He needed to savor her, so Damien took his time, his painfully relentless curiosity finally given an opportunity for satisfaction. Beneath him, Amma panted, still holding back, fists clenching as she fought to keep them in place as he’d told her to. But grazing fingers and tongue over soft skin that shivered with each pinch and lick, he grew desperate to taste her elsewhere.
Damien took her by the waist and shifted her upward, such an easy, little thing to throw around, just as she’d been in his lap earlier. He had wanted to toss her on the table then, to slide himself inside her to show her what her wriggling and whining had been doing to him, but he had chosen to be callous then despite that punishing her meant he too had to suffer. At least as he slid her over the linens and trailed his mouth along her belly, he was inching closer to satisfaction for them both.
As soon as his lips touched her navel, she inhaled much sharper than before. He stopped, glancing up between her breasts, slick with his mouth’s exploration. Amma lifted her head, arms coming away from the bed as if to go for him. “What, um…are you doing?”
He pounced on her, pressing her back into the linens and holding her down. “You won’t remember since you were quite intoxicated,” he said, nipping at her bottom lip, “but I threatened to kiss every inch of your body once. Now I’d like to follow through.”
“Oh.” Amma’s breath was warm falling over his face with the simple word, all she seemed capable of saying. She settled under him, and he released her, shifting downward to caress the curve of her waist with his mouth. Then she started to make noises that weren’t words at all, a giggle when he tickled her side, a shocked gasp when he ran hands up her thighs to part them, and finally a pleading moan when he took the chain about her hips and began to inch it downward, lips following after. She wasn’t being nearly loud enough. Not yet.
A rap sounded at the door, short and loud, and Amma sat straight up with a squeak.
“Lord Bloodthorne, you have been summoned by the Grand Order,” a raspy voice called from the other side of the door.
Damien dropped his head into Amma’s lap and groaned right up against the warm, wet, rapturous place he’d nearly gotten to, fabric regrettably still sheathing her away from him. “Fucking bloody fucking Abyss of all the bloody possible fucking times.” He dragged himself upward begrudgingly to meet her face. “Apologies, my sweet.”
He kissed her quickly before sliding backward off the bed, eyes trailing down her body, breasts pink and pleading for him to return, legs spread and too terribly inviting. He nearly fell to his knees right there, ready to devote himself to a goddess for the first time, the whole of evil be damned, but another sharp knock reminded him the only way he could keep Amma at all was to bend to GOoD’s will.
“Don’t leave the room,” he commanded, grabbing his coat, eyes remaining on her, “and don’t even think of getting dressed.”
CHAPTER 7
A MORATORIUM ON DECISION MAKING
If the Grand Order wanted to see Damien, it needed only order him to come, but if they were not yet ready for his presence, why in the Abyss had they summoned him at all?
He stood outside their meeting chamber, hands on hips, scowl on lips, entire body wound tight. The maroon imp had retrieved him an hour prior, and he’d reluctantly left a panting, wriggling, moaning Amma due to what he’d believed was urgency, but as the minutes ticked by, all he could do was count the number of times he could have summoned her to come instead. GOoD was going to have to deal with a very frustrated, very reluctant Lord Bloodthorne when they finally did call him inside.
Just as Damien was mentally juggling quality versus quantity and weighing the results against the resilience of his jaw, there was a rumble, and the door he’d been pacing outside finally shifted, a slab of stone grinding against more stone, horrible, ominous, and annoying. The imp jumped to attention, scrambling to stand on the threshold, and when it was opened, swiftly moved to the side and bade Damien entry with a deep bow.
There they were, the bastards who had kept him waiting, all six this time sitting high upon their ridiculous dais. Which had been the faceless, nameless one to run late, he couldn’t discern, not that it mattered—surely they reveled in making him wait yet again—but at least Amma was not rotting in some dirty, cold cell. Hopefully she had nestled her nearly naked body beneaththe warm linens and—“Shit, I should have told her not to touch herself.”
WHAT WAS THAT, LORD BLOODTHORNE?
Damien grimaced. “You called, oh, terrible council?”
The hooded figures traded glances that he suspected even they could not see, the miasmic cloud above shifting in the low, blue lights of the stagnant chamber.
THE FORGING IS COMPLETE, said the council’s one voice that was also many, and arcana sizzled in the air.
“Oh, goody,” he groused, arms crossing.
The imp scurried past Damien and up onto the dais the hardest way, claws sinking into the stone as he climbed. When he reached the top, he hurried to its center betwixt all six chairs and held spindly arms up overhead.
The cloud that held the council’s consciousness began to swirl, a shock of arcana bolting through it. The magic jumped from edge to edge, and Damien watched it languidly until it arced to the center and burst downward, striking the imp. Smoke curled off his horns as he staggered, and Damien almost thought to help the wretched thing, but under the watchful eyes of the Grand Order, he decided it would be best to let him suffer. The imp righted himself and made it to the dais’s edge, hesitating and then jumping to the ground with a splat.
As if unworthy of being higher than what he carried, the imp managed to keep arms raised, scurrying to Damien and falling to his knees. In his clawed hands lay a bit of stone atop a coil of thin chain.
Damien glanced back up at the council, and he presumed their blotted out faces were staring back by the way a few leaned forward from their hulking seats. He clicked his tongue and snatched the chain. The rough-cut gem was shaped a bit like an upended triangle though the top corners were rounded, and it had a crimson sheen when it dangled in the light yet was toocloudy to be of value.
As the imp scurried away, Damien tipped his head to the council. “You know, I very much expected this forging to result in some pointy thing I was meant to stab some other angry thing with, not a bit of ugly jewelry.”
YOU HOLD, LORD BLOODTHORNE, THE DREADCOUNCIL’S FRAGMENTABLE PENDANT OF ACCURSED BONDAGE AND NEFARIOUS CONQUEST.
His lip turned up at the spinning pendant. “Don’t like the sound of that.”
IT IS THE ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND, FORGED FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF ITS TARGETS’ UNION AND SUBJUGATION. PUT IT ON, WON’T YOU?
“And Ireallydon’t like the sound ofthat.” He dropped his arm, and the pendant bounced against his leg.
