Damien grabbed her wrist, holding her wandering hand still. “You don’t have to barter anything for my help,” he said sharply. “Especially not this.”
“But you want it too.” She wriggled against the bulge between them, heat building as if they’d soon start a fire. “This part of you does anyway.”
He groaned, hold weakening. “What in all the planes has gotten into you?”
“I’d like it to be you,” she purred, leaning in to kiss his ear lightly and then whispering, “make love to me, Damien.” She watched him swallow, gritting his teeth, hips falling still. He was stiffening in exactly the wrong way which wasn’t at all how this was supposed to go. “Mmm, that’s not what Rapture called you; it was Lord Bloodthorne, wasn’t it?” Amma dropped her voice low against his ear again. “Fuck me, Lord Bloodthorne.”
“Holy gods, Ammalie,” he swore, releasing her arm and taking her roughly by the hips, but instead of thrusting himself against her, he lifted her up, putting hateful space between the two. “What does it matter what Rapture calls me?”
“Because that’s what you like.” She nipped at his jaw. “I just want to please you, and if what you want is someone like her—”
“I don’t want someone like her, I want—wait.” Damien sat up swiftly, shocking Amma as she was taken along with him. The arm around her waist tightened, holding her there in his lap, the other hand taking her chin to pull her face close. “Are you drunk again?” He sniffed her breath.
She shook her head, barely able to move in his grip on her jaw.
His brow pinched with confusion. “You don’t smell like ale at all. Did someone do something to you?” She shook her head again, but it was clear he didn’t believe her, eyes darkening. “Tell me the truth, Amma. Now.”
Her heart hitched, the threat in his voice that should have sparked fear only deepening her desire. “Or what?”
“You will not like it.”
Somehow she doubted that very much. Amma squirmed herself forward, closing the gap in their laps, and her core pulsed with pleasure.
Damien growled, though his length persisted. Chthonic spilled out from between his lips in a mad rush, a sibilant spell wrapping around Amma and climbing up her spine. As the magic writhed its way inside her, Amma put up no resistance, welcoming it in. His fingers still dug into her jaw, and flooded with Damien’s arcana, she melted into the tight embrace both inside and out.
She’d been so certain of what she wanted moments ago, and that desire hadn’t left, but it shifted as she watched his face, the confusion at her actions, the mistrust. She longed to crush that doubt, to obliterate it with her touch. It didn’t matter how she’d gotten here, just that she was here, and she was finally able to show him what she wanted—him—and wasn’t that enough?
Amma lifted a hand to Damien’s temple and swept back the fall of his black hair. She let her fingers trail down to the space between his brows that he nearly always held so narrow and angry, and she lightly touched the place where his scar began. The spell was still swirling inside her, tickling behind her navel, beneath her shoulder blades, under her breasts, and she tenderly ran her fingers along the silvery, raised skin over his nose and across his cheek.
“Why don’t you believe me?” she asked, feeling a frown crease her lips.
“Because someone’s poisoned you,” he said, his grip on her going tighter though he released her chin. “I can feel it wreaking havoc in your body.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she said, shaking her head vigorously, and then she snickered. “Come on, Damien, show me if you have a tail or not.”
Damien clicked his tongue, frustration mounting.
She grabbed his free hand then and used her nimble fingers to slip it into the scooped neckline of her dress and cup it around her breast. “I want you,” she breathed, shifting his other hand from her waist to bury it somewhere even warmer. “Let me show you.”
His eyes fluttered closed, fingers sliding over her, then froze. “Sanguinisui, tell me what’s happened to you.”
Amma’s body went lax, mind clouding, words falling out. “I saw you talking to Rapture. I didn’t want you to sleep with her, I wanted you to choose me instead. Ivory gave me a vial filled with something she said would make me less afraid, and here I am.”
“And here you are,” he sighed, pulling his fingers away from her most sensitive spots and making her draw a sharp breath.
The spell flooded out of her, an ache balling itself up in her stomach. “I thought you weren’t going to do that to me anymore.”
Damien groaned, this time with discomfort. “Apologies, but I didn’t expect you to poison yourself and lie to me.”
“I’m not,”—Amma swallowed, mouth dry—“I’m notlying. I do want you.”
He tipped his head, appraising her, then lifted a hand. The tips of his fingers were slick in the candlelight, and he grinned. “Well, I suppose so. But you’re still intoxicated.”
“It was a good idea,” she insisted, pouting, but couldn’t look right at him.
“No, it was not.” The smirk fell off his face. “You ingested a potion from a stranger so that you could come in here and do something you wouldn’t have done otherwise. I would say that’s actually very, very bad.”
“That’s not true.” She pawed at his bare shoulders, exasperated, but as the last of the talisman’s magic left her, she was suddenly flooded again with the confidence to turn things around. She lifted her eyes back to his and grinned. “But don’t you like it when I do bad things?”
