Page 70 of A Study of Blood and Ichor

Our breaths were heavy and hot, mingling together as I leaned back against his chest, feeling the rise and fall of it as he continued to stroke me over and over until my legs were tense and trembling.

“Look at you shaking for me.” He dragged my earlobe through his teeth, and I shuddered, pressing further into his lap and feeling him achingly hard for me. “You’re close, huh? Am I going to make you come?”

“Rory,” I gasped as he slid one finger inside me, dipping it in and out slowly while he worked my clit with his thumb.

The hand at my throat remained steady, and I found myself giving into the feeling of his possessive touch more than I cared to admit. Maybe if it was Vain’s hand wrapped around my neck, I might have felt some unease. But with Rory, there was a tenderness I found a level of comfort and safety in.

Rory’s finger pumped in and out of me, eventually adding another and spreading me wider. He crooked them inside, finding the textured spot that had me writhing on top of him until my whole body was singing for him and weeping at his touch.

I bit down on my lower lip, attempting to muffle my cries.

“No, no,” he panted against my ear. The hand at my throat dragged upward, his fingers sliding past my lips to hook my mouth open. “I want to hear every fucking moan. All for me. It’s all for me.”

Rory’s teeth grazed and nipped at my neck, sending me past my breaking point. I cried out as my climax ripped through my body. A satisfied groan eased from his chest as I continued to rock and grind against his palm, riding out my release until my inner walls ceased spasming around his fingers. My head felt light, spinning even after the final wave crested, and I slumped against his chest, panting hard.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered into my hair. “Come on.” He planted a short kiss to my temple and lifted me up in his arms as if I weighed nothing to him. “Let’s get you into bed.”

I was too spent to put up a fight. He carried me down the hall to my room and set me down gently onto the mattress and pulled the duvet over my shoulders. Rory loomed over me, a hazy figure made of shadow as he bent down to brush my hair back.

His lips grazed my forehead as he whispered, “Goodnight, Ava.”

Unable to battle the heavy weight of exhaustion anymore, I fell into dreams filled with demons dancing to a melody of strings, a haunting lullaby.

NINETEEN

Rory

You smell like cunt.

I shot out of bed from the shock of Vain’s voice in my head piercing the silence. Groaning, I threw myself face-first into the pillows, wishing I could slam the snooze button on him. Unfortunately, demons didn’t respect the snooze button.

“Is it too much to ask for a few extra hours of peace and quiet?” I grumbled into the pillow.

Get up, or I’ll do it for you.

I groaned again. Two minutes, please.

You wouldn’t be so exhausted if you hadn’t stayed up fucking her last night.

The memory flooded back to me as I winced at the crudeness of his words.

At the mere mention of Ava, my dick was rock-hard. To be honest, I don’t think I had stopped being hard since the moment my hands had started roving over her perfect body in my lap. I pressed my hips into the mattress at the reminder of her soft skin, her wetness pooling at my touch, and the scent of her hair when she leaned into me as she came on my fingers.

You’re so pathetically obsessed with her.

You’re one to talk, I countered.

If I had a death wish, maybe I would have told Vain he sounded jealous. I held my tongue instead. I knew better than to rile him up when he was already in a sour mood.

He was still shaking off the last bits of his rage from last night. The moment he saw Ava struggling beneath Ilo, Vain had transformed into a storm of fury unlike any I had ever felt before. In the swell of all that anger and vengeance, something inside me had unleashed itself as well, and I became every bit the monster alongside him.

I’d never killed anyone before, not even a demon. And while Vain would never admit it, I knew he had made an effort not to kill anyone for my sake.

But Ilo had been different.

I had craved his blood on my hands. I had found a warped sense of pleasure at the sound of his screams. I hadn’t cared about the human vessel in the way. I’d barely given it a second thought to be honest, even though I should have. Looking into his watery blue eyes, I should have seen myself reflected in them, but I only saw the demon cowering beneath. And at that point, I was too far gone to think rationally—to think of mercy.

All the blood and all the ichor that had sprayed through the air and covered our skin, I swore I could still smell the soured, metallic tang of it in the back of my throat in every breath I took. In that moment, it felt right. Killing. Ripping. Destroying.

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