Chapter 8: The Prince's Penance
The scent of burnt sugar and old blood clung to the ruins. Chris’s breath was hot and ragged against her neck, his body a cage of trembling muscle and pain around her. Her own blood, rich and potent, welled where his fangs had pierced, a twin sting that echoed the throbbing between her legs.
He didn’t let her move. His hand, still tangled in her hair, kept her face pressed to the cold, fractured mirror. Her reflection stared back, a mosaic of a woman she barely recognized—lips swollen, eyes dark with a storm of shame and undeniable need, her back streaked with the violent, pearlescent proof of his release.
“You smell like a fucking battlefield,” he rasped, his voice shredded. “Sulfur and sin and him. It’s all over you.”
He ground his still-hard cock against her ass, smearing his own spend across her skin and the remnants of Edgar’s earlier claim. The crude, possessive gesture should have revolted her. It did. And it lit a fuse low in her belly.
“Get off me, Chris.” The words lacked force, breathy and spent.
“Or what?” he bit out, but he loosened his grip. She turned, shoving against his chest. He stumbled back, his torn wings sending a shower of glittering, ethereal feathers to the sticky floor. The hellish sigils carved into his skin by Edgar’s chains pulsed a faint, angry red.
She wiped her mouth, tasting copper and salt. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to act like some wounded animal marking its territory. You lost any right to claim me the moment you fucked Lorena.”
His face, handsome even in its anguish, contorted. “I know. Fuck, Mia, I know.” He ran a hand through his hair, streaking it with ash. “You think I don’t see that throne room every time I close my eyes? You, on his lap, soaked in both of us… and me on my knees.” The memory was a physical blow; he flinched. “He wanted me to see. He wanted me to taste my failure. And I did. I licked you clean and I wanted to choke on it.”
The raw admission hung in the air, thicker than the dust. Mia’s body hummed, confused. Her skin remembered the worship of his tongue, the brutal efficiency of his fucking. Her heart was a mess of broken glass.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked, her voice quieter.
“This is where it started,” he said, gesturing weakly at the decaying grandeur. “My club. My kingdom. My pathetic attempt to play prince in the human world. This is where I should have begged you to be my queen. Instead, I got drunk on attention and let everything rot.” He took a step toward her, his movements stiff. “Including us.”
He was close now. The heat of him, the familiar scent of night-blooming jasmine and angelic grace buried under hellfire and regret, washed over her. Her nipples tightened against the ruined silk of her dress.
“He’ll kill you for touching me,” she whispered, not as a warning, but as a dark, thrilling fact.
A savage grin cut across his face. “Let him try. I’m already in hell.”
His mouth crashed down on hers. This kiss wasn’t like the earlier violence. It was desperate, starving, a floodgate breaking. She kissed him back, her tongue meeting his, tasting her own blood on his lips. A low groan vibrated from his chest into hers.
His hands found the torn shoulders of her dress and ripped downward. The fabric gave way with a sigh, pooling at her feet. The cold air of the ruin kissed her skin, followed immediately by the searing heat of his palms. He palmed her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples with a rough, knowing pressure.
“You’re still so fucking perfect,” he muttered against her mouth before trailing biting kisses down her jaw, her throat, lingering at the wound he’d made. His tongue lapped at it, a soothing, erotic contrast, and she arched into him.
He sank to his knees on the gritty floor. His eyes, luminous even in the gloom, locked on hers as he pushed her thighs apart. The neon’s dying pulse painted his face in streaks of crimson and shadow.
“This isn’t for him,” Chris said, his voice a dark promise. “This is for me. This is me remembering what’s mine.”
He buried his face between her legs.
His tongue was a flat, demanding stroke against her entire slit, gathering the mixed wetness there—her arousal, the lingering slickness from Edgar. He groaned, the sound vibrating through her core. “Taste it all,” he snarled, his words muffled by her flesh. “Taste your king. And now taste me taking you back.”
He devoured her. There was no finesse, only a raw, relentless hunger. His tongue speared into her cunt, fucking her with short, hard thrusts before flattening to circle her clit with punishing focus. He used his lips, his teeth, his stubble scraping her tender inner thighs. One hand gripped her hip, fingers digging in, while the other slid between her cheeks, a blunt tip pressing against her other hole.
She cried out, her hands flying to his hair, not to pull him away but to hold him there. The mirror behind her rattled with the force of her shudder. Shame was a distant echo, drowned out by the roaring tide of sensation. He was right—this was different from the throne room. That was a punishment, a performance. This was a reclaiming, frenzied and personal.
“Chris… fuck…” Her curses were gasped, useless things.
He redoubled his efforts, sucking her clit into his mouth, his tongue flicking over the swollen bud until her legs began to shake. The orgasm ripped through her, brutal and blinding. She convulsed, her juices flooding his mouth, and he drank her down like a man dying of thirst, not missing a drop.
Before the last tremor had subsided, he was on his feet, spinning her around. He bent her over a crumbling cocktail table, its surface gritty with plaster and time. Her cheek pressed against the cold, porous stone. He kicked her legs wider.
He didn’t enter her slowly. He shoved his cock into her soaked, clenching channel in one brutal, deep stroke.
The air left her lungs in a punched-out moan. He was thicker than memory, harder, and he filled her with a stunning, painful completeness. He didn’t wait for her to adjust.
He set a punishing rhythm, each drive of his hips slamming the table into the wall with a jarring thud. His balls slapped against her with every thrust. One hand anchored on her shoulder, the other circled her throat, not squeezing, just holding, a dominant cuff of heat.
“You feel that?” he gritted out, his breath coming in hot gusts against her ear. “That’s me. Not him. Me. You’re so fucking tight, Mia. Like you’ve been waiting for me.”
She couldn’t speak. Pleasure, sharp and coppery, built again, a fast-rising wave fed by the sheer animal force of his fucking. The crude, filthy sounds of their bodies connecting filled the hollow space. Each grunt from him, each slick, wet smack of skin on skin, coiled the tension tighter in her gut.
“Come for me again,” he commanded, his voice guttural. “Come on my cock, you perfect fucking bitch. Show me you remember.”
His fingers found her clit, rubbing rough, hurried circles. It was too much. The overstimulation, the relentless penetration, the blistering ownership in his touch. She screamed, her body seizing around him in a second, shattering climax. Her cunt milked him violently, spasming in wave after wave of intense, shuddering release.
It triggered his own. With a raw shout that echoed in the rafters, he slammed into her to the hilt, his body going rigid. She felt the hot, liquid surge of his cum flooding her, jet after jet, filling her up, marking her internally this time. He pulsed inside her, his grip on her throat tightening momentarily as he rode out his own oblivion.
For long moments, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, mingling with the persistent, erratic buzz of the neon sign.
Slowly, he softened inside her, slipping out. A trickle of his release followed, tracing a warm path down her inner thigh. He turned her, pulling her against him, his forehead resting on hers. His wings, broken and bleeding, enfolded them in a tattered, private canopy.
“I’m not letting you go,” he whispered, the words a vow. “Hell, Heaven, Edgar… none of it matters. You’re mine.”
Before she could answer, a new sound cut through the silence.
A slow, solitary clap.
It came from the doorway, where the shadows coalesced into a familiar, broad-shouldered silhouette. The faint glow from the sign caught the glint of honey-brown eyes, cold and utterly calm.
Edgar leaned against the charred doorframe, his suit impeccable, a stark contrast to the ruin around them and their own sweaty, debauched state.
“A touching performance,” Edgar said, his voice smooth as aged whiskey and just as intoxicating. “Really, Chris. You almost sound like you mean it.”
He pushed off the frame, taking a single, deliberate step into the room. The temperature dropped. The flickering neon light seemed to bend toward him, dyeing his sharp features in hues of damnation.
“But we both know,” he continued, his gaze settling on Mia, “that she doesn’t belong to princes who play in ruins.”
His smile was a blade.
“She belongs to the king who built the throne.”