He froze, waiting a full second before turning around to face me again. Behind me, I heard the plants begin to shift, twisting and crunching against one another, and when I checked back over my shoulder. There was a brand new path that hadn’t been there moments ago, and my heart leapt into my throat.
“Don’t die, Rayven,” he said.
Then in a swirl of sparkling blue magic, he disappeared, leaving me alone once more.
I stared at the spot he’d been seconds ago, this time a little less lonely, and a little less afraid.
Chapter16
BELIAL
I wasn’t just playingwith fire. I was stoking an inferno that threatened to destroy everything if I wasn’t careful. Though, truthfully, I didn’t mind getting burned. Not when it meant I’d be using every one of my little thief’s orifices to bury my cock in.
It was only supposed to be a game. It had quickly turned to so much more.Shewas turning into so much more.
I’d meant to toy with my little human, to get her hopes up only to crush them later. To earn her trust, only to break it. I’d wanted to be her ruin, her destruction.
But now…
Now I was pacing in my study, twirling the tiny dagger earring between my fingers, waiting for her to summon me with its twin. Waiting to race back to her in the maze and help her in exchange for free use of her body.
Waiting for her to need me.
For hours I’d watched her in the maze as she tried, and failed, to get anywhere. It shouldn’t have been as entertaining as it was. But…I could watch her forever.
I expected her to call for me almost as soon as I’d given her the earring. She was hopelessly lost, endlessly frustrated, yet the call never came. Was she trying to prove a point? Trying to show me just how strong she was? Or was she that reluctant to let me use and worship her body?
Stubborn human.
Every one of her attempts were futile. She'd never figure out the labyrinth's cryptic paths. No one ever had, not that many had tried. I alone knew its secrets for I was the one who'd planted it centuries ago. I was the one who'd enchanted it, tended to it, fed it corpses to keep it content.
My little thief would try desperately to escape the dark, endless pathways, and it wouldn't be enough. Not by a long shot.
Then, when her time ran out, she would belong to me… not that she didn't already. At least this way, she’d come to accept that fact once she failed.
In the meantime, I’d let her come crawling to me for my help, thinking she had an ally in the masked ferryman.
I couldn’t wait to see her break when she discovered the truth.
I could do it now, give in to the desperate fire in my veins and pluck her from the labyrinth. I could break our deal and claim her as my queen, abandoning this plan of psychological torture.
But she was so beautiful when she suffered. So stunning when she cursed, when she cried. When her emotional fortress came down and she sank into complete and utter despair. Knowing I was the sole cause of it all, that made it all the sweeter.
Besides, I might have been a heartless, callous monster like so many had claimed, but I was a beast of my word. I could summon enough patience to wait until her time ran out.
Three days was nothing compared to how long my little thief would belong to me. A blink of time compared to all of eternity.
In the meantime, I’d wait for her to beg for my help. I’d give it. In return I’d use her, play with her, taste her. She’d be willing. For the first time, I’d fuck a living woman. One that wouldn’t cower or sob at the sight of me.
My fingers tightened around the earring, the blade slicing through my flesh. With a curse, I pushed the digit into my mouth to suck my blood clean.
“You must be in quite the dry spell to be sucking your own body parts, brother, ” a voice hissed behind me. I turned to find a man with angular cheeks, green scaly skin, and serpentine eyes glaring at me from the mirror in the corner.
Fuck. I usually kept a sheet over the damn thing to keep my brothers from contacting me, but I’d forgotten to put it back after my conversation with Asmodeus.
Of course one of them would contact me when I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. Irritation burned through me when I saw who it was.
“What do you want, Leviathan?”
