Bedtime Stories

      It was so stupid! Absolutely, completely, utterly stupid!              Golden Hongmun was just a step away from her. She could reach out and feel the strings of the shield, familiar since childhood, the pure melody of souls. But she couldn't think about it at all.              A stranger's name, a stranger's face, a stranger's life, a stranger, cruel, so similar to her fate, loomed before her eyes, robbing her soul of its last shreds of peace. She was a hunter, destined to finally build the golden shield, the dream of her predecessors from generation to generation, and yet she was thinking about a demon!              Rumi grabs the pillow from the bed next to her and, barely managing, presses it to her face, screaming furiously into the darkness. Anger, confusion, and guilt take their toll, robbing her of sleep at night and, during the day, of smiles and the peace she so desperately needs with her friends.              But despite all the compelling arguments, she cannot stop thinking about him. The whole world, all other souls fade away, becoming mere background, while he shines before her in a blue flame, so lonely and broken. And all she wants, all she needs the golden Honmun for, is to save him.              “How can that be?” whines Rumi, throwing the pillow back in its place and turning onto her left side. Somewhere out there, beyond the railing of her balcony, the strings of the shield shine in the light of the full moon. Somewhere they are covered in pink, thin and fragile, but she tries to paint them gold in her thoughts so that confusion does not overtake her, at least in her dreams.              But all her efforts are in vain, because the golden lines are still turning black, distorting and forming the image of forbidden fruit. Her secret and greatest sin. Jinu.              Rumi covers her eyes, resigning herself to her inner voice, letting the demon win this battle. The wrinkle on her forehead smoothes out as the tension leaves her head and heart. It's so easy, so simple to give in to temptation...              But something changes in her, in the very air around her, in the strings of Hongmun.              She doesn't need to see the scarlet ripples to understand.              A demon. Here.              Not just any demon. Jinu.              She had spent enough time side by side with him to learn to sense his presence, to distinguish him from all the other demons. They felt like a chill on the hunters' skin, a fleeting pain, but not him. Jinu was like warm milk seeping through her defenses softly, with a tiger's gait, so that Rumi melted from the mere sensation, goosebumps remaining on her skin.              Rumi tries to continue breathing evenly, pretending to be asleep, so that... what? To let him kill her? No, he definitely won't do that. He mustn't. To find out why he's here? That's more like the truth.              I wonder if the other hunters sensed his presence? Or was it just her imagination?              How ridiculous! She, still as foolish as ever, pretends to be asleep for someone in an empty room, when she could just open her eyes, get rid of the uncertainty, and face the darkness. In both its manifestations.              But in the next second, the bed behind her creaks slightly, bending under someone else's weight. She couldn't have imagined it!              Her heart races, ready to burst out of her chest with panic. Jinu is in her bed, lying right behind her. Why? What for?              Her breathing was about to accelerate to the limit, unable to keep up with her pulse, but Rumi tried to calm down, once again deceiving herself that nothing terrible or strange was happening. Damn it, she's a hunter! She should summon her sword, turn abruptly, and press it against the throat of the uninvited guest. Send the soulless demon where he belongs — to the underworld — but instead, her limbs continue to grow heavy, sinking deeper and deeper into the softness of the mattress.              She is drowning. Drowning in her sin.              She wants to open her eyes. She is too curious about what Jinu is doing right now. Did he just lie down next to her? Did he decide to sleep? Or is he looking at her?              The answer comes with a stranger's hot breath on her cheek. Rumi struggles with all her might, resisting her own body, which wants to fly up on the spot from the sudden rush of feelings.              Jinu is leaning over her, peering into her face. Perhaps he is checking to see if she is asleep. Of course not! Even a blind man could see that from her uneven breathing, the vein fluttering under the thin skin of her neck, which the demon cannot fail to notice.              She's not just stupid, she's also a coward who continues to hide behind such obvious lies. Ha! As if that's not what she's been doing her whole life.              The weight of a stranger's hand suddenly appears on her shoulder. Fingers brush lightly against her skin, catching the edge of the blanket and slowly pulling it down to her thighs, exposing the upper part of her body to the cool air.              She didn't have the strength to change, so Rumi went to bed in the same white dance top with a zipper in the middle, wrapped in a blanket up to her chin. The girls weren't in the habit of coming into her room in the morning without an invitation. Only if she woke up, which never happened. And she hardly had the strength to cover the patterns with anything.              Her marks! That's what he's looking at.              And this guess is confirmed when his finger touches her skin right on top of one of them. Jinu draws a map on her body, moving from one pattern to another, like a child with a pencil on a coloring book. And the mere fact that he touches her without disgust, as if there is nothing wrong with these purple lines, breaks something inside her into tiny pieces.              No. She can't. She mustn't become even more attached to him.              Rumi quietly mumbles something incoherent in her sleep and tosses and turns, hoping to scare him away by waking up so that Jinu will leave on his own. Nothing works. The demon stays by her side, and the huntress freezes again, as if she were a rabbit and he were a cunning fox who had trapped the poor creature. This can't be happening!              Now her face is directed straight at the ceiling. If she opens her eyes, she will surely encounter a stranger's gaze, frozen a few inches away from her.              Perhaps he knows she is awake. He probably knows, which is why he takes her turning toward him as an invitation. Or perhaps he is a completely lost soul without a shred of shame or morality, not shying away from such intimacy. Be that as it may, his hands continue their journey across her body, touching every pattern on one hand and moving on to the other.              It's getting harder and harder to restrain herself and not open her eyes. She wants so much to move a little closer to him, to openly enjoy his every touch, his every glance. The first one who accepted her for who she is. The first one who saw her and didn't look away.              A demon.              What is she doing! Her best friends, hunters who trust her completely, are sleeping through the wall, while she, while she... what?              The ghost of someone else's fingers froze above the tight collar, from which the silhouettes of disgusting threads had just begun to emerge. He should have stopped, known the limits of what was permissible, but time and again Rumi forgot who she was dealing with. A demon. Soulless.              It takes nothing for Jinu to hook the round clasp and pull it down. The sound of the zipper unfastening echoes like thunder in the silence of the room. Stop. Stop. Stop!              Her mind screams, torn apart by desires that are difficult to discern. There are so many of them, and they collide with each other while Rumi waits with bated breath. The clasp slides lower and lower, and Jinu has no intention of stopping.              The metal burns her skin with its coldness when the slider reaches the very edge. She has nothing else there... The thought comes too late, because the top is already unbuttoned, and the two halves separate with a quiet rustle, lingering only slightly on her chest, covering the very peaks.              Now, wake up now!              But sin proves stronger, and she is too curious about what Jinu will decide to do next, too good to just interrupt everything like that. Let her heart leap to her throat, and her cheeks surely already burning brighter than hellfire.              Jinu hesitates for some reason, but his presence is still palpably close... The thought that he is simply looking at her, exposed before him, reveling in her, makes Rumi burn with real boiling water.              His touch is hotter than the sun when his fingers touch the spot right in the middle of her chest, where the demonic marks have just taken root. Her lips tremble, holding back a moan, because it feels so good, so hot that it makes her legs weak. Her body reaches out to him in response, as if by magic. A demon seducer, that's who he is.              And Rumi gives in.              Her ragged breaths shatter the silence of the room, as well as any last hopes of concealment. Screw it, screw everything. Just touch her scars longer, love them with your fingers, accept her as she is. All of her.              Rumi doesn't resist when Jinu's hand suddenly changes direction and reaches for the place where the poison ink hasn't yet spread. At least, that's what she thought. The tip of his finger gently traces the curve of her breast, barely touching it, but she is thrown off balance by the impulse that pierces her body.              She tries to discreetly clench the sheet in her hand, to hold on to reality, but fantasy is stronger. Jinu appears before her in all his devilish beauty. The marks on his skin are a reflection of hers, elegant, dark, giving him charm instead of horror. His eyes must have been burning with hellfire, staring at her with his cat-like slits, because a human couldn't act like that. Only a demon.              His palm rests completely on her breast, squeezing gently, and desire pierces her through and through. The tip of his claw scratched the pea-sized nipple, which had shrunk in his hands like a rosebud. Everything in her ignites from a single movement, and it becomes so hot and wet between her legs that Rumi can't stand it and crosses them. But that doesn't help. Another impulse from the touch of her own skin to the most sensitive part strikes her nerves.              Rumi is still hiding behind the appearance of sleep, grimacing, shaking her head slightly, as if something is preventing her from sleeping, while moans continue to escape from her throat.              Jinu is probably smirking, so brazenly and sweetly, enjoying her struggles.              The demon in her room caresses her body while she lies defenseless, betraying her friends. Completely lost.              And her torture continues.              His hands don't let her go, playing with her breasts, squeezing and stroking her swollen nipples. His palm jumps from one hemisphere to the other, squeezing, pulling, stroking, so that Rumi feels like a snake on a frying pan, scalded on both sides. But if the snake tries to escape its fate, the hunter only gives herself more.              She prays to unknown forces, but not for what she needs. Let his mouth descend upon her, touch her lips, her tongue, her neck, descend lower to replace his hands. Rumi can feel the phantom heat of his kisses, the roughness of his tongue against her skin, the pain of his claws and fangs leaving new marks on top of her own. Mouth to mouth, palm to palm, body to body, mark to mark...              Rumi should feel shame, fear, but those feelings fade away in the light of long-awaited freedom.              It was becoming increasingly difficult to restrain herself and lie still. Her body betrayed her, tossing and turning on the sheets, and if she had previously hoped that this would scare Jinu away, she now prayed that he would take it as a good sign.              Oh! Of course, he does.              His finger traces the curve of her breast, tracing the faint pattern that has just begun to appear, but he doesn't stop there.              There are no marks there, that's for sure. Rumi checked them before going to bed, but Jin slides lower, playing with his nails on her ribs like guitar strings, lightly scratching them, softly like a cat. A restrained moan, more like a hiss, escapes from Rumi's parted lips. It's not hard to imagine his insolent, sharp grin at her, served up on a silver platter. White fangs are surely visible from under her desirable lips, and the mere fantasy makes his thighs burn with heat. Bite her, taste her.              Jinu's hand falls rapidly downward, tracing a light circle around her navel and descending lower and lower...              And only when his sinful fingers creep up to her waistband does Rumi realize where this is going...              He won't dare. He mustn't. Damn it. Demon. Devil.              In an instant, she is torn between polar desires. Her weak body wants to give itself to him completely, to let him see all her hidden parts, her shameful scars and the flawless lines of her body in its most pristine form. And with just one such fantasy, her, completely open before him, everything inside her tightens into a tight knot, and her thighs fill with juice.              But her mind, constantly battling temptation and filled with the lessons of the hunters, goes against her, dousing her with a cold stream of common sense. Duty hangs over her neck like a guillotine.              What to choose?              And when Gene is so close, when his hand dives under her belt, Rumi opens her eyes wide, tensing up and preparing to fight back, to look into the eyes of her shame and sin, to tear it out from under her skin and from her heart forever.              Empty. The room is empty.              Her breath falls on the silence of the room in heavy strokes as she looks around in disbelief. It couldn't have been just a dream. Could it?              Her body is covered in sweat, desire pulsing between her clenched thighs, so acutely demanding someone else's attention, his attention. But Gene is not there. The top is buttoned up to her chin, her soul a tight collar, and Rumi rips it off furiously.              Her hands fall over the purple marks, and she covers her eyes, imagining someone else's touch, unreal, unlike the anguish that has settled under her heart.              But Gene isn't here, and this truth has never been so bitter, and the desired vice so sweet.              The moon rises above the city's peaks, but Rumi hides from its rays in the shadows, tormented by only one question: “What if...?”