Sloth, p.14
Sloth, page 14
part #4 of The Damning Series
My pussy squeezed Ryland’s cock, milking him for all he was worth, as he grunted, spilling his seed inside of me.
Killian pulled out of my mouth just before he came, aiming his cock so his cum covered my tits and landed on Ryland’s chest.
Not one of us said anything, suspended in time and space. At that moment, there was no poison coursing through my veins, killing me slowly. No humans camped outside Paco’s shed whispering my name with a reverence it didn’t deserve. No kings hellbent on destroying us. No evil, bitchy sisters who wanted to destroy the world. It was just…us.
And it was fucking perfect. What would’ve made it even better was all of my mates being present.
Killian didn’t remove his cock from where it lightly brushed against my tit, and Ryland didn’t pull out of me. We just sat there as the stars twinkled in the sky above us, seemingly pleased with our mating.
Utterly sated and unable to hold myself upright a second longer, I placed my hand on Ryland’s chest and practically fell forward. He caught me instantly and placed a tender kiss to my forehead. It didn’t even matter to me that we were camped out on the uncomfortable floor of the forest. Nothing mattered but my mates and the love I felt for them.
“Fuck,” Killian murmured dazedly as he dropped down on the other side of me. He kissed my shoulder as his hand sneaked around me, cupping my breast.
“Fuck is right.” I laughed breathlessly as I remained cuddled between the two of them.
The silence was broken when Killian blurted, “I’ve never had a threesome before.”
“You’ve never had sex before,” Ryland retorted, and I didn’t need to see my incubus to know that he was blushing.
My heart swelled with emotion, and desire swirled through my veins. What would it be like when I completely claimed Killian as my own? I heard being with an incubus was absolutely insane, inspiring pleasure that no human could possibly imagine.
And a sick part of me felt an insane amount of glee that I would be the first, and only, girl ever to experience this with Killian. It wasn’t as if I had expected all of my mates to remain virgins before we met when I sure as fuck wasn’t one, but it was nice to know that I would be Killian’s first.
“Soon.” I pressed my lips to Killian’s hand, a promise and a vow. In response, he nestled closer to my body, his cock digging into my ass.
A cough jerked my body forward, and I spasmed in my mates’ arms.
“Z?” Killian asked in concern, but I couldn’t stop coughing. It felt as if my lungs were being shredded and forced out of my throat. Blood dripped down my chin and stained the dirt beneath us.
“I’m. Okay,” I panted, though my voice was weak and shaky.
Killian’s face turned grim. “No.” He swallowed. “You’re not.”
“Come on.” Ryland grabbed my clothes off the ground and tenderly began to dress me. I let him, too weak and tired to do the simple task myself. “Let’s get back to the others.” His eyebrows furrowed together in concern as he stared intently into my eyes. Whatever he saw had sadness rippling across his face. “Now.”
Sixteen
Devlin
The fire in my veins burned white-hot as I stormed down the staircase and into the foreboding darkness of the dungeons. Only one candle sat on the opposite end of the hall, its orange light barely able to penetrate the shadows surrounding us.
Everything here was dank and depressing, with stone walls, dirty floors, and the scent of piss permeating the air.
Lupe stood beside me, his expression grave and hands balled into fists. Both of us were on pins and needles as we neared the cell located at the very end of the hall that we knew housed the shadow king.
He stared despondently at the far wall of his cell, his shadows contained by the cuffs wrapped around both of his wrists. This was powerful magic—magic I had only seen once before, when Zack was able to stop Diego from accessing his powers during the Damning.
Which meant that bitch Aaliyah was involved.
“I’m not surprised they sent the two of you.” His gaze didn’t move in our direction, though his hands did tighten into fists. Without his shadows obscuring him from view, I could make out every scratch marring his face from the kings’ torture. Every bruise on his bare torso. Every wince of pain he quickly tried to hide.
“Your Highness,” I began stiffly, but the shadow king simply laughed, the noise low and raspy, and waved his hand back and forth as if he could dismiss my words.
“Please. I’m no more a king than you. Call me Seth.” He finally twisted his head to stare at me, and I was struck by the blue of his eyes. Not because the color was unique or anything like that, but because they were Ryland’s eyes. The same cerulean shade I saw daily in my brother’s face was now staring back at me from this beaten, disheveled shell.
“Seth.” I tested the name out on my tongue, not quite sure how much I liked it. For as long as I could remember, the kings had held a god-like power in my mind. They were invincible, indestructible, and powerful beyond measure. Even the shadow king, who we’d all decided was the nicest of the bunch, was both revered and feared.
To see him reduced to this…
Horror engulfed me, squeezing my throat in an impenetrable iron vise.
What would the kings do if they discovered the truth about Z? Would they continue using her as their pet assassin, forcing her to do their bidding and work against her closest friends and confidants? Or would they decide she was more trouble than she was worth and kill her? Knowing my father and his malevolent friends, the former option was more their style. They saw all of us as only pieces on a game board, and they wouldn’t hesitate to move Z like a marionette into enemy territory.
“If you’re going to torture me, get it over with,” the shadow king—Seth—said in an indolent manner. He nestled himself further against the wall and squeezed his eyelids shut, adopting a pose of nonchalance and innocence. “I’m not telling you shit.”
“But it’s true you worked with the Alphabet Resistance?” Lupe hedged, but Seth simply pantomimed zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key.
I stared intently at the shadow king, almost as if I could will him to reveal all of his secrets, before sighing heavily and grabbing Lupe’s arm. The large man didn’t struggle as I dragged him away from the cell, with its pungent smell and steel bars, towards the opposite end of the hall, near the candle.
“We can’t torture him,” Lupe hissed in revulsion. “I won’t. Not again.”
I knew he was no doubt thinking of T—Z’s friend and a member of the resistance, whom he’d been forced to get information out of. We’d left T back at the inn with the other human servants, but I knew it haunted Lupe whenever he saw his mottled, bruised face and the scar on his cheek that would never quite heal properly.
“He won’t tell us anything,” I warned, glancing over my shoulder in the direction of Seth’s cell. Fuck, it felt weird to call him that. His title, the King of the Shadows, evoked images of wealth and power. Seth made me think of the pathetic, beaten man rotting away in a cell miles beneath the capital. “I don’t know what to do here, Lupe. The kings own Z, and if we don’t do what they say, I have no doubt they’ll hurt her to hurt us. But she’ll never forgive us if we give over information about the Alphabet Resistance to the kings. And that’s assuming the shadow king tells us in the first place. Plus, how the fuck do we explain all of this to Ryland?”
As I was speaking, articulating the numerous thoughts running rampant through my head, Lupe’s expression changed and tightened, shock giving way to resolve, and then that resolve transforming into unreadability. Before I could question his behavior, he placed a large hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“I’ll handle this for us,” he vowed, his tone solemn.
“Lupe…” I eyed my best friend warily. “What are you going to do?”
Lupe ducked his head until his blue eyes met my violet ones. There were lines around his eyes and mouth, lines that I’d never noticed before. It gave him a haggard look, almost as if he’d aged years in seconds, and I couldn’t help but note the similarities between him and his father.
They really did look similar.
But I couldn’t argue with him and whatever decision he’d apparently made, not when Z’s life was on the line. Not when I would make the same decision as well.
I hated that Lupe was embracing his wrath, embracing the beast he’d struggled for years to contain, but we didn’t have a fucking choice.
We never had a choice.
We were born in sin, and we’d die in sin. It was the way the world worked.
So instead of mounting a protest, I nodded stiffly, straightened out my cuffs, and then climbed the long staircase out of the basement, leaving my brother alone to face his demons.
What was happening to us?
In our quest to stop our fathers…were we becoming even bigger monsters than them?
I didn’t make it too far before I was bombarded by a sickly sweet perfume. My nose wrinkled in distaste a second before a tiny body practically plowed me over, her arms wrapping around my waist and constricting like a boa.
“Devlin! I haven’t seen you in forever. I’ve been worried.” I detangled myself from the brown-haired genie with a grunt of disgust.
“Laurel,” I said curtly, staring into her violet eyes a few shades darker than my own. She smiled widely, revealing a single dimple in her right cheek, and brought a hand to my wrist. I automatically stepped away with a grimace, hating her touch on my skin, but that only seemed to broaden her smile.
Some might have considered her pretty, with her curly brown hair, an hourglass figure, and long lashes that curled slightly. But she didn’t hold a candle to Z, a fact that would infuriate her if it came to light.
“You’re a tough man to get a hold of, Devlin Genie,” she purred as something ugly and slimy lodged itself in my throat.
Weeks ago, I made a deal with Laurel to find my stolen lamp and have it returned to me. At the time, I’d believed it housed the soul of Z’s ex-boyfriend, S, but someone had stolen the soul before I could retrieve it. It all proved to be a complete fucking waste of time, but because I’d wished on Laurel’s lamp, I owed her a favor.
Or my soul.
And it seemed she had come to collect.
“What do you want, Laurel?” I bit out. I was desperate to get away from her, to get away from it all. I wanted to scrub at my skin in my shower, eliminating days of filth that clung to every bare inch of me. And then I wanted to find my favorite black suit, put it on, and fall back into a role of familiarity, one where my life wasn’t rapidly steering itself towards a brick wall. One where I could take control of my surroundings once more, instead of relying on chance and circumstance—two words I abhorred.
“You owe me, Devlin.” Her hand moved to my chest, her fingers splayed just above my heart, before she lowered it to my stomach. The path she took was slow and torturous, and every muscle in my body locked together. I held myself perfectly still as her fingers touched the waistband of my pants, but before she could dip them inside, I grabbed her wrist and gave it a punishing squeeze.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed out, horror and disgust percolating in my stomach like days old milk. If she forced me to touch her…
I would rather die.
Laurel pouted, fluttering her long lashes up at me as if she thought she had even the smallest chance in hell of seducing me. “You don’t want me touching you, Dev? You don’t want me to wrap my lips around your cock?” She wrenched her hand free and placed it on my cock before I could stop her, rubbing me through the material of my pants. I was about as hard as a limp noodle, and she knew it.
The only touch my body ever responded to was that of my mate.
“Don’t.” I grabbed her wrist once more. “Touch.” I squeezed until her face scrunched together in pain. “Me.” Releasing her, I gave her a tiny shove that had her stumbling back a few steps.
But instead of appearing indignant or even upset, she simply threw her head back and began to laugh.
“Oh, Devlin. I missed our verbal sparring. Haven’t you?”
“I’ll kill you before I’ll ever allow you to lay a hand on me,” I warned her vehemently. I didn’t care what my father would do to me. This bitch wasn’t going to get a single piece of me, no matter the deal.
“Relax, firecracker.” She quirked her lips up and sashayed back towards me, standing until we were chest to chest. She bit her bottom lip as she peered up at me, one of her hands moving to her cleavage and tracing the skin there.
“Not. Happening,” I hissed, and she released another breathy laugh, finally stepping away.
“All right. Fortunately for you and your flaccid dick, I don’t want that from you.” She began to circle me like a vulture studying its prey. Her eyes were just as predatorial as that damn bird.
“Then what do you want?” I growled out.
She paused when she was in front of me once more, but this time, she kept a respectable distance between us. She placed her hands on her hips and tilted her head back, her lips twisting into a scowl.
“I need you to break someone out of the palace’s dungeons for me.”
“What?” I balked, staggering back a step in disbelief. “You want me to free the shadow king?” That was a death sentence if I ever heard one. If the kings discovered we helped him escape…
It would be very, very bad.
“No.” She shook her head. “Not him. The other prisoner.”
“The other…prisoner?” I cocked an eyebrow, trying to remember who else had been down there with Seth, Lupe, and me. I couldn’t recall any of the other cells being occupied, but that wasn’t to say they weren’t. It was a big fucking prison, and there were still two more hallways with more cells than I could count.
“A shifter,” she clarified. “Cell G.” Something soft touched her features as she gazed at something over my shoulder.
What the…?
Understand washed over me. “You love him,” I stated in wonderment.
The softness faded, replaced by something hard and dangerous. “Your job isn’t to ask questions,” she hissed out. “Your job is to do what I say. Once you complete this, your debt to me will be fulfilled.”
She turned on her heel, preparing to walk away, but I called after her. “What did he do?” A perplexed expression knitted her eyebrows together, so I rushed to elaborate. “What did he do to end up in the dungeon?”
“Oh.” A cunning smirk pulled up her ruby-red lips as her gaze turned faraway and distant yet again. When she finally came back to the present, her eyes were hyper focused, but her smile remained just as cruel. “Nothing you need to worry about. Just get him out, and we’ll be even. Got it?”
Nothing you need to worry about.
This was a horrible fucking idea, yet I knew I had no choice. I had to free this mysterious prisoner from the capital’s prison or my soul would belong to Laurel.
Now, how to do that…
I couldn’t very well walk in and use my cunning to break him out. And I couldn’t have Lupe wish for his escape either, not when my father would be able to see our contract if he so desired.
Which meant…
Which meant I had to ask my father for his help. Which meant I had to play the dutiful son he’d always wanted me to be. Which meant I had to move myself on the game board away from Z and towards the kings.
My nails dug into my palms hard enough to break skin as I moved farther down the hall, bypassing the throne room and ballroom until I reached my bedroom. Once inside, I locked the door, turned on my shower, stripped down, and then scrubbed my body raw. My skin was a bright red by the time I finally pulled myself out from beneath the spray and dressed in a pitch-black suit with white cufflinks. I combed my brown curls back and completed the look with a plum-colored tie.
Control.
You need control.
I thought of Z the last time I saw her, unconscious and in pain, and my heart gave a damning squeeze, even as my expression turned stoic.
For her, I would become the thing I hated.
For her, I would embrace the monster inside of me.
For her, I would be the Crowned Prince of the Genies.
I straightened my violet tie, checked my reflection once more in the mirror, and then stalked out of my room with an imperious set to my chin. Servants and nightmares alike got out of my way as I walked, their eyes widening in fear and awe. It was the same look they wore around my father and the rest of the kings.
The only way to free a prisoner and not be deemed a traitor was to have an official pardon from one of the kings. Which meant I needed a favor from my father. Which meant…
Which meant I was selling my soul to a different genie.
Pushing open the heavy oak doors to the throne room, I found the kings exactly where I’d left them, whispering amongst themselves. Their silence was instant when they caught sight of me, and I noticed my father straighten imperceptibly in his throne, as meticulously groomed as always.
“Devlin?” he demanded. “What’s the meaning of all of this?”
I clasped my hands behind my back and pushed my chest out, meeting each of their gazes unflinchingly.
“Why, I thought it was obvious?” Bile burned in my mouth, but I shoved it back down. “I’m here to embrace my duties as the crowned prince.” I paused, allowing that revelation to sink in. Unlike my brothers, I hadn’t ever openly defied my father, but I knew he saw the rebellious streak in me. Taking a deep breath, I braced myself for what I needed to do. “How can I serve you, Father?”
Seventeen
Z
My peaceful sleep was interrupted by the barely audible sound of the van door opening. My eyes shot open, and I tensed where I lay between Killian and Ryland in the backseat of the vehicle, all of the seats pushed down to make room for the blankets and pillows we borrowed from the humans. Jax and Bash had chosen to stay inside Paco’s shed and help him finish the potions. Hopefully, I’d be able to take the elixirs tomorrow and finish it once and for all. Either I’d die…or I’d live to fight another day. I was hoping for the latter, thank you very much. Since Dair was still in the lake, and I knew he had no intentions of coming back tonight…that meant the figure peering in at us was not one of my mates.
