake by a demon.

Not just any demon, but the one that had just been in her dreams. Only it wasn’t his tongue between her legs, but a part of him that she had mindlessly cried for during their last meeting.

The memory heated her face, but it didn’t stop her hips from desperately canting toward his.

It didn’t deter her from wrapping her legs around him, from crying out at a particularly deep thrust. He was above her, inside her, and the lonely part of her that had mourned their short separation cried out with joy at having him so near again.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t complain, though.

“You fucking asshole ,” she panted as her hand wrapped around his thin, bony wrist. “You … you couldn’t have asked first?”

He looked dangerous above her, eyes glowing like neon signs and bathing his terrible grin.

The tongue that had been inside her peaked between his teeth, wet and dripping.

His unhinged expression made Gwen shudder as he continued to fuck deeply into her.

“Why would I have asked when you demanded it so badly? This was your desire, wasn’t it?” he laughed, a staggered sound against her face.

“I promised you I would do this, didn’t I? Aren’t I a good benefactor, my bittersweet? Don’t I give you what you need?”

Fuck.

Fuuuuuck.

Those words made her clench around him, and they both groaned at the sensation.

Teeth sharpened into that familiar shark-like grin as Ambrosius’ claw dug into her hip.

Gwen could feel the subtle ache of them, the blood welling toward the surface of her skin, making her gasp.

“Oh, Gwen , you just got wetter,” Ambrosius cooed.

His angles were wrong, that much Gwen could contextualize with her pleasure drunk gaze.

She could feel it through the thin material of his dress shirt, the unusual arch in his back and the length of it.

He was taller than he normally was, even his arms seemed to jut out of his shoulders like spider legs.

Yesterday she had slept with a demon who hid beneath the skin of a man.

Now, she was being fucked by what laid underneath.

And the thought alone made Gwen wild with need.

His large, monstrous hand easily covered one of her heavy breasts.

Ambrosius quickly swallowed her breath, mouth covering hers.

Gwen could feel the jagged edges of his teeth against her lips, felt the hot, wet invasion of his tongue.

She did her best to combat it, but it felt like a losing battle as Ambrosius stroked the roof of her mouth.

When she felt faint, Ambrosius was the one to pull their mouths apart.

Something hot and sticky fell against her cheek.

Saliva, no doubt, but it was the farthest thing from Gwen’s mind.

The only thing that mattered was the way her heart pounded in time with Ambrosius’ bruising pace.

“Oh, Am—” Gwen groaned around his name, hands desperately reaching around his growing rib cage.

“Ro-ah, fuck!”

“Mmm, you said that before,” he laughed, this time a deep and dark creature that vibrated into her very marrow.

“ ‘Ro’ , you said it so wantonly. Is that Daddy’s new name, hmm? Needy, always so needy for the thing in the dark. For the thing under your bed. For me. ”

Gwen keened, hands sinking into the fabric of his dress shirt as blue veins pulsed past her wrist and up her arms. The glow of Ambrosius’ terrible gaze was suddenly cast in more of that spectral light.

It took Gwen a moment to realize it was her own eyes making that strange light, but she was immediately thrown at the almost gentle expression on the demon’s face.

A brief moment of fondness.

She could worry about having radiation eyes later.

In that moment, Gwen only wanted him.

For him to lose himself in her.

To hold him close and never let go.

To match all his impatient, selfish affection with her own.

Stay with me . Please, just stay here with me .

Gwen reached up, clawing past his sharp shoulder toward his neck.

This part of him was elongated as well, stretching farther than what should have been possible, but not so much as to be absurd.

When she reached his jaw, she could feel the skin stretch taut.

His lips were pulled wide, splitting open at the corners toward his ear.

Delicately, she ran her thumb along it, straining her neck to look up at him.

“Please,” she whined.

“Please, Ro. Give it to me, please . I’m so close. I need it, need you.”

The words stole the affection from his expression, but the twisted features still made Gwen’s heart shake.

Horns had formed from his forehead, but more shockingly were the other two that followed shortly after.

These coiled from the same points as the first, curling back and looping around his ears like a ram’s.

Blood pooled down his temples, tattered skin hanging loosely from the sharp points.

Ambrosius swung a leg over hers and before Gwen could question it, he had taken her free leg into his large hand.

He tucked her knee to his hip, the new position tilting her hips and making Gwen sob with newfound delight.

“Then take it, my bittersweet. Take all of it,” he growled, roughly thrusting into her cunt over and over.

“It’s all for you. ”

The wail that escaped Gwen was loud in her own ears, back arching.

Desperate to find something to hold onto, her hands found the horns that curled along his jaw.

Her grip tightened around them, coated in blood and flesh as she rocked through the intense pleasure .

Her touch set Ambrosius off.

He met the tail end of her pleasured cry with a relieved groan as he pulsated within her.

The sensation was still new—and admittedly strange—but, like Ambrosius had said, it was hers.

Gwen felt something whip against her thigh, something thin that curled around her as Ambrosius continued to fuck through the end of his orgasm.

She continued to meet him, until he collapsed on top of her, suddenly more man than demon.

While he had felt brittle, but deadly beneath her hands before, now he was solid and real.

His breath hot against her shoulder, having narrowly aimed the sharp points of his horns away from Gwen’s face.

Her hand trailed from the horns, falling to the damp, silky strands of his hair.

Ambrosius was hot—always so hot—but he was real.

He hadn’t left her yet, and as long as he was there, Gwen had no intention of letting go either.

Not yet, not when he held her whole heart with every unhinged sentence that left his evil mouth.

Not when there was so much left to discover, to learn, to…

“Are you mad?” he asked through panting breaths.

Gwen tilted her head toward him, mindful of his horns.

His face was still pressed to her pillow.

“Mad about what?”

“Waking you up the way I did,” he replied, before slowly lifting his head.

“Without asking, like you said.”

She was still catching her own breath, still sweating and buzzing from pleasure.

The look in his eyes—just the two now—gave nothing away.

Gwen laughed. Was this his way of making sure he hadn’t hurt her?

“Are you serious? Why the hell would I be mad?” she asked, lifting a pink eyebrow at him.

“Nothing about us is normal , why would this be any different? So, we didn’t have a big conversation about it, so what? I wanted this, you agreed to do it. Yeah, you scratched me up a little, but nothing’s broken. Plus, I don’t know if you noticed it, but I was kind of really into it all.”

Gwen might never admit how much she loved it, but she didn’t want him to think she hated it.

The disappointment that curled low in her belly whenever she woke up from the horrific wet dreams had been a burden on her heart.

And while Gwendolyn would have had several complaints, Gwen had none—at least when it came to the sex.

She would never complain about the sex.

Especially as it was something Gwen hadn’t anticipated wanting so much.

She couldn’t remember wanting to be with Danny this badly.

Or any of the other short-lived boyfriends or dates she had.

This thing she had with Ambrosius, while it didn’t have a name, Gwen knew it was different.

That it was … something she had never felt before.

“I did notice,” Ambrosius hummed, leaning toward her to steal a lazy kiss.

“I notice everything about you. It’s maddening.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Hmm, what would you like to know?”

Gwen laughed, “You just screwed my brains out, you expect me to think right now?”

“Indulge me,” Ambrosius replied.

“Oh, I think I did that already,” Gwen said, running her hands over the material of his shirt.

“I can’t believe you kept your clothes on.”

“I was impatient. ”

“I could tell,” she teased.

The remains of her old sleeping shirt had fallen to her elbows, the scraps at her back damp with cooling sweat.

If it wasn’t so old, she might have grumbled about it.

Gwen didn’t know when it had happened, but the light from her bathroom had come back on.

She could see Ambrosius more clearly, could see the horns on his head slowly recede.

It looked painful, as evidenced by the blood and gore still on her hands.

Ambrosius let out a relieved sigh once they were gone.

He zipped up his pants before pressing into the mattress as if to sit up.

“You need sleep. It’ll be light soon,” he murmured.

Panic pressed a blunt knife to her heart.

Gwen grabbed onto his shirt, yanking firmly and drawing him back down.

She fell on top of him just as quickly, free from the ruined sleeping shirt.

Tucking her body as close to his as she could, Gwen shut her eyes tightly.

“Gwen?”

“Stay,” she whispered against his jaw.

“You don’t have to go every time. You can stay. ”

For a brief moment, Gwen was certain he would push her away.

But his hands found her bare skin, snaking around the base of her neck and back.

She exhaled into his neck and tried to hide the way her body shuddered with how badly she needed him to stay.

If she just buried herself against his frame, made his chest her new home, then he’d never have to leave.

“But not for long,” he replied.

“Not forever. That’s up to you.”

“I … I’m still…”

“I know,” he sighed.

“You’re still so … human. ”

The words hurt.

They always hurt when Ambrosius was the one saying them.

Gwen should have been used to it by now.

This was what they did.

Hurt each other. It didn’t matter if Gwen refused or accepted the Soul Covenant, because Ambrosius would leave either way.

Wouldn’t it be better to let him go completely than binding herself to him and suffering anyway?

Human.

Monster.

All of it swirled through her head, a mess of doll hair knotted together and impossible to sort through.

It hurt—hurt in a way Gwen hadn’t felt in ages.

The way family and friends had hurt her, until she had been forced to make the hard choice.

Taking scissors to all the messy threads between them and severing the connection.

She had done it before, Gwen could do it again, if only her heart wasn’t betraying her.

Beating so rapidly that it made her dizzy.

Like she couldn’t get enough air.

She was suffocating.

Gwen pulled away from him, gathering her pillow toward her chest. For a moment, she said nothing, but felt Ambrosius stare heavy on her.

The awful feeling wasn’t going away, it would never go away as long as he was around.

“I guess that’s one of the ways I drive you mad, huh?” Gwen said, not meeting his eyes.

“Being so human .”

“Gwen—”

“Not that I should be surprised, right? After all, you told me what this was early on,” Gwen went on, swallowing every unsaid word into her gut as deeply as she could.

“This is just business, right?”

That was the purpose of a warlock, wasn’t it?

To work for a demon, to do their bidding.

Everything Gwen had sworn she would never do, until Ambrosius had come along and messed with her mind.

For all she knew, he could have been reading her thoughts the entire time.

He was devious enough, petty enough, and if he noticed things about her as well as he said he did, Ambrosius would know exactly how to wield that against her.

The sun was starting to rise, the early morning light trickling through the balcony blinds.

The promise of another hot summer day right around the corner.

And here Gwen was, with no family, no friends, no job, and no promises.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked a moment later.

His voice was so quiet, but it was so loud in her ears.

Despite her best efforts, the thought surfaced in her mind.

Because you’ll never love me, even if I tie myself to you.

You’ll never love me the way I love you.

“You should go,” Gwen said instead.

“You have antiques to sell.”

Ambrosius didn’t say anything for a long time.

When she finally found the courage to look at him, he was gone.

Gwen buried her face into the pillow and cried.

Her sobs grew harder at the sight of black ichor stains on the pillow.