30. Leni

It feels like I’m losing.

My body’s strung painfully tight, a taut wire ready to snap. Each breath burns my lungs, leaving behind a lingering ache. I’m overwhelmed. Flooded with this sticky, all-consuming want, and yet there’s a gap between what I desperately need and where I am.

Cross’s breaths match mine, rapid and heaving as we lock eyes, soak in the command stripped from my heart.

Harder.

My lips part and then press together again.

I haven’t touched him.

I should.

I will.

Sweet Hera, I want to. There’s no doubt the male has spent his life in battle. Sculpted and hard. Muscles I’m positive no mortal has, thick and bulging. Dark power thrums beneath his skin, scorching the air between us, but his fingers are only just overly warm against me.

On the floor, knees spread, chin down, Cross claws his muscled thighs like they’ve done him wrong. His lips are bloody red and slightly parted, eyes liquid with wild desperation, as if he’s halfway insane. His chest heaves, every coil of muscle in his torso pronounced and straining.

He’s struggling.

I bend forward, lift up off the bed to help, and he jolts back like Zeus’s bolt found its mark.

“Cross?”

“Fuck,” he groans, teeth sawing. The muscles of his throat constrict as he swallows. He retreats further, and half the candles on the bookshelf blow out, sending a waft of vanilla and amber through the air.

The windows are covered in a screen of matte undulating black, claw like tendrils snaking out across the ceiling. Cross groans again and they recede, rushing back to the window. “I’m trying to be gentle, Leni. I really am. Just…” He pulls his disheveled curls, directs a silent plea to the candlelit ceiling. “Give me a minute to settle and I can … I’ll be gentler, do better. I—”

Wasn’t he listening? “I don’t want gentle.”

“But—”

“I did,” I tell him, searching for the words. End up sighing. “This isn’t us, Cross.” This is not the male who gathered me in his arms in the rain, who made me stand across a room to keep from pouncing on me, who ended an interrogation by burying his face between my legs and praising me for it.

This cautious seduction, it’s polite. It’s everything I prayed for when I was trapped in the palace, staring down Draven’s barrel.

Flickering candlelight and sugar-coated words. Champagne and pools of sunlight. Tender, fleeting touches.

He’s given me everything, and it’s all wrong.

“Gentle, Leni,” Cross repeats, sounding the opposite, sounding broken.

“I know what I asked for, but now I just want you.”

He hits me with a hard stare. “You’re only saying that because you think I can’t do it, but I can. I’ll do this for as long as you like, however you like.”

I gesture wildly at the wall of slithering black. “You’re losing control.”

“Then, tie me up. You use me. You might have to pin me down again, but I can take it. Luke still has the chains.”

My stomach flips over in a way that makes me want to throw up. “You’re never being chained again.” Ever.

He nods, scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Rope then.”

“No!” I erupt, an edge of hysteria creeping into my voice. “Sweet Hera, no. No rope or chains or handcuffs. You don’t need to be bound to touch me.”

“I do,” he whispers, not looking at me. Sooty strings of candle smoke circle him, drawn to his heat and power, licking at the grooves of his cheeks, his bare chest. He glares at his palms like they’ve betrayed him. “I’ll hold the bedposts—”

“That won’t work.”

“Then we don’t work. Not even the will of the Gods can grant me the control I need with you. You’re my …” He bites his lip, shakes his head like he’s in anguish.

“Cross.” I shuffle down the bed. The soft rustle of the covers hit him like breaking glass. He winces, pulls back. I reach out and catch his cheek, touch featherlight.

It’s an instant reaction, how he freezes, turns his mouth into my hand to press rough lips into my palm. The heat of his skin radiates through me, coiling in my chest, simmering in my throat, lashing between my legs. “You’re not gentle, and can you believe that I’ve never once been afraid of you?”

“You have,” he whispers back. “When I lost control, I hurt you.”

A tickle compared to what I’ve endured. “I’ve certainly tried to be afraid,” I admit, scooting closer, until my knees are tucked between his thighs, tile cold and slippery against my calves. “What respectable creature finds a male who shoots a gun without looking charming? And who in their right mind wouldn’t be horrified at the sheer number of weapons you strap on every morning? But you’ve never truly scared me.”

The obsidian in his eyes turns to swirling ink over the gray. “Just wait.”

I bite my lip and coast my hand down over the edge of his jaw to cover the black on his throat. “What I’m failing to explain is that I am no respectable creature, and the way I crave you, the things I need from you, they aren’t gentle. Not in the slightest.”

“Not in bed,” Cross argues, Adam’s apple bobbing under my palm, tone full of longing, of insistence. “Between us, like this, you do want gentle. I know you do—”

“I want you, Cross,” I declare fiercely. Obstinate. “The ruthless male who protects me. Who makes me laugh. Who rescues me.”

He shakes his head so hard, his curls bounce. “I am not that man.”

I scowl. “You are twice that male. You’ve opened my eyes to what I want. Before you, I dreamed for a gentle lover because I assumed the opposite of Draven was best.”

Fury whips into Cross’s face instantly. “I’ll kill him.”

That’s not what this is about.

It was. Before.

This is for me now.

I press my forehead to his and give him a raw, holy confession. “I see your eyes when I close mine. When we’re apart I miss the way your hands mold around mine like ribs cradling a heart, and when I think of kissing you, the air constricts in my lungs and I get so lightheaded, it hurts.” I meet his gaze. “And I like it.”

The force of his swallow hangs in the air. “Leni.” My name coated in shadow.

I push tighter to him. “If you’re gentle with me, it feels like none of what we have is real. And I know it is.” I’ll tattoo it everywhere to prove it.

Watching me, he swallows hard, too stubborn to agree, no argument to be had.

“Give me you,” I plead. “As you are.”

“You have no idea what you’re asking.” He gathers my hair in his hand, fingers molding to my skull. “I’m of the Blackguard, not the Kingsguard. Not anymore.”

“You’re both.”

With that, my spymaster kisses me with intent to devour me, as if I’ve unlocked the last of his defenses, solved the riddle and found the missing corner of the map. He groans low in his throat, and I rise up to meet him, throw my arms around him and bring our chests together. Cotton against granite.

Shadows spear over the ceiling, dancing as he lifts me, how he always lifts me, by the crease of my thighs, no need for me to help, and drapes me back across the bed again. He flicks his tongue against mine, big hands cradling my face.

My heartbeat begins to appear in odd places. My eyelids, my lips, my belly.

“Tell me”—he grates out against the hollow of my throat, tongue punishing— “the moment you want to stop. The second it’s too much, if I do something you don’t like.”

“Yes.” Agreeing is mindless. Cross won’t let it get that far. If he senses I’m unhappy, he’ll stop. Try his best to fix it. That’s who he is.

The spymaster sits back on his heels to study me, knees anchors in the mattress. Stunning. Candlelight soaks his skin, caressing and strange, his eyes a wicked illusion of entangled midnight blue, slashes of green.

Colorful.

The effect is like a spark, a hot shock of desire rocketing up my spine. “Please, Cross.”

“Don’t ever beg for me.” A smirk and then he dips his head again, tongue flicking my bottom lip before his teeth graze there. His lips follow. And the kiss is filthy and hard. Sucks the oxygen out of me, tips me into a lightheaded haze.

Rough, sure hands stroke me everywhere. Tugging on my waist, clasping my thighs, wresting into the collar of my shirt and ripping it down.

Tearing it in two.

I inhale sharply, instantly slick between my legs, pulsing with liquid heat.

Hot, strong fingers press on the ridges of my spine, arcing me until I’m suspended entirely in his arms, thighs hooked around his hips, ankles wide buried in sheets as he sets his mouth to my breasts. Every stroke of his tongue is twofold, sensation shooting through me and the rumbling curl of it through him. He knows exactly where to touch, where to put pressure and ease, how to tease and torment.

He bites lightly over the side of my breast and my body jerks. I stifle a moan.

Yes, this is exactly what I wanted.

I try to keep up, chasing the pulse of his tongue, bending into his mouth, grinding helplessly against the rigid length peeking out from the band of his underwear.

I don’t even know what I want, but I’m positive Cross will give it to me. And you can bet all the ambrosia on Olympus, I’m taking it.

Lost and light, I feel nothing like myself, free, building up to a life-changing peak, reaching out for it.

He rips it away.

One minute I’m swimming in sensation: his hands making fire prints on my back, his hot breath on my peaked nipples, the distinct scrape of teeth against Better and Alone, and the next, his hands are peeling the torn shirt down my arms, lifting me again, twisting me.

Plunging me headfirst into the pillows.

Lips scorch the expanse of my back. The warm sweep of his tongue tracing the tattoos dancing along my spine. “Tell me about these,” he rasps against my skin, hand snaking its way into my hair, fisting it, turning me to watch as his teeth catch my shoulder blade.

This.

This is what I wanted. Commands, not hesitation.

It feels so right, it’s almost wrong. I knot the sheets, digging into the thousand thread-count like its single use as I squirm and babble, blindly detailing each cluster of names.

Wide hands yank my hips into the air, knead my ass, spread it. I’m completely naked, panting, exposed, and fluttering, as helpless and hot as the little candle flames left.

“You’re such a good girl,” Cross murmurs against the base of my spine before he bites down, mouths a searing path across the swell of my ass cheek.

A sound I’ve never made before escapes my teeth, chased by Cross’s low, mischievous chuckle.

Without warning, his tongue slips inside of me, where his fingers left me wet and empty. I yelp, burying my face in the pillows, utterly surrendered to his control as he tastes me, licking and teasing.

The room is silent, except for the rough groans he makes without seeming to realize. My hair blocks out my vision as he pulls my ass higher, bends me, devours me, as my knees shake on the mattress.

“Gods, Leni, you don’t know how you tease me.” Fingers replace his mouth, hard and deep, finding a gliding rhythm. I moan at the devious wet noise of us, pulse skipping and stuttering in my chest.

His voice is cosmic devotion, wanton and unashamed. “That lingerie.” Another bite, another thrust. “I thought of it ten times a day. But now.” He curses quietly as arousal begins to seep down the back of my thigh. “Now, I picture you in my shirt. And I’m at fucking war with whether I like you in it or out of it more.”

“Shouldn’t have ripped it then,” I groan, blood loud in my ears.

“Fuck, you are so beautiful,” he hisses, hooking his fingers inside me. Lending his mouth to the mess leaking down, cleaning every drop off my thigh like it’s freshly warmed syrup.

His fingers slick back and forth rhythmically, purposefully, and just when I learn it and buck into him, he hits a new spot.

I gasp.

The pulse in my stomach magnifies, spreads as I shove my face into feather heaven, and groan. I don’t have to say harder.

He does it himself.

Doesn’t relent as I vibrate, tremble under the intensity of his thrusting fingers. Doesn’t stop the hard, biting plunge, knuckle deep, the perfect curl of his tongue over my swollen clit as I fly over the peak and into a heart-stopping freefall. I cry out his name.

Always his name.

This male that I’ve come to love.

A love that defies the Fates, an emotion that serves me no points in a greater game.

Yet I long for it to blossom and spread like vines overtaking a skyscraper.

“Cross,” I gasp it, I savor it, imprint it deep within me. I swallow as my body tumbles from its euphoria, as my fingers numb and my thighs ache.

He withdraws momentarily, murmuring how I taste like heaven, how I taste blue and watery, like honeysuckle and with a guiding, sticky hand on my stomach, he spins me again to settle back onto cool sheets.

The entire room is black. Packed with his power, blocking out the sun. None of the candles have survived. I bet even the hall is slick with it, darkness stuffing cracks like spilled ink.

“We can stop here,” he rasps suddenly, voice like gravel. Pulse throbbing beneath his tattoo.

I hesitate. Only for a moment, just enjoying the male looming above me. Hands braced on either side of my head, knees tucked tight against my thighs. Hard muscle and cut valleys, no signs of the bullets he took for me, of the chains, the needles, the slash of his nails in his throat. He’s healed. just while he’s been here, with me.

It gives me a sweep of hope. Maybe the curse won’t hurt him if we’re together. Maybe we can live in his darkness and he’ll be safe. Maybe I can stay. “Come closer,” I whisper.

His breath hitches.

We entwine like the loose ends of a sail, knotting in a way that feels innate, as if nature itself has brought us together.

I tilt my chin up to caress his cheek and shut my eyes against the sudden ache of yearning, of feeling like this is what I’ve missed my entire life, and it’s still somehow out of reach.

He lowers his body against me, heat and muscle.

Then he holds me. Ungently. Too tight, too heavy.

I laugh, and he doesn’t wait to join me, snuggling into my neck.

Like we were in a pillow fight and now we’re breathless. Like he didn’t just make me come so hard, I got closer to the sun than Icarus. Like his mouth isn’t still wet with me. Like I can’t feel the cycling pulse of desire hard as steel against my stomach. Like we have nothing to say.

Like we have time.

I don’t want to cry, so I lick the curve of his ear. “I want more.”

“Take a minute,” he commands, voice tight with hunger. “You’re about to be breathless.”

Aren’t I already?

I smile hard enough to sting my cheeks as he trails a finger down my throat, and over my shoulder. “Sweaty,” he murmurs, following his touch with a lingering kiss. “Pretty.” He tucks a strand of sky blue behind my ear. “I should tell you that more.”

“I like that you don’t.” I admit, blushing as his eyes snap up to mine. “I know you find me attractive. My kind are somewhat known for it, and a princess is expected to be beautiful.” A small knot clogs my throat. Do not cry. “It’s all anyone thinks of me. Pretty, stupid, good for one thing. You never mention it. You make me feel like an equal.”

Like I could go toe to toe with the foremost spy of the realm. Like we could chase and evade each other for the rest of eternity. Spend eons doing both just to keep crashing into each other.

I love you.

It’s what I wish I could say. What I’d whisper to him right now, right when I’m drowning with it, if we did have time.

We don’t. Life isn’t rainbows and unicorns and I’m not actually a princess, so I take Cross’s face, stroke my thumbs across those aristocratic cheekbones, and warn him, “If we do this, Draven will come after you. He’ll demand revenge.”

“If we do, or don’t, I will hunt him down, corner him like a lame deer and demand nothing. I will simply gouge from him what he tried to take from you, and should he survive such gratuitous pain”—he kisses my forehead, voice deadly as a knife’s edge—“I’ll take his life with my bare hands.”

“He’s not worth it.”

He narrows his eyes and shakes his head as if he can’t fathom my defense. A second later, his lips slant over mine, hot and wrenching and raw. I dissolve into the force of his hold, feeling light as air.

Perfect.

Hadn’t I said he’d be perfect?

I love being right. That’s why my eyes burn. Pride.

Nothing else.

Liar.

Our noses brush, his hand fists my hair, his soft brown lashes cast sleek shadows over dark hooded eyes. “You are,” he seethes. “You are so unbelievably worth it.”

His mouth finds the flesh of my breasts, parting against the skin and sucking, while through mastery of movement, he divests himself of his jeans and underwear.

No one with their sanity intact could smother a gasp at the sight of the Blackguard’s spymaster, the master of secrets, the nameless man, the shadow master, utterly naked, chest rising, eyes like black fire.

“Bless the Fates,” I mutter, heart pounding.

“Way ahead of you.” He grins, and it’s a shot of lust to my body, as piercing as Poseidon’s trident.

His palm glides down the solid slab of his stomach and the V of his hips to stroke his rigid length. I die a little. Suffocating because I can’t remember how to breathe.

My pulse hammers, desperately pumping blood through my veins as Cross’s big hand squeezes, hair flopping into his forehead.

Greedy, I tug him into me, yank him to his elbows, chest against my ribs, hips nestled in the cradle of my thighs. All that delicious length threatening.

Every muscle between my thighs clenches.

“We don’t need protection,” I tell him, squirming, greedily exploring his scorching skin. “I’m not fertile right now.” Not yet at least.

Cross’s finger strokes a tantalizing path along my core. “Gods above, you’re so wet.” His lips latch onto my peaked nipple, tugging it between his teeth, sending a delicious sting through me. “Are you sure?”

I nod, and let my eyes fall shut, hand snaking around his neck to tangle in his silky hair. Slowly, hissing into the sensitive skin of my neck, Cross pushes inside of me.

The pain simmers, a stinging stretch of overfull, of unfamiliar.

He claims my mouth harshly, flaring the heat in my blood, until it’s twisting and tangling into a consuming vortex, and I forget the discomfort. My body goes lax as he fills me up, so full I’m afraid I’ll splinter, break under the intensity.

And then there’s more. Sliding deeper, pushing, unraveling my mind.

Breathing hard into my mouth, Cross grasps my waist, angling me, and a moan tumbles off my lips. I arch.

There.

We’re flush. Melded together, skin on skin. Ecstasy. He kisses me slow and sweet as he’s buried to the hilt inside me, and something ruptures in my soul. That’s what it feels like. The neatly stacked parts of me explode violently, only to lazily reassemble in a teetering pile that includes the wake of this new sensation.

I laugh.

A little one. A laugh and a tear.

Cross’s hot mouth trails a path along my collarbone. Inhales deeply. “I couldn’t have asked for a better sound than that.”

“I’ve been led to believe a moan is best wished for in bed,” I manage to retort through gasps and sighs.

“I’ll have your moans, love. Be sure of that. But a laugh”—his tongue scorches my jaw, as if on reflex, like he’s catching a runaway vanilla drip off his ice cream cone—“A laugh tells me you’re happy and that’s much harder to conquer than lust.”

With deliberate precision, he stretches back, pulls out and, with a punishing grip on my waist, he surges forward inside me again.

Automatically, I bend to meet him, to take all of him. “Gods, Cross,” I hiss, overwhelmed as he stretches me, long and wide and every other way. “I can’t believe you said no to this.”

Through a strained moan, he grates, “With the last of my will.” and surges deep. Pulls out. Nips my palm. Sweat beads on his brow, drips down his temple. “I wanted to. I just didn’t trust you.”

Guilt hits me.

“I couldn’t figure out how I drew the luckiest damn straw in the universe with you.”

My smile is wobbly and weak. I need to tell him the truth, but I can’t bear to ruin this moment. So instead, I reach up and stroke his curls, the loveliest soft shade of brown.

“I’ll remember this.” I clutch him closer, hungry. “Same as I remember every single thing about you. Every conversation. Every touch. I’ll remember it all, every line in your eyes. Even when we’re apart, even when you try to stop me.”

Before he can respond, I mesh our lips together, tongue diving and rolling against his.

Cross flips us around so I’m astride him, his thumbs firmly anchored on my hips, guiding and directing me to ride him, burying himself deep as he can with each thrust, impaling, ruling.

I’m dying. Gasping like it’s my last breath. I bite my tongue until I taste metal, keen his name, murmur affirmations as his thumb finds the most sensitive part of me and presses.

Hard.

“Be a good girl and give me another one. Come on,” he urges, all husk and heat. “You can do it again. Win the race.”

It’s his tone.

Soft as a feather, tickling electric pulses up my legs. I burst apart, tense and spasming, flying on wings of shadows in a starless sky, and he takes over the pace, pounding up into me. Hands pinching a little too hard as he yanks me down, pins me by the shoulders and sucks painfully at my neck as our hips collide forcefully.

He takes my bottom lip between his teeth, bruising my mouth, slick, hot, tasting like blood, pretty red blood, breaking away to bark a guttural shout into my skin as he explodes.

We lay together, tangled, boneless. Heartbeats synchronized in the same discordant rampage.

Once I have the air to say it, I rest my chin on his sternum and smile at his swollen, still moist mouth, curved upwards on both ends. “Bet you can’t do that again.”

Cross laughs, a deep rich sound that fills the room.

It’s too easy.