by Jenn Stark
He lost that grin when Cressida lunged for him, clearly unprepared for her to follow him up, or push him backward with a force that was part primal, part magic. Stefan dropped onto the bed, his eyes wide, then jolted in shock as she climbed on top of him.
“No,” he started, but the word seemed to get stuck in his throat as Cressida slid up his legs and positioned herself above him, straddling his hips.
“Please don’t deny me, demon,” she said, staring at him with a combination of need, want, and exultation. The eyes that stared back at her glowed a fiery red, and when the demon spoke, it was little more than a growl.
“Cressida,” he began, but she didn’t want to hear the warning in his voice, didn’t want to hear his excuses about why this wasn’t a good idea, why they should wait, why she should reconsider.
She sank down over him. Stefan’s body went rigid as she stretched around his shaft, and a surge of deliciously wet heat swamped her body. This was nothing like what she’d expected—there was no pain, no tearing, no doubt. There was only Stefan, filling her so full, she couldn’t imagine how she could ever be complete again without him. Only Stefan.
She sighed low and deep, her exhalation almost more of a feral groan even to her own ears. She planted her hands on his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his flesh, but Stefan didn’t seem to mind, while she was lost in the sweet slide of her body over his, the pulsing rhythm of their movements growing deeper, longer, with each thrust. Stefan reached up and clasped his hands on her hips as she braced herself on him, and she was dimly aware of the fire dancing along her knuckles. She would be seeing purple and red flames in her dreams for the rest of her life, she was sure, and she’d welcome it every time.
“Yes…” Cressida murmured, or she thought that was her voice, though it was soft and ethereal and seemed to take on a life of its own, swelling to fill the whole room. Stefan’s gaze snapped to her face, and she didn’t miss the change in his intensity. He began moving faster, pulsing up into her, his red-hot eyes glittering with a need so bright and clear, it had to be reflecting her own. Where she felt he ordinarily would have asked her to slow, to wait, to draw the moment out, he seemed to move with redoubled energy, his mouth stretching into a fierce and possessive grin.
“Yes, Stefan,” she whispered, and he stared at her more wildly, the sound of his glamoured name driving him to a harder, pounding rhythm. “Yes…”
“Ahh!” Stefan’s shout cut her off, and suddenly, a wave of mind-shattering energy seemed to explode out from the center of them, bursting all the way to the heavens for a split second, then rushing back into her heart, her core, the marrow of her bones.
Beneath her, Stefan bucked in instinctive response, and he howled something in a language she didn’t know as she threw back her own head and cried out, fiercely, wildly exultant.
They collapsed together on the bed, utterly spent.
Chapter Thirteen
Stefan stared at the far wall, his lungs heaving, while Cressida pulled herself to her feet and stepped away from the bed, wrapping the sheets around her. “No one’s here,” she muttered.
“Were you planning on an audience?” She turned back to look at him, wide-eyed and hopelessly disheveled, and he caught his breath. She looked impossibly gorgeous wrapped in the sheets the way she was, and he grinned as she bit her lip.
“No. It’s just that—no one’s bothered us. At all.” She frowned, looking at the door to the bedroom, as if she expected the troops to come rolling in at any moment.
“And that’s weird because…? Other than you having a demon in your bedroom?”
She laughed, her anxiety dialing down a notch. “Other than that, yeah. The fact that no guards have been dispatched to my apartment surprises me. Because your torque failed and there was the attack…” She scowled. “Oh my god. Those dead demon bugs. They’re all over my living room.”
“Not anymore,” Stefan said, laughing at her startled expression. “All part of the service, ma’am. We in the Syx aim to please. But why do you think Marcus will be down here? Isn’t he supposed to lay off while you’re on your little dates?”
“Well, yes, but…” She blew out a long breath. “Honestly, none of this is going the way it was supposed to.”
Stefan patted the bed beside him. “Maybe this would be a good time for you to explain how it was supposed to go, and we can see where you screwed things up. Oh, never mind, we know that—it’s when you chose a dill weed as your head study buddy. But we’ll get to that.”
Cressida crossed back to the bed and sat on it, her attention snagging on Stefan’s skin as if she was seeing something that wasn’t really there.
He glanced down sharply, but no—his glamour remained intact. “What?”
“There was fire,” Cressida said. “Floating around my fingers, over your skin, there—” She reached out and didn’t quite caress his arm. “It didn’t burn me, but it was there.”
He nodded. He’d seen it too. It’d mostly looked a bad pyrotechnics effect, but what if—
Cressida seemed to hit on the same realization as he did. “What if that’s what happens when a witch partners with a demon?” she asked, her eyes going wide. “What if that fire, or whatever it is, is what will take out Ahriman?”
Stefan considered that. “Could be. I haven’t seen that particular type of fire in anything I do. We tend to go for the old-fashioned kind. But I have seen flame like that. Sort of.”
“You have? Where?”
“Oh, just a part-time Tarot card reader I know. She’s started throwing fireballs around like it’s her job. But if you can throw it too…” He tilted his head. “Well, that’d be cool.”
Cressida breathed out a stuttering sigh. “I can’t tell anyone—maybe Dahlia. But no one else.”
Stefan kept his face as neutral as possible. “No? Why’s that?”
“Because I…” She cast her gaze down, regarding her hands as if they no longer belonged to her. “I need an advantage against those in the coven who wish to do me harm. Something I can use that no one else expects. Some strength they’re not aware I have.”
Stefan stared at her. “You know, not to get all up in your business, but your little coven sounds more like a nest of vipers than the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Where’s the camaraderie? The joy? Where’s all the moon hugging?”
Cressida frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m just saying, most covens seem a little more, I don’t know, chummy than you guys. What happened to the Scepter Coven that made you all suck?”
“We don’t suck,” Cressida protested, but her mouth tugged down at the corners, and her tone was dismayed. Stefan decided to leave it at that. The truth was, he didn’t know much about covens, but there was something decidedly…off about this one. Something important.
“Okay, well…anyway,” Cressida continued. “Since I don’t know how much time left we have together, would you mind if I tried to compel you? Not sexually, I promise. I wouldn’t do that. But it’s just—you’re so strong…”
Everything on Stefan went stiff again as she moved toward him. He tried to ascribe his interest in her body—his continued, pronounced, and very evident interest—to the fact that she was simply an attractive female, with her tumble of dark red hair, her vivid green eyes, her full mouth that snagged his attention as she bit down on her lower lip in concentration. Surely that would be enough to tempt any demon, especially one as depraved as him. She also was a jumble of conflicting emotions—her stern, stoic demeanor masking a roil of fear, vulnerability, and a drive for success that had more to do with not letting anyone down than a true taste for leadership. She was a messy, fallible, glorious human—and yet none of that explained Stefan’s hissed-out breath as Cressida dropped her hand to his chest. Her fingers were cool and soft, but her touch burned him so much, he had to fight not to flinch.
Stefan swallowed as she pushed him back, then drew the sheet do
wn his body. He self-consciously twitched for the trailing edge. “I’m cold,” he muttered.
“You’re not cold. You’re burning up with heat.”
Her almost clinical survey of his body should have helped convince him her gaze wasn’t intimate, and certainly not sensual, but it didn’t. Cressida breathed out with appreciation as she flattened her hands on his chest. “I couldn’t focus on anything specific before,” she murmured. “You were too overwhelming.”
“I get that a lot.” Still, as she pressed both hands to his chest, Stefan’s eyes nearly crossed. He would be okay with them going back to where she was overwhelmed. The full attention of the witch beside him on the bed was affecting him in a way he wasn’t prepared for. And his cock was already throbbing, barely covered by one corner of the sheets. Given how fascinated she seemed to be with his collarbone, he didn’t hold out much hope that she’d ignore his full and straining shaft. He wasn’t sure how he was going to handle that.
“Your glamour is impervious to my view. I can test that, see if I’m stronger now that we—I mean since we—”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I feel so used,” he declared, and was rewarded by the blush of embarrassment that stained her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she said, continuing to draw her hands along his body, curving them over his shoulders. She darted him a quick glance. “Did you mind very much?”
“I’ll get over it.”
“Good.” She blew out a shaky breath, and he realized—her hands were shaking too. “But your glamour is as good a test as I can think of. I’d like to see you—”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said with absolute authority, grateful to be back in familiar territory. “I don’t look like other demons, who are horrible enough. Most demons are self-made creatures, usually based on whatever they think will scare humans the most.”
“Really?” She seemed to be listening to him, but that didn’t slow down her sensual exploration of his body.
Stefan swallowed. “Yeah. So you’ll find demons with prongs, with haunches instead of legs, claws and wings instead of arms, animal heads, multiple heads, inverted or upside-down heads—whatever is a mortal’s worst nightmare, chances are a demon has stumbled upon it. There are a lot of us, and…um, what are you doing?”
Cressida drew her fingers up and down the arch of his neck, as if she’d never seen a throat before. The movement was impossibly gentle, again almost clinical…and unbearably erotic.
“Your skin is so warm.”
“A steady diet of brimstone will do that to you.” He would have broken off and simply focused on breathing through his nose as she moved her questing fingers to his jaw, but she didn’t give him the out.
“Continue explaining about your glamour,” she urged.
“Ahh…” Stefan could feel his lips tremble, but it wasn’t really his fault. “That’s a little difficult to do with your fingers in my mouth.”
“They’re not in your mouth. They’re on your mouth.” If anything, she stared harder as she traced the outline of his lips, and Stefan’s cock responded with such a powerful spasm, it nearly lifted him off the bed. Cressida muttered a frustrated curse and leaned forward, her face only inches from his. “I don’t understand why I can’t pierce this veil. Continue. How are you different?”
Stefan could feel the instinctual spell of compulsion radiating from Cressida, but he didn’t know if that was what drove him to continue speaking or if it was the aroma of jasmine and vanilla wafting up from her hair, the scent of human heat and sexual interest that filled his every breath. While, ordinarily, talking about his demonic form would be the last thing he’d want to do with a beautiful woman leaning over him, her naked breasts swaying toward his chest, now he reached for the conversational gambit as if it was a lifeline.
“Like I said, I didn’t get the option of choose-your-own-horror. By the time I realized I’d been transformed into a demon, the damage that’d been done to me was already set. In some ways, it was far less shocking than you’d expect for any self-respecting demon. No animal parts, no extra limbs, no bright shiny things sticking out from me in all directions, dripping with poison.”
That caught her attention, and he breathed a sigh of relief as her hands stilled on his mouth, and her gaze met his. Hers were no longer filled with the sleepy kind of haze that dogged most humans who were on the verge of abandoning themselves to sexual impulses. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or bad thing anymore.
“You saw Boltar?” she asked. “His true form?”
“I can see everything,” Stefan said without hubris. “Demons can recognize other demons, generally speaking, unless they’re spelled otherwise. But the Syx sees all.”
“But Boltar couldn’t see you.”
“He couldn’t. He’s kind of a self-centered guy, though. He wasn’t trying very hard.”
“Okay.” Once again, she jogged left when he would have been far more content with her remaining on the straight and narrow. She reached up, her touch leaving his mouth to trail up the side of his face, tracing the delicate contour of his ear. This, in particular, he shouldn’t feel, given what had happened to him, but a demon’s life didn’t work that way. The touch of her light fingers on his glamoured ear was exquisite torture, going straight to his groin. Then again, everything was going straight to his groin. It was like an express lane to insanity.
Before she could prompt him again, he plunged on, his eyes drifting shut to try to focus on his words. Mistake. It merely meant every unexpected drift of her finger, every soft exhalation, was that much more in focus in his mind. But he conjured up an image of his current demonic appearance and—that definitely helped.
“I pretty much look like I’ve been dipped in acid. Like Voldemort on a really bad day. My body is bleached white, I have no features—no nose, no ears. My eyes are sunken into craters. I look just enough like my regular self, however, that there’s no mistaking who I am. It’s not like you could walk by me and not think—oh, that’s Stefan of the Syx after he got his face sliced off.”
Cressida murmured a soft objection, sounding genuinely dismayed, and Stefan resolutely kept his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see either horror or pity in her eyes, for all that he was deliberately trying to incite them.
“If you can tell me all this, why don’t you simply show me?” she asked.
Stefan tightened his jaw. “Because I don’t want to. It doesn’t matter why.” Technically not true, but she didn’t need to know that. The rules guarding witches and demons were ancient and absolute, even if he was a Syx. But some of those rules had been deliberately scrubbed from the books before the covens had gotten wise to their demon-summoning ability. As far as Stefan was concerned, witch ignorance was definitely bliss.
“And what about your body? What does it look like?”
“It’s less problematic, which has its good and bad points as well. Again, there are the acid burns, some bits of skin bleached white, others black. The bones broken and reset at almost the right angles, but not quite, causes a permanent lurching limp. The damage to my feet doesn’t help that. My arms are relatively intact, but my hands were broken and put back together by a monkey on fentanyl, I’m pretty sure. Not a good look. All of it is encased in skin that’s more scars than dermis, and you’ve pretty much got a sack of pain. The fact that it looks almost like my original form if you squint really hard and turn your head to the side is a trick I’ve never seen replicated in another demon.”
“Why did it happen to you, then?” she asked. Her pressure shifted on the bed, as if she was sitting up, and Stefan breathed a tight sigh of relief. He was so deep in his story that he could almost keep from imagining her deep red hair tumbling over her pale shoulders, her flashing green eyes fixing on him, her soft, full lips, bruised from his kisses, parting and—
Okay, this wasn’t helping. Back to the tale of the crypt.
“It happened because it was the nature of my sin,” h
e said, with a frankness that was somehow made easier because his eyes were closed. In his mind’s eye, he could see the cause for all his troubles, well—not the true cause, not really. He was the cause, and he’d long since come to terms with that.
“You started to tell me about that,” she murmured, and he nodded, though he didn’t open his eyes. He wanted to tell her, he decided, wanted her to know. It was water under the bridge…but water he’d been treading for a very long time.
“I was one of God’s most beautiful Fallen, if I do say so myself. A wonder to behold. While everyone had their claim to beauty, though, mine took it a step further. I was not only spectacular, I was desirable. Particularly to mortal females. It wasn’t something I set out to be, it simply was. And I—didn’t handle it well.”
“You fell in love?”
He snorted, his mouth twisting with derision. Her fingers were winding through his hair, which was making it difficult to focus. “I didn’t fall in love. Demons or angels—that’s not how we’re built, even when we understand the capacity for the pure and profound feeling of love itself. But I wasn’t equipped to manage the kind of human love that was presented to me. Lust I understood. Reveled in, in fact. Desire was something that had form and meaning and function. And love—the resolute, stoic, unmitigated devotion of one form for another, I understood that as well. But the darker side of love, where devotion and need and want all mix together, that I didn’t understand. Didn’t understand the desperation it could drive someone to, the almost manic energy, the—”
He broke off as Cressida’s weight suddenly shifted, and his eyes snapped open. “What are you doing?” He gasped as he stared up at her—up, because she was perched above him, her hands on his chest once more, bracing herself. Her ass rested on his abdomen, mere inches away from his full and ready cock. Now her hair was fully tumbled over her shoulders, and her lips had somehow darkened since the last time he’d seen them. Even as he stared, her small pink tongue emerged from her plump mouth and licked the surface of those beautiful lips, and heat swelled through Stefan, making him sweat.