Chapter 3: The First Sacrifice
The world narrowed to a single, punishing point of contact. Her weight, her heat, the impossible, grinding rhythm of her. Lewis was a nerve ending, stripped raw, every thought blasted away in the white-noise roar of sensation. He was being unmade. The cheap couch groaned like a living thing beneath them, its protests lost under the wet slap of skin and her low, rumbling sighs.
Her claws weren’t weapons now; they were anchors. They dug into the flesh of his hips, not deep enough to maim, just enough to claim, to hold him exactly where she wanted him. Each possessive squeeze sent a jolt through him, a painful reminder of his own fragility against her.
She dropped her head, her forehead pressing against his. Her eyes, those pits of emerald fire, held him. “Look at me,” she growled, the command vibrating through his skull. He couldn’t have looked away if he tried.
Her mouth found his. It wasn’t a kiss. It was an invasion. Her forked tongue pushed past his lips, exploring, dominating, tasting. It tasted of ozone and something wild, and beneath that, the coppery tang of his own fear. He choked, gasped, his hands finally moving to push weakly at her shoulders. His palms slid over the impossibly hard, slick muscle. It was like pushing against warm stone.
She laughed into his mouth, a wet, contemptuous sound, and drove her hips down harder.
Time lost meaning. It stretched and snapped. There was only the rhythmic shock of her taking him, the animal sounds she made, the sweat stinging his eyes, and the dizzying, soul-crushing ascent of a pleasure so intense it bordered on agony. He was sobbing, he realized. Short, ragged breaths that were also, undeniably, pleas.
When it ended, it wasn’t with a whimper, but with her shuddering above him, a low, seismic groan tearing from her throat that seemed to shake the very walls. She collapsed, a mountain of spent power, her body pinning him completely to the damp, ruined cushions. The only sound was the ragged sawing of their breath.
Slowly, the world began to seep back in. The flicker of the TV static. The distant wail of a siren. The ache in his bones.
She shifted, her weight still immense but somehow less purposeful. One massive arm slid beneath his neck, the other draped possessively over his chest. She curled around him, her body a heated wall of green muscle, making him the small, trapped center of her universe. He was buried alive in her.
“You see?” she whispered into his hair. Her voice was a ragged echo of its former growl. “You called. I came.” She nuzzled the side of his head, an obscenely gentle gesture. “All that lonely wanting… it’s a beacon. A prayer. And I’m the answer.”
Lewis tried to speak. His throat was sandpaper. “Wh… what are you?”
“Yours,” she said simply, as if it explained everything. “And you are mine. This isn’t a one-night stand, Lewis. This is a binding.”
A cold dread, deeper than any he’d felt during the act, began to pool in his stomach.
He felt her sigh, a long, tired exhalation that smelled strangely of rain now, not ozone. And then he felt… a change.
It wasn’t like the transformation in the doorway. That was an explosion. This was a slow leak. A deflation.
The immense pressure against his side began to lessen, subtly at first, then more noticeably. The rigid muscle under his cheek seemed to soften, losing its granite density. He heard a faint, wet shifting sound, like clay settling.
He dared to turn his head.
Her vibrant green skin was fading, paling to a sickly mint, then to the flushed pink of human flesh. The terrifying, corded muscles were receding, smoothing out, shrinking. Her breathing, which had been a deep bellows, became lighter, quicker. Panicked.
Her arm around his chest grew slender. The claws retracted, leaving only short, bitten human nails.
In what felt like minutes, but could have been seconds, the seven-foot behemoth was gone.
Curled against him, naked and shivering violently, was the woman from the hallway. Ella. The auburn hair was plastered to her damp forehead. Her hazel eyes were wide, unfocused, blinking rapidly at the cracked ceiling he knew so well.
She looked down at her own hands, turning them over as if she’d never seen them before. She stared at the shredded remnants of clothing scattered around the room like crime scene evidence. Then her gaze traveled to Lewis—to his torn clothes, the faint, red scratch marks on his chest and hips, the look of sheer shell-shock on his face.
A small, broken sound escaped her. “Oh, God.”
She scrambled off the couch, her movements clumsy, human. She stumbled back, catching her foot on a torn box and almost falling. She wrapped her arms around herself, covering her nakedness, her eyes darting from Lewis to the door to the monstrous green handprint smeared in condensation on the window.
“What…” Her voice was high, trembling, utterly normal. “What happened? I… I came to say hi. I felt dizzy. I saw… green. And then… and then…” Her eyes locked on him, genuine horror dawning in them. “Did I… hurt you?”
Lewis could only stare. The shift was too vast, too jarring. The entity that had spoken of bindings and prayers was gone, replaced by a confused, terrified woman who looked like she might vomit.
He sat up slowly, every muscle protesting. The apartment was a wreck. The couch was tilted on a broken leg. The coffee table was splintered. And the air still thrummed with a spent, unnatural energy.
Ella was crying now, silent tears cutting tracks through the grime on her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what… I blacked out. I must have… had a seizure or something. I’m so sorry.”
She was apologizing. She was shrinking into the corner by the door, a petite, vulnerable woman, the absolute inverse of the creature who had dominated the room moments before.
Lewis looked from her pathetic, shivering form to the deep, satisfying ache in his body. He looked at the vivid scratches on his skin—proof. He remembered her whispered words: This is a binding.
The cold dread in his stomach solidified into a knot of ice.
She didn’t remember. But she would. It would come back. It, or she, would return.
He had wished. And she had answered.
And as Ella fumbled for the door handle, muttering about calling a doctor, about needing to go home, Lewis knew with a terrible, certain clarity that she had told the truth. She wasn’t leaving. Not really.
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving him alone in the silent, ruined apartment. The only sound was the persistent buzz of the flickering lamp. He was alone.
But he didn’t feel alone. He felt watched. Owned.
The binding held.