Her heart dropped into her stomach. Was it over already? The last few days had been the happiest she’d had in a long time. Maybe that was all it took. He’d given her a brief reprieve from loneliness and moved on to the next woman.
Numbness washed over her. Still wearing her coat and boots, with her bag still hung on her shoulder, she went to her bed and dropped face first onto it. She lay there for a long time, listening to the sounds of traffic below her window.
“Bad day?”
Autumn sprang off her bed and spun around. Relief and joy crashed into her. “Irdu?”
“Hello, Autumn.” He stood in the center of her tiny apartment, looking pleased. She launched herself into his open arms, burying her face against his chest and holding him as tightly as she could. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes. Now it is. Where were you? The sun set an hour ago.”
“I didn’t want to enter your home when you’re not there.”
“You’re welcome here any time.” She pulled back to look up at his face. “When I got home and you weren’t here, I thought you were gone for good.”
Irdu adjusted his embrace, picking her up and carrying her to the bed. “I’m still here. As long as I can be.” He set her down on the bed and began removing her shoes.
She sighed and slipped out of her coat. “You can come here as soon as the sun sets. I don’t mind. I like knowing you’ll be here when I come home.”
He nodded, setting her boots on the floor.
“I mean—you don’t have to,” she said quickly, realizing how demanding she sounded. “If there’s something else you want to do.”
Irdu nodded again. His hands went to the waist of her trousers.
“What are you—”
He pulled the zipper down.
“Oh! Wait, listen. I need to tell you—”
He tugged her pants down her hips.
Autumn giggled, but caught his wrists, trying to hold him still. “It’s important for you to know that I don’t want you to be my slave. I know you’re not exactly free to live as you please, but I don’t want you to ever do something you don’t—”
Irdu tugged out of her grasp. His pupils ate up his eyes until they were entirely black. She stared at the change, arrested for a moment. His eyes usually only seemed to change when she felt her own arousal spike. And while she was certainly warming up, she was mostly just having fun wrestling with him.
He took advantage of her momentary stillness to keep undressing her. His fangs glinted against his skin as he grinned, peeling her pants the rest of the way down her legs. She kicked them away, but wrestled with him when he reached for the buttons on her shirt.
“I’m trying to be serious!” She twisted in his arms, catching one clawed hand as it snaked towards her buttons.
“I’m taking you very seriously.” His other hand snuck around, popped her top button open.
“Hey!” It was taking effort not to giggle and rip her shirt off for him. She twisted like an eel, evading his sneaky hands. He caught her hips and turned her around, throwing her onto her back and pinning her in place by straddling her. He opened the next button.
Smiling devilishly, Autumn buttoned her top one back up. Irdu opened a third button, she closed the second one.
“Witch!” he growled with a crooked, fanged smile.
She giggled and refastened another button. Irdu caught her wrists and pinned them over her head with one hand. With his other hand, he quickly unbuttoned her shirt. His claws were surprisingly deft. He flipped her shirt open, revealing her naked breasts. Her nipples tightened in the open air. Irdu dipped his head, sucking one, then the other. With her hips pinned by his bodyweight and her arms held above her head, she was helpless to do anything but receive the pleasure he wanted to give her.
“Irdu—ah! Irdu.” She gasped for breath. “I’m trying to—oh!—tell you that I don’t want you—oh!—to feel like I’m—”
Irdu brought his mouth to hers, silencing her with a hard kiss. “There is nothing you could ask me that I would not want to do for you.” He kissed her again, deeper, longer, until she was writing underneath him. “If I were free, I’d still want to be your slave.”
“No, don’t say that. You’re—” Her objection was swallowed up by another kiss.
“I’m yours,” he growled. He cupped one of her breasts, pinching her nipple. “Say it.” It was somehow both a command and a plea.
“Mine,” Autumn gasped, arching into his touch. Heat and moisture bloomed between her thighs. “You’re mine.”
“Always.” He shifted, stretching his legs out and insinuating his hips between her thighs. She spread her legs for him, welcoming the hot pressure. “And if you want me here at sundown, I’ll be here. Happily. Because I’m yours.”
She panted as he slid his erection over her slick folds.
“When you want a hard cock to ride, I’m your slave. If you want a face to sit on, you use mine.” He punctuated each statement with a thrust, bearing down on her sex with delicious friction. “And if you just want to be held, to talk, you use me. Anything I can give you—sex, comfort, safety—you take from me. Why?”
“Because you’re mine!” Autumn nearly sobbed the words as he set a delicious rhythm, gliding over her swollen, glistening folds, but not inside her.
“Yes. Yours, love. Now, tell your slave what he can do for you.”
“Please, inside me,” she begged. “I need you inside—ohhhh.”
He filled her slowly, his thickness stretching her just to the pleasurable side of pain. Autumn could see the moment when their shared pleasure staggered him—the determined set of his jaw giving way to a slack mouth and a low moan. With his cock wedged deeply inside her, his obsidian gaze met hers and something heavy seemed to pass between the two of them. Her heart lurched inside her chest.
Irdu lowered himself to his elbows, cupping her face as his hips rocked a slow, potent rhythm against hers. She rolled to meet him on each thrust, her parted lips pressed to his cheek, her labored breaths gusting over the side of his face. The intensity of their connection, the rawness of the physical sensations, overwhelmed Autumn, driving her quickly to the edge of climax. She clung to him, perched on that precipitous edge, but not yet tipping over.
“Take what you need, love,” he panted against her ear. “Let me give it to you.”
“I want to give you something,” she breathed back. “Want to make you—”
“Give me your pleasure,” he growled, thrusting deeper, harder.
“Yes.”
“You take what I’m giving you—” he gritted out “—and give it back to me. Take me with you, love.” He let out a gasping breath. “Take me with you—”
“Yes!” Autumn dropped into the acute pleasure that only Irdu could give her. She was distantly aware of her body, trembling and arching, caged beneath Irdu’s mass. But her mind was a riot of some other kind of awareness.
Sparking blue aether swirled around her, a tender whirlwind that lifted her and carried her away through a void of eternal darkness.
Again, she felt the press of other entities, other souls. They gathered around the edges of the protective aether, grim, empty, watchful. Autumn was surrounded by the warm, exquisite embrace of the swirling blue quintessence, but the edge of her mind was aware of the desperate emptiness gnawing at the edges of her safety—a hunger that burned like dry ice. She shivered and twisted within the dancing light, letting it carry her safely through the darkness.
She returned to herself in gradual increments, the darkness fading from her mind’s eye until she became aware of a burning pain in the muscle that sloped between her neck and shoulder. The glowing blue incandescence surrounded them both, and Irdu’s face was buried against her neck, his lips pressed to her skin, his teeth sinking into her. He was frozen above her, still trapped in the ecstasy of their climax.
After a moment, she felt his tongue move against her skin, and he released her from his bite with a gasp. “Autumn!”
He lifted his head. His eyes danced with shifting veils of blue—like a faraway view of the same light that had enveloped them in her own mind.
The dancing light faded from his eyes. The black receded slowly. He blinked, and his gaze found hers. His face was stark with abject horror. “I’m sorry!” Still breathing roughly, he lifted his weight from her body and pulled out of her. “Are you alright?”
Autumn traced a finger over the place he’d bitten, feeling the two puncture wounds his fangs had left. She grinned at him. “I’m good. I liked it.”
“You—what? I bit you! I’ve never lost control like that! I can’t believe I—”
“Shhh.” She leaned up, looping an arm around his shoulders, and brought her mouth to his neck. She bit down—and not lightly. Irdu grunted, the muscles of his back tensing beneath her arm. “There,” she said, releasing him. “Now we’re even.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve never done something like this. What you give me—” he shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve never experienced the like.”
“Good,” Autumn told him fiercely.
“How can you—”
“I’ll bite you again if it’ll convince you I like it.”
He slumped to the side, stroking one clawed hand down the center of her sweating body. “I can’t believe you,” he said, in a tone of wonder that wrapped around her like a warm hug.
“Same,” Autumn assured him, curling against him. “It’s kind of strange though. Lately, there’s—” Autumn stopped herself from telling him about the darkness, and the presences she sensed there. If she gave him any reason to fear for her, she worried he’d do something drastic in an effort to protect her. Like stop coming to her.
Irdu pushed himself up on one elbow, frowning down at her. “What? Tell me.”
“It feels like I leave my body, when I come,” she said, telling him a portion of the truth. “I’ve never felt that before.”
Irdu was quiet for a moment, searching her face. “Does it frighten you?”
“No. It feels amazing.” Except for the bit where a bunch of hollow-eyed voyeurs stared hungrily at her.
Irdu’s frown deepened. “What are you not telling me?”
Autumn pushed herself up and kissed him. “Don’t look at me all suspicious-like. Can I draw you?”
Irdu recoiled, completely thrown by the change in topic. “Draw me?”
“Yes. I’ve already painted you, but I had to do that by memory. I’d like to capture a more accurate likeness.”
“Why would you want to draw me?”
“Because I haven’t drawn a live model in forever. And you are possibly the most interesting live model I will ever see in my life.”
Irdu considered it, looking as if he’d very much like to say no.
“I thought my willing slave would do anything for me?”
He sighed, slanting her a wry look. “Fine.”
Autumn grinned and bounced off the bed to fetch her sketchbook. She peeled her sleeves down her arms, flinging away the button-up shirt and pulled on an oversized t-shirt and underwear.
“What am I supposed to do?” Irdu asked.
“Stay just like that.” Laying on his side, braced on one elbow, his tail curled languidly over his hip.
Autumn settled into the chair beside her dresser, sizing him up as she sharpened her drawing pencil. Irdu stared back, a mixture of amusement and uncertainty. She knew he didn’t see his demon form as anything that could possibly be attractive. Even after she’d told him she didn’t like the illusions, he appeared to her in human form in her dream. The human he used to be. Autumn understood suddenly that his physical form was a constant reminder of everything he’d lost—that he saw it as a barrier between them.
She began shaping the base of his figure, loose lines that captured the silhouette of him, the boldest shadows and highlights.
“You don’t enjoy your work,” Irdu said after several minutes of silence. “That is, I mean your employment.”
“I do and I don’t. At best, it has no artistic or spiritual value. At worst, it actively degrades the importance of real art.”
“But?”
“But I’m good at it, and I like being good at things.” She fell silent for a moment as she etched in the rough beginnings of his features. “And I’m currently working at a nonprofit. So, my designs are technically soliciting money for a good cause instead of enriching some corporation—even if the organization is useless.”
“Useless?”
Autumn explained her theory that the Weldon Foundation was purely a front for the filthy rich founder to illegally shift money—and that very little actually went to the causes the Foundation supposedly supported.
“Some things never change,” Irdu said wearily.
“Human corruption?” Autumn asked.
“That, yes.” After a moment he said, “But I’ve witnessed great acts of kindness, of sacrifice, as well.”
“Yeah?” Autumn asked hopefully.
“Yes.” He began recounting the time he’d seen all the elders of a village form a human barrier between their people and advancing pillagers. The pillagers were a horse people, with better weapons and superior numbers. The village’s warriors had had no hope of defending the village. To everyone’s utter shock, the pillagers admired the elders’ courage, and spared the village.
“Really?”
Irdu nodded. “They expected to die—to give just enough time for the young and healthy to escape the oncoming raiders.”
Autumn’s throat tightened. “That’s both ugly and beautiful.”
“Humanity,” Irdu said thoughtfully.
A comfortable silence descended again. Autumn moved to the foot of the bed, so she could see the details of Irdu’s body up close. As she sketched the faint tattoos wrapping around his biceps, it suddenly occurred to her that now was the perfect opportunity to copy down the cuneiform ideograms for her meeting tomorrow with Leila Kader. She flipped to a fresh page in her sketch book and began copying as many individual characters as she could identify.
“What are you doing now?”
“Drawing your tattoos.” She refrained from telling him about her meeting with Leila Kader. She suspected he wouldn’t like it. And she knew he wouldn’t stop her, or even ask her not to do it, but his unhappiness would make her feel guilty.
She felt guilty anyway, as Irdu lay trustingly on her bed, watching her through heavy-lidded eyes.
“What will you do tomorrow?” Irdu asked.
Autumn looked at him, startled. “Why?”
“I’m curious what you do when I’m not around.”
“Oh. Well. Work, mostly.” She looked back down at her sketchpad. “I’m… I’m meeting someone for lunch. And I have to mail out my mom’s Christmas gift.”
“You give her a gift?”
Autumn shrugged. “She always sends me one.” She made a face. “And it’s probably the only one I’ll be getting this year.”
Irdu said nothing, watching her with a speculative look on his face.
“You know,” Autumn said, refining the points on a particularly complicated ideogram, “It seemed like you were the one who started things today.”
“By ‘things’ you mean sex, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
Autumn lifted her gaze from her sketchpad. “Well?”
“I’ve been thinking about that myself,” he said, expression turning thoughtful.
“Your eyes didn’t change until well into it, and you said your eyes change in reaction to my arousal.”
“Yes.”
“But if you started undressing me before I was even—”
“Are you upset?” He asked, sitting up abruptly.
“No! I liked that you wanted something from me without being driven by my needs.” She closed her sketchbook and set it aside. Crawling to Irdu, she wrapped her arms around his neck and slid into his lap. “Is it possible that you can feel sexual desire, independent of mine
?”
Irdu looked somber. “Does it bother you that I can’t?”
Autumn opened her mouth to tell him no, but remembered their vow to give each other everything—including the truth. “A little,” she admitted. “It feels one-sided—like the things you do for me are only for my benefit. I wish I could give you pleasure without worrying about what gets me off. I wish I could make you come without losing my own control. If I could, I would tease you until you begged for release.”
Irdu grinned. “It’s not all one-sided. I can’t feel pleasure without you—but what you give me is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
“Are you sure you can’t? It really seemed like—”
“I wish it were my own. I certainly felt some sort of… excitement. But I think it was anticipation for the pleasure I knew we would share—not anything innate within myself.”
“Oh.” Autumn tried not to sound too disappointed and failed.
“You already have me on my knees. I’m positive that I’ve begged you more than once.”
Autumn smiled at that. “Yes, you might have…”
“I can try harder.” He leaned in his lips hovering just a hair’s breadth above hers. “Please let me taste you.”
Smiling wickedly, Autumn leaned back. “No.”
Irdu followed her, closing the distance between them without touching her. “Please,” he purred, lips stretching into a wicked, fang-baring smile.
Autumn let out a shuddering breath, and Irdu’s gaze went black. “I can’t tease you when I want you more than you want me,” she complained wryly.
Irdu sat back from her, his smile falling away. The black faded from his eyes. “Is that what bothers you?”
“No, I—”
Irdu surged forward, catching her face between his hands. He looked hard into her eyes. “You promised you’d give me everything. Don’t lie to me.”
Eyes downcast, Autumn sighed. “Yes. I want you. But you only want what I want because you have no choice.”
Irdu’s hands gentled on her face. He stroked his thumbs gently along her cheekbones. “I wish I could let you inside my mind. You’d understand that your fears are completely unfounded. I have never cared for someone as much as I do you. I’ve never felt the way you make me feel. I’ve never looked forward to sex the way I do with you. Never. My way of wanting may be different from yours, but it’s real. And it’s only for you.”
Demon Lover Page 8
