NIGHT SEVEN OF PHANTASMA
There was a hopeless feeling deep inside Ophelia’s bones. After a restless night, she spent the entirety of the next morning tearing through every room she had access to in this wing of the manor. But there wasn’t a single thing that she thought might be Blackwell’s key.
She suspected that the object they were looking for was either in a part of Phantasma she could not reach, or lost forevermore.
Why else would no one have found it yet? she reasoned. Why else would he not have found it yet?
They had both known it from the start, but now that time was running out, it was really starting to sink in for Ophelia: she had made a very risky gamble, and she was going to lose. The only option she had left was to win the competition and ask for her debt to be forgiven. Which meant all of this was truly for naught. She and Genevieve would still lose Grimm Manor. They’d be exactly where they started—just with a little extra trauma.
She was so numb as she padded her way down the hall, back to her room, that when Sinclair appeared next to her, she barely acknowledged him.
“I see you’re beginning to realize the gravity of your situation,” Sinclair mocked. “Have you reached the point of reconsidering my offer yet?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps I just need to wait you out a few more hours, hmm? You’d really rather give up a decade to him than make one tiny little bargain with me?” Sinclair pressed. “If all of you mortals stopped giving him the years of your own lives to sustain him, maybe he’d fade away and be unable to do this to further victims.”
Ophelia glanced at the Devil to her left with apathy. “I will not be taking on the responsibility of whether or not he makes deals with others in the future. He doesn’t force anyone into a bargain, and he doesn’t want everyone to keep failing.”
She wasn’t sure why she felt the burning need to defend Blackwell—she was still furious with him after all—but it made her blood boil that Sinclair had the audacity to say a single disparaging thing about her Phantom considering the Devil’s own warped sense of morals.
Sinclair looked at her as if he thought she were pathetic. “You do care for him. Jasper said as much.”
“Devils are shameless gossips,” she muttered without acknowledging his statement.
“Mortals are pitiful romantics,” he countered. “Falling in love no matter the cost.”
“I didn’t fall in love,” she gritted out, a fire beginning to ignite in her belly. “I wish everyone would stop assuming things they know nothing about.”
“It was just mindless pleasure, then? A distraction?” Sinclair’s lips curled up in a taunting grin.
Her own lips curled with disdain. “How much did you watch us?”
“Enough.” Sinclair slid in front of her, halting her steps. “Enough to know you’re lying to yourself about your feelings as some sort of last ditch resort to spare yourself from the inevitable pain to come.”
“I’m not,” she insisted, but even she could hear the shaky conviction in her voice. “It’s been seven days,”—she swallowed—‘and he’s been an absolute nuisance for most of them.”
Sinclair laughed. “Except when he’s making you scream his name, right?”
Yes, she thought, her teeth grinding together. Except when he’s making grand speeches about every little thing he admires about me, or making the voice in my head shut up, or giving me the sort of unearthly pleasure that makes me see stars.
Sinclair reached out and dragged his index finger along her clenched jaw and beneath her chin, tilting her face up to look directly into his. “But if you insist it was just a distraction—prove it. Let me distract you. I guarantee I can do it better.”
“Never,” she whispered.
He laughed. “Why? Because I’m a Devil?”
“Amongst other things.”
“You aren’t even a little curious?” The slit in the center of his eyes widened, black swallowing his ruby-colored irises. “About what I can give you that he can’t?”
She swallowed. Truthfully, she was curious, but probably not for the reasons he assumed.
And as if he saw that very thought in her eyes, he laughed.
“That’s right,” he purred. “Just say the word, sweetheart. If you don’t ask me to touch you, I won’t.”
She hardened her heart to what she was about to do. “Kiss me. Touch me.”
Wicked laughter rumbled in Sinclair’s chest as he granted her request, bringing her lips to his and sweeping his tongue over hers with a confidence that made her feel utterly unprepared for what she had asked for. He wasn’t tender or gentle. His movements were sharp, his body hard, as he pressed her back into the wall and roamed a hand down over her side, to her hip, to the back of her knee, lifting her leg up to hook around him.
Though there was lust in their kiss, there was absolutely no heat. Her stomach did not flutter, her skin did not flush with anticipation. And though she could feel herself become wet between her legs, it was simply from the motions of the act itself, a biologically driven reaction. Not a passionate one.
His hand began to move between them, and he pulled back just enough to ask, “May I?”
“Yes,” she answered. Clear. Short.
“You can command me to stop any time,” he told her sincerely. “I do not ever take anything that isn’t freely given—as is the nature of Devils and our bargains. Do you understand?”
A single nod.
“No,” he told her. “I want to hear you verbalize it. Do you understand that you can tell me to stop, and I will?”
“Yes,” she confirmed.
Without another word, he kissed her again and pulled up the side of her skirt to slip his hand beneath them, pushing two fingers inside of her when he reached her core. Curling them forward with a beckoning motion to hit that sensitive spot deep within her, he used the pad of his thumb to rub her clit at the same time. Her body barely reacted, the pleasure so much less intense than it had been with Blackwell.
Blackwell, who made her whimper and writhe with ecstasy, who made her blood boil and often had her ready to beg for more despite her vow to never do so.
With Sinclair, it felt like her senses had been dulled.
She broke the kiss, grimacing as she flattened her palms against the Devil’s chest to push him away. He removed himself from her in an instant, dropping her leg and transporting himself several feet away.
“No. I can’t, it’s not right.” She shook her head. “You’re not right.”
“Oh, it didn’t look all that bad from here,” a sultry, feminine voice said from the right.
Ophelia whipped her head to find Rayea leaning a hip against the wall, watching them. Sinclair gave the other Devil a languid smile in greeting.
“Then you have him,” Ophelia spat as she straightened her skirts to leave.
“Been there, done that,” Rayea remarked. “You’re missing a good time. But I understand. Blackwell just has something about him, doesn’t he? Those eyes, that mouth, that tongue—”
“I’m not going to let you get under my skin,” Ophelia told her.
“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t have to let me do anything.” Rayea laughed. “I think I’m already there. I’ll be sure to let Blackwell know you’ve moved on perfectly well next time I see him. Make sure I’m there to… comfort him.”
With a wink, Rayea disappeared, leaving her alone with Sinclair once more.
“Have a good rest of your night, darling,” Sinclair drawled.
Ophelia ran back to her room. She slammed the door shut behind her and slid down its frame to the floor as a deep sense of dread shattered through her. Something had taken root in her heart, something forbidden, without her realization. And now it was too intertwined with her very being to cut it out. Her heart had finally grown teeth of its own, and it was ready to tear itself to shreds if the time came.
