Page 110 of Devil's Deal

We both watch as more blood slowly trickles out, filling the basin of my cupped palm. When it’s about to spill out the sides, Woland lowers his head, ever so careful, and laps at the red with his long, agile tongue. I shiver when its coarse texture caresses my sensitive skin.

His antlers cage me in, pressing gently into my arms. Weakness spreads inside me, glittering desire flowing in my veins. I watch him and want, every lick of his tongue fanning the flames higher, every seductive glance of his golden eyes making me shiver as he stays bowed over my palm.

“We’d do this every day,” he whispers, licking my wrist. My palm is clean, no more blood coming. “I’d drink from you, you’d drink from me.”

His sharp teeth sink into my wrist, and I gasp, a potent shudder running down my body until my legs fall open on either side of him, weak and helpless. He moves into the space I made for him, his hips pressing my inner knees further apart. His shadows hike up my dress to make it easier. We’re skin to skin.

“W-why don’t you wear clothes?” I ask, desperately trying to get a handle on myself. I know his tricks by now. He’ll make me almost come and then stop and demand my fealty. Or he’ll threaten. Or leave right before he takes me. Or…

“I don’t get cold,” he murmurs, pulling his lips away from the wound. Blood trickles out, and he licks it up, then nuzzles his nose up my inner forearm, inhaling deeply.

“Don’t you wear clothes for adornment?” I ask, gripping the knife tightly as he seals his lips to my wrist and pulls a long, dizzying drink right from my vein.

He sucks again, then lets go, licking gently with small flicks of his tongue as his eyes shoot up to my face. My lips part. I’m panting. A knowing smile curves his reddened lips.

“Why adorn perfection?” he asks with a wicked glint in his eyes.

That makes me snort with choked laughter. “Oh, you’re vain.”

Woland licks his lips and grins. “Not vain. Just self-aware.”

I laugh again, looking up to roll my eyes at his audacity. My gaze falls on the dead body I’m supposed to watch over. I freeze, revulsion and shame rising in my stomach. Gods, what am I doing? Laughing with the devil and letting him have my blood while a dead body lies not five steps away. If Wiosna saw me right now, she’d take away her blessing for me to be a whisperer.

“Jaga.”

He calls my attention back, and I look at him slowly, mortified and angry. He did it again. He wrapped me up in his charm, manipulating me. It only serves one purpose: so I give myself to him. Everything he said is probably a lie, but somehow, I stopped scrutinizing his every word some time ago.

I fell in his trap. I allowed this. After everything he did, after all the promises I made to myself.

This—his lapping at my skin, me laughing at his words—it has to stop.

My fingers wrapped around the knife clench tighter. Woland blinks once, long and heavy, and something shifts in his expression. It’s no longer playful and charming. His face closes off, a mask of neutrality sliding over his features.

I slash at his face. He grabs my wrist, his hand faster than a shadow. The tip of the knife quivers a breath away from his cheek.

Something predatory and dark passes through his eyes. I try to yank my hand free, but his grip tightens until it seems like the delicate bones in my wrist grind together. I clench my teeth and watch him belligerently, doing my best not to show my fear.

When he speaks, his voice is soft with an idle sort of curiosity, like he’s discussing a solution to an imaginary problem.

“Not the best place to cut if you truly want to hurt me, darling. Not that a knife like this, even a silver one, would kill me. Here, let me show you.”

His grip painfully tight on my wrist, he guides my hand lower. I resist him, panting from effort, but it’s as if I didn’t try at all. He lines up the knife with the side of his neck. I grunt, striving to pull my hand away, but he grins, panting as he directs my hand. Slowly, inch by inch, the knife sinks into his flesh.

I watch in horror, my jaw slack, as dark blood splashes down his shoulder. He keeps grinning, his face a mask of cruelty and mad amusement, as he pushes my knife deeper and deeper in, until it’s buried to the hilt. His neck is so thick, the tip doesn’t come out on the other side.

“See?” he says, his grin widening. There is no pain in his voice, nothing that would indicate he’s hurt in the least, even though his blood flows in a steady trickle.

“Stop,” I whisper, horrified it’s my hand on the handle of this knife that’s now in his body. I’ve never cut a person to hurt or kill. “Please.”

“And now you beg,” he says slowly, savoring every word. “But I begged you, too. On my knees. And you refused.”

I scream when he pulls my wrist sharply, yanking the knife out of his neck. I scream again when he pushes it back, the knife stabbing him. Red ichor gurgles out of the wound, and he laughs, demonic and eerie, as he makes me bury the knife in his neck, over and over again. My fingers are sticky with his hot blood.

When the knife finally clatters to the floor, it’s not because I won but because he let me go. His face twists in a grimace, angry and vicious, and his wounds close, the flow of blood stopping as his flesh knits itself together.

He closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, and stands up in one graceful motion. With a twirl of his finger, his blood is siphoned off his skin and the floor. All of it flows into a stunning crystal bottle in a triangular shape, its stopper hanging from a chain, as if it’s meant to be worn like a necklace.

When all blood is in the bottle, his long fingers wrapped around the glittering crystal, he gives me a long, expectant look. My hand twitches with a covetous urge. He laughs.

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