TWO

He lingered there, hands anchoring quivering flesh, as if to hold the moment in place. Even the walls seemed to watch—complicit in their silence. 

She didn’t move. Couldn’t. The world had narrowed to the pulse singing in her veins. The memory of his mouth still surged through her, ghosting over nerves scraped raw. 

Slowly, she remembered how to breathe.

Her chest rose and fell in that broken, uneven way all mortals did—after they’d come hard enough to leave their souls behind.

Silence pressed in. Vision returned, raw-edged and shimmering.

Her fingers loosened in his hair. She eased back reluctantly, prying herself free from the pull of a tide too vast to fight.

Maybe if he hadn’t lived so long, his eyes would have widened. Maybe his mouth would have fallen open in shock.

He was surprised. He just didn’t bother to show it.

Not when this beguiling, ruined thing lay before him—breathless, reassembling herself with trembling hands and a heart that beat at the behest of something else now.

“You said my name,” he murmured, his breath a reverent drag across the hollow of her thigh.

Somewhere in the room, the mirror splintered into a lattice of fractures, veining outward from lipstick scrawl.

A rupture left behind.

The way his lips dragged across her thigh—once, twice, slow and open—could have passed for reverence. But reverence didn’t scorch through nerve endings soaked in gasoline. Didn’t stoke the inferno pulsing between her legs, still demanding more.

It wasn’t an act of worship. It was a seal. A vow of ownership, pressed into prickling flesh.

She groaned, the sound dragged from the wreckage of pleasure.

“What?”

“Not the infernal sigil scrawled in your summoning book,” he said, voice thick with satisfaction. “You said my true name.”

The silence didn't ring anymore.

It cracked—thick with heat and vows unspoken.

“Do you know why demons guard their names so intently?” he asked, rising from between her legs with slow, predatory grace. The kind of fluidity that followed conquest.

“I have no idea,” she muttered, irritation crackling through the haze of post-orgasm bliss. “But please, do tell. My curiosity is eating me alive.”

At the wicked curl of his mouth, she exhaled hard through her nose.

“Pun intended,” she added under her breath.

She propped herself on her elbows, glaring at him between shamelessly parted thighs.

Fully exposed, and still she speared him with her gaze, unflinching.

Oh, she was delightful. Brazen. Defiant.

The kind of mortal who’d beg for the blade without realizing she was already bleeding. Who’d whisper prayers for mercy without understanding mercy was the cruelest weapon of all.

He would savor this. Ruin her slowly—one shattered breath, one ruinous heartbeat, one futilely murmured prayer at a time.

“Speaking my name binds us,” he said. Simple. Like that should explain everything.

It did not.

“I didn’t…” she frowned, the crease between her brows deepening. “I didn’t even know I said anything.”

He moved off the bed with languid elegance—a predator post-hunt, basking in the glory of it. Each step unhurried. A study in indulgent intention.

At the wall, he lifted the mirror and turned it toward her. Its surface webbed with fractures, the words she’d written warped by the force of what had passed between them. 

Try Me.

Oh, he had. 

He glanced at the glass, then back at her—and smiled like a man who had not only been challenged, but had risen to meet it, and now would tempt her into the infernal blaze she’d summoned him from.

“Well,” his voice was a slow drag of mischief, thick with satisfaction.

“One thing’s for certain.”

The candlelight slicked across his dark skin in gold, the wicked gleam in his eyes unholy.

“I won’t be returning the way I came.”

Her breath hitched. The air was thick again—velvet-draped and electric.

The heat of her release dipped into something colder—a sharp current humming beneath her skin, shifting.

Shit.

“This wasn’t supposed to mean anything.” The words cleaved through the fog of tension settling between them, bladed and accusatory.

Had he trapped her?

“Ah,” he said softly, savoring the flare of her temper, “I see.”

He leaned against the wall, arms folding loosely across his chest—utterly unbothered, settling into the power he’d coaxed from her with nothing but the heat of his mouth and the consumptive swipe of his tongue.

“You were hoping for casual damnation,” he drawled, eyes gleaming like sunlit sin. “A good fuck. A story to tell.”

His smile carved deeper—wolfish. Unapologetic.

“I’m sorry to tell you: that’s not how this works.” 

He pushed off the wall, each step a deliberate surrender of distance.

“You summoned a demon, not some wayward fuck stumbling home at dawn.”

His voice was a velvet vice, slowly cinching around her throat. “And that, my dear, always comes with a price.”

She opened her mouth to argue, to demand—she wasn’t sure which.

The words snagged—stubborn, breath-bound—as she watched him close the space between them.

Slow. Sinuous. Like a man savoring a fate already sealed.

His smile had dissipated.

What remained was something else. Hushed. Patient.

Deadly.

Like the sacred pause before the sky opens, when even the gods held their breath.

“You called me.”

His gaze flicked to the half-open summoning circle, a tether she’d forgotten to sever.

“You bound me.”

He didn’t speak in anger, but affection didn’t blunt the edges of his words either.

This was fact, as inevitable as the tide’s return, as cruel as faith betrayed.

Pressure gathered, a swell rising beneath her skin. It threaded down her spine, pooled low in her gut.

Her thighs pressed together—reflexive, useless against this slow, insidious pull. Still she bit her lip, gripped the sheets, clinging to control she’d already given away. 

It wasn’t fear.

It was desire.

Worse—a sacred ache, like being dragged under by something ancient and beyond her understanding. A riptide in the shape of a man.

He didn't move. Didn’t touch.

The silence charged and stretched taut until it crackled—like the air before lightning carved through it. He let the illusion of her control linger.

Then, almost tenderly:

"I didn't need to trap you." His voice was quiet, reverent in its damnation. "You chose this."

His gaze was patient, merciless. The weight of that inescapable truth captured her in the current she had summoned herself.

And somehow, that was crueler than any command: the steady, unrelenting drag of his gravity unraveling her from the inside out.

She made a soft sound, almost pathetic.

A whimper.

“On your knees, darling.” he purred, lecherous and indulgent. “Show me what worship looks like—and I’ll show you what damnation tastes like.”

Time held its breath.

Her body moved before her mind caught up. She slid to the edge of bed, hands braced against the mattress for balance. Knees found the floor—cold, biting. The sensation barely registered, drowned beneath the static hum of need that prickled just beneath her skin.

The contrast between chill and fever blurred to nothing. Only the ache remained, slow and heady, winding through her veins, silencing everything else.

The action was hers—deliberate. A surrender not demanded—but given.

Her shallow breath faltered. She should have hated herself for it. For how easily she fell to him. For how right it felt.

She didn’t.

His gaze warmed with approval, liquid gold—molten.

Smelted. Pleased.

The silence sharpened to low hum, buzzing behind her ears.

He stepped closer. Close enough for her to smell it: smoke and igneous heat clinging to his skin. Close enough to feel the promise of him, thick and heavy, straining behind the zipper of his pants.

A breath. A heartbeat.

She swallowed against the swell. Her skin tingled, nerves sparking, straining for contact. Anticipation coiled in her chest: an ache, a hunger. 

The leather of his belt was warm under her fingers, supple from use. The metal buckle felt impossibly heavy, like a stolen relic laid on an alter of corruption.

She worked it loose slowly, carefully.

He said nothing. Did nothing. Just watched her unbuckle him.

The zipper followed, slower still. Its sound sliced through the silence, sharp as a blade, vulgar in its finality. She swore she could feel it reverberate through her teeth.

His cock surged against the fabric—unapologetically hard, profane.

Her mouth watered. But she didn’t rush. Didn’t dare. Her fingers curled around the waistband. She tugged—not rough, not timid.

Certain.

Devout.

Not because he commanded it, but because something in her soul had already yielded.

The fabric fell, stripped like the remnants of her control.

He was stone and sin, every inch a weapon carved for depravity. Veined. Slick at the tip. Waiting.

She licked her lips, an evocative, sensual drag of her tongue, and glanced up at him through her lashes.

His expression hadn’t changed. The same patient, predatory calm still clung to him like a shroud of smoke. His hand slid into her hair, not tight, not controlling—just there. Steady. A promise of guidance, not a demand. For now.

“At your pace,” he murmured, voice a silken caress against her flushed, bare skin.

“But let’s be clear, darling—this isn’t for me.”

His thumb dragged along the curve of her cheek—almost tender.

Almost.

“It’s for you.”

A gift wrapped in sacrilege: hers to offer, his to own.

She didn’t know what he meant.

But gods—she wanted to.

She leaned forward. Let her breath skate over the head of his cock, flushed and slick. A vow unspoken, but branded into flesh—echoed in the quiver of her thighs. Devotion perverted: an offering placed at the feet of a demon, not a god—her mouth open wide, trembling with invitation, her need inscribed by the molten curl of her tongue.

He hissed through his teeth; a quiet, fractured sound not of pleasure, but pressure, of violence barely contained. It surged through her, and she moaned softly at the clench in her core.

This was damnation given flesh. She knew it, and she should have bolted right then. Should have crawled back to whatever divine power she invoked and begged for absolution.

Instead, her lips wrapped around his cock, jaw stretched, and she prayed he’d feed her ruin.

She took him in slowly, letting him feel the searing heat of her mouth. The wet, worshipful slide of her tongue.

His groan was rough, restraint fraying, fingers tightening in her hair.

Her hands rose, gliding over the hard lines of his thighs—unyielding, chiseled from the same stone as the cock she was trying to devour. One hand wrapped around the thick base of him; the other braced against his hip.

Anchoring herself through the storm.

His approval rolled through her. Unspoken, but undeniable. Felt in the rough edge of his breath. In the way he let her pretend the pace was hers, knowing that it was her unbridled hunger leashed only by his calculated control.

And still, she pretended restraint was something she still held.

“Good girl,” he murmured, almost too soft to hear.

The words licked down her spine, a phantom lap against her quivering sex. Her core clenched, tight and wet. The sacred, sinful ache punched straight through her, and she moaned around him. She hollowed her cheeks. Sucked him hard enough to tear a groan from his throat—a crack splintering through that inhuman discipline.

Not a god. 

Not a king. 

Not a monster.

Hers.

If only for as long as she dared to hold him.

She worked him deeper—inch by inch—every action a depraved form of worship. The unyielding pull of her mouth. The wet swirl of her tongue. All of it: deliberate, filthy, devoted.

That’s when something shifted.

A flicker at first. A hum muted by the rush of her pulse.

It crawled up the back of her neck: heat that wasn’t hers. Like molten tentacles coiling over her skin. Invisible hands stroking her from within.

His pleasure—seeping into her.

It pressed against her ribs, wound around her lungs. A languorous flood of sensation. Possessive and inescapable. Her fingers dug into his hip as her eyes fluttered. Nails biting into the sharp jut of bone—anything to keep herself anchored through the swell of sensation. As if he could hold her steady.

He wouldn’t. Not when he was the current swallowing her whole.

She should have pulled away.

She didn’t. She pressed deeper.

Let his hunger seep into her mouth, her limbs, and sink into her marrow. She took him until only the war-drum rhythm of her own heartbeat remained. Until nothing existed but the slick, relentless pulse of his cock in her throat.

The deeper she took him, the deeper he rooted inside her. It was fullness—vast and terrible—like something sacred edged by savagery. A claiming she hadn’t agreed to, but wouldn’t resist.

He was everywhere. Filling her. Rewriting her. Not just fucking her throat—claiming the space. Possession carved by heat and havoc.

And she could taste it. In the salt and skin and heat of him, and something darker.

Desecration had never tasted so sweet.

You’re mine.

The voice came from the base of her skull, a whisper that crawled across her nape like breath.

Always mine.

It wasn’t just a thought. It was a caress—sensual and invasive. A psychic brand that rippled through nerves sparking like live wires. Her moan reverberated through his cock, helpless and lost in the weight of sensation.

He answered with a low, guttural groan of his own, and the sound rolled through her like thunder, swelling in the slick, obscene mess between her thighs.

The hand in her hair tightened, not as punishment—but as a tether. Because he could feel it too: that seductive fusion, her hunger siphoning his essence like it belonged to her.

He burrowed. Rooting through her like a claim carved in bone. Binding not just flesh to flesh, but soul to soul.

And she sucked harder, sank deeper. Let him feel the raw greed of her throat, the devotion in every strangled swallow around his length. Her nose pressed flush to his pelvis. Choking, drooling, vision blurring, eyes stinging with tears, drowning in the unholy rightness of it all.

A reflexive, savage need for control surged in him. He gathered her hair, wrapped it in his fist, and drew her back only enough to allow her to breathe.

She gasped against him, chest heaving, lips swollen and slick. Desperate. Starving.

His thumb traced the corner of her mouth—a slow, deliberate sweep, smearing the spit, the mess, the proof of her enthusiasm in unholy worship.

A consecration in salt and surrender.

“Do you feel it?” he rasped, voice rough with reverence. “Can you feel me inside you, darling?”

She should have denied it.

But he saw it all—everything. Straight through her, down to the supple, trembling meat of her soul. 

She dragged her tongue over the head of his cock—slow, deliberate—her gaze tethered to his. Whispered against the heat pulsing in her mouth:

“Yes.”

Something jagged flashed in his eyes—hunger sharpened to violence. His hips flexed forward, a brutal snap, and she took it. Let him fuck her throat like it was made for him.

She gave him everything.

He moaned, a deep, ragged sound that resonated through her bones as he drove into her again.

And again.

He held her deep until she hovered on the edge of obliteration.

Her jaw ached. Her throat burned. She was swallowing hellfire—salt-slick, molten, endless—and still, she wanted more.

The bond cracked like lightning with each thrust of his hips, sending its current lashing down her spine. It wasn’t just a tether anymore. It was a vein. A conduit.

A pulse of shared desecration ravishing both their bodies.

He didn’t need to warn her.

She felt it.

In the tightening grip at her nape. The tense flex of his thighs. The storm of him coiled with inevitability, building to rupture.

And when he came it was thick, hot—flooding her mouth in punishing waves. She drank him down like communion. 

It wasn’t just devotion. This was sacrilege. Her mouth sealed the pact her body had begun.

His groan was wrecked, raw. The sound of something not merely satisfied, but fulfilled.

And gods help her—she felt it too.

The promise of him, still buried in her throat, pulsed once more. His essence threaded through her, burrowing, changing her. She swallowed everything he gave—every scorching drop—consuming the full weight of his release like an unholy rite.

When he finally pulled back, she sank back onto her heels—panting, dazed—and licked her lips clean without thought.

He cupped her jaw, his thumb gliding over her swollen mouth like a tide smoothing the shore it meant to swallow.

His golden gaze burned. Not like fire, like judgement.

“Good girl,” he murmured, knuckles ghosting across her cheek, soft as falling ash.

His praise surged through her, heavy and hot, settling deep between her thighs.

“You don’t know what you’ve done yet, do you?”

She shook her head slowly, uncertain.

Something ancient stirred beneath her skin—vast, fathomless—a pull she would never escape.

His smile was edged by cruelty.

Almost pitying.

Almost proud.

“You’ve let me in,” he said, voice a silken noose, tightening.

He leaned in, slow and deliberate. His breath was a final benediction against her lips.

“And now?”

The weight of his truth threatened to drown her, and she surrendered to it anyway.

“There’s no shutting me out.”