"Fuck off," she barked.
Not a scream. Not a plea. Just two words, flat and final, the way she dismisses men in bars whose hands roam like hungry cocks.
She didn't wait for his response.
Her nine tails, that absurd, inconvenient weight she hadn't asked for, moved before she'd fully decided to move them. They fanned out behind her like a wall, curling inward to cover her chest, and then pushed.
A sharp, controlled shove of air that sent her sliding back against the pit wall.
Damn.
She hadn't known they could do that.
Apparently, the previous owner had.
Arkin didn't budge, instead, he simply followed, unhurried, like he had already decided how this ended and was merely observing the steps between now and then. He closed the distance she'd created and stopped just short of touching her.
His massive frame cutting off the violet moonlight until there was nothing left in her immediate world but his shadow and his scent.
Strawberry and old blood.
It shouldn't have been pleasant. It wasn't pleasant. But something in her body reacted to it anyway, a low, involuntary tingle that started at the base of her spine and moved upward without her own permission.
Demon, she reminded herself. He's a demon. Of course he would smells like temptation.
She coughed, tasting copper on her tongue. "I said get back!" Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I am not in the mood!"
"Little Fox."
His voice dropped into something low and textured, less a sound and more of something that bypassed her ears entirely and settled directly into her bones.
Her tails twitched. She hated them for it.
Fuck he sounds so good.
His fingers found her neck. Not gripping, just present. Tracing along the curve of throat, like he was learning something.
"You push me away," he said, "and yet your body pulls me closer." His eyes moved over her lips then to her eyes, reading something else she hadn't consented to showing. "Which one should I listen to?"
Neither, listen to neither and remove yourself from my immediate vicinity.
She despised being on the weak side.
What came out instead was her fangs, bared, small and white and furious. Her breathing turning labored. Her tails acting on instincts began to uncoil from her chest, and draped themselves over his shoulders, caressing the pulse point of his throat.
"Who the fuck... sleeps with a stranger?" she gasped, her knuckles white where she gripped the torn silk at her chest. "This isn't a one-night stand. This is a goddamn ambush. I don't even know your last name."
That was a lie. I know enough to know why he is here with me.
Arkin leaned in. His lips brushed the shell of her pointed ears, barely contact, almost nothing, and yet she felt it everywhere even in her clit as it throbbed, and a whimper slid out of her lips.
Didn't he have a single shame in him to be doing this to a stranger?
"This is the Demon World, Little Fox." His voice was quiet. Almost gentle. Which made it worse. "There is no dignity nor contract here. No shame. No consequences to manage." A pause. "You can fall apart as completely as you want. I will still be here when you do."
Arkin, at this point, didn't know what he was saying; all he knows is that the sweet scent wafting out of this female is what he truly needs and desires right now.
He sniffed her again, an audible, deep inhale that made his eyes glow a feral, predatory red. His hands began to wander, tracing the line of her waist, the dip of her spine, purposefully avoiding the one place where the ache was making her go absolutely mad.
He didn't know how, but his dick had raged against his silk trousers, demanding to enter this little fox.
While he was in his own little world, Lexianna was in hers.
In utter agony.
This was not just any honey trouble.
She wanted to tell him that falling apart was not something she did. That she had sat across from men twice his size and taken everything they had without flinching.
But the pressure in her chest was becoming something she could no longer reason around.
She ground her teeth, as the ache intensified and her toes curled.
Goddamnit, what sin must I have committed to be cursed like this?
The pressure had moved past pain into something more demanding and totally humiliating, radiating outward with every heartbeat. The poison was threading through her blood and whatever it was doing, it had clearly decided that she could no longer afford modesty.
His hand moved. Slow, deliberate, tracing the line of her waist, the dip of her spine, her ribcage, learning the geography of her without landing anywhere that mattered. Testing. Watching her the entire time.
She hated that the most.
Being watched.
A low, muffled moan escaped her that she did not authorize. Involuntary and mortifying.
"Fucking hell," she growled, her tails coiling around his waist before her brain had issued the instruction, pulling him forward until his warmth pressed fully against her skin. Her own body staging a coup. "If you are not going to help, then move."
He didn't move, instead he sneered.
His hand came up and closed around her throat to still her. He pressed her back against the stone, tipped her chin up and made her look at him directly. Into those dying-star eyes that hadn't blinked once since he'd landed in this pit.
"Perhaps," he said softly, "If you ask properly, I'll consider it." Something shifted in his expression. Dark. "If not, I will kill you here. And take what I want regardless."
A fox demon being difficult, from where could she have gotten the courage? Arkin thought.
She held his gaze. Didn't look away.
"You won't," defiant as ever, yet she grounded her hips against his hardness.
She wasn't entirely sure why she believed that. But she did with a confident smirk curling at the corner of her lips.
His jaw tightened. Frustration, or something adjacent to it moved in his eyes.
Then in one swift, violent motion, he tore the red silk from her form.
The cold air hit her bare skin all at once, and the relief was so immediate and so total that the sound that left her had nothing to do with embarrassment.
It was pure, unguarded, and she couldn't have stopped it even if she tried.
The chill cut straight through the heat that had been building against her chest, and for one merciful second, the pressure eased.
Arkin had gone very still.
His gaze dropped. The air between them had shifted, that pineapple sweetness, thick and relentless, flooding the space until it felt less like a scent and more like a presence. She watched him process it. Watched the cold calculation in his eyes dissolve into something rawer and less controlled.
In the dim light, her pale white chest was stained with a translucent, white liquid.
He leaned down slowly.
"So this is where it came from," he said, more to himself than to her. His eyes tracked upward to hers. The killing edge was gone replaced by a focus so complete it was almost worse. "What do you need from me, Little Fox?"
If it was the normal her, she would have laughed.
But right now, Lexianna wanted to die.
Professionally, personally, spiritually, she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole, away from this situation.
She had dictated terms to people who thought they held power over her. She had walked into rooms and made them rearrange themselves around her presence.
Yet here she was.
Naked in a pit. Poisoned. Her boobies heavy and leaking. Being looked at like something worth figuring out by a demon who smelled like blood and strawberries, which she was sure was the trick of her mind. While her own traitorous body staged the most humiliating mutiny of her life.
The audacity of this world!
But there was no thinking past it, she was in pain, she needed help, she couldn't manage it. She had to deal with it now. It was the only thing.
And this was the only deal on the table.
She met his eyes and held them. And she hated every word before she said them.
"Please... suck it, Lord Arkin."