Chapter 7: The Healing Price
The air in Ashanti’s bedroom tasted of spent magic and sweat. Logan sat on the edge of her rumpled bed, the muscles in his jaw working as he stared at the ruin of his left forearm. The skin was a mapped wasteland of graveyard grey, dead and cold to the touch, the fingers curled into a stiff claw. It smelled of old cellar and absence.
“Okay, grimdark,” Jackie said, peering at it. She still glowed faintly, a residue of stolen shade-energy making her skin shimmer. “So we BBQ the fuck out of it. How?”
Ashanti was already rummaging through a carved wooden box. “The rot is metaphysical. We need to overwhelm it with a contrary force. Life. Hunger. Heat.” She pulled out a vial of iridescent oil and a black candle scored with runes. “You’re the battery, Jacks. I’m the conductor. This is gonna hurt him more than it hurts you,” she said, glancing at Logan.
“Just do it,” he gritted out, his yellow eyes fixed on the wall. “Feels like ice is crawling up to my elbow.”
They worked quickly. Ashanti dripped the oil along the border where dead flesh met healthy skin. It hissed, releasing a scent of pepper and ozone. She lit the black candle, and its flame burned a violent, unnatural violet. “Jackie, give me your hand.”
Jackie placed her palm over Logan’s wound. Her glow intensified, concentrating. Ashanti placed her own hand over Jackie’s, the violet flame from the candle seeming to leap to her fingertips, channeling through Jackie’s succubus energy and into Logan’s arm.
The effect was immediate and violent.
Logan threw his head back, a raw, strangled roar tearing from his throat. The dead flesh didn’t burn; it unmade. Grey skin blackened, crackled, and then flaked away like ancient parchment, disintegrating into a foul-smelling ash that drifted to the floor. Beneath it, the revealed tissue was an angry, blazing pink, raw and weeping clear fluid. The smell of seared meat and hot copper filled the room.
“Fucking… hell…” Logan panted, his whole body trembling with the strain of staying upright. Sweat poured down his temples, soaking the roots of his dreads.
“Almost there,” Ashanti murmured, her voice tight with focus. The violet light pulsed, scouring the last remnants of Finch’s nothingness from the cellular level. Jackie’s face was set in a rare mask of pure concentration, her energy flowing out of her, syphoning the death away.
With a final sizzling pop, the last grey speck vanished. Logan’s arm was whole, the skin new and painfully pink, but alive. The terrible, invasive cold was gone.
The tension snapped. Logan’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed sideways onto the bed, succumbing to a total systemic crash. His breathing evened out instantly, deep and tidal, the profound sleep of a body diverting all resources to repair.
Jackie swayed, pulling her hand back. The glow around her had dimmed to a faint ember. “I feel like I just ran a marathon backwards. I need a fucking juice box and six orgasms.” She looked at Logan’s passed-out form, then at the horrific pile of ash on the floor. “He’s gonna be pissed about the rug.”
Ashanti let out a long, shaky breath, extinguishing the candle. She looked at Logan, vulnerable in his exhaustion, then at the ruin of her room. A slow, wicked smirk spread across her lips. She pulled her phone from her pocket.
“What are you doing?” Jackie asked, slumping into a worn armchair.
“Collecting,” Ashanti said. She angled the phone, snapped a clear photo of Logan—out cold, healed but battered, lying diagonally across her scarves and silks. She attached it to a text for Eric.
The message was succinct: We fucked your brother up and Logan is healing. Need two days of paid leave for all three of us, agree to it and I'll let you cum inside my pussy.
She hit send. The read receipt appeared instantly.
Jackie raised a brow. “Bold. You think he’ll go for it?”
“He likes decisive transactions,” Ashanti said, her eyes on the screen. The three pulsing dots appeared. They lingered. Then the response came.
The penthouse. Now. Leave the mutt to sleep it off.
Ashanti showed Jackie the screen. “Told you.”
“Get your bread, queen,” Jackie said, closing her eyes. “I’m gonna nap right here and maybe fondle myself in your chair. Don’t wake the puppy.”
The elevator’s sigh was the same. The sterile chill was the same. But the energy was different. Eric was waiting, not by the window, but seated in the same leather chair. He had changed into dark linen trousers and a shirt that was open, revealing more of that smooth, ageless chest. He held a heavy crystal glass of something that looked like liquid shadow.
He didn’t look up from his phone as she entered. “The healing was crude but effective. The photograph was gratuitous.”
“You wanted proof of performance,” Ashanti said, stopping a few feet away. The cold he’d left inside her earlier was gone, burned up in the chapel fight. She felt clean, sharp, and entirely in charge of the trade about to happen.
“I did.” He set the glass down on the floor. His eyes, that bottomless grey, finally lifted to hers. “Two days. For all three. The Kitten and the night shift will manage. You have your leave.”
“Good.”
“The terms, however, have shifted.” He leaned back in the chair, steepling his fingers. “You don’t let me do anything. You will get on this chair, you will ride my cock until you cannot think, and you will beg for my come. You will want it so badly you taste it. Then, and only then, will you have it.”
A thrill, hot and dark, coiled in Ashanti’s gut. This was the game she understood. Power contests disguised as submission. She smiled, a slow unveiling of teeth. “Or what? You’ll renege? You’re not a liar, Eric. You’re an asshole, but you honor a deal.”
“I do. But the experience of it… that can be easy, or it can be unforgettable.” His gaze dropped to the front of her dress. “Choose.”
She chose by reaching for the hem of her dress and pulling it over her head in one smooth motion. She stood before him in only a pair of black lace panties, her curves painted in the city’s neon light, her pierced nipples already hard peaks. She saw the ancient hunger flicker in his eyes, the beast beneath the skin acknowledging a worthy provocateur.
“Unforgettable,” she said, her voice low.
He nodded, once. “Then begin.”
She stepped out of her panties and climbed onto the chair, straddling his lap. His trousers were already open, his strange, shifting cock erect and waiting. It was still that impossible, light-drinking obsidian, cool to the touch. She positioned herself, her wetness slick against the uncanny surface.
“No,” he growled, his hands gripping her hips, his fingers biting in. “You don’t just take it. You work for it. You make us both feel it.”
She braced her hands on the back of the chair, looking down at him. Then she began to move, not sinking down, but grinding herself against the length of him, coating him in her arousal. The frictionless surface made the sensation bizarrely intense, a smooth, relentless pressure against her clit. She moaned, her head falling back.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She obeyed, her dark eyes meeting his void-like ones as she rubbed herself on him like a cat in heat, getting herself messy and desperate. Her big breasts swayed with the motion. “You like that?” she panted. “You like watching me get myself off on your fucking weird dick?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I like your desperation. Cultivate it.”
She sped up, her thighs burning, the coil of pleasure tightening deep in her belly. She was so close, teetering on the edge from this alone. “Fuck,” she hissed. “Okay. Okay, please.”
“Please, what?”
“I want you inside me. Now. I want to feel you fucking stretch me open.” The words were filthy, needy, and entirely genuine.
His lips curled. He guided the tip of his cock to her entrance. “Then take it, witch. Take every inch.”
She sank down. The stretch was immense, unbelievable. He was huge, and the unnatural smoothness made him feel even bigger, a solid, cold invasion that filled her utterly. She cried out, a sharp, broken sound, as she impaled herself to the hilt, feeling him press against her deepest limits. She was achingly, perfectly full.
“Move,” he ordered, his voice ragged.
She rode him. It was a brutal, demanding rhythm, each lift and drop a shock of intense sensation. The cold of him inside her created a dizzying contrast with the heat of her own body. Her inner muscles clenched and fluttered around the invading length, trying to warm it, to claim it.
His composure shattered. His hands left her hips and fisted in her long black hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat. He drove up into her from beneath, meeting her downward strokes with punishing upward thrusts. The chair groaned in protest. The sound of their bodies slapping together, wet and raw, echoed off the cold glass.
“Is this what you wanted?” he snarled against her throat, his sharp canines grazing her pulse. “My cock buried in your greedy cunt? You think this is a transaction? You are my fucking ritual.”
“Yes!” she screamed, her vision spotting. The pleasure was a crescendo, tearing through her. “God, yes, don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop!” Her nails clawed at his shoulders, drawing faint white lines on his impossible skin.
He fucked her with a single-minded intensity that erased everything—the ledger, Finch, the chapel, the rot on Logan’s arm. There was only this driving need, this perfect, violent friction. She felt her orgasm rip through her, a silent, blinding detonation that locked her muscles and drew a ragged sob from her lungs. She convulsed around him, her inner walls milking his shaft.
It triggered his own climax. With a guttural roar that held echoes of deeper, older voids, he slammed her down onto him and held her there. His release wasn’t cold this time. It was a flood of searing, electric heat that pulsed into her in thick, endless waves. It felt like being filled with liquid lightning. She felt it, a shocking, branding presence that marked her from the inside.
He shuddered through it, his grip on her hair relaxing to a trembling caress. For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. Ashanti slumped against him, spent, feeling his come leak from her, a warm trickle down her inner thigh.
Ashanti slumped against him, spent, feeling his come leak from her, a warm trickle down her inner thigh. The city’s silent neon pulse painted its tangled forms in washes of lurid color. Her heart hammered against his, a frantic, living counter-rhythm to his preternatural stillness. She breathed heavily and looked up at him slowly before sharing a deep kiss with him. The taste was a mix of her own sweat and that lingering ozone. 'If you need to go again, sir... I don't mind...' she whispers against his lips.
Eric’s hands, which had been resting limply on her back, tightened. A low, considering rumble vibrated in his chest.“The leave is granted. This,” he said, sliding a hand between them to feel his own spent slick on her skin, “is avarice.” He gripped her ass hard, pulling her tighter against his softening cock. “And I reward avarice.”
He shifted beneath her, his strength effortlessly maneuvering her exhausted body. In one motion, he stood, holding her aloft with her legs wrapped around his waist, still impaled. She gasped, her arms locking around his neck as he carried her from the chair toward the vast, empty expanse of the black marble floor.
“But on my terms,” he said, his voice dropping to a predatory murmur. He lowered her onto the cold, polished stone. The shock of the ice-smooth surface against her heated back made her arch. He followed her down, covering her body with his, not re-entering her but pressing his full weight against her.
His mouth found her breast, his tongue swirling around the cold metal of her piercing before drawing the entire peak deep into the warmth of his mouth. He sucked, hard, a sharp possessive pull that zinged straight to her throbbing clit. She cried out, her fingers digging into his hair.
“You’re still so fucking wet for me,” he growled, his hand sliding down her stomach. He plunged two fingers into her cunt, fucking her with them, the slick sound obscenely loud in the sterile space. “You can feel me inside you, can’t you? My come.”
“Yes,” she moaned, her hips rocking against his hand. The overstimulation was a bright, sharp pain tipping into pleasure. “It’s all I can feel.”
“Good.” He removed his fingers, shiny with their mixed fluids, and painted her lips with them. She sucked them clean, her dark eyes locked on his voids. Then he flipped her onto her stomach with a force that knocked the air from her lungs.
He pulled her hips up, leaving her ass in the air, her face pressed against the chill marble. He kneeled behind her, his hands spreading her apart. He didn’t enter her. Instead, he leaned down and licked a long, slow stripe from her soaked entrance up to the small of her back. She shuddered, a full-body convulsion. “Eric, please…”
“Please what?” he asked, his breath hot against her wetness.“You’re a mess. My mess. I should just taste you until you scream.”
He did. He buried his face between her legs, his tongue lapping and probing with an inhuman precision. He focused on her clit, sucking the sensitive bud into his mouth, flicking it with the tip of his tongue while his fingers stretched her open, pushing deep into her fucked-sloppy channel. She came again, violently, her muscles clamping down on nothing, her shouts echoing off the glass.
Before the waves even fully receded, he was mounting her. He gripped his cock, guiding the thick, smooth head back to her entrance. He pushed in, not with the slow burn of before, but in one brutal, claiming thrust that stole her voice. She was so open, so oversensitized. He set a punishing pace, each drive knocking her forward on the floor. The slap of his balls against her, the squelch of her filled cunt, his guttural grunts—it was a raw, mechanistic fuck. He leaned over her, his teeth sinking into the meat of her shoulder, not breaking the skin but branding her with the pressure. One hand snaked around her hip, his thumb finding her clit and rubbing rough, tight circles.
“This is the price,” he hissed in her ear, his thrusts becoming erratic, deeper. “You belong to the city. You belong to me. You will bleed and fuck and magic for my ends.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only take it, her body yielding and responding, another orgasm building from the sheer, brutal dominance of it. He felt her inner walls begin to flutter again and swore, his control snapping.
He came with a roar, pumping another scalding load into her depths, his hips jerking erratically as he emptied himself. He collapsed on top of her for a moment, his weight pinning her to the stone, before rolling off.
She lay there, unable to move, feeling his essence seep steadily from her. The marble leached the heat from her body.
“Two days,” he said from somewhere above her, his voice restored to its dry, placid calm. He tossed a small, black towel onto the floor beside her. “Do not make me regret my generosity. Finch is diminished, not destroyed. The harbor still dreams of him.”
Ashanti eventually found the strength to push herself up. She cleaned herself with the towel, her movements slow and sore. She dressed in silence under his impassive gaze. The transaction was complete, the terms met, the power dynamic reaffirmed yet subtly shifted. She had gotten what she wanted, and he had taken what he needed. She left without another word. The elevator swallowed her.
The apartment was dark save for the flickering glow of Jackie’s phone screen. Jackie herself was curled in the armchair, asleep, one hand tucked between her thighs. Logan was a large, still shape on Ashanti’s bed, his new skin gleaming faintly in the ambient light. The pile of foul ash was gone; Jackie must have cleaned it. Ashanti shuffled to the bathroom, her body a catalog of aches and bruises. She turned on the shower, steaming hot, and stepped under the spray. The water ran grey for a moment, carrying the evidence of the penthouse floor and Eric Osborn from her skin. She leaned her forehead against the tiles. A soft knock on the door frame made her turn. Logan stood there, a towel around his waist, his yellow eyes clearer but shadowed.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice gravelly with sleep. She managed a tired smile.“Got us two days off. Paid.”
He nodded, his gaze taking in the fresh bite mark on her shoulder, the general weariness in her posture.“Cost you.”
“It always does.” She turned off the water. “How’s the arm?”
He held it up, flexing the fingers. The pink skin was already fading to a healthier brown.“Itches like hell. Feels alive.” He paused. “Thank you. And Jackie.”
“We’re a package deal.” She wrapped herself in a towel and stepped out, facing him. The hallway was narrow. “He said Finch is diminished, not destroyed. That the harbor dreams of him.”
Logan’s jaw tightened. “So it’s not over.”
“It’s never over,” Ashanti said, her voice flat. The steam from the bathroom curled around them in the dark hall. “It just naps. He naps. We nap. Then we do it again.” She reached out and traced the edge of the new, pink skin on his forearm. It was hot under her fingertips. “This is what winning looks like. Being less dead than the other guy.”
Logan caught her wrist. His grip wasn’t restraining, just present. His yellow eyes held hers, reflecting the weak light. “What did it cost this time?”
She didn’t pull away. “The usual. Pride. A few ounces of dignity. The feeling in my thighs.” A faint, tired smirk touched her lips. “He came inside me. Twice. Filled me up with that… whatever it is. It doesn’t feel cold anymore. It just feels like him.”
He processed this, his thumb moving absently over her pulse point. The growl in his voice was almost subliminal. “He mark you?”
“He always marks me.” She tilted her head, showing the fresh bruise on her shoulder from Eric’s teeth. “It’s just a receipt.”
Silence stretched, but it wasn’t empty. It was thick with the aftermath—adrenaline decay, the phantom stench of the chapel, the shared understanding of their fragile survival. Logan’s gaze dropped from the bite to her mouth, then to the towel barely containing her body. The air between them changed charge.
From the living room, a sleepy, muffled voice cut through. “If you two are gonna have a meaningful moment, can you either fuck or get me a water? My mouth tastes like dead shadow and regret.”
Ashanti laughed, a short, real sound. Logan released her wrist. “You’re insatiable.”
“I’m dehydrated,” Jackie corrected, shuffling into the hallway’s gloom. Her blonde hair was a mess, her green eyes half-lidded. She looked at them, at the scant space between them, and her expression shifted from drowsy to keenly interested. “Oh. You’re having the other kind of moment. The pre-fuck one. Cool.”
“There’s no moment,” Logan muttered, but he didn’t move.
“Bullshit.” Jackie leaned against the wall, crossing her arms under her breasts. “I can smell it. It’s all over the place. Fear-sex. Life-affirming sex. My favorite kind.” She looked at Ashanti. “You’re buzzing with his weird power. And you,” she said to Logan, “are basically radiating ‘protect-and-claim’ hormones. It’s cute. And boring if you just stand there.”
Ashanti looked from Logan’s tense face to Jackie’s provocative smirk. The cold, calculating part of her brain, the witch part, assessed the energy in the cramped hallway. It was a live wire, sparking with spent violence and raw need. It was wasteful to let it dissipate. It could be used. It could be felt.
“She’s not wrong,” Ashanti said, her voice dropping. She let her towel drop to the floor.
The faint light from the street carved the curves of her body from the darkness—the full swell of her breasts, the metal glint in her nipples, the damp triangle of hair at the junction of her thighs. She saw Logan’s pupils dilate, swallowing the yellow of his irises. Saw Jackie’s lazy smile sharpen into something hungry.
“I’m tired of things being taken from me tonight,” Ashanti said, stepping into Logan’s space. Her naked skin brushed against the towel around his waist. “I want to take. I want to feel something that isn’t cold or empty.” Her hand slid down his chest, over the hard planes of his stomach, and hooked into the towel. “And you need to stop thinking. You think too much, wolfy.”
She tugged. The towel loosened and fell.
He was already hard, his cock a thick, heavy weight against his thigh. The silver hoop through the head gleamed. The sight of it, familiar and profoundly real after the unreality of Eric’s, sent a jolt of pure, wet heat straight to Ashanti’s core. This was flesh. This was heat. This was theirs.
“Fuck,” Logan breathed, his control snapping. He didn’t kiss her. He grabbed her, one hand tangling in her long black hair, the other arm banding around her back to crush her against him. His mouth was hot and demanding on hers, nothing like the chilling void of the penthouse. This tasted of salt, of home, of the herbal smoke he preferred.
Ashanti kissed him back just as fiercely, her hands roaming over the powerful muscles of his back, feeling the ridges of old scars and the smoothness of tattoos. She ground herself against his erection, the friction making her gasp into his mouth.
“My bed,” she managed. “Now. Before I come just from this.”
He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. In one smooth motion, he bent and hooked an arm behind her knees, lifting her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, his cock trapped between their bodies, a hot, insistent pressure. He carried her the few feet into her bedroom, Jackie trailing behind them like a pleased specter.
He laid her down on the scarves and silks. The mirrors on the walls caught the movement, multiplying the scene into a fractured orgy of shadows and skin. Logan followed her down, covering her, but Jackie was there too, crawling onto the bed beside them.
“Don’t mind me,” Jackie murmured, her hand already sliding down her own stomach, her green eyes fixed on them. “Just the vibe crew.”
Logan paused, looking from Ashanti to Jackie, a question in his eyes. Ashanti reached up and pulled his face back to hers. “She’s part of this. She’s always part of this.” She turned her head, catching Jackie’s gaze. “Aren’t you?”
“Obviously,” Jackie said, and then her mouth was on Ashanti’s breast, her tongue laving the pierced nipple with a skill that made Ashanti cry out. The dual sensation—Logan’s weight and heat pinning her down, Jackie’s clever mouth on her sensitive flesh—shattered the last of her coherent thought.
Logan watched for a second, a possessive growl rumbling in his chest, then his mouth found Ashanti’s other breast. He sucked the peak deep, his tongue worrying the metal barbell. The sharp, sweet pain-pleasure made her arch off the bed. His hand slid between her legs, his fingers finding her sopping wet. He dragged two through her folds, coating them, and shoved them into his mouth, tasting her. “Mine,” he growled, the word vibrating against her skin.
“Prove it,” she challenged, her voice wrecked.
He didn’t need more invitation. He positioned himself, the broad, pierced head of his cock pressing against her entrance. He pushed inside with a single, relentless thrust that buried him to the hilt.
Ashanti screamed. The fullness was breathtaking, a stretching, burning welcome after the strange, cold smoothness of Eric. This was textured, hot, alive. He fit her perfectly, stretching her in a way that made her feel owned and worshipped simultaneously. The silver hoop inside her created a devastating, unique friction with every tiny movement.
“God, you feel good,” Logan choked out, holding himself still, his forearms trembling with the effort. “Tight as fucking hell. Always so tight for me.”
“Move,” she begged, clawing at his back. “Please, Logan, fuck me. I need it.”
He withdrew almost all the way, then drove back in, hard. The pace was set instantly—deep, punishing, possessive strokes that jolted her body up the bed. The wet, meaty sound of their joining filled the room, syncopated by their ragged breathing and Jackie’s soft, encouraging murmurs.
Jackie’s hands were everywhere, touching both of them. She trailed her nails down Logan’s sweat-slicked spine, cupped Ashanti’s face to kiss her deeply, tasting Logan on her lips. Then she moved down, positioning herself between Ashanti’s spread legs. She looked up, her bright green eyes locking with Ashanti’s.
“Let me,” Jackie said, and then her mouth was on Ashanti’s clit.
The sensation was electric, catastrophic. Logan’s thick cock pistoning inside her, filling her, and Jackie’s tongue circling and sucking her most sensitive spot with supernatural precision. It was too much. It was everything. Ashanti came almost immediately, a violent, screaming orgasm that clenched her around Logan’s shaft like a vise.
“Fuck, Ash, just like that,” Logan grunted, his rhythm faltering as her inner muscles milked him. He fucked her through it, each thrust prolonging the waves. Jackie didn’t let up, drinking Ashanti’s arousal, her own energy beginning to glow faintly as she fed.
Logan’s control was unraveling. His thrusts became harder, faster, more ragged. The bedframe slammed against the wall. He leaned down, sinking his teeth into the junction of Ashanti’s neck and shoulder, not breaking the skin but anchoring himself as his climax tore through him. He slammed deep and held, a broken shout muffled against her skin as he poured into her, his come hot and abundant, a stark contrast to the eldritch chill she’d carried home.
He collapsed beside her, spent. Jackie finally released Ashanti’s clit, crawling up to lie on her other side. For long minutes, the only sound was their heaving breaths and the distant city hum.
Ashanti felt warm, claimed, real. The ghost of Eric’s touch was scrubbed away, overwritten by the sweat and come and familiar scent of her pack. She turned her head, looking at Logan’s profile. His eyes were closed, his chest still rising and falling rapidly.
She leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “It’s over for now... until another millennia. For now we rest and recover for our two days. Night, wolfy.”
She kissed him once more, then turned, curling her body into Jackie’s, who threw a languid arm over her. Sleep rose up to claim her, deep and dreamless.