Page 33 of Sinner's End

Adreana sleeps peacefully, her tired body draped across her bed, washed, and clothed in a pale cotton nightgown that hides just enough of her perfect flesh to be painfully tantalizing. Kaleb must have done that, and a twinge of irritation slithers along my spine at the mortal’s intervention. That he has touched her, marked, and claimed her burns my insides brutally. The desire to singe his flesh to ash while she watches sweeps over me, and I push the darkest thoughts away.This place is pure evil.

How she could reside within and not be tainted, I don’t understand, either. My innocence—no, myignorance—cripples me as I kneel by her bed and curve my palm around the shape of her face, without touching her. Heat warms my palm, her soft, dark lashes fluttering with the disturbance of her room. But if she’s going to wake…

I may as well cave to my obsession as the others have to theirs. It’s not like I am a perfect man, and giving in to her seems the perfect answer to my plight.

My fingertips brush her skin. A faint, pink blush warmsher flesh beneath my touch. The color spreads, curving beneath her eyes and traveling down her neck to the tops of her breasts. A flick of the thin, cotton strap leaves her exposed to me. I suck in a long breath, willing myself to remain in control, but she’s so beautiful. So fucking beautiful lying there, her body reacting to me even though she doesn’t know I’m here. My cock thickens inside my pants and I swallow back the urge to free myself and desecrate her pretty skin, leaving her bound in my silken ropes.

She shivers in her sleep, one hand drifting across her chest to brush my wrist. Her fingers leave a burning path with each caress, as though she acknowledges my presence. Those slim, pale hands curl around my wrist, holding gently, and she lets out the softest sigh that leaves my blood sizzling in my veins.

My thumb presses against her lips where they part slightly, the tip of her tongue gliding over my skin. I suck in a sharp breath.Is this why I’m here? To defile her, and myself?Temptation never bothered me in the short history of my remembered existence, but I do know she’s made for me, and that I belong to her. Like a possession? Mana would have a field day with that, a demon’s delight, but I don’t care.

I press my thumb deeper, parting her lips a little wider. She lets me, rolling to one side and leaning into my touch, the very tip of her tongue testing my flesh with tiny strokes. I groan, fisting my cock through my pants with my other hand, but it’s too much. Being here, with her … I’ll shatter for her, fragment into a thousand pieces for this mortal who holds me enthralled.

Reaching into my pants I grip my cock tight and thumb the head. I’ve never let anyone touch me, willingly, or take part in Mana’s impromptu orgies, prefering to watch and suffer, but this moment is one where I cross a personal line when I rest the head of my cock to her lips and she sucks me in.

Blood rushes south, leaving me rocking on my knees at her bedside as she sucks the tip of my cock like it’s her personalpacifier. I let out a soft groan, unable to keep my need in, my craving too great within the warm, wet confines of her pretty mouth that’s the perfect shape for me.

“I’m yours, Addi,” I murmur, knowing I won’t last more than a handful of seconds.

My prediction comes true as she sucks oh-so-softly on my cock, and I plunge to the back of her throat, coating her in my silk. A shuddered breath leaves her as I pull out, glossing her lips gently with my cum, defiling her beautifully.

I tuck myself back in, my hands shaking as I rest my lips against her temple.

“All yours,” I promise her sleeping form, and thumb the pearlescent drop at the corner of her lips back into her mouth. She sucks just as gently and I harden impossibly, aching inside and out.

My steps take me unconsciously back to the open window, and I lean out of it, knowing the fall won’t kill me when I land on the hallowed ground of the cemetery that butts up against the house. Its borders include Sinner’s End, Addi’s house within the glowing blue circle that encompasses the graveyard, creating an end to the city’s limits, a place I know Mana cannot cross.

I don’t understand the knowledge or its origins, but I lean into the night air and nearly scream at the red-and-white splattered horror that floats outside her window.

My drop to the ground is less than graceful. I manage to land in a crouch, stumbling only for a second before I find my feet.

“What are you doing here?” I ask the horror that floats gently to my side.

“Watching her, like you,” Bowen mocks me, his too-pale eyes glittering in his pigmentless face. “Except tonight you took more than you gave, didn’t you, little innocent?”

My cock strains at the thought of her sleeping form, her lips wrapped around me, sucking me off. “Not so innocent,” I murmur, letting the destroyed soul walk at my side.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “So, I wonder, what does that make you now?”

“I know not what I was or what I became,” I quote the words like they were ingrained into me in some past life.

Bowen chuckles softly, stepping out onto the short, arched bridge that crosses the stream at the edge of Sinner’s End’s land. “Oh, yes. The words of your maker etched on your soul. Let’s fall together, shall we?”

He mounts the edge of the bridge, his arms open wide like a sacrifice, and topples backward. I frown, but there’s no splash and when I glance over the edge, the water beneath is undisturbed.

Bowen is gone and despite his strange invitation, I walk silently across the town to Harken, reaching the asylum’s shadows just as the sun breaks the horizon, lighting everything with its too-bright rays not made for a creature that slinks in the shadows. Before its light can reach me, I’m safely ensconced within Harken’s walls along with all the other broken, tortured souls.

The ones just like me.

Chapter Fifteen

Drink to Obsession

Mana

My world is filled with creepers. Like that blank-faced angel who doesn’t remember the last millennia of his existence yet follows me downstairs to watch my daily demise. The same demented creature who holds my metaphorical fucking hand like a perfect nursemaid.

Hell, by the time the Chemist is done sucking my veins dry like a clinical vampire, I don’t remember my own name. Lethe sits with me while I return to the world, though it must have taken a handful of hours. His eyes trace the syringes that permeate my skin like a freakish hedgehog, lining my ribs and stomach, tracing my outline in a monstrous fashion.

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