Exhaustion made her body sag against the sheets as she turned to rub her cheek against the pillow. She tugged her hand free from within her trousers, not knowing what to do with it.
Taste it,Bastian urged.
She remembered what Az had done—how the demon had touched her, then tasted the wetness that lingered on his fingertips.You mean you want me to…
Place your fingers between your lips. If I cannot be there to taste your arousal, then I will do so through you.
Slowly, she brought her hand up to her mouth, seeing her fingertips glistening softly in the glow of the candlelight. She parted her lips, tongue peeking out. Was she truly doing this? Bastian did not think it to be dirty, nor had Az when he had done so.
It’s not wrong, is it?she asked, one last time to the vampire.
Never.The vehemence in Bastian’s tone gave her all the courage she needed to place her fingers on her tongue, wrapping her lips around them as she let her taste fill her mouth.
Soft and mild sweetness. Not much of anything at all, really.
But Bastian groaned deep inside her mind.Gods, pet. I need to taste you for myself. Promise me I can once we are free from here?
Her fingers came free with a soft pop.
Luella’s lids fluttered, and as she settled down to sleep, sated, she whispered her reply, not knowing what she was getting herself into.
I promise.
As sleep took her, Bastian did not leave her mind, and she was dimly aware of an exhaustion that was not her own, tugging at her chest, one laced with pain and blood, honeyed cloves, and secrets and lies.
Each day in this dark seclusion was somehow just like that.
Bastian, stealing into her mind, teasing her in her thoughts. Sometimes, they would merely talk. About things of no consequence, a break from the heaviness that awaited them outside these stone walls.
Every night—at least, she thought it to be night; the candles were the only source of light here—he sent her wondrous dreams. Sometimes sweet, always soft, and occasionally sensual.
She kept routine, even when routine seemed to resist her, carefully wiping her body with a cloth dampened by the trickle of water from the spout over the empty tub—the only way she could bear to bathe. It made her miss Az desperately.
In dreams, Bastian found her.
In a leather chair, she sat, the edges of her vision flickering with incandescent shimmers as Bastian sat before her, fingers teasing the soft skin of her inner thighs. She didn’t let him look as she touched herself. And he always obeyed.
Those dreams came twice in the seven days they were trapped.
And in each one, she felt her magic grow calm in the presence of her Vincire.
She felt the others, too. In her mind, in her heart. Nestled deeply inside her soul, cracking at the edges of her composure, forcing themselves inside her, desperate to be known.
The first time Bastian asked if she would speak with the others, she told himnoand made him leave her mind. Her dreams that night had still been soft, but less so. As if even his Mind magic couldn’t break through her fears.
The second time, he tricked her.
She lay on the bed on her side, just awoken from a dream he had gifted her, where she teetered on the edge of her release and sought no relief from it for what felt like hours of sweat-soaked pleas. All while he filled her mind, unseeing but watching. As she awoke, arms wrapped around a pillow and cheek pressed tightly against it as she sought its comfort, wings shivering behind her, it was to find herself shattering, untouched. She had been forced over that toe-curling pinnacle from a dream, alone.
As she gasped into the pillow, she heard his call in her mind:
Speak with them. Please.
She was so undone by pleasure, spasming through her body, that she would have agreed to anything—she did agree to anything, whispering a soft, "Yes, Bastian," in reply.
That was the fifth night.
And on the sixth morning, lounging on the bed, tracing the cracks in the wall—she could count them by memory now—she felt a stirring in her mind.
