An Unexpected Ascension, page 30
I do and my mouth waters at the sight of his naked body on full display. Black ink caresses every contour of his body. From his legs up to his neck. It’s like the darkness from Hell has wrapped its shadows along his flesh and stayed there, seeping deep into his soul.
Sitting on my knees, I stare up at him from between his thighs. Amusement glitters back at me swirling between a navy-blue sea.
“Stand up and lay over my lap.”
“What?”
“Now.” He barks, his tone deep and demanding.
I straighten on my feet, then lean over his lap with my stomach and chest resting on his thick, muscular thighs. A loud slapping noise echoes through the room as his hand comes down, striking my ass.
“Fuck!” I squeak, the suddenness of the assault eliciting a shocked curse.
In response, he shoves three fingers into my mouth and down my throat until I’m gagging. Drool leaks out of the corners of my mouth just like the tears now trickling down my face.
“Don’t make a fucking sound. You’re going to take everything I have to give you like a good little angel, got it?”
I nod, and he spanks me again, the force of his hand against me shoving me forward on his lap. All I can do is whimper and take it, just like he demanded.
That rough palm of his rains down on the sensitive flesh of my ass until it’s raw and angry. Every inch of me he’s touched feels like I've been seared by a flame, my skin feverishly hot. Then he stops.
I wait.
Six, seven, eight...
Counting the seconds that tick by with nothing but his fingers stretching my throat, I begin to wonder if he’s done with me. If he’s changed his mind, but by the count of ten, my scream is fighting past the intrusion in my mouth.
With his other hand, he forces two fingers into my center, slipping in easily with the slickness of my arousal. He fucks into me with those fingers of his, relentlessly summoning an all-consuming orgasm. I can feel myself dripping, spilling down the insides of my thighs.
The pressure inside my lower belly builds until it’s nearly painful. My core heats with an unbearable fire ready to sear my entire body. Those familiar tingles begin in my toes, numbing my legs, tickling my stomach.
It becomes so overwhelming, and I prepare to burst into a million pieces until he yanks his fingers from within me, both ends utterly empty.
I pant, finally taking a full, unobstructed breath.
“Wha—”
“Oh, Angel. Did I say you could speak?” he tuts, clucking his tongue seductively.
“No, but why did you stop?”
He chuckles. “Clearly you don’t know what it means to shut the fuck up and take it, do you?” He fists the hair at the back of my head, pulling me to stand. “I guess you’re about to learn.”
Lynx positions me so I’m standing between his thighs and facing away from him.
“Bite this,” he orders, handing over one of my daggers.
Hesitantly, I take it, placing the blade between my teeth, careful not to slice my tongue. Then, the palm of his hand splays against my middle back, silently urging me to bend over. I do, obeying him, folding nearly in half.
A stinging pain starts at the fleshy part of my right ass cheek, the other dagger in his hand. With slow, particular movements, he carves into me, taking his time. I can feel a sticky wetness start to trickle, dripping down my curves and onto the back of my thigh.
My teeth clamp down even harder, nearly cracking against the metal as he continues. My eyes burn with tears, but I asked for this. I wanted this. Do want this. So, I let him carve me up just as I had done to myself.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs, rubbing his fingers through the blood now pooling from the wound.
I feel him stand behind me before he spins me around to face the chair. He maneuvers my arms to rest against the seat cushion and kicks my legs apart. With the same fingers he’s coated in my blood, he eases them into me. Only, not the part of me he’s claimed time and time again.
With the dagger still clenched between my teeth, I groan. Between the pressure of him spreading that piece of me that’s never been touched and my stinging flesh, I’m struck dizzy. I don’t know whether to cry or be grateful.
He pushes slowly, not one finger, but two. The intrusion is uncomfortable and burns just like the wound on my ass, but he keeps pumping ever so slowly. Even through the whimpers and tears and groans.
“Does this hurt, Angel?”
Devil, save me.
It does. It hurts so fucking bad.
I nod.
“When you speak without permission, you get punished. Do you understand?”
I let out a muffled sob and it breaks over the blade between my lips. The blade that’s now cutting into the corners of my mouth, drawing little pebbles of blood, but I still nod.
“You’re being so good right now, Angel. Taking your punishment. You stretch so nicely for me, almost like your body wants more. Do you want more?”
He adds another finger without waiting for a response and I lose my breath. Every muscle in my body stiffens and I accommodate more of him than I thought physically possible.
I shake my head, the movements choppy as his fingers demand every bit of my attention.
“No? You don’t want more?” He stops pumping his fingers, leaving them deeply inside of me. “You don’t want to come?”
I whine, nodding now.
“Well, which is it?”
He takes the dagger from my mouth, dropping it to the floor and waits for me to answer.
“I want to come.”
“That’s what I thought. Stand up.”
“I-I can’t.”
“Why not?”
My body shudders, shivers rolling through me.
“You’re still inside of me.”
“Then let me help you.”
He wraps his fist in my hair and pulls the upper half of my body until I’m flush against his chest. My back arches and I gasp, the movement forcing me to clench around his fingers. I feel so uncomfortably full I want to cry.
“Wrap your arms around my neck. You’re going to want to hold on.”
I reach behind me, doing just as he ordered and he slides his other hand over my belly, continuing south. Sparks of unbelievable pleasure ignite through me as he massages me exactly where I need him to. He rubs and circles and strums until I’m writhing against him and screaming in blissful agony. All the while he viciously pumps with his other hand.
The combination is lethal. It’s confusing. It’s torturously magnificent.
I feel like the very act belongs in Hell.
Stars burst before my eyes, the room swaying and swirling as all the blood rushes from my head. I’m twitching against him as his fingers draw forth a maddening orgasm. As a scream barrels past my lips, Lynx withdraws his fingers. Relief settles over me at the emptiness, but it’s short lived as he spins me around to face him. He lifts me beneath the thighs, allowing me to wrap my legs around his waist.
In the same moment he sits, I sink down on him, but he doesn’t move. He looks over me, the tears covering my face, the blood seeping at the corners of my lips, the saliva covering my chest.
His thumbs brush over my nipples as his tongue laps at the corners of my mouth, which he ends with a simple kiss.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I whisper, wondering if I am in fact okay.
“Here.” He hands me the dagger from the floor next to us.
My hands tremble as I take it, aftershocks of my orgasm still shivering through me.
“No.” I shake my head as he wraps his hand around mine and brings the blade to his chest. “No, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It’s only fair.”
In slow strokes, he carves two letters over his heart, drawing deep a crimson rivulet traveling down his pec.
“Why?” I wonder as I stare at my initials now cut into the demon’s flesh.
“To match yours.”
“You carved my initials in my own ass?”
He chuckles, dropping the dagger once more.
“No, Briar. I carved my initials into your ass.”
I swallow, suddenly overcome with emotion I can’t even put into words.
“Hermes or Lynx?”
“Lynx of course. Lynx Cromwell. LC right on your ass.”
He smiles triumphantly and my heart nearly bursts at the sight. The feeling almost as intense as the orgasm he just gave me. Almost as insane as the one he’s about to give me. With a brutal force, he slams his mouth against mine, devouring me as he works his hips. He thrusts up into me and as I moan, he swallows it whole.
Calloused fingers dig into my hips, holding me in place as he fucks me so roughly the sound of our skin slapping together sings over his grunts and my panting. He wraps his hand around the back of my head and pulls me close, our lips touching for only a moment and losing connection with the animalistic way he pounds into me.
“Fuck, you’re perfect. I could do this for eternity, Briar.”
A strangled cry echoes in the room, and my head falls back as he hits that sweet spot inside of me. He fucks me like he’s a priest exercising all my demons and I’m ready to surrender. His body, a prayer purging the darkness that claims my soul, clearing it for lighter things. Perhaps things like...
“I lov—”
His hand covers my mouth.
“Don’t say those words to me right now, Briar. I want you to fucking mean them, not because I’m making you come.”
He doesn’t allow me to respond as he finishes me off, tearing apart everything inside my soul, shattering me to pieces before putting them back together again. He groans, low and heady, and the sound is everything I need to let go.
I scream his name as I pulse around him, my walls holding onto him so tightly I can feel the twinge in his cock as he spills himself inside of me.
He wraps his arms around me, cradling my body to his chest as he moves down to the floor. I stare up into his eyes, his fingers brushing a strand of hair away from my forehead as he rocks back and forth in a gentle rhythm.
“I love every moment we spend joint together, but can I fuck you how I think you deserve to be fucked now?”
“Is that even physically possible?”
“Very much so.” He smiles proudly.
Smirking, I nod. “Then by all means.”
Chapter 43
The Demon
To my surprise, Briar let me worship every inch of her body as softly as I once teased. However, now, when my lips graze her delicate, damp skin, she doesn’t recoil or tear at my hair. Instead, I’m rewarded with unsuppressed moans of approval. Even when I kiss the center of her chest right over her heart.
That moan…
That moan was straight from the wild, untamed beast within her. That organ that thrums in false pretense, tricking the mind into thinking you’re alive.
Oh, how desperately I want to be alive in this moment.
To lay here naked and entangled on our bedroom floor amidst a fire that wasn’t created from the heat of Hell. To drag my fingers between her thighs, wet and sticky with my seed, and to have hope. Hope that one day I could give her a chance at motherhood and that her heart would no longer feel that perpetual emptiness that echoes inside of her now.
A sudden ache lies heavy in my chest at all the beauty we will never see. Perhaps I do understand a fraction of the loss Briar feels for the child she never had. Until this day, I never once thought of kids or a family. Never even dared to love.
And now?
And now, I fucking love this woman with every ounce of the soul I thought I sold.
“I’m sorry.” Her words are whispered on a wavering exhale.
With great reluctance, my lips part from her shoulder. Her eyes twinkle with the flickering flames of the fire beside us, the heat blanketing our naked bodies. I caress the side of her face, waiting patiently for an explanation while still buried inside of her.
“I’m sorry.” This time she chokes on the words as tears fill her eyes.
“Briar—”
“For everything. For being so empty and treating you so horribly. I don’t hate you, Lynx.”
I kiss the tears spilling past her lower lashes, their salty tang staining my mouth.
“Never apologize for what the world has stolen from you.” Her gaze glitters like the sharpest blades of grass. “Stabbing me on the other hand...” And then it falters from mine, shame eating away at her. “You’re forgiven.”
As her chest deflates in relief, I chuckle. I would've gladly let her carve my heart right out of my chest if it meant filling hers.
“Thank you.” Her fingertips feather over my biceps as her eyes search mine. “I like this. I like your gentle touches, your soft kisses. I never wanted to like it, but I do.”
I smile, shifting my hips. “Yeah?”
She nods, her teeth sinking down into her plush lower lip. I lean down, stealing it away from her and suck the flesh into my mouth. She groans and I can feel myself thicken inside of her as I pick up the pace. Her legs wrap around my waist, feet hooking behind my back and for the second time tonight, I fill her with my seed and with all the love that’s only recently found me.
Chapter 44
The Angel
“We should probably head back to the party or what’s left of it now.” I chuckle as Lynx laps a droplet of water from my neck.
“That sounds like a terrible idea.”
His words are hot against my skin as he reaches behind me to shut the shower off. The stream ceases and casts us in a chill. With gentle hands, he wrings the excess water from my hair before grabbing a towel and wrapping it around my body.
“It would be rude to leave Lucifer out there alone.”
My eyes trail his glistening torso down to the V between his hips, that now disappears beneath his towel.
He smirks. “From the sound of it, the party has died out anyway.”
“Then we should see if he needs any help cleaning up.”
He levels me a stare.
“Briar, he’s the God of Hell. Do you think he’s ever cleaned a day in his life?” I shrug, my gaze flicking toward the bathroom door, which causes him to sigh. “Don’t worry, I won’t force anymore intimacy tonight. I can see you’ve had enough.”
My eyes roll, but a little string tugs at my heart. I didn’t mind the sweet moment we shared earlier. In fact, I actually really enjoyed it. So much so that I’m beginning to feel the weight of what it means: to be in love with a demon – to be in love at all.
My empty heart is filling once more, and the thought petrifies me because as my heart fills, the void once there is closing. The void that was held open like a festering wound. The void that held grief for my daughter, for myself.
To fill it up?
Devil, save me because I don’t know how to forgive myself for something like that. To replace that love lost with a love found. Such a large part of me doesn’t want to heal. The idea of risking my heart all over again could be detrimental. I don’t know if I could survive another tragedy and with this war?
I can already feel the walls forming and hardening around my wavering heart.
And by the sadness clouding over Lynx’s midnight eyes, he can see it all happening too, brick by brick, taller and stronger. That near-slip of the tongue earlier might have been his only chance at hearing those words he longs for.
He nods, knowingly, before leading us out of the bathroom to dress in silence.
Chapter 45
The Angel
Forgoing the gown from earlier, I follow Lynx donned in tight black jeans and a T-shirt back to the party.
As we near the Great Hall, my stomach begins to feel as heavy as my heart. There's something entirely out of place. Where a symphony of strings once played, now sits a deafening silence. Not a single sound echoes down the halls. No chatter, laughter, debate.
“We were gone a while, but I didn’t think we were gone that long,” I mutter to Lynx as we ascend the final step.
He pauses with a hand outstretched to keep me behind him and withdraws the sword that lives on his back. Instinctively, I reach for the daggers at my thighs as if the few short weeks of training will do me any good in a real fight.
We creep forward on soft feet to the double doors, hiding behind the side that’s closed. The smell hits me first, metallic and coppery. Then, the crimson river of blood seeping past our feet.
Lynx peers in, keeping me tucked and hidden behind the safety of the door. When he retreats, there’s a wild flame flickering in his eyes that makes his face look as pale as death.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
I search his face, as if it might hold the answers. He swallows and it’s all I need to know; it’s bad. Really bad.
“Lucifer? Ada?” I push past my constricted throat.
He shakes his head causing his wet bangs to brush along his forehead.
“I didn’t see them. I didn’t see anyone... at least in one piece.” My eyes widen at his words as fear begins to consume me. “Come on. Stay close behind me.”
I nod, letting him lead me into the Great Hall. To avoid the blood glistening on the floor is nearly impossible. Where it didn’t reach, lay a body instead or rather pieces of a body. These people, they weren’t dead though. No, their eyes follow us as we climb past them through the room.
How we didn’t hear the terror from such tragedy is beyond me. The screams of pain, the pleas for mercy, the cries for help. None of it reached us while Lynx and I spent the night entangled.
Then I see why.
Each throat of every person here had been slit. Their vocal cords ripped to shreds and dangling from their necks like a beast had torn into them. The sight was horrific.
