Page 58 of Cursed Heirs

“You treat the demon like it’s a separate entity from you and that fight is impossible and exhausting, X. It’s killing your spirit. Hence, what happened earlier. Hence you feeling without hope and purpose. The reality couldn’t be farther from the truth.” He slicked his fingers in his own blood. “The thing is, to embrace it, you need to lose control, to experience that sensation which you’ve spent three years denying and struggling against.”

I was about to tell him to shut the hell up and take his leave, but then he spread his blood-slicked fingers all over my lips.

A snarl left me and he took the opportunity to shove them into my mouth, along my tongue and over my teeth.

In the very next beat, those teeth became fangs as the demon took me.

“Don’t,” I growled, spitting out his blood.

“Come on, we both know you’ve always craved a taste of me.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking, what the demon will do to you.”

“It’s not all darkness with the vampire side. There’s beauty to be found in the demon, that which you haven’t begun to explore yet. Everyone has darkness in them. But as I’ve learned the hard way, denying it all completely isn’t the way to go. You lose so much of yourself that way.”

I started. “Those are Alena’s words to me. How do you know about that?”

“How I know isn’t important. The words are. Her beautiful words to you. She didn’t see you as beyond salvageable, as damaged. She saw you as a man, a man she clearly loves enough to risk her life and her sanity to save.”

“No. Stop it, Ore. She loved the hybrid. Really the magical side, and she just tolerated the vampire.”

“That’s you rewriting history in your deeply depressed and hopeless state. For the record, that last part of what she said is why you think you have nothing left. You’re denying it all, X. You’re denying yourself, yourlife.”

“Stop,” I ground out. “I can’t… I can’t hold out much longer. Go or I’ll descend on you.”

Instead of doing so, he spread more of his blood over my face. This time, my nose, my cheeks, my mouth, then gliding his bloodied fingers down my chest, creating an arousing sensation to test me even more, a sensation I’d only felt toward him once before, shortly after we’d first met and I’d been turned on by his forthright and powerhouse personality, the way he kicked ass, took names, and didn’t give a fuck about what anybody had to say about it.

The wayIused to be before I’d been turned and everything had slipped away.

“Orpheus… I’ll hurt you.”

“Doesn’t seem like you can do much of anything with how weak you are.”

“As soon as I drink more than a couple of drops of your insanely potent and powerful blood, that will change.”

He climbed fully onto the bed, pouncing on me and slamming his hands down either side of my head, effectively caging me in. “Then drink. Descend on me.Hurtme.” His eyes flamed. “I can’t fucking wait.”

I frowned up at him. “You want this?”

He rolled his hips and I jolted as I felt his hard dick against mine over the covers.

“Hell,” I breathed.

He leaned in closer, his breath fanning over the side of my neck. “Come on, how many times have you wanted to tear intome for the shit I’ve done? This is your one shot, the one and only time my magic won’t thwart you.”

Damnation!

I shot out my hand and grasped his jaw in a bruising grip that had him hissing and his eyes lighting up—depraved bastard.

Exactly what I needed right now.

And of course he’d fucking known it.

More than anybody else who’d tried to help me.

He understood his darkness and that in others better than anyone I’d ever known.

A snarl escaped me and I didn’t try to hold it off this time, letting it out in all its destructive glory as I told him, “Buckle up, Dark Prince, this is gonna hurt. Gonna fucking decimate you.”

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