Page 14 of Love Her Ruin
Sera stands. The motion is fluid, deliberate, the queen rising from her throne of linoleum. The cold fire blazes behind her eyes, and the shadows beneath her skin surge to the surface, coiling around her wrists, her throat, her fingers, like dark jewelry that pulses with intent.
"I’ll do it," she says.
James’s grin grows to feral, all teeth and ember-glow, the beast recognizing the scent of a hunt about to begin. "That's my Prayer."
Eddie's grey face has found its color again, the detective's purpose restored now that there is a plan.
"I need to sleep for this to work. And I'm…" She gestures at herself, at the rigid line of her shoulders, the tension in her jaw, the adrenaline that has been mainlining through her system since the consecrated ground pushed her back. "I'm not tired. I'm the opposite of tired. I'm so wired I could run through a wall."
James tilts his head, a feral gleam lighting his face. "I can think of a few ways to tire ye out, Prayer."
Eddie drops both hands below the table’s edge and shifts in his seat, his blue eyes shuttering with need. "I’m always looking for an excuse to fuck."
Sera’s blood shifts, stirring with something that remembers what it feels like to be held by three different kinds of darkness simultaneously, to be filled and claimed and worshipped until the body surrenders what the mind refuses to relinquish.
Control.
She needs to let go of it. Just long enough for sleep to find her.
And we are very, very good at making her let go.
"Fine," she says. “I’ll take one for the team. If the next step toward destroying my enemy is to let my court fuck me to sleep, so be it.”
James is already moving toward her. Eddie pushes back from the table. And I descend from the ceiling, letting my form thicken, letting the embers burn brighter, letting the cold pour off me in waves that make the air crystallize and the shadows deepen and the house itself lean in, eager, hungry, ready.
The court converges.
The hunt begins with surrender.
Chapter 8
Eddie
Iheldbackwhenwe fucked Sera just hours ago.
Not this time.
Earlier felt like a warm-up, the frantic, celebratory claiming after I crawled back from death. A rehearsal. This is the main event.
We carry her up the stairs, our hands all over her, stripping her naked before we even reach the bedroom. My fingers find the button of her jeans, pop it, yank the zipper down. The denim rasps against her thighs.
James’s mouth is on her neck, biting, sucking marks into her skin that will bloom purple by morning. Azhrael’s shadows are already coiling around her legs, lifting her, carrying her weight so we can devour her as we climb. My hands are on her tits, pinching her nipples until they’re hard little peaks under my thumbs, and she’s gasping, her head thrown back, her body arching between us, offering itself.
We lay her on her bed, and her bruised eyes lock on me like I’m the one holding the leash now.
And fuck, maybe I am.
The pact with Azhrael changed everything. That grey space where I died peeled back the layers of bullshit I’d buried under procedure and restraint. The good detective who listened, who didn’t posture, who kept his dark room locked and bolted is gone.
What’s left is a man who craves control like oxygen, who wants to choke the breath from her lungs while she comes, who needs to direct every filthy second like it’s a goddamn interrogation where the only confession is her screaming my name.
I feel the shadows humming under my skin, sharper than before, eager to obey. They’re not just power now; they’re an extension of my will.
James’s already stroking his cock through his pants as he circles the bed like a predator scenting weakness. Azhrael hovers at the edges, his ember eyes burning low, his form a cold void that makes the air frost over and the hairs on my arms stand up.
We’re a court, complete and hungry, and tonight, we’re fucking her into oblivion so she can sleep and hunt.
“Restrain her,” I say, my voice low and commanding, the words tasting like power.
