Page 29 of Zodiac Demons

What the fuck?

He pulled back when he felt my body relax. He climbed off of me, and took a step back in the pool with a curious tilt of his head.

“Are… you okay?” He asked, as he lifted my limp arm and watched it drop back in the water with a splash. He fully retracted his fangs, though the hints of my blood were still visible on his teeth, shining as red as his cheeks.

“I can’t move.” I told him through my incomplete mental link.

He ran his still forked tongue over his fangs, lapping in my blood, while he considered what had just happened. “So my gaze can’t turn you to stone, but my bite still paralyzes you.” He pondered on that for a moment, then he laughed quietly to himself. “Good to know.”

Obnoxious. My expression might have flattened if I could have done anything at all. Maybe this little power dynamic wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it would be.

“That’s fine.” He said, before he remounted my lap with an unexpectedly devious grin. “You can be my puppet tonight instead.” He lifted my paralyzed hand and he guided it to his still hard cock. He wrapped my fingers around the shaft, and he used his own hand to control my movements to jerk him off. “Now be a good little doll, and stay still.”

Fuck, why is this so hot?

“You’re incredibly unfair.” I channeled to him directly.

And he just chuckled a dark and unexpectedly cruel laugh I never expected from the quiet, studious legacy heir. My vampire heart was able to clear the toxins from my blood fairly quickly, but every time I started to regain any sort of function, he bit me again, and shook his head.

“I want you just like this tonight.” He whispered.

We played that game until he was satisfied, then just before the night escaped us and the sun returned to the horizon, he carried me to the room, let me recover from his paralyzing bite, and I reminded him which one of us was the Alpha in that singular bed.

Present Day

“Your mother is Lamia.” I said the words out loud, and they gave me a headache purely by existing in my ear drums. “Your mother is the Lane Rodanthe, who founded Graves, and you just never thought to mention her maiden name?” I continued to blink just trying to process that, as Lila was sitting on my couch, trying to relax, while my fangs had been less than an inch from entering her femoral artery.

“It didn’t even occur to me that her name meant anything.” She laughed sheepishly. This fucking woman, I swear. I wondered who else knew? Ceto admitted he saw her shifted when I cornered him about it after “inventory,” so there was zero chance the Basilisk didn’t innately recognize Lamia when he tasted her blood, but considering Lamia was also famously infertile, her existence was, without question, far more complex than her half demon mother fucking a Capricorn Shifter.

“Your mother is literally Graves royalty,” I noted, because she seemed genuinely nonplussed and indifferent to what this meant. Her ‘raised as a human’ privilege manifested in the oddest ways. “The only bloodline coveted on the level of a Rodanthe is the Aryas or the Wongs, and…” and she was mated to an Arya. Which meant I was mated to a Rodanthe and an Arya. How did I keep getting mixed up with the founding families?

Fuck, this was going to make everything more complicated. Dealing with Ceto’s burdens had already been enough to ruin our first attempt at a relationship as they were, but now I was fully mated to two legacy heirs?

With her ability to currently hold three mate marks, I would not be introducing her to any Wongs. Though I was fairly certain the only son of the Wong family was not remotely into women.

That wasn’t the point. The point was that if I was kind enough to give Ceto permission to reject his pact—which I wasn’t totally sold on doing, quite frankly—his family would kill me. Actually, I wasn’t confident they wouldn’t kill me either way, so their son could be the only one mated to such a coveted bloodline.

He… he was legitimately completely fucked here.

I’d always considered myself a psychopath, but that actually made me feel guilty. If I hadn’t given him permission the night before, as an Omega, he wouldn’t have been able to seal that pact no matter what he did to her.

This was… a predicament. In all of my posturing and intimidation, I didn’t want Ceto to actually hate me, yet I’d given him some pretty legitimate reasons to now. His old reasons were overblown at best.

We were getting in one last feeding session before heading for the ferry, hoping to keep my ‘aggression’ down, but I was hardly the biggest problem here.

I pulled back from my space between her legs, and I stared at the woman who I never would have suspected was a part of a legacy family, who carried one of the more powerful—not to mention among the most ancient—demonic bloodlines in existence. The woman who was my fully sealed mate, Ceto’s fully sealed mate, and my brother’s partially claimed mate.

Well that explained why Lila’s unique blood flavor was so unidentifiable. The chances of me having ever tasted Lamia before were damn near impossible.

I never had any intention of breaking my pact with Lila, no matter what my brother’s messed up curse might require in the end, but I couldn’t help but wonder how the Aryas would react to that. I currently had carte blanche to allow or disallow our Omega to break his pact, but… if he hadn’t been disowned as a half-breed, I can’t imagine rejecting the unexplained daughter of Lamia, herself, would go over well. Certainly not when rejection would likely mean he could never take another mate. I didn’t know of any hybrids that had tested that rule of pure breeds, but I also didn’t think it was worth the gamble if we experienced the same level of permanence in a rejection ceremony.

As much as I liked pushing his buttons, I didn’t actually want him to have his entire life ruined, and this might start to creep into that territory. Though whether rejecting Lila was what he wanted or not, I couldn’t say. Nothing had forced him to mark her that night. I’d given him permission to, but the rest was all him.

“I guess that’s why I have a scaly exoskeleton.” She rubbed the back of her neck, like she had any reason to be ashamed. “I wish I knew how to shift better, so I could actually see what I look like when I’m not more Virgo than monster.”

“We can work on that.” I said, as I moved a bit higher up her leg. I slid my palm along the thick of her thigh, and slipped one hand beneath her skirt. She watched me with her perpetually nervous, yet no longer innocent eyes, as I started slowly dragging down her panties, just enough for her to feel their absence, before a very small amount of effort tore and removed them completely. I pushed her skirt up, and leaned in to brush the flat side of my fangs over the lips of her pussy, having no will or desire to retract them. “I’ve got a new kind of orgasm I can show you, Baby Doll.” I whispered against her skin. “And I want you to focus only on that feeling. Try to stay relaxed as you lose yourself, and let it take you. No fighting, no trying to hold out, no self-conscious nonsense. Just feel the true power of what your own body can do with the right stimulation.”

“Okay,” she said, tentative as ever. She may or may not have understood that this was a legitimate technique to find your inner monster. It didn’t matter if she did though. Whether she was writhing under me for fun or for purpose didn’t change my motivation to simply relish in how good I made her feel.