Page 134 of Pareidolia

As mine.

I fuck him until my body tingles, until pleasure rips through me and I fill him again, shifting my hand up to cover his mouth so he’s forced to swallow the liquid he’s choking on. Aspen takes me in—all of me—as orgasm tears through me, a new and novel sensation that he fed to me, that he taught me.

New.

All of this is so fucking new for me. As new as the name I made for him. I came here to kill him, and somehow claimed him instead in ways irreversible, ways that I can’t take back.

When I finally lean back, he’s slicked in blood and cum, black fluid spilling from his chest as his skin knits back together and his tattoo pulses and shines with my shadows and strength. Those inked wings glow in an echo of my own as Aspen chokes and swallows down the last of my saliva and looks up at me with ochre eyes that shimmer for a moment, pale as moonlight, before they flutter and he collapses against the table. I slide out of him and let my body shift back to its usual state. Aspen’s doesn’t quite manage to do the same—his hole is agape, and I’m greedy for it when I drop my hand between us and use four fingers to stuff the dark liquid spilling from it back inside him. He whimpers where I stroke, but he doesn’t pull away.

It’s easy to scoop him into my arms and carry him to the bed in the corner of the fire tower, to lay him against the sheets so I can step back and look at him—truly look at him, this human I’ve shaped into something different, this man who I’ve given something that no creature has had before.

This soul that I’ve claimed as mine.

Aspen sleeps, and the rise and fall of his bare chest is far more interesting to me than it should be, because it shouldn’t exist anymore.

He should be dead.

I’d come to kill him, but somehow he’d ended up tapping into a part of me that I hadn’t been aware existed—a hunger that I still wasn’t sure I understood.

Lust.

Desire.

I’d drunk it down before, but I’d never understood it. Never experienced it myself.

But Aspen…

Had he turned it on me to save his own life? Perhaps… but I am a beast that can’t be lied to. He might have used his body to save himself, but he’d wanted it the entire time he’d done it.

And now…

I step forward, carefully running my fingers along the red pulse beneath his skin. It trails up along his arm, across his shoulder… and then the black veins spiderweb down to where I’d cut him open and poured my very essence inside him, bringing the wings he’d tattooed on his chest to life with my shadows.

Parts of me I can’t get back.

Parts of me I can feel missing, an answering hollow echo in my chest that matches his own.

CHAPTER 14

ASPEN

When I wake up, I lie there for a moment with my eyes closed. I’m pretty sure with the way Nox tore into my stomach, I should be dead. I’m pretty sure his teeth sinking into my neck were enough to finish me off if the rest of it hadn’t been.

But I feel fine.

Refreshed.

I don’t ache.

I’m half afraid to move, like my body will realize the trauma it went through if I do.

I can still feel Nox’s claws in my chest… and every nerve is imprinted with the sensation of his saliva choking me while he fucked me so hard I couldn’t think around the feel of his cock tearing me open.

Just the thought is enough to make my body twitch, and a low sound makes my eyes snap open.

“Already wanting more?” Nox is perched at the foot of the bed, his too-large body crouched like some kind of fucking gargoyle looming over me.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I jerk upright, faintly aware that I’m still in nothing but my blood-soaked boots. “What the hell, Nox? What are you doing?”