Page 121 of The Deer and the Dragon
“Please,” I begged, needing him inside me more than the sun in the winter, more than water in the desert, more than air. I pressed myself into him, knowing my robe was hiked up over my hips. The only thing separating us was his pants, and I pushed into him as if hoping it would burst through its cage and into me. I wriggled against him until I heard the sound of something—a button? a zip?—then the only noise accompanying the deep pulsing bass of the music was my gasp.
My head kicked backward. I cried out in pleasure, in agony, in surprise, in desperation, in need as he slid into me. I was so wet that I accepted him fully in a second. I cried out in fullness, in victory as he stretched me, filled me, completed me.
His reciprocal groan was music to my ears—sweeter and more vital than the thundering songs that shook the walls. I still felt the cool press against my face and bared breasts. I was still aware of the dark, dimly lit room. I knew Astarte was here with us. But all I could feel was the heartbeat of the cock inside me. I gave myself over to it, wanting fingers to dig into my hips, wanting the slap of skin as he drove into me, wanting the claiming demand of thrust after thrust.
I waited. And waited.
It took a second for me to recognize the wet sounds of a kiss behind me.
Breaking free from the haze again, I tried to jerk free to see what was happening, but the painful twist of my wrists kept my arms rod-straight. I grunted as I resisted it all, resisted the drug, the threesome, the world as I heard their mouths meet. I was his, and he was mine. He pushed into me more deeply and I gasped, feeling the fabric of his pants against my ass cheeks as if he’d barely popped himself out of his zipper to take me. I wanted to enjoy it, but I couldn’t. The lust slipped away as I heard the sounds of tongues and lips behind me again. I craned my neck just enough to see Astarte slip her hands into his hair. I tried to cry out, to stop their embrace as my eyes homed in on his free hand.
It didn’t go to her, or to me.
His free hand slipped to the back of his pants. I was barely conscious enough to see the moment he released my wrists. My hands flew forward to grip the edge of the table, groaning against the release of my bone-breaking grip. Time slowed as I watched Astarte’s hand in Caliban’s hair. His free hand went to hers, balling in her dark locks the way they had in mine so many times. His wrist yanked her head back, and herlips parted in a smile. Her eyes closed in pleasure. I arched up to protest the moment I saw his hand break free from its hidden place as his face changed completely from pleasure to concentration. His arm arced as his hand pointed down, the ornately engraved dagger angled for her heart. Her eyes flashed open in the last second before the knife plunged into her chest, buried up to its hilt as it found the tender spot between her ribs. She’d barely begun to scream out in rage as his other hand yanked her head back farther. Blood spurted from her center as he freed the dagger from her heart and slashed her across the tender flesh of her throat.
I watched and felt…nothing. Was I supposed to?
Her cry cut into gurgles.
On the far wall, Jessabelle’s face blinked onto the screen as she screamed for backup. I caught Azrames’s gray-and-black form. The clerk had crumbled in the corner of the lobby, pool of blood so red it looked black collecting below his head. Jessabelle scarcely had time to scream as the lasso whipped above Az’s head before the spiked hammer released. It shot across the room and embedded into the back of her skull. The screen went black.
Caliban pulled free from me, tying my robe as my head spun. I grabbed the table for stability. I heard the bizarre, squishing, crunching noise of sawing before I dared to look down at his blood-covered hands. I refused to let my eyes see the sight before me as he decapitated Astarte with the dagger. I blinked against it, struggling between arousal and horror, need and confusion, shock and terror.
“Caliban.” I finally managed his name.
“Trust me,” he said through gritted teeth, a muscle ticking in his jaw as he scooped me up. I looked to the slowly growing lake of vermillion that gushed from Astarte’s prone shape. A woman…her eyes open in unblinking surprise…mouth ajar in a silent scream…she’d been so pretty…
I bounced in his arms as I looked over his shoulder, scarcely aware as we passed the locker rooms, the shallowpool, the pillars. He hit the bank for the elevators again and again as he impatiently summoned the machine.
As if speaking through dozens of shots, I slurred, “Is it broken?”
“The elevator?” he asked, still pressing the button.
As if speaking through molasses, I tried again. “The seal.”
“Yes, Love,” he growled, face set in a hard shape against the tremor of fury that he struggled to contain.
“Jump,” I said. I could scarcely speak, nor did I want to. It was with the low purr of a bedroom voice that I slipped my hand toward his pants as I said, “Jump realms.”
He shook his head, snatching my hand to stop me in my pursuit. “We can’t leave Azrames with Anath. Stay in the elevator.”
Azrames. I knew that name.
The moment the doors parted, he shot into the rectangular box and pressed the button for the lobby over and over again. I knew this was important. I knew I needed to focus, to fight, to be an asset. Instead, I buried my face against his neck and pressed my lips against the pulse in his jugular. I felt like a storybook vampire as I could sense the blood beneath his throat. I wanted it. I wanted every part of him.
I wasn’t sure how much time had or hadn’t passed when the elevator doors parted for the lobby.
“Stay put!”
Caliban set me on the ground, and I felt the slapping offense of a cold fish across the face as he abandoned me. He dashed into the sounds, the whir of metal, the scream, the chaos and noise of the lobby. I heard more than three voices. Whoever was in there, it wasn’t just my demons and Anath. I’d witnessed Jessabelle’s death on screen in the moments before…
I struggled to my knees as I hit the button for the door to open. It did in a second as I crawled from the elevator. I got to my feet on unsteady legs. Wine and whiskey and molly and coke and music and lust and passion and tension and cravingtore me into a thousand pieces, each vice grabbing me with greedy hands as it pulled me in every direction. I struggled to move forward, eyes nearly unseeing, head swimming, ears hearing little above the ancient throb of bass-heavy music. Their drums filled me, demanded of me, called to me.
There was another scream—but not one of terror. A feminine rallying cry sharpened my attention, affording me another small moment of lucidity. I tried to understand the shapes between the cream-colored couches, the Juliet roses, the mosaic tiles of the marble flooring, but I couldn’t discern the shapes.
I barely made into the lobby when I fell to my knees, joints hitting the lobby floor with the purple, bruising pain of the cobblestones of Hell.
Anath broke her battle with the demons as she spun for me. She sprinted toward my prone form. Something shiny cut through the haze, if only for a moment. Azrames swung his lasso with the spiked, silvery ball at the end as he knocked her out of the way. He succeeded in stopping her advance, but I caught movement from everywhere as if I were a spider seeing out of the refraction of twelve arachnid eyes rather than two, useless human ones. The enemy was everywhere. And Caliban and Azrames were only two.
