His cock throbs inside me, swelling with every pull of his mouth, the rhythm of his drinking syncing with the rhythm of our bodies. And then I feel it—the thing inside me stirring, furious and awake.
Heat erupts across my shoulder blades and down my back, searing through the sigil. The sound it makes deep inside me is terrifying—a sound that feels like metal dragged through bone, a vibration that steals my breath and whites out my vision.
Lucien groans against my neck, his fingers tightening on my hips, his thrusts turning wild, desperate, as if he can drive the darkness out of me with every movement.
“Fuck, Elara—” His voice is rough, strained, like he’s fighting something even as he buries himself to the hilt inside me. I feel it then, the moment his control snaps.
His cock twitches, thick and relentless, and then he’s coming, his release flooding me in hot, punishing spurts.
I sob, my body clenching around him, milking him for every drop as the sigil’s light pulses in time with his orgasm, as if feeding on it.
On us.
His blood-stained lips press harder to my throat, his fangs still buried deep, and I taste copper in the back of my own mouth, feel the way his seed mixes with my wetness, dripping down my thighs.
The room hums with power, the air so charged it makes my skin prickle, my breath come in shallow, desperate gasps but it dissolves into something else as he drinks deeper, his throat working.
Then the sigil flares.
A blinding light explodes behind my eyes, white-hot and suffocating. My back arches so violently I think my spine might snap, my muscles locking as the entity inside me thrashes, its presence suddenly a deranged living thing, a storm of needles beneath my skin.
Lucien rips his fangs free with a snarl, his lips slick with my blood, his cock still jerking inside me as he grips my head, turns me to stare down at me with wide, dark eyes.
“Elara—!” His voice is distant, muffled, as if I’m hearing it from the bottom of a well.
I can’t answer.
Lucien
The first tasteof her continues to detonate my very bones as she goes limp in my arms.
Fire and sweetness, a thousand years condensed into one breath. Her magic floods my mouth, hot and electric.
But beneath it, I feel something else stirring, the thing inside her, writhing against me through her blood.
It’s not human. It’s not witchcraft. It’s hunger and evil, pure and ancient.
I pull back and savor it, lips smeared red. “I taste you now,” I growl and it’s not aimed at my Elara but at the entity. “I see you now.”
Her eyelids part slowly. A sinister acknowledgment burns black for a fleeing moment through her eyes and I know I’m staring at my adversary.
“It knows,” she confirms in a terrified hush.
And then she collapses against me, trembling, her head buried against my neck. I hold her there, breathing her in, feeling her pulse slow. The glow beneath her skin fades. For now, it sleeps.
“You don’t fucking give up, Elara. You are no longer alone in this,” I repeat the fierce reassurance I’m not sure she believes.
She looks up, eyes wide and I see she wants to believe but uncertainty still wavers in her eyes. “This delicious madness will doom us, Lucien. You shouldn’t have drank my blood.”
“It’s the single sweetest obsession in this universe. I will never learn how not to be deliriously damned by it.”
Her lips part to protest, but I silence her with another kiss, this one slower, softer. A promise and a warning both.
When I pull back, my voice is rough. “Whatever they put in you, I’ll find it. I’ll kill it.”
Her gaze darkens. “What if by killing it, you kill me?” she whispers.
The words hit like a blade. I search her face for a lie, find none. “Then we’ll find another way,” I say finally. “But if it attempts to reclaim you, if it ever tries to take you from me, I’ll drag it into hell myself.”
