Page 127 of Demon Food

“How do you know?”

“Because I know, human. I fucking know. You need to go. If you stay, I will kill you.”

“It’s too late,” I said, meaning it. “I’ve already made up my mind.”

The way he was looking at me. Like he couldn’t believe I’d gone so mad.

I didn’t care. I steeled myself with a breath as I snatched the discarded chain from the floor and dragged it forward.

“Go,” he pleaded, shaking his head, but he was too weak to fight me, and he knew it. “Please.”

All he could do was watch with tender desperation as I knelt before him and secured the collar around my neck, whimpering when I clicked the lock shut.

The weight of it around my neck was almost comforting, like it reminded me of him.

I gathered the chain and pressed it into his palm. “We’re in it together.”

The anguish in his expression was nearly too much, too heartfelt as the red of his eyes battled the copper. “You don’t unders-stand. The monster. I c-can’t control the m-monster.”

“Then stop trying to control it.”

He was trembling, his breathing ragged as he drew me in by my chain, unable to fight his nature. Just like he couldn’t fight the scarlet red billowing through his irises, soaking up the copper like a sheet of paper in a puddle of blood.

As much as I’d gotten to know him, this was also him. He was my charming prince as much as he was a royal vultus, as much as he was a deadly sex demon, as much as he was the kindest soul imaginable.

And I’d made up my fucking mind.

“I’m not afraid of your monster, Alek,” I said, curling his fingers around the chain, handing him every last drop of control. “And I’m not afraid of you.”

I pressed my lips to his.

39

ALEK

“Fuck,” I whispered as I drank Feloré’s sweet essence.

He kissed me hard. I consumed him as he kissed me. They were all one and the same. Kissing. Drinking. Fighting. Living.

His energy was so satiating as it blasted down my throat, soothing my shredded insides, filling the hungry cavern of my body. It was just as brilliant as it’d been the first time, only now, I wasn’t stopping. I was leaning all the way into it, surrendering as much as he was into the unknown.

And unknown it was.

I’d never let myself go like this. For months, I’d fought this fire, but now, it was brewing inside me, as powerful as a volcano.

I could feel it clawing higher and higher, scaling up from my depths, its hot flames licking the inside of my stomach, my lungs, and my throat as I gorged myself on Feloré’s energy.

I didn’t know when my hands tangled into his hair, only that they were, and I was gripping it by its roots with a strength I didn’t have a few seconds ago. He let me hold him in place while I filled his mouth with my wild tongue.

He tasted of so many different things—of sweetened cinnamon bark and summer nights and determination and warm salted cum.

“Fuck, yes,” I panted, pulling his head to the side, and the way his slender neck stretched for me, offered to me, like the flesh of a tender fruit.

I could drink there, too. I could drink fucking anywhere.

My body jerked hard enough for me to wince, but I couldn’t take my hands off him. I couldn’t keep my mouth from exploring his skin as I pulled him in tighter, sucking and swallowing from the depths of his vivid soul.

I said something as I pushed myself up, swinging my legs around to frame his tight body where he still knelt on the floor before me, but I couldn’t…hear it?