Page 600 of Rage

I closed my eyes again as hot, soft lips pressed against the place where my neck met my shoulder.

It was chaste at first–at least as chaste as a demon’s kiss could be. But after that initial contact, his lips parted and brushed a wet path from my pulse point to the edge of my jaw. One of his canines caught the lobe of my ear and dragged with delicious slowness.

I whimpered and was rewarded with a kiss on the other side of my neck. Teeth nipped and captured the skin. He suckled on the captured bit of skin and I gasped as that unfamiliar heat coalesced between my thighs.

“Kiss me,” I whispered.

He released the skin on my neck and captured my mouth with ravenous fervor. His tongue, I learned, was split down the middle. It brushed the seam of my lips, requesting entry. I obliged him, parting my mouth and relishing the overwhelming fullness as his tongue overtook my mouth, the two halves of his tongue wrapping possessively around mine.

I gasped, my body arching against his.

His hand supporting my legs shifted.Oh so easily, those massive fingers and palm supported my seat, allowing his thumb to brush a questioning path on the line where my thighs squeezed together.

My skin blazed as I leaned back into the hand supporting me, opening my legs to him. Then, with savoring slowness, the pad of his thumb slicked across the outer part of me. He broke the kiss to look into my eyes as he held me aloft. His thumb brushed a circle over a spot that caused a spasm in my thighs and a sharp gasp to escape me.

A low laugh rumbled through him, his smile sharp as he watched my face with rapt attention. “See, my priestess of carrion? See how your body sings for this? No man has stirred you like this, because no man can worship you as I have. I am devoted to you.” He pressed a little harder as he circled again, my thighs clenching around his thumb. A tightness began to coil in me, like a snake preparing to strike. Slick, wet sounds came from between my legs as his circling shifted into a rhythmic slide from that sensitive tip down to my opening.

He didn’t press into me, just kept stroking me as that tension wound tighter and tighter. My eyes were locked on his as he kept coaxing my pleasure. I rested my hands on his neck, smoothing one over the thick cords of muscle and into his hair.

“There is nothing to fear from me, beautiful monster,” he said. “I will make you bleed but once so that you can bathe the world in blood.”

I pulled him closer to me and he lathed the sensitive skin at my neck with his split tongue as I ground myself against his thumb. There were sounds coming out of me the likes of which I’d never heard before: whimpers, moans, pleas.

“Let go,” my demon said. “Come undone and be made anew.”

My toes curled as I did just that, my body going loose and my head falling on his shoulder as I shattered under his ministrations. I gasped against the heat of his neck as he slowed his stroking, letting the sensation taper off at a deliberate pace.

“You see? There is nothing to fear,” he murmured against the shell of my ear while shifting me again, cradling me in his arms with surprising sweetness after such a carnal display.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked, still breathless as I lifted my head.

“You need not do anything,” he said. “The arrogant men will serve their purpose, they will call me forth from where I’m locked within you.” His large thumb settled between my breasts, over my heart, as if to show me exactly where he was imprisoned. “I will come to you and your power will be yours again. No longer will you have to stare into darkness to find me, or quiet your mind while I whisper your will. I will have a form as solid as yours, and you will never be alone again.”

My vision blurred and I swallowed tightly, looking away from him.

This man–this creature–was far more destructive than any man like Richard. With a simple promise of companionship I was sundered apart, my shattered heart laid bare.

He made a perch of his bent arm and wiped tears away with large, clumsy fingers. “No,” he cooed softly. “Do not despair,little goddess. By the night’s end, you will no longer be forgotten. The cruel and the greedy will tremble to know your name.”

Chapter Five

Briar

It was almost laughable, how theatrical these men were.

Leave it to a self-important man to be completely deaf and blind in matters of taste and style. Richard did always struggle with dressing himself. He got by because of classic good looks, but when the man paired black shoes with a brown tie, it was no wonder that the venue for the sacrificial rite looked more like the set of a penny dreadful than a proper ritual space.

The room lacked the earnest austerity of a cathedral, but it made its best attempt at mimicking one. A large platform at the center of the room stood laden with white flowers: lilies, roses, daisies, carnations–seemingly whatever could be found on short notice. I wondered if any of them had been purchased from Marguerite, and a cursory glance her way told me they had been. She appeared almost green as she looked at her personal captor.

In the center of all of the foliage stood a stone altar; the most ancient thing in the room, with archaic etchings depicting figures of ambiguous gender in the midst of various carnal pleasures. To my newly elucidated eyes, it was clear that one figure appeared in each panel; a goddess with long hair and sharpened horns. I wondered if the men were blind to this because they were idiots, or simply because they were arrogant.

Encircling that ancient altar were eight other altars, newer in construction, each inhabiting the point of an eight-pointed star. One for each of us.

“Welcome, girls,” Richard said from where he stood, still wearing his stupid looking robe and his feral smile. “Welcome to the first day of freedom.”

In the end, the plan we’d come up with to fight hadn’t amounted to much of anything, just as the demon had promised it wouldn’t. Turned out that our hosts had picked up a magic trick or two, including some chant delivered in tongues that made the women in the bathing room fall to the floor like marionettes forgotten by their puppeteer.

When the shoddy plan failed, I’d expected Cassandre to fall apart. But she remained silent as she clasped hands with Atreya.

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