Chapter 12 - Fallen's First

The indulgence of Neyu’s lips left his swollen in the most delicious way imaginable. A soreness he wouldn’t trade for anything. Her tongue brushed against his, granting him taste after taste of his beloved. If the tree weren’t at her back, propping them up, his knees would have given out from the sensory overload.

His body demanded more. By the way she undulated her hips into his, so did hers.

Saer’s hands slid around Neyu’s where they curled under his jawline. Before he could regret the decision, he pulled them away from his skin with a gentle tug.

Neyu parted their kiss with a whining protest.

“I know.” His voice had dipped deeper, just above a wanton growl. Pressing one more agonizing kiss against her mouth, he leaned back, allowing a sliver of air between their bodies.

Neyu pulled against his hold to close the distance, but Saer held fast, leaning in to brush his nose against hers, whispering, “Let me undress you.”

Her breath caught, her eyes fluttering shut. Neyu licked her lips, and she gave a stilted nod.

He wanted nothing more than to rip the blanket off her. Instead, he squeezed her hands and used them to guide his demoness. Neyu opened her eyes to give him one more ravenous glimpse of her cerulean gaze before acquiescing, and she spun to press her palms into the wide, smooth trunk they’d leaned against moments before. Saer’s fingertips trailed down her wrists and arms while his eyes drank in the smooth skin of her shoulders and upper back. His tongue yearned to explore, to see if all her flesh tasted as good as her lips.

When Saer’s fingers grazed her shoulder blades and dipped under the edge of the blanket he’d placed around her—when was that? It must have been hours ago—he paused at the corner he tucked in so deliberately.

Another whining groan left Neyu, and she arched her body, rolling her backside into him. The motion drew a breathless moan from Saer, and his hands snapped down to her hips as he curled his chin over her shoulder.

His arms quivered as he fought the sudden dizziness swimming in his mind, his voice shaking just as much as the rest of him. “Frenzied Hellsfire.”

“Touch me,” she whispered. And her voice didn’t tremble in the least.

He was created First. He held the ability to unmake her.

There was no question in his mind who held all the power in this exchange. He’d worship her, bend to her every whim, do anything she asked or commanded.

“Yes, Dearest,” he whispered against her shoulder then placed another kiss, letting his tongue dart out to graze her perfect skin. Somehow her flesh carried traces of salt, smoke, and an untamable sweetness.

Hellsfire, she tasted like paradise.

Saer’s palms rubbed up her hips, her sides. When they reached the top of the blanket, he forced his movements to slow as he untucked the corner, then allowed the makeshift garment to drop at her feet.

He gifted himself a moment to lean back and indulge his eyes with her curves, her hips, her backside still arched against him where his wrapped blanket provided the only barrier separating their flesh. The hardness between his legs pressed against her frame, aching.

On their own volition, his fingertips trailed down her ribs, leaving gooseflesh in their wake.

At last, Neyu’s breaths began to shake. The anticipation might eat him alive.

One of his hands curved around her luscious hip while his opposite palm curved under her backside, then dipped between her toned legs.

When his fingers grazed her core, slick and warm, Neyu’s head jerked back with a sharp inhale. “Saer.”

He growled at the first touch of her, his throat fighting against forming words, but he still managed to murmur, “Yes?”

“More.” Neyu shifted her hips enough for Saer’s fingers to glide between her silken folds. He clutched her hip with his opposite hand, hard enough that he knew he’d bruise her, and the thought had him suddenly loosening his hold.

The intensity of the change coaxed another moan from Neyu, and she turned her head to brush her lips against his cheek. “Be gentle. Be rough. Be everything. I need all of you, Dearest...don’t hold back.”

How did she manage to form whole sentences?

The thought was fleeting before his overwhelmed mind caught up to her words. He wouldn’t deny her. He’d give her anything she asked for.

Reinforcing his hold on her hip, Saer kissed the top of her shoulder and renewed his exploration with his opposite hand. Her slickness coated his fingers, allowing them to glide back and forth. Every time he grazed that small bud at the apex of her thighs, Neyu shuddered against him, groaning and rolling her hips into his hand. The instant he noticed the pattern, he stayed there, gliding and rubbing as he whispered against her flesh, “Here?”

“Yes.” Neyu sounded just as breathless. “Please.”

Wrapping his other arm around her waist, he focused his efforts, squeezing Neyu against him while he honed in on her body language. She whimpered and tensed as he curled and extended his fingers, sliding back and forth.

He made it his mission to coax more salacious sounds from her throat.

When her hips moved with increasing intensity, he pressed firmer, moved faster. She whined, and he felt more than saw her nod as he scraped his teeth on the flesh between her neck and shoulder.

Neyu’s breaths came sharper, quicker.

Her legs quaked.

The sense that she built towards something had Saer holding his breath as he focused on that bundle of nerves, fingertips slick and stroking as his corded forearm strained.

All at once, some crashing finality washed over her, and Neyu’s head threw back against his shoulder as she cried out. Saer buried his face in her neck while she rode his hand, holding her up with his arm when her legs suddenly refused to support her.

He’d hold her forever if he needed to.

He lost himself in her abandoned pleasure, matching her movement for movement. His palm pressed against Neyu’s slickness and gave her all the friction her body demanded until a strangled cry left her. The tenseness in Neyu’s body evaporated, leaving her limp against the tree, his other arm supporting most of her weight.

Saer didn’t waste time, pressing loving kisses against her throat. She twitched under his touch, and he pressed his full palm between her legs, rewarded with her shuddering sigh.

Most of the stories he’d overheard from men in his time on the surface focused on their own pleasure—not what could be given to their women. After evoking such a response in Neyu, how could one not become addicted to it? Already, he wanted to lay her down and start again, explore her further, lose himself in her, taste her…

As though she read his thoughts, Neyu adjusted her footing and turned around, forcing Saer to unfurl his arms. She spun until her back pressed once more to the tree and gazed at him with a kind of dazed wonderment in her eyes.

Saer pressed his forehead to hers, his body aching but his pride satiated after showing her what no one else had.

Neyu tilted her head and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth before uttering two words that threatened to break him.

“Your turn.”

Her hand, unbeknownst to him, snuck down to his blanket edge. In one smooth movement, she pulled it undone.

The hardness between his legs strained, ready for her, and Neyu gave him no reprieve before wrapping her fingers around its length. Saer’s eyes shut and he bit back a groan as exquisite lightning shot through his anatomy.

She squeezed him before releasing. “Lie down.”

Thank the Hells, because his legs were about to force it on him.

The blankets served their purpose well enough, and he lowered to his back while she followed, straddling his stomach.

Saer’s heart hammered in his chest as he beheld her, the way the shadows of the tree painted her body between slivers of glorious sunlight.

Neyu bent over him, lips finding his once more, her breasts crushing against his chest.

It couldn’t get any better than this, could it?

Then she reached between their bodies, wrapped her fingers around the most wanton part of him, and guided him to her center. No hesitation as she lifted her hips and impaled herself upon him, her breath leaving in a rush.

Saer’s eyes rolled back into his head, his torso arching as she encased him, sending ricochets of pleasure through him from head to toe.

Neyu didn’t give him the opportunity to recover. She pressed one hand to his chest, her other palm over her own heartbeat, and she began to move.

Slow at first, taking in every sensation, Neyu’s hips rocked back and forth. She ground down with each thrust, seeking her own pleasure as her hips pressed into his. When he could focus again, the sensations captivated him as much as the slackness of her beautiful mouth. The way she groaned above him. Something urgent and desperate entered her gaze as they remained locked with one another.

A steady rise of some intense thing started low in his stomach.

Her motions quickened.

Neyu licked her lips, a question in her gaze.

Saer couldn’t speak, only nod.

And he followed her over the edge of oblivion.

His peak crashed over him, just as she cried out, limbs shaking. Her pupils dilated, threatening to swallow the azure of her irises, but they didn’t break eye contact as she rode him to finality. Didn’t stop until he lay a breathless casualty under her indisputable command.

Then her lips broke into an earth-shattering smile. She bent again to kiss his mouth, and whispered, “You have until you catch your breath. Then I want you on top.”

* * *

They ended in a pool of crushed plains grass, soaking up the heat of the burning sun overhead. Resting on his back, Saer contented himself with half of Neyu’s weight on his torso, her temple pressed into his shoulder. The demoness traced a delicate fingertip along the lines of his neck musculature and collarbone. Delicious trembles echoed through him with every touch, threatening to spur him into rolling her over so he might lose himself in more euphoric pleasures of the flesh.

Of her flesh.

Reality needled at the back of his mind, the demand to consider the consequences of their past day.

Just a little longer.

Saer cleared his throat, eyes still shut as he skimmed his own hand along Neyu’s shoulder. “What happened with the humans?”

Her low chuckle reverberated against him. “Not that.”

Saer cracked one eye open to glimpse her smiling face. “I believe you.”

“That’s a start, at any rate.” No accusation existed in the statement. Only authentic bliss that Saer’s ire passed. She nuzzled against him. “From the instant they approached me, I knew the target of their true desires. You didn’t mention you could do that with your sin.”

Saer ran his tongue over his teeth in thought. “The times I’ve pulled on pride, it didn’t have a quarry or an outward direction. I imagine lust has a target more often than not.”

“Fair point. By its nature, pride is quite self-focused.” A hint of teasing had entered Neyu’s tone.

Saer scoffed and bent his head so he could plant a playful nip at the top of his love’s shoulder, to which she obligingly squirmed. “I don’t recall our last hours as self-focused,” he growled.

The breathlessness in her voice made his comment worth it. “Perhaps there’s hope for you, yet.”

Saer tucked a finger under her chin, guiding Neyu so he could lay another lazy and thorough kiss on her lips. Once he’d closed it, he whispered against her mouth, “Perhaps so.”

The flavor of her smile seeped into his very bones.

He couldn’t afford to become addicted to it.

The knocking of reality beat stronger, and he parted his lips to say what he didn’t wish to. Neyu seemed to sense the change in him, and she rushed to touch two fingers against Saer’s mouth. “Not yet, Dearest. Please.”

Saer shut his eyes in a pained blink, but nodded. His demoness’s hand lowered, and she resumed their previous conversation. “I brought out the humans’ true yearning. They fell upon each other once they realized.”

“One of them reached to touch you.” The image played in his mind, and he couldn’t help the edge of possessiveness in his voice.

His demoness leaned in to drag the tip of her nose along his cheek bone. “They had fear of rejection from one another. I saw it in their eyes once they realized their actual desires were for one another and I…” Neyu offered a soft smile and lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “I encouraged them to embrace their attraction.”

The First huffed and turned his head to brush his mouth against hers. “Sounds uncannily familiar and relatable.”

He couldn’t get enough of her. Her voice. Her taste. Her body.

Neyu lifted herself onto an elbow so she could see his face better. “I don’t want this with anyone else.”

“Neyu—”

His demoness shook her head hard enough to quiet him. “You might have spoken in anger and fear before, but let me make this clear so Pride himself can do what he does best—and not doubt.”

Saer blinked, confounded into giving her his silence and undivided attention.

“Our maker shaped me, but yours were the first eyes I saw. Saer…” She glided the pointer finger of her free hand under one of his silver locks. “I was created by him. But I was made for you.”

He wanted to argue with her, insist that her statement defied logic—except the words struck an undeniable chord in his heart. That instant she took her first breath, blinked, and met his gaze. He remembered the jolt as though it occurred yesterday. He’d thought the same. That she was his.

Neyu’s brow knit while she watched her finger tracing the lines of Saer’s jaw. “I can’t help what I am—my components, my sin—any more than you. If I make others feel special, as you said, by being, there’s little I can do about that. But it doesn’t take away your significance to me, or how…” The demoness brought her palm to her breastbone and pressed it into her flesh firm enough that her knuckles blanched. “How this feels empty when you’re gone. No one else does that. No one else is dearest to me,” She patted her sternum, “here.” Her attention lifted to his face.

Saer met her eyes and drank in their sincerity, the dangerous truths they shared. His heart swelled and broke all at once. How had she become his everything?

His.

He would protect what was his, at all costs.

Lucifer wouldn’t allow their connection. Their very attraction to one another put Neyu in danger, just as it had on the first day of their creation. Saer still recalled the terror shooting through him when their maker wrapped Its fingers around her neck when they’d known one another for minutes, much less years.

If that happened today…

Neyu shook her head a fraction while resolve crept into Saer’s gaze. “Don’t,” she whispered.

Saer took her hand from her breastbone and kissed her palm, then squeezed it as he held her gaze. She deserved that at least. “I’ll return to the Hells and tell our maker that I arrived in an area without humans, so I’ve returned to relocate.” And if It asked about Neyu, he’d lie and say he didn’t know where she’d gone.

“Saer—”

“From there, I’ll travel to another part of the surface. Somewhere away from here.”

Pain slashed across her gaze, strangled by heartache. Saltwater pooled in her eyes, steaming off the corners. “I don’t agree to this.”

The muscles in Saer’s abdomen flexed as he sat and moved Neyu with him, curling his hands to frame her jawline so he could meet her glistening stare. “We made a vow, Neyuukhan.”

Somehow, she managed to look both fractured and fierce all at once. “We could be unstoppable.”

Against all but one, he knew.

Saer leaned forward and indulged himself with one last kiss from her lips. Remnants of her tears fell down the demoness’s cheeks, their saltiness bitter on his tongue.

Amidst their kiss, he allowed Hellsfire to take him, and him alone, back to the Hells.