Page 135 of Changeling
“Oh, I know Malak,” the spriggan replied, smiling with what Nathan almost took to be fondness. “What about him?”
“He basically owns my soul. Seems pretty happy about that, too. How do you think he’s gonna feel about you messing with one of hisfavoritepossessions?” Nathan hated to even form that phrase but it was the only idea coming to him right now. All the other sidhe either didn’t know Malak by that name or were terrified of him.
Whatever Nathan had hoped would be the spriggan’s reaction, it wasn’t that he would curl Sasha’s lips into a wider smile. “Malak wants you in the Veil, Nathan. You die while under the thrall of the bounty…you automatically become a Shadow Immortal and appear before him. Didn’t you know that? Did you think death meant release? Hardly. I’m doing exactly what Malak wants.”
The spriggan stared at Nathan, heated and wanting the way Nathan was so used to from Sasha. He flicked his eyes shut, and when they opened, they were Sasha’s blue again.
“I think I’m going to keep Sasha after this,” he said, starting a hand low on Sasha’s hips and trailing lightly touching fingers up Sasha’s taut stomach. “It is such a nice body after all. Jim might even enjoy this. In fact…I guarantee he will. Jim…” he called sing-song as he began to crouch down.
Panic shot through Nathan’s limbs again, the limbs he couldn’t even twitch for how the spriggan was force-holding him to the wall. Nathan watched as he used Sasha’s hand to stroke gently at Jim’s face and Jim’s eyes fluttered.
“Jim!” Nathan yelled. “Snap out of it!”
When Jim’s eyes opened fully, still so glossed over and distant, they didn’t look up at the spriggan touching him tenderly, but at Nathan against the wall. “N-Nate…?”
“It’s the spriggan!” Nathan tried to explain, hating that Jim wasn’t resisting as Sasha’s body rolled him onto his back and straddled him without ceremony. “It’s the spriggan that possessed Leven; he’s messing with your head! Send—!” But what could Nathan say? He was going to tell Jim to send the asshole back to the Veil, but Jim’s powers hadn’t worked while the spriggan was still possessing Leven—not without killing the kid first.
“Shhh…” the spriggan hushed Jim before he could respond. He turned Jim’s head to look at him, Sasha’s body hovering over him with Jim’s hips between his thighs.
Jim blinked in confusion, perhaps not even remembering that they had been going at it fairly heated before.
“It’s okay, Jim,” the spriggan said in Sasha’s voice. “Nathan’s not feeling well. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. But you feel good…don’t you? You feel so good…”
Nathan hadn’t been able to understand how Jim had allowed himself to get into that position before, enraptured and even moaning Sasha’s name, but now that he could see it, it made sudden, horrible sense to him. The spriggan’s added power amped up Sasha’s pheromones so strongly that Nathan could actually see them.
The pheromones were visible, like a crimson mist that danced about Sasha’s fingertips as the spriggan stroked Jim’s face. Nathan physically saw Jim breathe them in. Jim’s eyes glazed over further and he stared up at Sasha under the pheromones’ thrall, hungry for the incubus all over again. These pheromones were so strong they didn’t even need a basis of attraction to work from.
“Jim, snap out of it!” Nathan cried again. “You know you don’t want Sasha! It’s not even Sasha, it’s the spriggan! Don’t listen to him!Jim!”
“Come on, Jim,” the spriggan spoke quietly, not trying nor needing to raise Sasha’s voice in order to keep Jim focused on him. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off, hmm? Don’t you want that…?” He leaned further over Jim, completely covering and surrounding him. Then, looking right up at Nathan for a moment and grinning devilishly, he rolled Sasha’s hips against Jim’s and Jim gasped in pleasure.
It was Jim—Jim—who grabbed Sasha’s face and kissed him fervently like before, deep and wanting.
Nathan didn’t think his stomach could tie in any more knots. He couldn’t get off the wall without the spriggan losing focus enough to drop him, and that didn’t seem likely. But Nathan knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it if he was really forced to watch this. Knowing Sasha was still in there unable to stop his own body made it so much worse. Sasha had killed a girl while feeding on accident once and still couldn’t forgive himself almost ten years later. If he killed Jim…
Nathan couldn’t be sure how strong the pheromones were, but he knew the spriggan had to keep Jim’s attention on him for them to continue working. Jim had snapped out of it fairly quickly when Nathan came into the room before.
“Figures an ugly freak like you would want Sasha,” he said, swallowing the bile in his throat at seeing Jim’s hands move to Sasha’s backside and grind up into him, their tongues still tangling in tandem. “Must suck, not being able to get laid in your own body ‘cause your face is worse than a pile of troll shit.”
Sasha’s eyes snapped open, no longer blue but that horrid molten black again. Jim moved to kissing Sasha’s neck, unaware.
“Or do you ugly fucks usually stick to screwing each other?” Nathan said with a forced smirk. “Got tired of always knocking on your sister’s door?”
“Enough,” the spriggan snarled, raising a hand at Nathan that closed something in his throat, silencing him.
Jim looked impatient again, out of it as he was, mindlessly pressing Sasha’s hips down against his own and licking the incubus’ smooth collarbone.
“You think I care about any of that now when I have a body like this?” the spriggan said. “You’re the one who should be worried about who’s going to befuckingyou. Because once you’re with Malak…well. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. But you see…Jimhere?”
Nathan flinched as the spriggan shifted Sasha’s hips and hoisted Jim up into a sitting position, Sasha’s knees bending so that the incubus was basically in Jim’s lap, hips aligned and still moving. Jim made a pleased noise like a feral growl. He moved his hands to Sasha’s back, holding him as he kissed and sucked fiercely on the skin of Sasha’s flat chest that had been brought to his face as he sat up.
The spriggan turned to Nathan again, clearly relishing in how Nathan couldn’t stand to watch and yet couldn’t look away either. “Jim isn’t as important as you think.”
Eager as he had seemed until now, as the spriggan spoke on, Nathan noticed Jim slowly beginning to lose his enthusiasm as if awareness was prodding distantly at the back of his mind. Nathan swallowed back the surge of hope that filled him and focused on the spriggan’s words, praying he would keep talking just a little longer.
“I can’t even begin to imagine everything Malak has planned for you, Nathan, but if you’ve met him, actually metthem, then you’ve at least been given a taste, yeah? Take it from me. Whatever he may have shown you or done to you so far, it’snothing compared to what awaits you. His powers in the Veil are endless. He wrote the book on imaginative torture. I almost wish I was going to be there to watch.”
He was moving Sasha’s hands through Jim’s hair and rolling Sasha’s hips consistently, but he didn’t seem to notice yet that Jim wasn’t responding anymore.
