Page 6 of Prince of Lust

I gasped, hands coming up in a pathetic resistance. I pushed weakly against the demon’s wrist, as wide as my own thigh, and before I could say anything more, it dropped its hand from my chin and slid down to my neck. The grip tightened. I took a feeble breath and kicked as it lifted me from the ground. Sweat, stars, cock straining—my body reacted with uncontainable glee, but I was frightened. It means to kill me.

Then, the breath was knocked out of me.

My back hit the wall, and I half collapsed as the grip around my neck suddenly released. Fresh air scrabbled down my bruised oesophagus, and I clawed at my neck, gently pressing at the indentations where massive fingers and claws had pressed.

Asmodeus regarded me with sadistic disgust. I couldn’t parse the expression. It enjoyed my reaction—but I knew without it saying anything that it thought me pathetic.

Why was I so aroused by that?

The demon approached. I turned my head up to stare up at it from underneath my brow. With a cooing, sweet sound, it reached out to me with a hand almost the size of my head. I closed my eyes.

“Look at me.”

That was a command. I knew it, knew there was no playful question in that tone. Once again, Asmodeus dragged its clawed finger against my jaw. I breathed in. The scent of the demon was richly vile, sweet, and enticing, and I let it enter my lungs, almost grateful to breathe in its presence. But I winced as the skin split once more, and part of the claw dug roughly into an earlier wound. I imagined how I looked: flushed, desperate, bleeding. With my chin balanced on the edge of the demon’s claw, it lifted my head upwards. Tentatively, I opened my eyes.

Asmodeus loomed over me, its black void eyes reflecting my frightened expression back at me. Its other hand grazed over my right arm, fingers sensually sliding through the cut on my palm. I jolted, first from the pain and then the arousal that shocked my body. My cock was swelling to erection, but if Asmodeus noticed, it did not do me the goodwill of touching me. Instead, a wolfish grin split its warm lips open, exposing two sharp canines and a long, forked tongue. Gently, it raised my arm, and I let it, suspended in a fugue state of helpless eagerness as it yanked my arm above my head. I realised what it was doing belatedly: those lips, those teeth, that tongue—it bent its head towards the wound and, its eyes transfixed on my own, it licked at the bloody palm.

Then, it was more than licking. Or rather, there was a dedication to the act now. Asmodeus’ gaze grew dark and heavy with desire, and I felt myself growing hot. When that forked tongue prodded at the wound, digging in until it hurt, a small moan escaped me.

My legs were quivering, cock twitching in my pants, and I couldn’t look away. Deliciously inescapable, we stared at one another as Asmodeus licked slowly, methodically, taking the blood I used to summon it into its body like a holy sacrament.

“You want me here,” Asmodeus said. It was teasing me but with the kind of confident surety that told me I needn’t have bothered answering. It could tell. My body betrayed me, shivering with pleasure and swelling to erection. I still gulped, trying and failing to find some dignity to hold on to. What was I going to do? Lie to the demon? Send it back to Hell? Did I even want that—no, you desecrator. You blasphemer, you slut. You want this. You want this!

Everything I had done that night had been in a haze of lust. And the demon knew it. With one hand, it reached out to my clerical collar. All it needed was one sharp claw. Just like that, it sliced through the white collar, tearing it from my neck and throwing it to the ground.

My eyes flew wide. Naked, suddenly—or exposed in God’s house. I opened my mouth, voice coming out in a cry of protest, but Asmodeus grabbed my face, slicing new wounds into the meat of my cheeks.

“If you’re going to be my bitch,” it growled, “you won’t be wearing God’s dog collar.”

I whimpered like a proper dog and grew soft and pliable in the grip of a demon. Asmodeus leaned close. I could smell it. All-encompassing and intoxicating: sulphur, cedar, something strangely sweet like caramel — I couldn’t help but lean forward into its strong body until it was supporting the weight of my traitorous body by my neck. It brought its lips to my ear, sharp teeth grazing against my earlobe, and move along my neck. That forked tongue licked over my lips with strangely sweet affection.

“Tell me what you want.”

It spoke slowly and clearly, like I was stupid and needed to be told exactly what to do. And I did. I wanted the demon to order me around. I wanted to be absolved of free will, of misusing my free will for this.

“I—don’t know.”

I thought about Bishop Jonah as the demon breathed heavily over me and imagined the way he used to ask me that same question.

A lot of lost lambs come to us. God points them in their holy directions. But you, Alessandro. . .

I was never so easy. Never so simple. But I tried.

On his deathbed, he had still called me that. Even after I had become a don. Alessandro, without the title. Tutted when I told him, “This. I want this. The monastery is my life.”

“Don’t you lie,” he had said in between wheezing coughs. “It’s a sin to lie.”

And now, I had lied again. I told Asmodeus, “I don’t know,” despite my cock swelling. Despite baring my neck—free of God’s mark, free of my priestly collar—to a demon. Despite loving it.

Even to my own ears, my voice sounded weak and pitiful. Asmodeus frowned, genuine and utter disappointment twinging across its face. It dropped the hold it had around my neck, stepped back—and slapped me.

Blood spurted from some part of me. I didn’t know where—couldn’t pinpoint the part of my face that hurt the most. My cheek was stinging from the impact and the puncture wounds. My lip burned with sudden ferocity. I spat blood out and coughed, and my hand shook as I reached up to touch the cut on my lip.

I looked back at the demon over my shoulder. It slouched, watching my expression carefully, curiously, poised as if expecting me to cry. Honestly, I don’t know what I was feeling. All the anxiety had been struck out of me. I suddenly couldn’t feel all the niggling thoughts of concern. I stood to my full height and turned to face it.

“Asmodeus,” I said. “What are you going to do to me?”

The demon’s expression ruptured like rot bubbling to the surface. That fine, handsome face imploded. Ridges, lines, fury, the smell of sulphur—it all increased tenfold. Asmodeus stalked forward and shoved me back. My back slammed hard against the wall, and I coughed as air struggled out of my lungs before I choked. One of those impossibly large hands had closed around me. Everything was cut off. Pain and a dull fog began in my head and my neck.

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