Prey (The Hunt Book 2)

by Liz Meldon

  She toppled into his chest, her bound hands between them, and Severus wrenched her head back by her ponytail. Her little squeal of surprise, dragged out by the sharpness of his kiss, earned her a growl in return. He held her flush against him, his arousal prominent, unabashedly pressed to her abdomen, even as he walked them into the center of the strange little room.

  He left her breathless once more, ending the kiss too abruptly for her liking and yanking her bound hands high above her head. Moira winced, shoulders protesting only slightly, and was forced onto her toes as Severus hung her from that iron hook. Just for good measure, she tried to free herself, squirming about as he stepped back, but once again he had proven his ability to trap her in one place.

  From a distance, Severus admired his work, those black eyes betraying nothing—the noticeable bulge in his pants did that just fine. Mouth smug. Hands clasped behind his back. Severus was the vision of a man too pleased with himself.

  He cocked his head to the side, watching her tiptoe in place. She wanted him back, his lips dragging across her skin and hands doing torturously wonderful things to her body. The distance left her uneasy.

  “Is the door locked?” she asked, voice cracking.

  “What’s wrong, darling?” He grazed a finger from her cheekbone down, over her lips, along her neck, across her collarbone. His eyes seemed to glitter, catching the individual stars in the ceiling. “Not an exhibitionist?”

  “No,” she said firmly. Severus pursed his lips, then huffed and marched around behind her. Moments later, she heard something heavy click into place. The nerves drained out of her—only to be replaced by nerves of a different kind entirely. Locked in—just her and the demon. Unable to turn around, the hook unyielding, she was forced to listen to the gentle click of his shoes, each footstep sending a prickle of excitement, anxiety, need across her entire body. Her nipples hardened, poking through the thin, velvety fabric of her bralette—a garment designed to be both a bra and a shirt. She’d bought it years ago and had never been brave enough to wear it.

  Now, she wondered if Severus would do her the courtesy of leaving it in one piece. He hadn’t been all that thoughtful with her clothes last time.

  Severus circled her slowly, each step precise and measured. He did it twice, the second time trailing his finger down her spine—gently at first, then roughly digging into the dip of her lower back. She squirmed out of reach, only to be pulled back by the little zipper at the top of her skirt. Biting her lower lip, she inhaled sharply as he unzipped the garment, then pushed it over the swell of her backside, down her thighs, until she stepped out of it and kicked it away. She expected her panties to come next—red, lacey, the mildly scandalous crotchless ones he had found so interesting that first day in her bedroom. She had been mortified then that someone so stunning—and terrifying—had taken an interest in her panty drawer.

  It seemed the fascination remained, because he paused for a moment, running his hands along the lace before delving between her thighs, his fingers ghosting over her slick folds left exposed by the slit. Moira pushed up higher on her toes, gasping shakily as pleasure fluttered out from her core. Then, just like that, he retreated—no more than a torturous tease. She licked her lips, her entire body feeling flushed, as he smirked.

  “You remembered my fondness for them. I’m flattered,” he rumbled, his voice thick with desire and maybe—affection?

  “And you have expensive taste. Keep that in mind if you decide to rip anything this time,” she told him, though the firmness had evaporated from her tone. A shuddering, trembling breathiness replaced it, and she tried to square her shoulders, tried to find the fire again, but she could already feel herself melting as his dark chuckle washed across her skin.

  “I do so enjoy that smart little mouth of yours,” he cooed as he grasped her face. She thought he might kiss her as he swooped in, but he merely scraped his teeth over her chin and down her throat. Moira hissed softly, pain intermingling with the pleasure slowly gathering deep within her. She should have held back a little—not played so easily into his hand. But Moira couldn’t ignore the heat between them. She didn’t want to.

  So, she arched her back, rising up just enough to meet his open-mouthed wandering down the planes of her body. His lips plucked at each nipple through her bralette, and she squirmed, wetness palpable now between her thighs. He murmured her name, painting it across her skin in broad, sweeping strokes, until he finally stopped. With a gulp, Moira peered down to find a demon kneeling before her, hands on her thighs, eyes drinking her in.

  “Severus, you—oh!” She giggled, not meaning to, when he lifted her up and all but sat her on his face. With her legs dangling over his shoulders and down his back, her arms found instant relief, the pressure easing as he took the brunt of her weight.

  Every slow, even breath, a torturous exhale tumbling between his parted lips, burned her sex. She thought he might torment her. After all, they had a lot of time to kill before his appointment with Verrier. However, Severus pushed the lace aside quickly instead, then cupped her backside, fingertips bruising, and guided her aching heat straight to his mouth. Her body spasmed with the first sensuous lick between her swollen lips, her eyes wide. Something straddling the lines of a gasp and a sob slipped out, pleasure radiating through her, so swiftly, so suddenly, that she almost told him to stop.

  She’d told him to stop last time too—right before she’d had her first orgasm. It had been…life-changing. And uplifting, honestly. Not because a man had showed her how to pleasure herself—but because he had taken the time to prove that she wasn’t broken. He had taken the time to prove her fears wrong. All she needed was the right pair of hands, the right mouth, on the right places.

  Humanity had been fading from her ever since her changes began, and with Severus, she was finally starting to understand why. She wasn’t defective. She wasn’t doomed for a pleasureless existence. She had just given up on herself, beaten down from everything—too despondent to even try.

  That same night, Moira had locked her bedroom door, turned off the lights, and touched herself as he had. Harder than she had ever dared before, she explored her body, this new body, imagining his hands, his tongue, those blazing black eyes swallowing her whole—and she had come just fine on her own, too. Her climaxes with Severus had been better, but she was determined to outshine him someday with enough solo practice.

  Someday—but not today. Not with the way his tongue looped around her clit, each sweep drawing out a sweet pain that reminded her of lightning. The searing, burning, crackling kind that cuts across a black sky in the middle of a storm—so too did her pleasure slice across the steadily swelling fog of desire building within her, threatening to burst, to rain down and drown her.

  She let her head fall back, helplessly trapped and in no mood to escape anytime soon. Hands bound, unable to move her hips away from his greedy mouth—only able to grind them up and down, only able to take the ecstasy of his touch, not deny it.

  It felt like hours—but it must have only been minutes—before Moira finally broke. Eyes clenched, she whimpered through the pleasure lapping across every part of her like a rushing, thundering river. Her heels dug into his back, and Severus bit her thigh in response—but neither let up. Not until the high of her undoing cracked and splintered, and Moira’s eyes fluttered open, lost in the twinkling starlight above.

  Slowly, the music filtered through the fog, and her body sagged when Severus set her feet back on the ground and stood. He wiped around his mouth, then licked his fingers clean. Moira expected the smugness again, the triumphant grin, but his lips were set in a thin line instead, jaw clenched tight enough that the muscles flickered. Fear crept through the pleasure, coaxing her out again, her breath starting to quicken as he strode around her and disappeared from sight.

  She didn’t need to turn around to know he was still with her. Moira felt him, the soft, barely-there vibration of his being—something she had never understood before, but the deeper she
sank into this world, the more she embraced it. She heard him too, the pop of his pants button and the hiss of his zipper. Fingers bit into her hips again, her thighs, as he eased her legs apart—and then filled her with a single, brutal thrust.

  Her cry bounced off the walls, eyes wide and fluttering as she adjusted to the sheer size of him, to the fullness. Pleasure bloomed within her again, tendrils of pain laced throughout, and Moira turned her head only slightly when she felt his lips on her shoulder.

  “You are,” he growled, briefly biting down hard enough to make her yelp, “the most exquisite creature I’ve ever seen.”

  When words failed her, she simply let her head fall back against him, lips parted and eyes closed—the ultimate trust, a calculated risk. He nuzzled against her neck, her skin erupting with goosebumps in response. Firmly, his hand wrapped around the base of her ponytail again. Her toes could no longer reach the floor, but she still tried anyway, straining, and Moira shuddered softly when his other hand trailed across her bare stomach. He did so gently at first, tickling her, chuckling as she squirmed, until he finally slipped under her top’s lace trim, under the red velvet, and pinched her already painfully hard nipple. She flailed out a little, legs kicking, hips bucking in response, but he stilled her with a harsh tug of her hair, his teeth on her neck.

  “Are you ready, sweet little Moira?” he rasped in her ear. She kicked back, savoring his grunt of pain when her heel collided with his shin. His fingers moved to her other breast, just as ruthless with that nipple, and he nipped at her earlobe. “So be it.”

  “Big talk—”

  He tore another sharp, startled cry from her with the first thrust, then the next, and the next, pounding into her. Her wrists screamed and her sex ached, the build toward another climax making her bite down on the insides of her cheeks. Muffle the cries, the whimpers, the moans. Severus reprimanded her by latching onto the nape of her neck and sucking until she kicked him again.

  “Don’t be quiet,” he hissed, his voice thick, the words savage. “I want them to hear you. I want to hear you.”

  Moira wanted to keep the sounds to herself—but she couldn’t. Not when he took her harder, faster, hammering into her, tweaking her nipples, wrenching her head back—until she saw stars again. Earnest, true stars. The pleasure of her second climax dulled her senses, the twinges of pain fading fast, only ecstasy in their place. Tears rolled down her cheeks as thick, molten heat leisurely swept across her body.

  “Moira?” She heard his voice distantly, through the fog—barely. “Am I hurting you?”

  “N-no,” she managed, her body tight and trembling.

  “You’re crying.”

  “I’m happy.” Happy to be normal, to experience normal. To be kissed and taken by a man who didn’t see the changes—who didn’t fear them. In that moment, she was happier than she had been in a long time… Tied up in what could very well be a sex dungeon, being pounded into by a demon. Moira was happy.

  “Fuck.” He hissed a string of incoherent curses against her skin, releasing her hair and wrapping both arms tightly around her waist. The brutality of his final thrusts punctured the post-orgasm bliss settling in, but he stilled moments later, choking out her name.

  They stayed there, pants and soft moans filling the room, until Moira realized her fingers had gone numb. She nudged his shin this time, and Severus needed no words to lift her, then detach her bound hands from the hanging hook. A little unsteadily, he carried her across the small chamber and sank onto one of the stone benches, still buried inside her.

  “You know,” Severus murmured, kissing up her arm, her shoulder, her neck, “we still have another, oh…” He held up his wrist, a thick, expensive-looking watch staring back at them. “Twenty-five minutes.”

  “Do we?” Moira asked, settling in, ignoring the dreamy quality that clung to her words. “How ever will we pass the time?”

  “Oh,” his hands trailed up her thighs, rearranging her on his lap so she could feel him hardening again inside her, “I think you’ll find I’m very creative when it comes to killing time…”

  Moira pressed her hands to her cheeks, hiding the blush, and laughed.

  Chapter Six

  “Are you sure I can’t get you something stronger to drink?”

  “No, water is fine,” Moira insisted, smiling when Severus’s roommate Alaric set the glass in front of her. He’d filled it to the brim with ice, just the way she liked it, without needing to be told. “I think I’ve had enough to drink tonight.”

  “I very much doubt that,” he said with a chuckle, leaning on the counter, long fingers threaded together. “I’m sure you’ll find your tolerance for most things is higher these days, if Severus’s theory is correct.”

  She shrugged. “I guess so.”

  He was right, of course. She didn’t feel the least bit drunk from the drinks she’d had before she and Severus found a scandalous way to kill time down in the sex pit. Not even tipsy, which was what two strong drinks would have done to her a year ago. Food never seemed to satiate her these days, not even her favourites, and she could handle all the savagery Severus had to throw at her in the bedroom. It would be a fun experiment for another night—to see just how much it would take to get her good and drunk. Tonight, however, Moira wanted to keep her wits about her.

  Taking a long sip of her water, she glanced over her shoulder toward the staircase Severus had climbed nearly an hour earlier, his trusty sketchbook tucked under his arm. By the time they had resurfaced, the scene had picked up, and he’d deposited her at the back bar with a guarantee that his roommate would look after her. Unfortunately for her, Alaric had been busy tending to patrons for much of her solo hour, so she wasted time away on her phone, no longer in the mood to demon-watch as the minutes ticked by.

  Now that the seats alongside her had emptied, however, she finally had the tall, sinewy figure all to herself. A delicate smattering of barely-there freckles painted the bridge of his nose. They matched his copper-red locks, which were swept back and arranged with some sort of styling product. He was a handsome guy, complete with a very posh English accent to boot, but she didn’t feel the same hum vibrating off him that she had come to associate with Severus.

  “So, how long have you and Severus been living together?” she asked when she realized he was still watching her.

  “Well, my father moved me over here when my mum died, and I was seventeen,” he told her. Moira schooled her features as she always did when someone mentioned the death of a parent, but she still felt that stab of longing, that slash of emptiness, deep inside her. She might not have been actively grieving for her mom anymore, but she missed her—always.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, hands curled around the huge glass, “about your mom. Mine died when I was twenty-one. It’s… It sucks.”

  “Not my best year, no.” Alaric swallowed hard, eyes everywhere but her. “But it was good to reconnect with my father. He wanted me close. Back then I thought it was because I looked so much like her, but then he gave me a job here, and I met Severus, and… Well, we’ve been roommates ever since.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t throw that term around when you’re referring to a demon,” Alaric told her with a slight grin, one that grew when her cheeks colored. “He’s a good guy though. He’ll never admit it, of course, but he’s one of the few demons I’ve met who didn’t give a shit that I’m a hybrid.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, curiosity piqued. “Do demons generally have a problem with hybrids?”

  “Sev didn’t tell you?”

  “No.” Moira huffed. “He’s a bit stingy with information. It seems like I’m still operating on a need-to-know…thing.”

  “Right.” He straightened and grabbed a spray bottle and a roll of paper towels, then started cleaning the counter. “Look, hybrids are a bit of a…taboo subject in the demon community. Most demons don’t acknowledge any children they have with humans. I was lucky my father loved my m
um as much as he did, otherwise I’d be on my own.”

  “But why?” She hadn’t put much thought into being a split between a human and an angel, but from the tone of Alaric’s voice, perhaps she should. “What’s the issue with hybrids?”

  “It all depends on how the demon views humans,” Alaric told her, throwing himself into a particularly troublesome spot, his brow furrowed. “Some see them as a, well, a lesser species, if you will. Others look at them as food. A few see them for what they are—people. But the majority of demons just think themselves better than humans.” He glanced up at her, his eyes a lovely emerald hue. “So, you take an apex species, then mix it with the bottom of the food chain… No one really likes the outcome, especially when you don’t know if the demon side’ll even show until they’re adults.”

  “Has yours started to show?” she asked, not missing a beat. She couldn’t imagine those wholesome green eyes going black, but then again, there were many stunning creatures walking around this side of the Inferno. Just because you were pretty on the outside didn’t mean there wasn’t a beast dripping with darkness on the inside.

  “No. Not yet, anyway.” He chuckled, rolling his shoulders back when he straightened. “I think he’s shy. Having Verrier for a father would probably give any demon a complex.”

  Before she had the chance to ask why—because she still didn’t understand what the big deal was with this Verrier guy, beyond the fact that it was clear Severus feared him—a cluster of noisy men settled along the barstools, filling all but the one beside her. Tucking away his cleaning supplies, Alaric shot her another grin, then mouthed be right back. Moira nodded and smiled, then took another generous gulp of her water. Hopefully he wasn’t gone for too long. While drawing information out of Severus was like pulling teeth, Alaric seemed all too happy to talk.