Page 27 of The Prospect's Succubus
I kissed her the way you do when you know it’s the last time, and maybe the first honest one, too. I let our mouths fit together slow, the barest pressure, my hand threading up to the back of her neck to keep her from pulling away. She trembled against me, the shake in her arms translating through to my ribs. Her mouth was searing, the kind of heat that made the frostbite in my veins go volcanic. I tasted her.
Jasmine melted into the kiss, her body collapsing flush to mine. She didn’t go for the theatrics; she didn’t weaponize it. She just… gave in. A soft gasp, chest pressed to mine, her hands gripping tight to the back of my jacket as if she let go, she’d be dragged straight to the pit. All the centuries of performance and hunger, stripped down to this single, shivering contact.
I parted her lips. No battle, no struggle. She let me in, let me taste the salt and the wine and the ghost of every soul she’d ever kissed before. But it was mine now, for however long the fuse burned. I let the pressure build, let it get desperate, until she was moving against me, hips rolling, grinding need into the space between us.
I wanted to take her right there, on the cold carnival blacktop, fuck her until the sun came up or our bones gave out, whichever broke first. I wanted to make her forget about Hell, forget about Lilith, forget about the blood pact seething in my veins. But even then, I kept it in check, holding her jaw, kissing her deeper but slower, drawing it out until she broke first.
She did. Jasmine gasped into my mouth, a sound halfway between surrender and desire, and her legs buckled. I caught her, muscled her against the battered hull of the ghost train, and pinned her between metal and flesh. My hands went searching for her waist, the line of her ribs, the small of her back where the dress puckered under the jacket. I wanted to feel every part of her, wanted to see if the demon really ran all the way to skin.
She didn’t resist. If anything, she was more desperate than I was, fingers clawing at my shirt, scraping skin through the fabric, pulling me closer until there wasn’t enough air for either of us. Her body flickered under my hands, part glamour and part true form. I felt the scales, slick and cold, then smooth flesh and then silk and bone and all the secrets in between. She writhed, barely breathing, and I realized I had her, not in a trap, not by the leash, but under the same hunger that had almost ruined me back in the church.
I broke the kiss first, but only by a fraction of a second. Her mouth stayed open, lips bruised, eyes glassy with everything she’d tried to kill off for centuries.
I grinned and said, “Still want to kill me?”
She cocked her head, dazed and dangerous. “In a minute.”
We both laughed, and that was the last normal sound the world made for a little while.
She dragged me behind the ghost train, into the pitch-black tunnel where the last three bulbs flickered a final warning before popping in sequence, each pop a gunshot in the dark. There was no one around. Not even the rats wanted in.
We hit the back wall hard, her shoulders slamming into the cold brick with a thud. I braced her with one arm, the other hand already working the buttons on her coat. She let me, chin lifted, a challenge in the shape of a surrender. The jacket hit the floor, and underneath was just skin, bare from clavicle to hip, a single line of obsidian chain running down the breastbone like a darkartery. She moved fast, desperate, every practiced move replaced by raw need. She yanked my shirt out of my jeans, popped two buttons, then went for the belt, all business. Her hands were rough, almost shaking. Even through the blood thrumming in my head, I felt the edge of panic, as if she stopped for one second, she might never start again.
I pressed my body into hers, pinning her hips with mine, then ran my hand up her side until it found her throat. I didn’t squeeze, just held, thumb resting right over the pulse point. Her eyes flared red for a second, then violet. The bond burned between us, every nerve ending tuning to the same frequency.
“Last chance,” I said, voice hoarse. “You sure you want this?”
She dug her thumb into my wrist, hard enough to leave a mark. “If you stop, I’ll kill you,” she said, and for once, it wasn’t a line.
I grinned, kissed her again, and let my hand drift down, sliding between her thighs. She was already wet—heat and rain and need, no trace of the cold that had haunted her hours ago. I let two fingers find the slick, and she moaned and let the palm of my hand grind down until her head snapped back against the cinderblock. The noise that tore out of her was demon-like.
She grabbed for my cock, found it, and got the zipper down with more rage than finesse. The way she palmed it—root to crown, not bothering to pretend it was anything but the weapon she needed—almost made me lose it right there. I barely got a hand onto her wrist before she stroked me, rough and perfect, and I hissed through my teeth. Somewhere in the dark, the echo came back doubled, like the tunnel itself was rooting for us.
The cold from her skin shocked against the heat of her cunt. I pulled my fingers free, slick and trembling, then brought them to her mouth. She sucked them, eyes locked on mine the whole time, tongue curling around the knuckles like she was dying of thirst. When I brought my hand back to her throat, sheshuddered, and the scales prickled through her skin, violet and black, then faded back to human. I wanted to see how long she could hold it.
I spun her around, pressed her hands flat to the brick, and trailed my lips up her spine, tasting sulfur and the thrum of her pulse through my tongue. She arched into me, hips jerking back, ass grinding against my jeans, and when I pressed the head of my cock into her, she hissed, low and hungry, like the demon had never left.
She was tight. Hotter than any human, wet as a gunshot wound, and her muscles clamped down like she was trying to chew through me. I held steady a second, savoring the involuntary shudder that ran from her shoulders to her heels. Then I drove in, slow, deliberate, letting every inch of her body memorize me. She sucked in air, bit her own wrist, and I watched the black flames writhe under her skin before snapping back to normal. The carnival silence was total, except for the slapping of skin on brick and the way she kept gasping my name.
I fucked her. Not the way you do when you're in love. Not the way you do when you're trying to prove a point. I fucked her like she was the last woman on Earth, and I was the last man willing to put her out of her misery. And every time I bottomed out, I felt her ass clamp and spasm, as if she was trying to milk the poison straight from my spine.
I pulled her hair, wrapped it once around my fist, and used the leverage to grind her down on me, burying myself to the root. She didn’t say a word, just snarled and clawed at the wall, nails scoring white lines in the cinderblock. After the third thrust, her glamour failed. Scales bloomed across her shoulder blades, her hair lifting and writhing as if alive, the demon fighting for air while the rest of her just begged for more.
I could feel her blood bond jumping in my own veins, like a patch of static over a radio dial. Every movement, every pulse,gave me the need to split her open, and the need to hold her together. I forced myself to keep it slow, stretching each thrust until her cries got breathless, then silent, then turned into a hissed monotone that vibrated up through her ribs. The more I pressed her to the wall, the less she seemed to weigh, until her feet barely touched the floor, and the only thing keeping her from floating away was my hand clamped tight around her throat.
She pulsed around me, a rhythm that defied biology, and I realized she’d already come. At least once, maybe more. The scent of her, the taste, was ammonia and sharp fruit, so intoxicating I could barely see straight. If this was how she hunted, it was a miracle she hadn’t killed off half the city in a night.
As her body convulsed, slick and feverish around me, I let go of the need to be gentle. I jackhammered her against the wall, using every ounce of strength, and her body just took it, asked for more, bent to the shape of me until I thought we’d break the brick before either of us gave out. She tried to scratch at my hip, but her arm wouldn’t reach, so she just slapped the wall to time the rhythm, a wet echo for every thrust.
The blood bond hit then, open circuit. I felt her inside my head, every image, every memory, her first kill, the taste of the pit, Lilith’s hand at her nape. The loneliness, pulsing and endless, the terror of being obsolete. I caught flashes of myself, reflected in her eyes, and for the first time, I saw pity, not just hunger. It undid me, more than even the heat of her ass or the music she made every time I slammed home.
She found her voice again. “Don’t stop.” It was a whisper, hardly enough to carry above a prayer, but I caught it and locked my hand over her mouth, shoving her face into the brick and letting the vibration of her moan run through my palm and down my arm like a fuse.
I didn’t just fuck her—I devoured her, every inch, every sound, every lean and twitch of muscle. She pulsed so hard around my cock that I thought I’d go off then and there, but I gritted my teeth, buried my forehead against her shoulder, and used the last dregs of my willpower to keep it tight.
The glamour flickered out completely. Jasmine’s skin was a storm of violet-black, slick and alive, and beneath it the scales shifted like mirrors in darkness. Her hair arced up, a living halo, every strand an electric current. I slid my hand from her throat to her jaw, yanked her head back, and bit the spot beneath her ear. Hard. She whined into the wall and bucked back, grinding me deeper inside, and I felt the shudders wrack her from head to toe. Blood, dark and red, raced down her neck, and I drank it in, the copper and iron taste part of the very universe that created her.
I let her ride it, let her shake and gasp until the sound of her voice was gone, replaced by a guttural rasp. She sagged, boneless, until I had to pin her to keep her from puddling to the floor, her knees shot, her muscles fried by the feedback loop of the fuck and the blood bond. I held her up, cock still buried inside, and just breathed.
