Page 13 of Death's Obsession

“No,” I choke out. I think you’re an angel, I want to say. Saving me from death. Saving me from myself.

“Do not move your hands from this spot, or you will learn just how monstrous I can be. Do you understand?” The pressure around my throat increases and his hands move to the next nipple, abusing it as he did the other. “Nod your head if you understand.”

I nod.

He leans down, blinding me with the darkness beneath his hood. My back arches involuntarily when his chest caresses my nipples. He pulls my bottom lip between his teeth sharply and my breath stutters. He licks the wound and pulls away, letting go of my throat.

“Good girl.”

This is just a vivid dream. This is just a vivid dream. This is just a vivid dream.

The shadowed hands find purchase with my breast, giving them more attention than they’ve ever received in their life.

“What are you doing?” I pant when he lowers himself until my heat is in the same line of sight as his eyes.

“I brought you a meal. It’s only fair that you offer me one in return.” He draws a single finger over my clit, then pushes into my entrance and hisses. “So beautiful.” I cry out from the combined stimulation of the shadowed hands and his real one. “I can smell your need for me, Lilith. I have made a decision, do you want to know what it is?”

It takes everything in me not to tell him to add another finger and just let me fall off the edge of bliss. The one digit keeps moving in and out of me, curling slightly to hit the spot that will make me see stars. But his lazy motions tell me he’s not even trying.

He’s playing with his food.

Delirious with need, I forget that he asked me something until a shadowed hand slaps my breast. “Your words, love.”

My brain is in too much of a frenzy to think of what it might be. “Yes.”

“I’m not just going to taste you. I’m going to hear you scream.”

My cheeks burn. “What—”

I swallow my words when another finger is shoved inside of me, and everything around me stops existing. There is only him and the swirls moving across his chest. I don’t get a chance to compose myself before he drops his head and starts lapping at my clit like a starved man who has just received his first meal.

“Fuck,” he snarls, and it’s almost like he’s laughing to himself in disbelief as a needy moan leaves my lips when he takes me in between his teeth. “I am going to devour you.”

I try to squeeze my legs and am met with a sharp assault to the side of my ass before he grabs the flesh like a lifeline, dulling the pain. One of the hands—I’m too lost in the sea of bliss to determine if it’s corporeal or shadow—pries my legs apart, pushing them as wide as they can go, letting the Faceless Man have more of me.

His fingers curl, and I do exactly what he said: I scream. I don’t even hear his growls of approval as he continues repeating the motion, flicking his tongue faster and faster, like I will run away any second.

I want to go against his command and let my arms down so that I can pull his hood away or reach beneath it and feel exactly what he’s hidden from me.

“Wait, stop.” My voice is raspy, the words coming out on two heaving sighs.

He freezes. My stalker and his shadow stop touching my body, and I almost tell them to disregard what I said and keep going. But I don’t want to have to call him the Faceless Man, not when he’s eating me like I’m his last meal.

“What’s your name? What are you?” I breathe out, my throat beginning to tingle from my screams.

God, Lili, it’s a dream. How the hell would he tell you his name?

“I want you to figure out what I am.” He kisses the inside of my thigh. “But the only word I want you screaming is my name: Letum.”

I bite my tongue because moaning his name is going to be a mouthful. What sort of name is that? Roman? What does it even mean? How did my mind conjure such an ancient-sounding name?

“Okay, Letum.”

He snarls and dives back to fucking me with his fingers and licking me like he might find religion somewhere inside me. A shadowed hand fists my hair and pulls me up onto my elbows so that I can watch his ruthless movements. Letum’s hood angles upwards, as if he’s watching me too, and he’s waiting for me to come undone.

I gaze up at the shadow, and just make out the faintest outline of eyes boring down on me, as if committing the sight to memory. Is the shadow just his soul? What exactly is it—he? I don’t know.

Letum’s hand grips my thigh with his free hand hard enough to leave an imprint on my skin that will bruise come morning, and his shadowed one reaches for my face, tracing my lips like he’s trying to capture my moans with his touch so that he can write about it in a letter. The move is so intimate, making my heart squeeze.

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