Chapter 3
“I Know What You Want.”
“Wait.”
Su Cheng lifted a hand and pressed it against the man’s chest.
His skin was burning hot. Heat rolled off him in waves, obvious even through the fabric between them, so hot it nearly scorched her fingertips.
Demons were rarely seen on the Northern Continent.
This land was under the Church’s control, and the followers of the Dark God were strictly forbidden from setting foot here.
Especially in a place like Amber City, where a grand cathedral stood and powerful clergy gathered in numbers.
Among them, there were certainly more than a few capable of sensing and tracking demonic auras.
Large cathedrals even possessed teleportation arrays said to connect directly to the Holy City. If anything happened, they could summon terrifyingly powerful reinforcements within minutes.
If necessary, perhaps even lesser gods from the divine realm.
Su Cheng didn’t know much about the demoness villainess from the original novel—why she came to the Northern Continent, how the Church captured her, or how she escaped afterward.
Maybe it had been explained later on. She’d skipped chapters when buying the novel and never saw that part.
But she did know that after Lin Yun got involved with the villainess, trouble followed one disaster after another.
“So you need to sleep with someone. Fine, I get it,” Su Cheng said carefully. “But why my house? Why me?”
The demon leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
“There’s some kind of aura on you. Weak, but noticeable. I instinctively teleported here.” He shut his eyes briefly, voice rough with exhaustion. “It’s my first time on the human continent. I wanted to pick somewhere… less awful.”
Su Cheng blinked. “An aura?”
On her?
She had already checked all her pockets earlier. The bracelet definitely wasn’t on her anymore.
The demon slowly opened his eyes again. Sweat slid down the sharp line of his jaw and dripped onto his broad, toned chest.
“…Mage,” he muttered impatiently. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how.”
“What do you mean I don’t?!” Su Cheng shot back on reflex. “I’m just saying—you’re already in this condition. What if something goes wrong?”
Those icy blue eyes locked onto her.
“It won’t.”
Su Cheng had just opened her mouth when the tail coiled around her waist suddenly tightened.
The demon abruptly leaned in close. His scorching breath brushed against her neck before a slightly too-long tongue slid across her skin.
His tongue was hot and flexible, the tip almost branding her as it traced slowly along the thin skin over her pulse.
“You resonate with wind elements?” he murmured. “I have wind affinity too. In that case…”
His lips brushed her bare shoulder and neck. He withdrew his tongue and instead dragged sharp teeth lightly against her soft skin.
“…Blood works too. Faster, actually.”
Then he bit down.
Su Cheng shivered.
It barely hurt. He bit gently, almost tenderly as he drew blood.
But while drinking, he kept licking and teasing the wound. The place he touched tingled and throbbed strangely, and beneath the faint pain, an entirely different sensation slowly bloomed.
A current seemed to run straight down her spine. Her waist weakened instantly, her body threatening to collapse if not for the tail holding her firmly in place.
The black tail extended behind him, the blade-like tip flicking happily through the air.
…Like a dog that’d just been handed a bone.
The absurd thought drifted hazily through Su Cheng’s mind.
“All right.”
After a while, the demon finally stopped. The tail around her loosened, and he licked his lips with visible satisfaction.
The markings on his face shimmered faintly. Light returned to those beautiful blue eyes.
Su Cheng straightened herself. “You’re okay now?”
Without warning, the demon’s tail whipped out again, wrapping around her waist and lifting her effortlessly onto the table.
Then he leaned over her.
One leg slid between her knees, one hand braced beside her body as he looked down at her from above.
And then he bit his own finger.
His hand was large, all sharp knuckles and elegant bones. The claws slowly retracted into the shape of ordinary fingernails as dark crimson blood welled from the cut.
A moment later, he smeared it roughly across her lips.
Dark red streaks stained her mouth like violent brushstrokes on a canvas. His coarse fingers rubbed hard against her lips until the soft flesh flushed red from the pressure.
Su Cheng let out an uncomfortable sound and instinctively turned her head away, only for him to grab her chin.
The demon lowered his gaze to hers.
“…Drink.”
“Hm?” Su Cheng blinked. “Does my drinking blood actually help?”
“A succubus’s blood suppresses all kinds of lust-related curses.” His voice dropped lower. “One dose should keep it dormant for at least ten days.”
Then he added flatly:
“But if you don’t have a curse, it becomes poison.”
Su Cheng immediately grabbed his hand and lowered her head to drink.
Warmth flooded down her throat.
Her eyes flew open.
There was power inside the blood—raw, vibrant energy that surged through her body in an instant, heat racing through her limbs.
At the same time, a restless, needle-like ache spread beneath her skin before gathering at her back.
The poison within the demon’s blood gradually dissolved into her curse, the two forces neutralizing each other.
Then came the pleasure.
A dizzying, intoxicating kind of bliss.
It felt as though she’d sunk into a steaming hot spring wrapped in warm mist, every pore in her body opening beneath the heat.
Su Cheng could even hear faint laughter.
Layer upon layer of soft, delighted voices—male and female alike. Some shrill and bright, others low and husky, all blending together into something strangely enchanting.
Like signals drifting in from another dimension, drawing her consciousness somewhere unknown.
Su Cheng froze.
Those were wind spirits laughing.
She could feel them circling around her, darting through the air. Faint green silhouettes flickered at the edge of her vision, and farther away, tiny specks of red glimmered into existence.
Fire spirits.
In a room with open windows and no lit fireplace, wind spirits should naturally outnumber fire spirits. There might not have been any fire spirits at all.
And yet she could see them.
Without casting magic.
Without entering meditation.
Her sensitivity to elemental spirits had increased.
…Maybe only temporarily.
Even so, the sensation was intoxicating.
She drank more greedily.
Her tongue swept over the wound at the base of his thumb, licking repeatedly at the small cut, even biting lightly as if trying to force more blood out.
Human lips and tongues were soft. Cooler than his own body temperature.
The demon’s eyes widened slightly.
His expression turned subtly unnatural. Behind him, the folded bat-like wings began to twitch open, while his tail lashed restlessly again.
The girl in front of him was clutching his wrist, sucking on one of his fingers, biting and licking and drinking without restraint. Her amber eyes were hazy with pleasure.
The demon stared at her in silence.
The claw resting on the table slowly curled tight, veins standing out sharply across the back of his hand.
His gaze darkened.
The other hand lifted slightly, as though he wanted to grab her—yet stopped midway, fingers instead yanking irritably at the chain around his neck.
About half a minute later, exhaustion finally crept over Su Cheng.
The pain from the curse on her back had vanished completely, but as more blood entered her body, she began to feel strangely heavy.
As though her strength were steadily draining away despite sitting perfectly still.
Remembering the plot from the novel, Su Cheng took advantage of the demon’s distracted gaze.
Quietly, she brushed bloodstained fingers across the wound on her shoulder.
Her fingertips, smeared with both their blood, traced several crooked concentric circles and triangles across the tabletop behind her.
Dark red light erupted through the room.
The demon jerked violently and staggered backward before collapsing onto the sofa by the window.
“You—!”
Su Cheng wiped the blood from her lips.
“You really had it all planned out, didn’t you?” she said coolly. “You told me drinking your blood would suppress my curse, but what you actually wanted was for me to share the burden of your restraint.”
As she spoke, her eyes drifted toward his throat.
The chain around his neck had tightened against pale skin, golden runes glowing as though they were sinking directly into his veins.
It began to contract slowly, like molten gold tightening around his throat.
His breathing grew harsher and harsher. Sweat dampened his hair and slid down the cords of his neck into the hollow of his collarbone, soaking through his torn clothes.
When he moved, strands of hair brushed the chain and stirred tiny ripples of golden light.
The demon tilted his head back, pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth as though trying to fight the suffocating sensation. The line from his jaw to collarbone pulled taut like a drawn bowstring.
Low sounds escaped him as he clawed angrily at his chest.
“Who… are you…?” he demanded through gritted teeth. “How do you know the counter-curse…?”
Apparently, he was having a difficult time accepting that he had been outplayed.
Su Cheng watched him silently.
In the original novel, the villainess had tried the same trick on Lin Yun during one of their encounters. But the old man inside Lin Yun’s bracelet warned him in time, and he managed to reverse the situation.
The demon had approached the protagonist to restore his strength.
But once he recovered enough power, he immediately tried to break free of the restraint around his neck.
Just like now.
Different path, same destination.
Su Cheng watched the demon curled up on the sofa, listened to his increasingly ragged breathing, and knew this was the backlash taking effect.
Because she already knew the plot, she wasn’t angry at all.
“The Lightforged Binding around your neck…” Su Cheng sat on the table and lightly nudged his kneecap with her foot. “I think I can guess who put it there.”
Complete nonsense, of course.
But because she’d accurately named the holy spell, the demon stiffened immediately.
Clearly, he believed her.
“I can help ease it,” Su Cheng said softly. “But I have conditions.”
As a human rather than one of the dark races, her resistance to holy magic wasn’t particularly low.
So even if she shared the burden of the holy spell with him, it wouldn’t kill her.
She’d just be exhausted.
The original novel had mentioned that too.
Lin Yun hadn’t cared about the exhaustion. He only used it as leverage to force the villainess into sleeping with him.
Su Cheng, on the other hand, didn’t care that much about sleeping together.
The important thing was getting his blood.
Otherwise, if the curse flared up again and she couldn’t find a partner in time, she’d literally die.
Succubus blood was basically emergency medicine at this point.
Once the blood left his body, he could no longer control whoever drank it anyway. So all she needed was to convince him to donate some and store it in bottles for later.
“…Conditions?”
The demon let out a cold laugh between ragged breaths, clearly trying to speak, only for pain to shatter his voice halfway through.
Su Cheng frowned slightly.
Then she lifted her knee beneath his chin, forcing his head gently upward.
He gasped sharply.
A feverish flush spread across his cheeks, neck, and chest, making him look almost indecently beautiful.
She reached out and touched the rune-covered chain while silently reciting the incantation mentioned in the novel.
The old man attached to the protagonist’s cheat-item bracelet hadn’t taught him the spell in any known language.
It was just a string of bizarre sounds.
Because the pronunciation sounded strangely like someone cursing loudly, Lin Yun had found it hilarious at the time—and that was exactly why Su Cheng remembered it.
“Ah—”
The demon’s breathing gradually steadied. Some color returned to his face, though he still looked deeply uncomfortable.
“You see,” Su Cheng said, withdrawing her hand with a blink, “if you want this to continue, then what I want is your—”
“Hah.”
The demon lifted his head to look at her and suddenly grabbed her ankle.
“Human,” he said lazily, “I know exactly what you want.”
“I agree.”
Her shoes had long since fallen somewhere onto the floor. Her bare foot was slender and pale, faint blue veins winding across the arch, her toes smooth like polished shells.
The demon looked at her with open mockery in his eyes.
Then he tugged her leg upward and lowered his head to kiss her ankle bone.
Su Cheng: “?!”
That’s NOT what I meant!
