Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy) Read online

  She rose up from her knees. “Okay, time to take a look at that shoulder.”

  She leaned over me, pushed up her glasses, and her nose wrinkled as she examined the gash. It wasn’t pretty: ragged torn flesh and still bleeding. She was right about it being infected, but putting so much thought and care into one’s wounds was a human thing. Forget about it and sleep it off was my usual plan. If an injury posed a greater risk to me, I’d know, likely because I’d be in pieces.

  She picked up another cotton ball and doused it. “Are you, uh...going to put on pants?”

  I grinned, settling in a little more comfortably. “No.”

  She rolled her eyes, but a blush rose on her cheeks. The way the blood filled in the spaces between her freckles was adorable. It made me want to hold her face in my hands and feel the heat beneath my fingers.

  She shooed the cat aside and, for the sake of easy access, straddled my lap. Her crotch pressed against my cock, and her eyes flickered up to mine as it twitched at her closeness, the cotton ball paused in mid-air.

  I widened my eyes teasingly. “Is that comfortable?”

  She bit her lip in silence, bending forward to clean the wound, moving slowly around the tender flesh. I kept the grin on my face, her thighs twitching slightly against mine, the scent of arousal flooding her. Her eyes were focused on her work but her mind was elsewhere.

  “You said Hell is like Earth,” she said, staring at the wound, as if she could force her arousal away if she focused on gore. “Is it really?”

  “It’s bigger,” I said. “So big that only the oldest of demons have ever seen the ends of it. There’s wide empty plains, forests so deep and filled with monsters that only our strongest dare to go in.” I stared at the ceiling as I recalled it. I’d been on Earth for over a hundred years. I wasn’t all that old, for a demon. Nearly a quarter of my life had been spent here in captivity. “There are oceans as clear as glass and as black as ink. Trees bigger than Earth’s tallest mountains. The cities...they’re art. Metal, glass, and stone, carvings of marble and wood.”

  Her eyes had grown wide. She was seated on me fully now, too enamored with my words to try to hover over my lap. It had been a long time since I’d spoken of home. Zane had been polite enough not to bring it up, and he preferred to spend most of his time on Earth anyway since he found humans so entertaining.

  But I ached for Hell.

  “What do you do there?” she said. “Do demons...have jobs?”

  “Most do. It keeps us occupied to do something fulfilling. But we come and go as we please. Resources aren’t limited. Money and economies are nonexistent. Precious metals are as common there as dirt. We do whatever pleases us.”

  “Sounds more like Heaven than Hell.”

  “Heaven is overrated. Too many rules.”

  She looked down when she laughed that time. Something about the shy aversion of her eyes and the sound of her laugh was making me...feel...something. But my brain kept confusing whatever overwhelming feeling this was with a desire to squish her, as if I could find an outlet for this annoying emotion by just taking her face in my hands and squeezing.

  I managed to resist.

  “What did you do there?” Her question snapped me out of my fantasies of affectionately crushing her. “For fun?”

  She wasn’t cleaning my wounds anymore. She was listening with rapt attention, waiting eagerly for what I would say. “There’s plenty to do. There’s —”

  “No, no, what did you like to do?”

  I hesitated. Talking about Hell was strange; talking about myself was even stranger.

  “I...I liked to…” Fuck, it had been so long. “I liked to explore. To wander. I wanted to see the edge of Hell, see all the places even others of my kind wouldn’t go to.”

  Wandering into the unknown, with hardly any plan and no expectations, was the wildest I’d ever felt. To lay in a dark woodland where no demon had set foot for millennia, or find some ruin of a city the old Gods built, was my freedom.

  “You miss it,” she said softly.

  “Every day.”

  Our eyes locked. There was something about those wide brown eyes that felt as warm as her hand, as bright as the sun, as deep as the forest. Eyes that were searching my face for answers, for insight, as if she could crawl inside my head and nest there like a little bird.

  “That damned curiosity of yours,” I said softly. “I was like that once. I think I envy you, to still look at the world with such fascination.”

  “You can still,” she said, frowning. “Why not?”

  “If you live in the dark long enough, you’ll forget what the light feels like.”

  She looked like she wanted to argue, and she tossed the cotton ball aside, back on the coffee table. When she turned back, she laid her hand against my chest again.

  “It will heal better now,” she said. “Just...keep an eye on it.”

  “I have more important things to keep an eye on. It’ll be fine.”

  “You can drop the tough guy act — you have a bloody open wound on your chest that’s likely infected,” she pursed her lips irritably. “I don’t know if demons can die, but it would probably be better if you didn’t.”

  “It’ll take more than a few beasts to kill me.” I cracked my neck, and winced when the movement sent sharp pain from the wound down through my arm. “We can die, sure, but I’d have to be ripped to pieces — unable to heal fast enough to keep up with blood loss and shock. It would heal faster with rest but...I have to find the grimoire.”

  “You can sleep here,” she said. “The couch is pretty comfortable.”

  I tweaked an eyebrow at her. “Trying to tempt me to stay? You’ll have to offer more than a couch.”

  She glared. Her hair had fallen forward, the soft black strands partially obscuring her face. I tucked it back behind her ear, my fingers brushing over the multiple studs and rings pierced through her cartilage. The sight of them made my cock twitch.

  “Indulge me, doll,” I said. “Convince me to stay. Tell me your deepest, darkest desire.”

  My darkest desires were tucked away in the back of my mind, the kind of things I’d only hinted at to my previous partners yet hoped they’d somehow figure out. They weren’t the kind of things I had any experience in speaking out loud, and his request made me protectively shove those wickedly secret things even deeper.

  “I don’t know.” It was a lame answer, and by his expression, he knew I was lying, immediately.

  He rolled his eyes, and a bizarre pressure squeezed the back of my neck. “Oh, come now, Raelynn. Don’t play coy with me.”

  “Stop doing that.”

  “What?” His crooked smile was anything but innocent.

  “That little mind game...trick...thing.” I shuddered at the sensation of fingers running over my scalp. “I know that’s you. It’s...weird.” Weirdly pleasurable, in a way that made my mind feel void of anything but lust.

  “Does it scare you?” His eyes widened. He was a sight to behold like this: entirely naked, fresh from the shower, so close that I could trace the lines of his tattoos under my fingertips. “I think you’ve made it clear you like it when I scare you, doll.”

  I gulped, as the mere sensation of a touch around my throat was replaced with his actual hand; not squeezing, just holding. He gripped close beneath my jaw so I couldn’t lower my head, so I couldn’t avoid his eyes. “Go on,” he whispered. “Tell me your sins, wicked girl. Tell me what you think about when you’re alone, and your mind wanders. Tell me what makes touching yourself irresistible.”

  I wasn’t ashamed of my desires — or at least I tried not to be, which wasn’t the easiest thing in the world when kinky sadomasochistic interests still resided firmly in the realm of taboo. It wasn’t as if I thought a demon was going to judge me; I knew he’d embrace whatever I told him. That was the scary part. Trusting him with those intimate pieces of me that I knew he’d be eager to indulge.

  I took a deep breath and since I couldn’
t look away, I closed my eyes. “I think about you hurting me, making me suffer, and rubbing it in my face how much I like it.”

  Well, shit, there it was. Masochist Rae had come out of her cage.

  When I opened my eyes again, he was smiling, his eyes reaching right into my soul and pulling out the rest of my raw words. “I think of you making me bleed, making me scream, making me come so hard I can’t think straight. I think of how easily you could kill me, but you don’t. You keep me alive to use me like…like…”

  “Like a doll,” he said, and there was such wicked hunger in his voice that I shuddered. His cock twitched against me and I almost moaned, barely choking down the sound. “How cute. Do you want me to treat you that way? Like my little toy?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, my legs beginning to shake in anticipation. I had fantasies of being desired so intensely that nothing could stop that need; consensually hurt and ravaged, allowed to revel in sensations that were beyond dark. But that had never been something I’d trusted another human to know.

  Yet here I was, trusting a monster with it.

  A monster who’d already saved my life more than once.

  Leon gripped my ass with one hand, the back of my neck with the other, and brought our mouths together in a voracious kiss.

  I closed my eyes and allowed myself to drown in him. He smacked my ass as he kissed me and I yelped into his mouth, shuddering at the sting as his sharp teeth bit my lip. I tasted iron, and he broke the kiss to lick the blood from me, forked tongue playing over my skin. I moved my hips back and forth, grinding down against him, the smack of his palm encouraging me. Every impact shot tingles up my spine and over my skull, until I was gasping and he pulled my mouth to his again, stealing away what little breath I had.

  It was more than pain. It was more than pleasure. It made my body come alive. It made me ravenous. I wanted him to consume me, to take and use all of me, and to consume him in return.

  His big hand squeezed around my throat, encompassing it easily. His tongue stroked over mine, tasting my mouth as the air left my lungs and only a faint feeling of floating remained. How could I drown in pleasure? How could ecstasy replace the very oxygen inside me?

  He stood, lifting me with him — one hand around my throat the other looped under my ass to hold me up as my legs wrapped around his hips. The veins in his arms had turned as black as the ink of his tattoos. His irises had enlarged until the gold in his eyes was a slim ring, an eclipse of the sun in his gaze.

  “Beg me to use you, Rae,” he growled, allowing me only enough air to stay conscious, only enough to smile in a daze and nod. He gave me a vicious little shake. “Words, girl. Beg me.”

  “Use me...please…” My words were weak, a pitiful whimper barely squeezed out of my throat.

  “You’re Hell’s little whore, aren’t you?” he said. “So eager for all the wicked things to crawl out of the dark and take you. Wicked things aren’t gentle, Raelynn.” He brought his mouth close to my ear, his words soft. “All the time you’ve spent playing in the dark — is this what you were waiting for? For some evil thing to come take you?”

  He lay me down on the coffee table, the surface cool and hard beneath me as he pinned me against the wood. “I’m going to break you in every conceivable way.” He chuckled, then laughed, as if the thought of what he was going to do sparked some feral energy in him that couldn’t be contained. “I’ll make you scream for more pain. I’ll make you weep for your own destruction.”

  I was scared — of course I was scared. I’d always chased fear, so I could experience it on my own terms, in exactly the ways I wanted. In fear, I found desire. In fear lived all the ancient sensations that demanded I know I was alive and struggling and feeling.

  He yanked off my pants and sweatshirt, smirking when he saw I wasn’t wearing a bra and my nipples were perky as the air hit them. He straddled me, so I was sprawled beneath him on the wide table, and took my breasts in his hands, squeezing them, his claws pricking at my skin.

  “Does it hurt, little doll?” He pinched my nipples beneath his fingers, rolling them just slightly. I began to pant, as every tug and squeeze sent trembles down through my abdomen. “Why did you never pierce these, hmm? You’ve had needles through your ears, your nose — did these frighten you too much?”

  Watching my face, he closed his mouth over my erect nipple, flicking his tongue over the tip. My hips bucked up, pressing against him, but his free hand seized my waist and pushed me back down. He administered the same torturous stimulation to my other nipple, until I was groaning helplessly, shaking under him. His tongue swirled circles around my breast before closing over me, sucking until I squealed.

  If this was sin, I’d gladly purchase my one-way ticket to Hell.

  He was probing my mind again, using whatever dark power it was that allowed him to make me feel touches that weren’t there and impulses beyond my own subconscious. He was pressing me down, as if bands were slowly tightening around my wrists, ankles, and abdomen, strapping me to the table. I couldn’t see them, but my mind was certain the bounds were there. Soon I could only squirm. I couldn’t lift my arms or close my spread legs.

  “What are you doing?” My voice was a whisper, heavy with lust, shaking with the nerves bubbling up in me. He raised his head, his mouth parting from its merciless torture of my nipple.

  “Only what you so desperately want,” he said, and his claws traced over my cheek. “You could resist the restraints, if you wanted. It would be easy. How funny…” He hovered over me, sharp teeth close. “You’re not even trying to get away.”

  His claws moved down my throat, over the tender pulse of blood in my veins, down my chest, down, down, until he came to the edge of my panties.

  “You really should just stop wearing these,” he said. “I’m only going to keep ruining them.”

  The panties ripped easily in his hands. My heart fluttered in my chest as a single claw circled my clit, a threat and a promise wrapped up into one cruel motion.

  “Remember, little doll,” he growled, his head lowering slowly between my legs. “Say mercy if you want our play to end. But beg for me to stop and plead for your life if you want to continue.”

  Every word was pushing me deeper into the cavernous bond between our imaginations, deeper into the fantasy of fear and captivity he was weaving. The fantasy that I was helpless, his fighting prey.

  But that fantasy wasn’t true, even as I allowed myself to indulge in it. He was watching every breath I took, watching my pupils swell. He could smell every chemical change that went through me, he could hear my heart speed up and slow down. He knew my every reaction on an even more primal level than I did.

  He’d stop at my word. I knew that. I trusted him in that.

  But an ending was far from what I wanted.

  Telling me to beg for my life? It aroused that deep desire for fear, my hunger for danger. “Let me go,” I whimpered. “Please…please let me go…don’t —”

  “Shut the fuck up,” he gripped my face, his tone vicious. “Open your fucking mouth, now.”

  I was giddy as I obeyed. When he spit on my waiting tongue and followed it up with his thick cock, I groaned to feel it press all the way to the back of my throat. It was so thick, and from the angle of him above me, he couldn’t even get all of it in. He gripped my hair, moving my head over him, laughing when I gagged on a deep thrust.

  “Aw, is that too much, little doll? But dolls take whatever their master wants, don’t they?” He held me down a moment longer, letting me gag again before he let me go and I lay my head back, gasping.

  He gripped my hips and flipped me onto my stomach. Those invisible ties tightened over me again, keeping my legs spread. He squeezed my ass, spreading me open even more. “Is your pussy still sore?”

  Two fingers pressed inside me and I cried out, squirming as he mercilessly fingered me. “Still sore,” I gasped, but I still moaned as he moved inside me. It felt good despite the pain; the sting only made it better
.

  “Well then, it would be mean of me to use your pussy again, wouldn’t it? I guess I’ll have to break in another hole instead.”

  My body flushed cold at the thought of him squeezing that thick cock inside my ass — impossible — but then his tongue was between my cheeks and all other thoughts vanished from my head. The forked sides probed, licking my puckered hole with such hunger that I wasn’t left even a moment to feel embarrassed to have his face down there. It felt too good, and his fingers were still working my pussy.

  “So wet,” he murmured. “Such a good little fuck doll. So eager to be destroyed.”

  Waves of pleasure reverberated through me with every thrust of his fingers, with every swirl of his tongue. My eyes rolled back, and the invisible ties drew tighter. I was so close, and right as my orgasm gripped me, he pulled his mouth away and pressed a finger inside my ass, mingling the sudden stretch with the already overwhelming pleasure.

  I cried out as my body throbbed, two fingers in my pussy and one in my ass moving in unison to draw out my peak to such an impossible degree that I was shaking, unable to squirm away, mouth hung open as every last rational thought left my brain.

  “Fuck, there’s my good little whore,” he said, bent over my back, breath hot against my neck. His tongue stroked over my skin, over the marks he’d left across me, a chuckle rumbling in his chest as I fell apart on his fingers. “You look so good with my marks on you. All mine, just as you should be. Your soul is next, Raelynn. One word and you’re mine for eternity.”

  Between the pleasure, the pain, the mind-blowing endorphins making me high, I almost could have given him my soul. Almost.

  “Do you have lube, little doll?”

  In my daze, I somehow managed to acknowledge that he’d asked a question. “Bedroom...upstairs…uh, nightstand drawer…”

  He was gone only a few seconds, and then he was leaning over me again. I gasped as I felt a cold drop of lube near my puckered entrance, but his fingers warmed it quickly as he began to rub it between my cheeks. He pressed a finger inside, deep and slow, working me up again as I shuddered with the aftershocks of my last orgasm.