Page 111 of Demon Touched

Syrus’s hands find the back of my neck, his fingers stroking along the nape, then firmly easing me down onto the bed, peppering my cheeks with kisses so sweetly adoring that they drive the breath out of me.

I paw at his clothes, slipping my hands beneath his shirt. I run my touch over the places I wanted to all those hours ago in Aradis. Back when I sat in a cellar, staring at the perfect, chiseled form of his body, knowing I would have to hurt it to save him.

Not now. Now I get to make him feel good. I stroke my fingertips over his back, sucking gently at his lower lip when he leans in for another kiss. Then I arch a little so that we connect in all the important places as I grind against him.

“Leah,” he groans into my mouth, my name a question and a hope, one I’ve been carrying around with me too. I answer enthusiastically by tugging his shirt over his head. Like he’s read my mind, knowing I want Syrus in all the beauty of his true form, with every scar and mark, he lets the disguise of the lake slip away, runes blooming across his skin.

Maybe in another time, we would’ve unwrapped each other slowly, but tonight we shed our clothes with all possible haste, the cool air barely having time to brush over my skin before he’s covering it with his huge, warm body. Just this contact, my skin pressed against his after being starved of him for so long, makes me whimper, and Syrus responds by burying his face against my neck, inhaling as he licks a line across my collar bone.

My mind is so hazy, overloaded with sensation, that I’m only vaguely aware of the words babbling out of my mouth. “Goddess, it’s been unbearable, Syrus. Not being able to touch you. Not being able to hold you. It was torture.”

He lifts his head. His eyes are one of the darkest reds I’ve ever seen, his lips already plump from where I’ve bruised them with my own. He looks handsome, powerful, but also undone in a way that makes me feral.

“I’m glad I wasn’t the only one,” he says. “There were times I thought I might go mad from the distance between us.”

We both know the bond made us desperate. Even now, when it’s gone, its absence is its own problem, resting loudly between us. But that pain is dimmed by the way we tangle into each other, soothing away the ache that came with that denial.

“We’re together now,” I murmur, and he nods, tugging a gasp from my lips as he lowers his head to suck gently at my breast.

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed this,” he breathes against my skin, sending goosebumps rising up across it. “I’ve dreamt about this.” He slides a possessive hand across my stomach. “And these.” He pushes himself down lower, kissing the tops of my hip bones. “And this.” He sighs, sliding between my legs and flicking his tongue in a way that sets me on fire.

“Fuck, Syrus,” I whine. “Don’t play with me. Don’t make me wait, after all this time.”

He hums, and the vibration of it rattles through me.

“I think you’re crediting me with much more self-control than I actually possess,” he says. His hands are splaying over the tops of my thighs, thumbs brushing lightly against my skin as he urges me open a little more to display all of myself to him.

When I’ve been in this position with other men, I’ve always felt exposed, too vulnerable to relax into it, but the look of pure, devastated arousal on Syrus’s face wipes all of that away as he presses soft kisses to the insides of my thighs, muttering sweet praises in Cyrax as he goes.

“So beautiful…so perfect…would’ve died without this…couldn’t stand it…”

My voice is quick to join his when he dances his tongue across the bundle of nerves, making them sing. I slip a hand around the base of one of his horns and use it to direct him, angling his head until his mouth is working me in exactly the right spot. It sends shudders through my body, my orgasm already looming.

He groans in response to my manhandling, and I flush hard, heat seeping up across my chest.

“You like that, then?” I ask, my own breath hitching as he swipes his tongue across me.

“Yes. Almost as much as I like this,” he lifts his head a little, watching his own hand slide up across my breast, fingers teasing where my pale skin shows every blush. “I love how pretty and pink you get for me.”

It’s true—Syrus can still bring color to my skin like every time he’s touching me is the first.

I tug on his horn again, and he makes a pleased, low groan as he returns his attention between my legs, making me buck and moan as he lavers at my entrance.

I come hard moments later, my fingers sliding from Syrus’s horn to twist in his hair. I am melted, boneless, floating in a warm, syrupy feeling. He kisses the edge of my knee, then starts to lift off of me. I pull him down, wanting his weight against me again.

I can feel his hardness pressed against me then, solid and unsated, and despite the satisfaction seeping through my body, I ache to have him inside me. There’s a part of me that’s afraid we lost something with the bond, that this won’t feel like enough anymore after the intensity of what we used to share. But joining our bodies together, being wrapped around him, feels like the only way to chase that fear away.

We don’t need to speak into each other’s minds to know what we both want. When I meet his gaze, the look we exchange says everything—take me, claim me, please.

I hook my leg over one of his own to invite him in, and in answer he braces a hand against the small of my back, pressing into me.

I moan as the thick head of his cock breaches me, dragging against my inner walls, filling me up. He takes a moment to rest there inside of me, basking in the perfection of the fit, darkened eyes drinking me in. When he pulls out at last, he saves me from feeling empty for too long, thrusting swiftly back in as he soon finds a rhythm that leaves me gasping.

It turns out Filippa was right: my wings don’t get in the way of this. In fact, as Syrus presses my hips into a deeper bend, his hands find my feathers, fingers dragging lightly against them.

“Fuck, do that again,” I order, my head rolling back as a whole new set of nerves awakens around me. He caresses my wings once more, still driving into me with each stroke, a wicked grin on his face. He folds his own wings around us, until the thick, ridged edges of them brush up against my own, the membrane so sensitive there my vision starts to blur with pleasure. It rolls across me in waves, sinking into my body and then building with every snap of his hips.

Eventually, my hands slide across his ass, gripping him tighter, letting him know—if my panting moans haven’t clued him in already—that I’m close.