Page 78 of Devil's Deal

One of them slithers, a flash of energy, and sparks of delight tingle across my spine.

I’m on the verge of something, a terrifying, magnificent epiphany that hovers right under my fingertips. It’s the answer to all my questions, the ultimate truth, and I take a breath to pull in another drop and uncover this final piece when Woland yanks his thumb out of my mouth with a sharp hiss.

“Enough!”

I lurch into him, too drunk, too sober, too soon. My body buzzes, alive and strong, and my mind glitters like an intricate spiderweb bejeweled with morning dew at sunrise. I hold on to him, this devil, this man at the core of it all. He is the secret and the key, the question and the answer.

I want to peel him open the same way I just did the world.

When he grips my hair and yanks back, forcing me to look at his face, I laugh. The pain isn’t pain but pleasure, because I am all and nothing and everything. I decide what is.

His eyes burn, shadows twining around him like smoke, past, present, and future braiding into one.

“My turn,” he growls, furious and so aroused, I can see it on his skin like flecks of silver. I reach with my tongue, trying to lean in and lick it off him. He grunts, the spike of his erection pulsing. He wants me, and yet, he doesn’t take me, just repeats, “My turn.”

“Then drink,” I say, my voice a complex melody melding into the night.

I hear everything, the grasshoppers chirping their lusty songs, scores of them in the grass calling out to invite mates. I hear the grass as it whispers, the worms plowing the earth, birds sleeping in their nests. And through that song, Woland’s heartbeat weaves like a dark, insistent drumbeat that gives it all meaning.

“Say my name,” he says hoarsely, something desperate and starving in his eyes.

I hear his unspoken please and it undoes me.

“Woland.”

He growls, a beast and yet a man, and bows over me. Just as his name carves a wound into my tongue, he seals his mouth to mine and pulls.

This is not a kiss. It’s a devouring. My tongue is in his mouth, held fast by the vise of his lips, and he sucks, drinking my blood from the wound his name gave me. I moan, and he swallows the sound. When I writhe, hot and in need of release, he wraps his shadows around me, bringing me up and up and up so I straddle his waist and he can kiss me without leaning low to reach.

Too soon, my wound heals—it’s magic, I’m made of magic—and he growls, releasing my mouth.

“Say my other name.”

“Diabel.”

Pain blooms in my mouth and he licks it better, sucking and grunting from pleasure. Strong pulls make blood flow from my tongue onto his, and I’m vaguely aware of movement, water splashing, the world spinning.

“Again.”

“Kusy.”

The next time I say his name, he lays me down on soft grass and pins my wrists to the ground with his large, graceful hands. He drinks from my mouth like it’s a spring of the clearest water, his hips settling between my legs. I’m naked and wet, warm and buzzing, and when he presses his cock into my inner thigh, I wish he weren’t so tall so he could slide inside me and keep drinking from my mouth.

“Again!”

“Czart.”

I lose track of time, wrapped completely in his arms, his shadows, his feral demands. The bulk of him above me obscures the sky, but I don’t need to look at the stars. There is a sea of starlight inside me.

My need mounts, a hot, insistent beat in my pelvis. I throw my leg over him and raise myself shamelessly, my muscles strong and vibrant thanks to his magic.

I rub myself over his taut, hot skin, back and forth like an animal in heat. He doesn’t have to prompt me anymore, because I chant his name against his lips, chasing my orgasm, hating the thought he might stop. He kisses me deep, his tail wrapping around my ankle that’s thrown over his hip, his tongue invading my mouth like he has to keep conquering me, like once or even ten times is not enough.

When his shadows pool at my core and push inside me, I moan into his ravaging mouth and he growls, his tongue going deeper, so deep, it chokes me. In that unearthly, infinitely dark place with no air and no limits, I shatter for him, filled with his tongue and his shadows, drunk on his blood, completely unraveled.

When I float down to the earth, his lips are on mine but don’t kiss me, his breathing harsh and shallow.

“Woland,” I whisper, making him shiver. My tongue doesn’t bleed.

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