7

Dreams of baubles and trinkets are snatched from my foggy mind as I wake with a start.

A dark, powerful figure moves over me.

A drowsy sound draws from between my bared teeth, nature tugging it out of my throat. My back arches off the bed to hiss at the shadow, sleep peeling away from me.

Slowly, my sight adjusts to the dimly lit bedchamber.

The shadow pushes down on me with a deep, chest-rumbling growl, savage enough to silence me instantly.

Takes another blink of the eyes before I come to. Then the grogginess is yanked from me, and I'm suddenly aware of it all.

Daxeel, in my bed, our bargain, one he can collect on until the start of the Warmth—and he's collecting on it again near the end of the Quiet.

One hand pressed into the mattress at the side of my head, he leans over me, but not lovingly. He keeps distance between our naked bodies, only brings his face to mine for one thing.

My scent.

The tip of his nose grazes along my temple before slipping into the mess of my unbrushed hair, hair he had his hand fisted in as he fucked my mouth. I wonder if that's what he's inspecting, how much of his scent he got on me.

Apparently enough, because a satisfied sound rumbles in his throat like a curt hum, and he shoves away from me.

From hooded eyes, I watch as he kneels between my legs. His head is bowed, he doesn't so much as glance up at me as he snatches the meat of my thighs and yanks me closer to him.

The back of my head is tugged away from the pillow, and I scowl. Too sleepy for this, too moody for this.

But the bargain keeps me in place, and he gives me no orders, so I don't move. I just lay here, tired and limp, and watch as drapes my legs over his hips.

The length of his cock pushes along my core, and I frown at the sudden surge of pleasure wetting me. I hate that he knows this about me, that he knows how easily and quickly I'm ready for him.

It's starting to feel like a losing battle—but I throw that grim thought from my mind, chalk it up to the moodiness I'm always consumed by when I'm freshly awoken. I'm the fae you don't talk to until she's had two coffees come morning.

But I keep limp for Daxeel, I let him run his hand over my stomach, feel his thumb graze a dark freckle there near my bellybutton—a human feature I despise.

For a while, that's all he does.

Caresses me, feels me, touches me.

Scentsme.

It's his nature, his instinct. It's even stronger with me as his evate.

But of course, I don't let on that I know that. Not yet.

So I'm tight lipped as he pushes his cock between my thighs, its weight pressing down on my pelvic bone.

Then his eyes flick up—and I feel the punch of their intensity, like he's reaching through my own eyes, into my fucking soul.

My chest tightens, his jaw hardens.

In a blink, he's snatching my thigh and shoving it to the side, not spreading my legs, but closing them—closing them on his cock.

Disappointment frowns my mouth.

With both my legs draped over one of his hips, his cock snug between my thighs, I know he's not meaning to fuck me.

He'll find his pleasure in other parts of my body. Not the part I need him to enter, the part that will secure our bond, forge it, and protect me.

I need it, as much as I need air to breathe.

Daxeel doesn't give it. His hips start to move, lazy and tired, as he fucks his cock leisurely between my thighs. His eyes burn into every part of my body, like he needs to inspect me all over again.

I don't feel the graze of his shaft over my core. It doesn't come. He keeps his cock just a touch above my humming clit, close enough for the occasional rub if he angles right, but not close enough to soothe the ache.

But still, I need him inside of me. I have half a mind to hook my legs around him, lift my ass up from the bed and—

No.

No, I can't do that.

So instead, I just simmer.

I lay here, feeling every bit his doll, and I play that act well. His nature calls for my pleasure, he fights it to show me this, show me that he can take from me without giving, but I know it's killing him a little inside that I'm not whimpering for him, calling for him, coming for him.

I want that pain to assault him, to fucking cripple him.

Maybe it's that I'm freshly awoken, or maybe that I'm feeling as used as he wants me to feel.

Whatever it is, I hate him so much right now that it hurts.

A slight groan escapes him.

On my thighs, his hand tightens and his pace starts to quicken.

A sudden urgency has stolen him, and I wonder if we're closer to the start of the Warmth than I thought, that he's on a time crunch.

His talon-like nails grip the meat of my thigh so firmly that crimson blood beads at my flesh. I hiss at the nips of pain.

Like he doesn't even notice, he curves over me, his hand coming down my middle to pin me in place.

He fucks into that warm space he's made for himself, fucks it like it's my cunt—the part of me he craves in the depths of his desire.

One hand keeps pressure on my knees, slung over his hip, keeps me in place—and his other presses down on the space between my breasts, but not weighted enough to ache my ribs.

How deep that need goes… the one to hold me down and claim me, like every part of evate is begging him to. I'm almost in wonder as I lie here, watching him. The harshness of his breaths, how he leans over me, how his smouldering gaze latches onto mine.

It's not love I see in him. It's the need to conquer me, to dominate, to take, and to keep.

You're mine, his eyes tell me.

This time, there's more frenzy. An urgency to the way he takes me. It's his desperation that makes me wonder how close to the Warmth we are, because it's as though he fights against time itself.

There's no pleasure in this one for me.

He makes that clear—those deep blue eyes watching me from beneath thick, long lashes and his natural kohl lines. He watches the frustrated pleasure frown my face, a pleasure he never quite fully delivers.

Cruel, wicked male.

Still, I'm tempted to do something horrid, to hook my legs, angle my hips, and impale myself on him. Then the bond would be forged, and he wouldn't be able to kill me, unless he wants to take his own life right after. More than that, he would have to steal me away from my horrid fate, because once that bond is forged, he can't ever let me go.

But I've gotten so far in our game. Look how far I've come before the first passage has even started.

Not to mention his rage would be brutal, would be unlike anything I've ever seen before. So I just force my sneer up at him—

And when he comes, and his seed spills over my middle, I give him less than a second to recover before I shove him off me.

With a groan, he drops onto the mattress.

He lands beside me, on his back, and has his dazed gaze aimed at the vined canopy of the bed. Chest rising and falling with his ragged breaths, he runs a hand over his clammy brow, and when that hand falls back to the pillow to rest, I note that a frown has formed on his face.

How he must suffer—this forever unsatisfied feeling he gets each time he almost fucks me. No matter how extraordinary his climaxes might be, that with me they are like no other he's had before, his animal must hum in his bones for that final part, to mate with me.

As he lies here beside me and frowns up at the vines as though they did him wrong, I wonder how quick the ache for me is to bloom within him again.

A dim flare of blue illuminates the bedchamber. Lanternlight, telling us the final hour of the Quiet has passed. The Warmth has arrived, and with it the end of our bargain.

It's all Daxeel needs before he pushes up from the bed.

I tug the crumpled sheet over my stained body.

His cum is fresh on my tummy, drops of it on my thighs, and dried streaks on my face. I roll onto my side and watch him step into his black combat trousers then fasten them.

My voice sounds faraway as he moves for the sweater, "What happened to the male I love?"

Leaning over for the dark woollen lump on the floorboards, he stills. Each muscle clamps beneath his perfect skin, and the tattoo gleams darker, as though the ink itself is reacting to me, growling at me.

Daxeel snatches the sweater from the floor and, with his back to me, tugs it on. He says nothing as he moves to sit on the edge of the bed, then pulls on his boots.

He doesn't look at me, not once since he finished on my belly has he looked at me. And not even as he moves for the door does his gaze slide to me.

He leaves with one word to hang in the air, to bring tears to my eyes.

‘What happened to the male I love?'

"You."