Chapter 6: Teasing the Succubus
The soft, steady rhythm of her breathing was the only sound in the room. Derek lay propped on one elbow, watching her. The frantic neon from the street sign outside had cycled to a constant, dull red, bathing everything in the hue of a darkroom. Morrigan was deep in a dreamless sleep, her face smoothed of fear, lips slightly parted. One green tendril of hair stuck to her damp cheek. The sheet was tangled low around her hips, leaving her torso bare.
His eyes traced the landscape of her. The pale, almost luminous skin. The elegant collar bones. The slow rise and fall of her ribs. The subtle, enticing swell of her breasts. In sleep, she was a sculpture. Untouchable. But she wasn’t. She was here, in his bed, warm and real and his to protect.
A possessive heat, quiet but intense, uncoiled in his gut. It was different from the rage in the blood pool. This was a slow, simmering fixation. He wanted to wake her, but not with words. He wanted to pull her from sleep with sensation alone, to prove that her body could answer to a touch that wasn’t cold and violating.
He began with his eyes, memorizing the curves. Then, with a feather-light touch, his fingertips. He traced the air just above her skin, close enough for her to feel the disturbance, the static charge of his nearness. He circled one areola, a millimeter from contact. Her nipple hardened anyway, a dusky peak puckering in anticipation. He did the same to the other, watching the flesh respond to an order he hadn’t even given.
A soft sigh escaped her. Her brow furrowed slightly, not in distress, but in subconscious recognition. Her back arched just a fraction, pushing her chest imperceptibly towards the source of the tantalizing almost-touch.
Derek lowered his head. He hovered his mouth over the tight bud of her right nipple, his breath washing over it in a warm, damp wave. He saw goosebumps rise on the pale skin of her breast. He flicked his tongue out—once, a lightning-fast, wet stripe directly over the peak.
She gasped in her sleep, a sharp intake of air.
He did it again, a little slower this time, then blew a cool stream of air across the wetness he’d left behind. Her nipple pulled tighter, almost painfully erect. He gave the same treatment to the left, sucking it lightly into the heat of his mouth for just a second before releasing it with a soft pop.
He kissed a trail down the quivering plane of her stomach, his lips brushing her skin. She was awake now. He could feel the change in her breathing, the new awareness thrumming through her relaxed muscles. But she kept her eyes closed, playing along, surrendering to the unknown journey of his mouth.
He nudged her thighs apart with his head. She opened for him without resistance, a silent, willing offering. The scent of her, musky and sweet, filled his senses. She was already wet, a slow seep of arousal glistening on her inner lips.
He didn’t go where she wanted. He kissed the inside of her right thigh, his stubble a delicious abrasion against the ultrasensitive skin. She jumped. He soothed the spot with his tongue, then bit down gently, not enough to hurt, but enough to make his possession known. A low moan vibrated in her throat.
He moved to the other thigh, repeating the process, kissing, licking, nipping. Her hips lifted off the bed, seeking empty air, seeking him. He blew a long, cool stream of air directly over her exposed clit.
“Oh, God…” she whispered, the words slurred with sleep and want.
He dipped his head. He licked her then, one long, flat, slow stroke from the very base of her entrance all the way up to the throbbing nub of her clit. He tasted her salt and her honey. And then he stopped. He pulled back, just looking, watching her glisten in the red light.
“Derek…” It was a plea.
He ignored it. He returned to his work, but as a tactician. He licked her labia, sucking each fold into his mouth, tracing the intricate, swollen geography with the tip of his tongue. He pressed his tongue flat against her entrance, feeling her muscles clench around nothing, but he didn’t push inside. He avoided the hard, desperate little bead of her clit entirely, even as it grew more swollen, more prominent, begging for attention.
She was trembling now, a fine, constant shake. Her hands fisted in the sheets. One hand crept down, fingers aiming for her own flesh, for the relief he was so cruelly denying.
He caught her wrist in mid-air. His grip was firm. He pinned her hand to the mattress above her head. “No,” he said, his voice rough. “This is mine.”
She let out a fractured sob, part frustration, part sheer blissful agony.
He continued his torture. He licked and kissed and sucked at everything but the epicenter. He pushed two fingers into his own mouth, wetting them thoroughly, then finally, finally, pressed them against her entrance. He pushed inside, just to the first knuckle, then pulled them out, dragging her wetness up to her clit, spreading it. He circled the area with his slick fingers, a maddening perimeter, never quite landing.
She was panting, her heels digging into the mattress, her wings fluttering against the sheets. “Please. Please, I can’t… I need…”
“What do you need?” he growled against her inner thigh.
“Your mouth. On me. There. Fuck, just…”
He released her wrist. Both of his hands went under her ass, lifting her, tilting her pelvis up to his face. He didn’t tease anymore.
He took her whole clit into his mouth and sucked.
It wasn’t gentle. It was hard, voracious, a relentless vacuum of heat and pressure. He flicked his tongue over the tip in rapid, punishing strokes while he sucked.
The sound she made was raw, ripped from a place deeper than her lungs. Her body bowed off the bed, rigid, as the orgasm detonated. It wasn’t a wave; it was a concussion. Her cunt clenched rhythmically around nothing, her juices flowing over his chin. Her thighs clamped around his head, her back arching so severely it looked painful. The cry went on and on, breaking into gasps and whimpers.
As the last pulses faded, she collapsed, boneless. Her eyes flew open, wide and unfocused, pupils blown black in the red light. She stared at the ceiling, breathing as if she’d run for miles.
Slowly, her gaze found him. He was wiping his chin with the back of his hand, watching her, his own need a hard, aching line in his boxers.
“You…” she breathed, her voice shredded. “You utter bastard.” There was no malice. It was pure, awestruck reverence.
Then her hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of his t-shirt. She pulled him onto her. Her kiss was feverish, desperate, tasting of her own essence. She wrestled with the waistband of his boxers, freeing his cock. It sprang free, thick and heavy against her stomach.
“No more waiting,” she commanded, her ancient authority flooding back into her tone, tempered now by a hungry vulnerability. “I need you inside. I need to feel you wreck me. Now.”
She guided him to her entrance, still pulsing and soaked from her climax. She was impossibly tight, her inner muscles fluttering wildly around the head of his cock. She hooked her legs around his waist, her heels digging into his back.
“Do it,” she hissed. “Fuck their memory out. For real this time.”
He plunged.
He buried himself to the hilt in one deep, claiming stroke. The fit was perfect, agonizingly tight and hot. She cried out, a sharp, guttural sound of pure satisfaction.
He set a brutal pace immediately. There was no gentle warm-up, no slow build. This was a furious exorcism. Each drive of his hips was a hammer strike, pushing the bed frame against the wall with a rhythmic, protesting thump. The sounds were obscenely wet, the slap of skin on skin echoing in the cluttered room.
“Is this mine?” he grunted, snapping his hips forward, hitting a depth that made her eyes roll back.
“Yes!” she screamed, her nails raking down his back.
“Say it!”
“It’s yours! My cunt is yours! Only yours! Oh, fuck, Derek, right there!”
He was hitting a spot deep inside her that felt like a live wire. Her words dissolved into incoherent babbling. She met every thrust with a violent lift of her hips, taking him deeper, demanding more. Her wings beat against the mattress, a frantic, leathery accompaniment.
The room disappeared. There was only this: the sweat-slick friction, the smell of sex and her perfume, the feel of her muscles clamping down on him like a wet, silken fist. He watched her face, the play of ecstasy and something like pain, the way her fangs dug into her lower lip.
He felt his own end approaching, a tidal wave building at the base of his spine. “I’m gonna come,” he warned, his rhythm faltering.
“Do it,” she snarled, wrapping her hand in his hair and yanking his head down to meet her feverish gaze. “Fill me up. Mark me inside. Let me feel your victory.”
Her words tipped him over the edge. With a roar that was part triumph, part surrender, he slammed into her one last time and held. His release poured into her, hot and endless, a flood claiming uncharted territory. She came again with him, a second, shuddering climax triggered by the feeling of him pumping his seed deep into her core, her internal muscles milking him for every last drop.
They collapsed in a heap, a tangled mess of limbs and wings, both breathing in ragged, broken sync. The red light bled over their heaving forms.
After a long time, she stirred. She traced the scratches she’d left on his back. “Pyron doesn’t have a weakness,” she said quietly, her cheek against his chest. Her voice was factual, post-coital calm settling over the dread. “Not a traditional one. He’s a force of nature. You can’t block a supernova. You can’t seduce a galaxy.”
Derek stared at the familiar water stain on his ceiling, his mind, usually so quick with patterns and exploits, felt blank. Empty. “There’s always a trick. A glitch. An input sequence.”
“Not this time.” She pushed herself up, looking down at him. Her green hair was a wild cascade around her shoulders. “Your world’s programmers made him the final challenge. He is, by design, insurmountable through conventional play. A test of pure, hopeless skill. A fight you are meant to lose, over and over, until you get good enough—or lucky enough—to barely scrape by.”
A cold knot formed in Derek’s stomach. “So how did you beat him before? When you were just code?”
“I didn’t,” she said simply. “The Morrigan you knew, the one in the arcade cabinet, she never reached him. She was beaten by Jedah, or B.B. Hood, or whoever, and the player inserted another coin. I never had to face the true end. Not until now. Now, the game is running to completion. For keeps.”
The controller lay on the floor where he’d dropped it. It looked absurd. A plastic toy. How could he fight a cosmic entity with that? The tactics that had saved her from Bishamon’s curse, from Anakaris’s sands, from Jedah’s hands… they were meaningless.
Morrigan saw his expression. She leaned down, kissing him softly. “You’ll think of something,” she whispered, but the doubt was there, haunting the edges of her eyes. “You have to. Because I can’t give you a weakness to exploit this time. All I can give you is me. Here. Now. For as long as we have.”
She settled back against him, but the peace was gone. The afterglow had burned away, revealing the stark, impossible cliff they were about to climb. Derek held her, listening to the monotonous click of the cooling computer, and watched the red light on the wall.
It no longer looked like darkroom illumination.
It looked like the glow of an approaching sun.