Page 80 of A Study of Blood and Ichor

“Which one of us will you come for?” one of them asked, but it was impossible to tell who said it.

“You beg so sweetly for us.”

“Maybe we should make her beg a little harder.”

No, no, no!

My head buzzed, and the insistent tingles at the base of my spine were beginning to bloom the longer they held me on the edge.

“No, I think she’s ready, aren’t you, mellilla? I want to hear your sweet moans as you come on our tongue.”

Vain’s words undid me, and my orgasm hit me hard, a full body crash of sensations and pleasure as my hips lifted off the cushions, and I cried out in ecstasy. They continued to give and take control from each other, using Rory’s mouth to drag every last pulsing tremor from my body.

“That’s it.”

“Ride it out.”

Each of them murmured to me, but their voices were dampened due to my pulse thudding loudly against my eardrums. I collapsed against the cushions and sucked air into my lungs like I had forgotten how to breathe.

When I reopened my eyes, Vain stared back at me, his body braced over mine.

“Look at the mess you’ve made of us,” he purred, licking my come off Rory's lips. With a swipe of his thumb across his glistening chin, he gathered up what remained and placed the digit against my lips. I sucked greedily, and a dark grin crept up at one corner of his wicked mouth.

“Good mortal,” he said, a deep rumbling sound.

Vain’s words sang in my chest, and it was in that exact moment I knew I was ruined for him—for both of them, possibly forever.

TWENTY-TWO

Ava

Dru left the next day.

Alastair flew her home to her family in Illinois because she'd refused Vain’s offer to shift her back. She was still distrusting of demons, but she had accepted Alastair’s help as he was the only one who could fly a plane and she was desperate to be reunited with her mom and brothers, who she hadn’t seen in months.

Before she left, I offered to help take some of her memories to ease the nightmares and pain of everything she had experienced with Ilo, but she refused.

“I don’t want to forget,” she’d said. “If I do, I might end up making the same mistakes that got me here in the first place.”

I couldn’t fault her for her decision, because I would have done the same if I was in her position and given the same choice.

I gave her a reassuring hug before she and Alastair drove off for the airport, leaving me in the penthouse alone with Vain and Nesera.

After last night, I couldn’t look Nesera in the eyes, and I feared the same might be true for Vain and Rory. So instead of facing them like any normal mature person, I sequestered myself in Vain’s library to avoid them altogether.

Trying to concentrate on anything was a challenge. My thoughts circled around last night and the way Vain and Rory had drawn out my basest desires with little effort. My body hummed remembering the way they pinned me down and held onto my hips. The brush of their mouth, the smooth rumble of Vain’s voice.

I pressed my thighs together beneath the desk and shifted in my seat. The memory was enough to make me wet all over again. I was already craving them—

What the hell are you doing?

Both of them were quickly becoming a force that was growing harder for me to ignore by the day. What they offered me was nothing more than a distraction I couldn’t afford to entertain. They were becoming my weakness. There was no denying my attraction to Rory, but as much as I found myself wanting him, I could not allow myself to fall for him. Because falling for him meant I’d be falling for Vain as well.

How had the lines between them both become so blurred over time?

Lusting after Vain felt instinctively wrong. And yet, he had rooted himself into the darkest corners of my mind and, somehow, my heart. Vain, no matter how alluring, was still a demon, and that fact alone should have been all the reason I needed to stop whatever this was becoming before it was too late.

I could never trust him. It was too dangerous to allow him such power over me, and so until I could find a way to exorcise him from Rory, I decided it was best to keep a level head and not be driven by my emotions and insatiable lust I’d developed for them. I would need to push them both away, no matter how much it might hurt me—or hurt Rory.

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