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Douma feels… strange, around you.
He’s grown attached to humans before, deigned to keep them around because they roused his interest or had some talent or skill he found pleasing. Never has he felt anything more than passing amusement for them, or pity.
But you… What is it that he feels for you?
Douma ponders it while he watches you sleep, your head pillowed on his lap and your breaths coming deep and even. He reaches for your face, nails dragging along your cheek. Your nose scrunches at the ticklish touch, but you slumber on, unbothered.
Hmm. Curiosity, perhaps? He certainly finds some merit of surprise in your ability to slumber so peacefully in the presence of a demon such as he. You’re no fool; you know he is no human, or at least you must suspect it, and yet you seek him out regardless, wishing to remain in his presence without succumbing to the simpering pleas and praise his followers lay at his feet.
Douma finds it… refreshing, and as he studies your sleeping face, tracing its dips and curves with his colorful eyes, he wonders what other surprises you might have in store.
*
It was inevitable that you should see him this way.
He watches you tremble on the threshold, your eyes darting between his blood-stained face and the lifeless girls strewn about his feet. You seem frozen, rooted in place by the spectacle, and though he smiles at you, lips curled in a welcoming grin, something blooms in the vicinity of his chest that he can’t quite identify when you flinch.
“My dear - “ he starts, and as if your body were merely waiting for the sound of his voice, it jerks violently away from the door. Away from him.
Ah, he realizes as he rises to his feet. That feeling in his chest has deepened, intensified, and he knows now what it must be.
Disappointment.
You cry out as he appears before you, falling back onto your rump and trembling like a leaf in a storm when he follows.
“Surely you knew,” he says, falling to his knees atop your frozen form. A bitter film costs the back of his throat at the obvious evidence of your fear, and he fights the urge to frown.
“Please don’t d-devour me,” you plead, and he has never seen your eyes filled with such fright.
He laughs, or tries to. It’s not as joyous as its usual fare, and for the first time in his long, long life, the blood caking his mouth tastes sour. How annoying.
“I have no desire to,” he tells you honestly, lifting a hand free of blood to cup your cheek. He half-expects you to flinch away, but you remain still, watching his face, searching his eyes. What must you be searching for, he wonders. He’s grown so dreadfully curious about what thoughts must be going through your head. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me at an… indelicate time,” he chuckles, glancing over your head to the remnants of his half-devoured meal. “Sorry about that!”
Your chest rises and falls beneath his. You’re shivering and afraid, but you’re listening.
The thought of giving you up is a distasteful one. The thought of devouring you, as scrumptious as you might taste, is even worse.
Douma sighs.
Confusion swims in your eyes as he releases you, rising to his feet and gesturing toward the threshold to his chambers.
“Go,” he tells you, though his insides churn unpleasantly at the thought. He buries his hands beneath his robes to prevent them from snatching you back into his arms, inwardly marveling at the strange sense of desperation clawing at his gut.
You rise clumsily from the floor, studying him for a long moment before you scurry from the room. Your scent lingers in his nostrils long after you’ve disappeared, and though his teeth clench and his nails bite into his palms with the strength of the urge, he does not pursue you.
Instead, he returns to his meal, though where once he would have feasted with abandon, after your departure his hunger feels muted, his feeding lackluster.
Strange, he thinks, frowning as he casts his morsel aside. He stares at the threshold to his room, empty and bereft of your presence. Somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, something aches.
This feeling, he could do without.
*
He doesn’t expect to see you again.
And yet… here you are.
He says nothing as you approach him, your hands folded over a book and your eyes determinedly cast to the ground. You settle at his side, your customary position since this peculiar attachment began, and crack open the spine of your tome without saying a word.
Douma studies you - there are shadows beneath your eyes that denote a clear lack of sleep, and though you’re taking great strides to appear nonchalant, your fingers tremble against the pages of your book.
But Douma is feeling generous, and says nothing of it. Instead, he grins, his cheeks aching with the strength of it, and when he catches you watching him, his smile only grows.
Once again, you’ve surprised him. What’s more, the sour feeling in the pit of his stomach has completely dispersed, leaving behind something that he might dare to call relief.
Imagine that! Is this what it is to be truly human, to be overcome by one debilitating emotion after another? How do they ever get anything done?
What more could you teach him? Surely there must be more, agonies and bliss the likes of which Douma has always observed in others, but never experienced himself.
The demon can hardly wait to feel them all.
*
Hunger, Douma recognizes - felt and indulged without a thought whenever the desire struck him.
Hunger like this -
Well, he has never experienced hunger quite like this.
Your eyes are wide, blown black save for the lantern light reflected in their depths. Your skin burns where your bodies touch - hips, chest, thighs exuding heat - but every remaining inch blooms with the chill of his Blood Demon Art.
Douma traces the fingers of ice that drift along your arms, your throat, your legs, leaving raised gooseflesh in their wake. Spiderweb-thin and clear as glass, the ice encases you like a second skin, leaving you shivering from head to toe, and though he’d fed hours before - and overindulged, if he were being honest, in preparation for this encounter with you - hunger gnaws at Douma’s flesh at the sight of your trembling.
What a glorious feeling! He’s practically trembling himself at the strength of it, stricken with the desire to ravage, to consume, but not to devour.
He thumbs at your bottom lip, and when the temptation proves to be too great, ducks his head to get in a quick nip. It isn’t hard enough to break skin, but Douma feels the blood rise to the surface, leaving your mouth tingling with a delectable warmth that he can’t resist chasing after.
And oh, how quickly you rise to meet him! Your hands grasp at his clothes, your thighs squeeze at his hips, and your mouth falls open on a sodden gasp whenever he dares to pull his teeth away. It’s hunger, it must be, the same desperate, clawing ache that has taken to gnawing at Douma’s insides at the mere sight of you.
What agony!
More, he thinks, circling your neck with a row of sucking bites, tasting ice and blood and the salt of your skin. Each cry and moan and gasp of his name is fuel for the hunger tearing through him; he wants to hear more, to taste more, to feel more.
How lucky Douma is, that you’re so desperate to give it.