Page 10 of Wings of Ashes (Wings of Ashes #1)

CHAPTER

“ H ello, Enchantress ,” a deep, sultry masculine voice purred into her ear, and Nix jerked awake.

Her mind raced to catch up to her surroundings. Not in a cage. Still here.

She laid in bed, in her dorm room. In the middle of the night. She had been sleeping peacefully; her pillow sported a small, very demure and ladylike damp spot of drool.

After rubbing her eyes, she squinted and gazed around her dark bedroom. She swore a voice woke her up.

“Oh, my Gods!” she yelled out when she saw the glowing red eyes staring at her from the end of her bed.

Bael said nothing as he calmly stared at her. Well, not “calmly.”

A hot hunger beamed from those red eyes, focused entirely on her. The scorching desire in his gaze struck her like a match, lighting instantly. Dark, sexual energy rolled off of him in invisible waves and soaked her to her bones.

The kind of erotic power emanating from him felt…dangerous. She was not used to being watched with that kind of piercing lust.

Jolting, she sat up on the bed and swatted away the cobwebs of sleep from her mind. Incubi were known to be nightwalkers; they could even step into the dreams of others and make the sleeper imagine anything the incubus wanted.

Was this a dream that he created in her mind?

Nix swallowed dryly and asked in a hoarse voice, “Is this…real? Are you really here? Or is this a dream?”

“What do you think?” Bael replied smoothly in that rasp of pure temptation of his.

The tantalizing sound of his voice caused goosebumps along her flesh. She shivered; yet, she felt especially warm.

Bael’s body emitted an intense amount of heat. It reminded her of sitting near a cozy fire. She wondered if it was a side effect of him growing up in Hell, absorbing all the warmth from constant flames.

Incubi were fire-resistant, after all. Around him, she felt very flammable.

“Did you want to dream about me?” he asked.

Nix scowled at his glowing red eyes in the darkness as her—not paranormally enhanced—vision struggled to see him clearly. “Obviously not.”

“No?”

“No.”

He smirked. “Hmm.”

Nix snapped, “Did you dreamwalk into my head?”

“Maybe you’re in my dream,” he said. “And you’re not the real Nix at all.”

She flipped him off, knowing he would see her middle finger in the dark.

He chuckled softly, and his red eyes grew closer in the shadows. “I told you to stop the enchantment.”

He slinked closer, and his scent wafted over to distract her brain like an intoxicating aphrodisiac.

He had the kind of alpha scent that sent shifters into heat.

Sweaty, passionate sex, musky earth, and cool rain.

He smelled like the fantasy he had put into her head earlier: a violently erotic quickie in the forest. The kind that ended in grass stains, scratches from rough tree bark or branches, and no regrets.

“If you stop the enchantment, I’ll stop taking an interest in you,” he said. “I won’t want to step into your dreams. If this even is a dream. Maybe I’m here right now. Maybe I slipped into your room—did you remember to properly lock it before you went to bed? Tsk, tsk .”

“I told you, I’m not enchanting you,” Nix stressed. What if it was not a dream? Bael’s presence, the bed sheets, everything felt real. Heck, her body prickled with awareness . She had never felt so awake during a dream before.

The hypnotically threatening and seductive red eyes moved closer. “I don’t believe you.”

Nix huffed. “I cannot be blamed for your trust issues!”

Without warning, Bael sprang on top of her, trapping her beneath him.

He balanced his weight on his hands, on either side of her head, as he leaned down and inhaled her scent. He groaned darkly, the sound of which sank inside her and vibrated. “What you do to me…makes no fucking sense.”

“I’m not doing anything—”

“I am not a fan of clumsy blondes who manipulate and enchant to get what they want,” he murmured over her forehead, skimming his lips over her sensitive hairline. “Yet, the thought of you makes my cock rock hard. Explain how it is not a spell.”

So, a spell was the only realistic and logical way he would be attracted to her? “Gods, you are such an asshole.”

“You were wet for me out in the forest,” he purred into her ear. “You tried to deny it, but watching the scene I painted aroused you.”

He told her, “Being held in such a dominating manner and being taken aroused you. My tail vibrating on your clit as I took you from behind made you so wet, I could scent it in the air. Your need—it calls to me.”

His lips elicited tingles and new flares of heat through her veins as he dragged his lips over her cheek. She hated the way her heartbeat raced in her throat; with his supernatural senses, he surely heard it. Embarrassing , Nix thought as she tried to calm her breathing.

“Are you enchanting me because you want a taste of me?” he asked. “Everyone wants a ride with the incubus. A dance with the devil. A trip to the wild side. You like bad boys, Blondie?”

He spoke onto her neck as his lips sank lower over her, “Because you don’t need to bespell me for me to fuck you, darling.”

“I can’t—I’m not…um…” Nix found it harder to think when he planted little kisses on her neck like that. In her past life, Nix had never experienced neck kisses, let alone a mind-numbing lust like this.

He seemed to know exact pressure points to press, like buttons to melt her mind. After just three kisses, her legs shuddered open a bit wider on the bed.

She gasped and tried to close her thighs together, but he dropped his knee between them before she had the chance. He rocked his firm, hard thigh against her clit, and her mouth gaped open at the sensation.

“ Oh .” Nix was used to torture, not pleasure. This was brand new to her.

Her greatest pleasure had been to reach through her cage to hold Persius’s hand when their captor left them alone in the evenings, bleeding out after his experiments.

She had never felt a real man’s body against hers like this—other than her lack luster experience of losing her virginity a few months before graduation to an alpha who had said he would marry her and keep her safe.

Can never trust an alpha.

But with Bael… Nix could trust that he knew how to touch her. The sex demon was experienced. I could make losing my virginity a much better experience in this new life.

“Oh?” Bael hummed, teasing. “Oh, that feels good?”

He rocked his hard thigh over her again, rubbing right over her pulsing clit and weakening her resolve. A warm pool of heat swirled behind her abdomen—an unfamiliar tightness that yearned for more strain.

Her hips jerked up, testing out the sensation and firmly grinding herself against him.

“Mm.” Nix bit back another traitor, swoony noise as her clit pulsed from the arousing pressure.

“There you go, moving your hips and grinding against me like a good, submissive girl for me,” Bael rasped. “Does it feel good to rub your pussy on me?”

He grunted. “You don’t need to lie about enchanting me. You want a taste; I’ll give it to you. I’m used to everyone wanting to fuck me,” he said, but the tone of his voice changed. Sounding bored and peeved at that fact.

“Well, I’m not everyone,” she breathily remarked as his kisses trailed lower, down to where her neck met her shoulder. Do not rub against him more, Nix , she tried to tell herself. He felt so good, but… Persius .

His warm lips skimmed over her collarbone, and her body quivered. “No,” he said. “You’re not, are you? You’re different. Special.”

Now he was just mocking her. Nix would have never referred to herself as “special.” Maybe “unlucky.”

“Why the fuck do they call you ugly?” he wondered aloud.

“Is this a dream or not?” she snapped at him.

He nipped at her flesh, and she gasped again. “It doesn’t feel like a dream, does it?”

His lips stretched into a smile against her skin as he kissed over the top of her chest. “Maybe I really am in your room, and maybe you are asleep. Two things can be true. Maybe you’re deep asleep, and I’m stripping your clothes off you right now, as I kiss down your body…”

He kissed a hypnotic, hidden spot on her neck that blanked her mind for a full three seconds.

“You’re…crazy,” she stated when she remembered words again.

His teeth felt like they burned a sensual mark into her skin as he bit her shoulder playfully. “Hell does that to a person.”

“You’ve…actually been to Hell?” She did not know if some of the incubi stories she knew were rumors.

“Born and raised and tortured and tossed out.” Bael’s hand shot out, and his fingers wrapped around her delicate neck. “Now, stop distracting me from my midnight meal.”

He dragged a long, thin tongue over her nape, and she realized it was a larger version of a serpent’s tongue, completely prehensile and forked at the end. It flickered and swept against her, and she shivered from the hot trail it left wherever it touched her.

“What do you know about incubi, Swan Lake?” he asked her. “Did you know that we are fabled to have sex with sleeping women?”

Nix froze.

“ Willing sleeping women,” Bael clarified harshly, as if the crazy man was offended by her automatic assumption.

“The fables tell tales of incubi slipping into lustful, lonely women’s rooms, keeping their minds in full slumber, and fucking them to sleep.

Have you ever had a really good sex dream? You ever come in your sleep?”

Bael grabbed her hips and lifted her, so he rolled her forward and slid her tingling pussy over his hard, muscular thigh. He guided her back and forth over his hard thigh, and a little whine of pleasure caught in her throat.

“Incubi are picky, but we’re sympathetic. When we see a woman who is in need of a good fuck, we give it to her.”

Nix rolled her eyes—half at the pleasure and half at his words. “So generous.”

“Even sex demons do charity work.”

Having sex with her would be charity work ? “How dare you imply—”

“I think you need an orgasm, Enchantress,” he whispered into her ear in a lascivious tone that stunned her silent. He opened his mouth so his long tongue could flick out against her lobe. “I think you need to come. Badly. You seem wound so tight. Won’t it feel so good to be unraveled?”

“W-What?”

“I think that you need to cum your brains out tonight and understand why you don’t fucking enchant a sex demon with an attitude problem.”

He moved so quickly; Nix didn’t see the knife until it was too late.