My head was buzzing, and my skin tingled everywhere her limp body touched me. I’d wanted to keep going, I hadn’t wanted to stop. But I could have gone until it killed her, and killing her wasn’t what I wished for.
She was mine. Finally, after all these years of following her, waiting, watching. Mine. My new little pet, my broken toy; and I didn’t collect toys to fix them. No, broken toys were the interesting ones. They were sharp and dangerous, like shards of shattered glass I couldn’t resist running my fingers over until I bled.
I’d be getting off to the memory of her stabbing me for a while: the viciousness on her face, the unbridled primality when she swung the knife at me. Fuck, it gave me goose bumps. My cock was still hard, and I was aching to bury it in that warm, sensitive pussy again the second I could.
Humans were always so tight, poor little things. They weren’t built for demon cocks, but they were adaptable, stretchy. A little pressure and they’d take it all.
But as I’d told her before she passed out, caring for her had to come first. I was a monster, but I wasn’t wasteful. I needed her strong so I could play with her again.
She’d been using a little shack in the mountains as shelter. I’d followed her there the previous night and kept watch, to ensure no Eldbeasts came along and ruined my bargain before it even happened. But I wasn’t taking her back to that place: it smelled like piss and rat shit. That was no place for a human.
No place for my human. The sensation of her soul bound to my being was still new and heavy, familiar but strange. Every soul felt a little different: some warm, some cold, heavy or light, soft or sharp. Hers was fiery, dangerously warm the more I pulled toward it. Binding a soul to mine meant the universe tugged at all the little strings around us, tighter and tighter, weaving our threads closer until they were inseparable. Sometimes it felt messy, tangled. Hers felt like a constant pressure, as if her soul was always pulling in another direction.
She was a fighter all the way to her soul. I liked that.
She was soaked by the time I got her home, but not even the cold rain made her stir. She was sleep-deprived, low on calories, dehydrated. Considering she was so skilled at survival, she was absolute shit at actually taking care of herself.
With her soul bound to mine, her body could heal a little faster than usual. The cuts on her chest had already begun to knit together, and the bleeding had stopped. But her swift healing was also contributing to her exhaustion, as her body worked harder and faster than it was built to.
She’d be knocked out for a while, so I wanted to make her comfortable.
My house had several bedrooms, none of which I used for sleeping. The beds in them just kept up appearances, because who the hell didn’t put a bed in their house? The only thing I used them for was fucking, but why fuck on a bed when there was literally everywhere else? Bed-fucking was unimaginative, but I digress.
I decided to put her in the master suite, give her something nice to wake up to.
But she was bloody and covered in mud. It didn’t seem right to lay her on clean sheets like that. I laid her in the tub first and ran the hot water. She stirred, but only a little, her eyes fluttering when the water touched her. Damn, she really was exhausted. I’d thought she’d wake up and do the washing herself, but no luck there.
Well. Fuck. It wasn’t my style to mess around with unconscious humans; it went against my principles. There was no fun to be had if they didn’t even know what was happening, and sneaking to get a bit of pleasure was pathetic. But it wasn’t about that. I wasn’t going to put her to bed muddy. There was too much risk of those cuts getting infected, and losing a human to infection was an amateur mistake.
I rinsed her off, using the detachable shower head to get the mud off her skin and out of her hair. I went slow, because disturbing her sleep just felt rude at this point. As I ran the water over her body, I got to take in every little detail of the art inked into her skin. A gray wolf’s head was centered proudly on her chest, surrounded by pine boughs, as if it were peering out from the forest. There were white flowers between the boughs, a touch of softness I wouldn’t have expected.
They covered her old scars, but couldn’t entirely hide them. Whoever had inflicted them on her — Kent Hadleigh, I could only assume — had been brutally reckless with their blade. They’d been rough, creating jagged scars. She’d likely been struggling against them, thrashing, causing the knife to slip.
It made me instantly, irrationally furious. I had to pause to force my blinding rage to calm. Just the thought of someone else holding her down, hurting her against her will, taking her suffering when they had no fucking right to it…
Fucking Lucifer, it enraged me. No wonder her initial reaction to seeing the knife had been such terror. I wasn’t used to experiencing such a visceral reaction to it; Earth was rampant with violent, cruel, unfair things, and I hardly blinked an eye at them. But when it came to her, when it came to my little wolf, it was different. I’d taken care with the knife, so the scars I’d given her would be slim, working within the lines of the art she already had.
They weren’t meant to mar her flesh, they were meant to honor it. The sight of my sigil etched into her skin made my cock hard again, a dangerous combination with my anger. I was going to end up breaking something if I wasn’t careful. I needed to go for a run. I needed to catch my breath away from her.
Why the hell did she have me so wound up?
I toweled her off and laid her in bed. She stirred as her head settled on the pillow, but she only exhaled softly and turned onto her side, clutching the blankets close to her chin. Her skin was so soft, it was like silk under my fingers. And when I trailed my hand over her shoulder, goose bumps blossomed across her skin. I sat back, lounging in the plush chair tucked in the corner beneath the window.
I wanted to keep touching her. I wanted to explore every inch, take my time, follow the lines of every scar, and count the freckles across her back. I longed to feel that soft, warm, mortal skin under my hands.
But I was trying to be good, I was trying to be polite. Self-control was a torturously difficult exercise.
Her lips moved with silent words in her sleep, and my claws sunk into the chair’s fabric. Those filthy lips around my cock, hungry and eager — I bit my knuckles hard enough to make myself bleed. My cock was aching, straining against the confines of my jeans. No touching, Zane. No more fucking touching.
I left her alone, took her clothes downstairs and put them in the wash — at least the pieces that were still wearable. I would’ve preferred she stay naked, but she wouldn’t go for that.
I had to get my head straight before she awoke.
