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I caressed my fingers over her face for a moment, marveling at the softness of her skin, cool with the rain, before I leaned close to her and nudged the knife against her jaw.
“Last chance,” I growled. “Do you still want this?”
She didn’t look away. Her skin twitched at the touch of the blade, but she said, “We have a deal, Zane. Do it. Take me.”
Dangerous words for such a breakable creature. I wanted her to scream, I wanted her tobeg. She could wield the knife so well, but could she take it in return? Could she bleed as beautifully as she fought?
I tossed her knife away. It would have done the job just fine, and perhaps it was just me being a goddamn snob. But willing my own blade into existence, bringing together the shuddering, shimmering wisps of aether to construct something beautiful and deadly, was far more satisfying to me than wielding a bit of pounded metal.
I straddled her back, slicing the sharp blade through her jacket from the collar to the hem. She gasped as the rain hit her naked flesh, and goose bumps lined across her. Her hips pressed up as she squirmed. I groaned, knotted a hand in her long, wet hair, and said, “Keep moving your hips like that and watch what happens. You’ll get this cock pounding your cunt.”
She was panting as I tugged her hair, and again, this time with purpose, she arched her back and ground her ass up between my legs. “Don’t threaten me with a good time,” she muttered, and I nearly lost it.
I tugged away the ruins of her clothes, leaving only her black bra. I flipped her onto her back, and gazed upon the scars etched into her skin. Lines and symbols, runes in a long-dead tongue: a devotion to an ancient God. She’d tried to cover them with tattoos, but they were impossible to hide. Her face hardened when she realized I was looking at them.
“They’re ugly as fuck,” she said. Her voice was rough, as if it was an effort to get the words out. I dragged my claws down her chest, making her arch up and hiss.
“Every inch of you is a tease,” I said, bringing my face down close to her breasts. I ran my tongue along one of her scars, following the line across her chest, savoring every inch of that beautiful flesh.
I could see it in her eyes when her mind wandered, when those memories took reality from her, when they stole precious seconds of her ticking mortal life. It was wasteful, and infuriating, and if I could consume the pain from those old wounds, I would.
I sliced the blade through her bra, and the tight fabric snapped back, laying her bare in the cold rain, her nipples hard. They were tattooed, like the rest of her, each one adorned with a Flower of Life. I took the tip of the knife and teased it against her nipple, and then the other, before I closed my mouth over one of them. She gasped sharply as my tongue teased the swollen bud, flicking it and sucking before giving it a little nip with my teeth. The other breast got the same treatment, and she began to squirm, shuddering beneath me.
I moved lower, tugged open the buttons on her pants and pulled them from her legs. But I had a surprise waiting for me beneath — she wasn’t wearing any panties. I glanced up at her with a grin, tracing my claws along her thigh. “No panties, eh? Are youtryingto make me fuck you?”
I got up, yanking her with me, one hand in her hair, the other gripping the knife. I brought her to her knees and held her there before me as she looked up at me with utter defiance on her beautiful face. I’d never met a mortal so demonic. Holding back from playing with her as roughly as I pleased was sheer torture, but it played perfectly to my masochism, edging me every time I had to temper my strength.
“I don’t really have to try, do I?” she said. “I don’t think you have much control over that thing in your pants, do you?”
I laughed. “Really? You think I don’t have it under control?” I traced the knife lightly along her collarbone. “If I didn’t have control, you wouldn’t still be mouthing off. If I didn’t have control, that mouth of yours would be occupied with other things.”
She laughed too, but hers was sharp with something like fear, wild with something like ecstasy. “So says the demon. All talk and no —”
“This is where I’ll mark you,” I said, tapping the knife against her chest and watching with satisfaction as the smile melted from her face. “Here, right below that gorgeous face, so no one will ever look at this body without knowing who it belongs to. It’s going to hurt, Juniper.” I grinned as her throat tensed with a gulp. “Don’t pass out on me.”
I cut into her skin. She flinched, but didn’t whimper, her eyes fluttering closed as fear rushed over her in waves, the scent of it bitterly sweet in the air.
“Stay with me, Juniper. Repeat my words back to me. Remember where you are.”
The pain in her memories would swallow her up if I let it, and I wasn’t going to lose her for even a goddamn second. To claim a soul was sacred; even when it was filthy, even when it was bloody. I wanted her in this, wholeheartedly. I hadn’t hunted her for all these years to have her lost in her mind at the culmination.
I wanted her fear, her desperate pain, her hateful desire. I could see it in her eyes: the struggle against wanting this, the confusion and disgust that she found herself desiring more. She suffered for her own lust. She let herself fall into utter corruption amidst a torrent of pleasure and pain.
A willing sacrifice, for me and me alone. An offering, as ancient and primal as Earth itself. Blood and flesh, lust and need. The Libiri had treated her like a lamb to be slaughtered, but she was a wolf, and a wolf wouldn’t bow its head if it wasn’t willing.
She opened her eyes. She held on to my arm that gripped her hair, chin up, jaw clenched. “Don’t stop. I want this. I need it.”
“Repeat back to me, little wolf. Be brave now. I, Juniper Kynes, offer my soul —”
“I, Juniper Kynes, offer my soul...”
“By the terms of the deal agreed between us.”
“By the terms —” She hissed as the knife edged lower. “By the terms of the deal agreed between us.”
It was my own mark I was giving her, my own name. All demons had two names: the one by which we called ourselves, and the one that called to our very beings. The name by which we could be summoned and imprisoned was also the name by which we claimed our offered souls. To claim a soul was to entrust the most vulnerable part of ourselves to another.
“I accept this deal of my own free will.”
