The Devil’s Keepsake by Somme Sketcher

Poppy

The scraping of the lock rips me from my bad dream.

“Great,” I grumble into the darkness.

From the frying pan into the fire; from a nightmare into another nightmare.

A sliver of light seeps into the crack, followed by footsteps so heavy that they could only belong to the Devil.

“Leave me alone, Lorcan,” I say, my throat dry and raspy. “If you’re not going to let me go, then leave me be. I’ll stay in this Museum every day for the rest of my life if it means never having to see you again.”

Silence fills the room. When it’s borderline suffocating, I peer out from under the cover and at the black mass looming over me. He’s so still that he could be a statue. “Lorcan?” I mutter, fear swelling in the pit of my stomach.

Finally, his gruff voice fills the black abyss between us. It’s strangled, like each word is fighting to leave his lips. “I hate seeing you cry.”

The bed dips as he sits. “I hate it so much that I want to douse myself in oil and set myself alight every time a tear rolls down your cheek.” When I don’t respond, he lets out a bitter laugh. “You know what I hate more than you crying? How much I care about you fucking crying.”

“You’re the sole reason why I cry, Lorcan,” I whisper into the darkness.

A hiss comes from his direction. “I hate you, Poppy Murphy. Do you know that?” There’s a pause, followed by a clinking sound and a gulp. He’s bought his liquid courage with him. “I’ve always hated you. At first, I hated you because I hated your father. I hated that I could look into your eyes and see Marcus Murphy staring back at me. Now, I hate you because of how you make me feel.”

The air I’m holding in my lungs is turning stale. I let it go along with a strangled question. “How do I make you feel?”

Another clink, another glug. “Like I want to rip my heart out of my chest and put a bullet in it myself. You confuse me.”

The darkness is my own liquid courage. It loosens my tongue and lets out something I’d never say in the cold light of day. The truth.

“You confuse me too,” I admit.

“How so?”

“I should hate you,” I choke out. “But I only hate you half the time.”

The weight on the bed shifts, and suddenly I can feel the warmth of his skin, smell the sweet whiskey on his breath. “And the other half?”

My heart is hammering so loud in my chest that it’s the only thing I can hear. “I want to kiss you.”

It slides out like butter on a hot day, floating between us in the dark.

The silence that follows is heavy and agonizing, stretching out into what feels like forever, until—

Lorcan crushes his lips against mine, capturing my mouth. The moment I taste him, desire floods my veins and I feel as drunk as him. As he slides a strong arm around my back, I find myself clawing at the top of his suit pants.

He freezes, and in the sliver of moonlight, our eyes lock. I know he’s thinking exactly what I am. It’s the first time I’ve willingly touched him. But I want him, crave him. In a way I can’t understand, I need him to corrupt me.

And the consequences of that are so far away from my mind they might as well be on a different planet.

He grabs my hands from his stomach and lifts them to his chest. Under the sculpted muscles I feel the heavy beat of his heart. “This is what you do to me, China Doll,” he rasps, “and this is why I fucking hate you.”

I moan into his mouth and he crushes his chest against mine, pinning me to the bed. His lips only break away from me to pull off his shirt, and to slip the straps of my camisole off my shoulders, letting my breasts spill out.

I’m not terrified tonight. No, I’m aroused. Manically so; the lust rises and falls in my chest with my heavy breathing. “I want to fuck you,” Lorcan’s growl vibrates above me, “I want to fuck you and I want you to want me to fuck you.”

“Yes,” I reply, delirious off his words.

“Say it.”

“I want you to fuck me.”

He widens the space between us for a moment, sliding off the rest of his suit. I prop myself up on my elbows to admire his carved-from-stone body. Even in the darkness, the outline of his massive cock makes me shudder with pleasure. It’s hard and long and fuck me that isn’t going to fit inside of me!

Lorcan catches my eye and grins a devilish grin, before looming back over me, thighs clamping either side of my hips. He dips low, running a sensual tongue over the curve of my breasts, down to my aching nipples. When he sucks them, a ripple of unbearable pleasure runs through me. Then his hand snakes lower, parting my legs.

I freeze. “I—” I stammer, putting my palm against his chest.

He looks up, brows knitted.

“I don’t know how,” I whisper.

He kisses my nerves away, before flicking his tongue over my earlobe and whispering, “All you have to do is give yourself to me, China Doll. Now spread your legs.”

I obey without question, feeling my clit swelling in anticipation.

“Good girl.”

Lifting himself off me, he crawls down to the space between my thighs and nuzzles his face between it. I gasp at the contrast of his soft lips and his coarse beard, and buckle my hips up towards him. “You’re already so wet for me, Doll,” he murmurs into my mound, his words vibrating in the best way possible. “I’m going to make you come all over my face before I fuck you.”

A moan escapes me as he runs a hard tongue over my clit. I grip onto his shoulders, preparing myself as he slips a lone finger inside of me. It opens me up in a cocktail of pleasure and pain, and I can’t help but think—if this is how his finger feels, how am I going to deal with his cock?

“Lorcan,” I gasp, buckling under his tongue. He growls into my pussy, alternating between licking, sucking, and flicking my clit, along with the steady rhythm of his finger sliding in and out of me.

The tension in my lower stomach mounts to unbearable heights until I have no choice but to let go.

“Oh my god,” I squeal, throwing my head back and pushing down on his face. My orgasm is all-consuming, stimulating every nerve ending in my body. As a second wave begins to wash over me, he removes his finger and uses both hands to pin my ass in place, lashing my clit with hard, desperate strokes.

After my second orgasm, I crumple onto the bed, panting like a dog in heat.

He sits back on his knees, a combination of a manic grin and my glistening juices on his lips. As he climbs back on top of me, pushing his nose against mine, he whispers, “I don’t know how to be gentle about this.”

My fingers dig into the muscles at the top of his back. “Then don’t be.”

The groan that escapes him is animalistic. Without another word, he parts my pussy lips with the tip of his cock, working into my untouched passage. He stops, just for a split second, to close his eyes and moan in pleasure. “You’re so tight, China Doll.”

It’s a weird sensation that I’ve only ever felt with Lorcan. When he spanked me, when he clamped his hands around my face… a state of limbo between pain and pleasure.

It’s my new happy place.

I cry out, and Lorcan’s mouth against mine immediately absorbs it. He works his cock further into my hole, and with every thrust, I think it can’t get any deeper, but it always does. Pleasure outweighs the pain tenfold. It cascades over me like a waterfall. Lorcan grips my hips and pulls himself even deeper into me. “Look at me,” he murmurs, pinning me with his glowering eyes. “I want to watch you as I take what’s mine.”

His.

He can have me, all of me, if this is what being his entails. The lust claws up my throat, leaving my lips in a weird, gurgling noise. Lorcan matches it with a growl of his own, eyes never leaving mine. He picks up the pace, thrusting into me, harder, faster, until his hot cum explodes inside of me, delivering a brand new sensation that drives me a different type of wild.

After a few moments, he leans back on his ankles, sliding himself out of me. My pussy suddenly feels empty and raw, the only trace of him left dribbling down my thigh. He breathes heavily, dragging his fingers through his hair.

Looking down at my throbbing pussy, he slides two fingers along the length of my lips, then holds them up to the moonlight. A mix of our pleasure and my blood glisten on his fingertips.

He pins me with a hard stare. “This means you’re mine, now, China Doll. You belong to me, in every sense of the word.”

I’ve just sold my soul to the Devil, and it feels better than I ever imagined it would.