4

I don’t bother leaving the tower until Eamon comes to find me.

By the time he does, I’ve polished off the remaining honeywine and valerian up here. Maybe it’s my way of saying goodbye to the tower, or my way of telling Daxeel to go fuck himself.

Either way, I loopholed my way right out of a command.

‘I suggest you use your spare hours cleaning yourself up.’

Only a suggestion.

And I suggest that Daxeel fucks a cactus, but here we are.

‘Dress nice…’

That’s one I can’t ignore.

That command struck through my bones.

His suggestion to make myself clean for him wasn’t a true command, so of course, I didn’t. And I won’t.

I carry the filth of two naps, a lot of tears, sobbing fits, and the outside air, little grains of dust and sand that can’t be avoided.

Eamon speaks nothing of my need for a wash as he peels me off the cushions on the tower. He supports my drunken weight back to my bedchamber.

If this is the only way I can stand up to Daxeel, or just give him a hard time, then I’ll commit.

Next on the list of ways to piss him off—dress nice.

That’s subjective.

Nice to me, nice to him, might not be the same as nice to another. So I’m grateful to past-me for packing ribbons, corsets, and puffy tulle dresses. That’s nice to some. My father thought so at least, so he bought it —the ghastly yellow dress that I lay out over the table in my bedchamber as Eamon finishes packing my belongings.

The lace trim along the skirt, layers and layers of it, is enough to bring a smile to my lips. That smile only widens when I run my fingertips over the bell sleeves where golden ribbons are tied into large and heavy bows.

It even comes with a wide-rim hat that’s accentuated by a stuffed canary and some bleached peacock feathers.

Oh, this will do. This will do nicely.

Eamon thinks so, too.

I hear his steps flatten on the floorboards as he moves for me, slowly, carefully, afraid to trigger a sobbing fit. But then he pauses, falters—then chokes on a laugh.

Smiling something ugly, I look over my shoulders at him. “Think Daxeel will like it?”

“The absolute opposite,” he says, but his pearly grin is a light in my darkness. “I doubt he will actually see you beneath those layers—is that metal ?”

The smile stays slapped onto my face. “It’s for the petticoat. Makes it nice and big, especially at the back.”

“As much as I admire your acts of rebellion,” Eamon starts and fingers through the buttery ribbons, “I have to know, why did you bring this with you?”

It’s a bauble thing. He wouldn’t understand. He’s male, he’s hybrid. Father gifted it to me, and it became a treasure. So I brought it. Even if I only ever meant for it to rot away in a trunk.

“The better question—” I sigh and chance a pout at Eamon. His face falls instantly. “—is will you help me into this thing? I can’t do it alone.”

The look he gives me is tired, and I know this is the last thing he wants to do. But he is my Eamon and I am his Nari, so he does just as I ask. He fastens me into this smothering gown, sews me in at the waist, then secures the restraint of it all with ribbons down my back, threaded through the corset.

I’m just about ready to collapse from constriction alone, then maybe die of suffocation, when he starts pinning the hat to the quick updo I twisted my hair into.

This all takes a while. Too long. And so I have no doubt that Daxeel is waiting for my arrival—impatiently—at his terraced home in Kithe.

But that’s not what occupies my thoughts when a garrison errand boy comes to collect the last of my trunks and take them down to the courtyard. There, a carriage awaits us—and in all the hours that have passed since I ran out of the offices, in all the time it took me to get dressed, not once did the door to my bedchamber rattle with a knock.

Father didn’t visit.

Pandora didn’t come.

And I leave Comlar without farewells, but with an ache in my chest that echoes old wounds in lessons before Daxeel.

This is not the first that I have seen the terraced home in Kithe, but it takes on a new vision now. Maybe it’s because last time I was here, I was drowned in too much drink, then rushing out in all my shame.

This time, I wear little shame beneath the armour of my defiance. The heel of my ghastly beaded yellow slipper clops on the carriage step like a steed’s hoof.

Eamon yanks out the bell skirt of my dress. The bone-poufed edges catch on the carriage door—he tugs and squeezes and pulls before it pops free and I stumble out.

His hands catch me by the corseted waist. He sets me down.

I loosen a sagged breath and look up at the place of my slavery—my fresh prison.

There is nothing overly grand about the terraced house. It carries the same humble wealth as every other home on this white-stone street that curves around the hill in a crescent.

But it’s the face of the home that tugs my mouth, a string pulled, into an almost smile.

Crushed stardust and midnight.

That’s what I thought when I first looked up at its deep blue fa?ade, a textured glitter that flickers under the wispy white hues of the street lanterns.

Hemlock reaches up seven levels with black paned windows that stretch from floor to ceiling; the roof is bordered by a black metal fence, not unlike the arrow-headed one that separates the front garden from me.

Eamon moves for the gate.

As he pushes it open, I eye the polished golden plate with ‘HEMLOCK HOUSE’ engraved into it. Vines have grown around the fence, but not a single leaf grazes those letters, as though they have been cut back into place so many times now that they have since learned to stay clear of the plaque on the gate.

Eamon pauses.

Hand gripped onto the black metal arrowhead, he looks back at me—and waits.

Behind me, the grunts and shoves and thuds of servants wresting my luggage of the carriage roof is the only sound on the soft street, until—

“Come now, Nari.” Eamon’s voice is gentle.

I swallow, thick.

I glance at the black lacquered door a moment before it unlocks with a click, then—on its own accord—sways open.

I push into step, a cautious pace as I pass Eamon at the gate.

He’s quick to shadow me up the path.

My steps are soft and hesitant under the rustle of my bell-skirt. I throw my anxious gaze around the modest gardens, which I would consider more of a porch with some cherry bushes and vines and short mossy statues.

But the garden departs too quickly, my hesitant pace too fast, because too soon I am stepping through the front door. And I feel like I’ve been stuffed into a blue phial.

The foyer is tighter than the last time I was here. But the last time I was here, I ran through this foyer for the front door—alone.

Now, I have an audience.

Tris—the human servant I have a vague, sluggish memory of in all my brutal drink-illness and shame—stands in the middle of the foyer with her hands clasped behind her back and her chin tucked to her collarbone in something of a bow.

Behind her, Melantha commands the bottom step of the stairs, hand on the banister. Morticia, at her side, at least offers me a small smile, and if I looked closer, I would find a gentle reassurance in her warmth.

I manage nothing in response.

I blink at her as dumbly as I would death, in that final moment before my final breath—then I turn my bleak stare to the gold that glints like drawn daggers.

Across the foyer, a smaller staircase of just a half-dozen steps descends the wall to, where I guess, the kitchens are. They are always in the basements of these sorts of homes.

There, on those stairs, Dare is perched on the edge of the banister, watching me. Rune leans against the wall. And, silent, Samick advances on them both with his slow, disinterested climb up those shorter stairs.

For a heartbeat, they stare at me, faces impassive.

Dare blinks, a startled look tightening his face—before it splits with a magnificent grin that would steal hearts more available than mine.

Beside him, Rune lowers his head and turns his cheek to me, and I know the move is to hide the outbreak of stifled laughter that silently jerks his shoulders.

Samick considers me and my ridiculous dress like we are little more than the berry bush out front, of no use to him, therefore of no interest, and in a fleeting second, he’s pushing past his brothers. He makes for the front door without a backwards glance, a mere breeze of ice mist.

The door shuts behind him.

I feel the click in my bones.

I’m officially trapped within the walls of Hemlock House.

The breath that escapes me is a defeated one, and it rustles the yellow gown much too loudly. The bell sleeves crinkle at my shoulders, but it’s the feathery hat with the dead, stuffed bird sitting on my head that has Dare doubling over in silent heaves of laughter.

Rune has turned his back to me fully now. His head rests on the wall as he fights his joy at my absolute disaster of a dress.

But I lost all humour somewhere between Comlar and Kithe.

A soft, soothing touch grazes my hand.

I blink out of the daze and look up at Eamon, at his smooth face, the fine slant of his perfect nose, and the muted gold of his eyes, and I think of embers dying in a neglected hearth.

His mouth turns up at the corner, an attempt at a reassuring smile. He must have inherited his gentle side from Morticia.

It works.

I almost melt into him. But before the muscles in my body can relax, Tris moves with a curt bow, then turns her back on me. “This way, miss.”

She starts up the staircase, passing Morticia and Melantha. Only the former has any trace of warmth in her gaze as I push into tangled steps, then drag the weight of my skirt up the stairs.

No one follows me, except the laugh that Rune finally releases, and it’s nothing less than a bark.

Tris leads me to the fourth floor, to a carved wood door I have been through not long ago. Like last time I laid my eyes upon it, when I was sneaking out in the Warmth, the shading of the wood is warped. It was blue then, but now I watch as splotches of ruby red and ink blots spread over the distressed wood.

The wonder of it captures me for only a moment before Tris knocks her slender hand on the doorframe, then reaches for the unpolished brass knob.

She pauses.

Only a second passes before Daxeel’s barbed voice hums from the other side of the door, “Enter.”

Tris turns the knob and pushes the door open.

I peer over her shoulder at the bedchamber that Daxeel and I forged the bond in. It’s as I remember it, but nicer… Maybe it’s the warmth of the orange flickering light coming from the hearth, the turquoise glow of the jarred larva set around the wainscoted cerulean walls or the deep midnight gleam that glitters from the lush trees through the tall, panelled windows.

Now, the almost romantic lighting calls to me.

I am lured.

Behind Tris, I take the steps over the threshold too easily.

Whatever fight I gripped onto, it left me somewhere between Comlar and Kithe. It’s not only that I remember my purpose in all of this, to win Daxeel’s favour and forgiveness, all to aid my escape from a miserable future, but also that I love him, I do.

I want that future with him.

Even now, buried under the aches he’s plagued me with. I want my love to choose me.

So I play these games.

And too willingly, I follow Tris to the centre of the room, then watch her dip into a curtsey. I trace the gesture to the shadows shrouding a button-tufted chair.

Daxeel lounges in the chair, one arm draped over the cushioned leather armrest, his other hand loosely gripping a crystal tumbler of tavarak.

Without a word, Tris leaves and closes the door behind her.

That faint click of the lock is much too loud in the silence. The occasional crack and pop of the fire is all that can be heard after.

In silence, Daxeel and I just consider each other.

Black linen pants are all he wears. That’s the first note I make in my observation. How disarming it is to see him dressed for home, for the ambience of his bedchamber, and it’s moments like these I wonder if I ever truly knew him outside of his mask worn for me, away from his leathers and weaponry.

I watch him, how his lazy movements bring the rim of the glass to his lips, his eyes burning through the shadows at me, thighs slightly spread, and his back rested on the spine of the chair.

I see a husband who waited for his wife to join him in the bedchamber, one who enjoys a drink in silence, and he watches her dress for bed.

I don’t know why I see that.

I just do.

But that isn’t my truth—and I have not dressed for bed.

I’m reminded of this ghastly yellow gown as his gaze drags over the bell-skirt, and his nose crinkles. He tries to hide the crack in his mask, the grimace of distaste, with a lingering sip from his glass, but I caught that one wrinkle of his nose before he managed to hide it.

“Dress nice,” I echo his command back to him, but I can conjure no bitter or nasty smile to go with it. “Do you think it’s nice?”

Daxeel’s eyes sear through me.

He drinks down to the last drop of tavarak before he tosses the glass aside. It hits the side table with a rattle that jolts my shoulders. And I know he meant to startle me.

I don’t need to tell him I wore the ugly dress to spite him, to spite the favouritism he has of my slips and sheer dresses and little skirts and stockings. He’s figured that out all on his own.

“Maybe it’s not practical,” I say and, clasping my hands together at my middle in the perfect picture of a lady, I sway my hips side to side. The skirt swishes like a bell. I loathe bells. “I can’t exactly clean or garden or cook very well in this,” I add. “Not that I can do any of those chores in a better fitted dress.”

I blink something false at him, an innocent look that has his silent, smouldering gaze narrowing on me. And still, he doesn’t speak.

“I’m sure you will be wholly disappointed in my slavery.” I halt the sway of my hips and it takes some final swishes before the gown stops its rustling over the polished floor. “Of household skills, I have so few.”

I would say I have none at all, but sewing is a trick I picked up in my younger years, if only to save my favourite sweaters and skirts from a fate of being scraps and ribbons.

But all my defiant teasing is silenced the moment Daxeel moves.

Slowly, his hands slide onto the armrests. His gaze doesn’t waver from me, doesn’t unhook from mine, doesn’t dim in all its ferocity—he has me pinned in place with his gaze alone.

Daxeel presses his weight onto the arms of the chair. It creaks, but only a faint sound as he pushes up—and rises to his full height. An effective move, one that has me taking a step back.

He advances on me, as though I don’t gulp, as though I don’t stagger back a step, as though my nails don’t cut into my palms.

“Be still.”

The snapped command bolts me in place.

I stand, stiff.

He pauses, some steps distance between us, then he lingers his gaze over me. From the beaded toes of my slippers, up the poufy shape of my hips, along the corseted cinch of my waist—

My heart twists.

He examines me, inspects me like a fucking purchase.

My lip curls.

This is exactly how he wants me to feel. For sale .

And I can’t move.

Cold, I decide. He is cold.

The ice isn’t just in his gaze as he looks me over. It’s all around, in the air of the bedchamber, nipping at my flesh through the heat of the fireplace. The clash throws me into memories of fever.

Disturbed, my skin prickles.

I ache to fight his command, to lift my hand and flip him off. But no matter how hard I fight the stillness bolting me in place,

I just can’t move.

Harsher breaths start to rise and fall my chest.

His gaze lands the lift of my corset. He advances, his steps wandering and predatory. His mask sculpted from cool stone is unflinching.

Lazily, he reaches out a hand for the curve of my neck. His grip is loose as he holds me in place, then turns me around—prey into a trap—to face the dresser.

My gaze finds him in the mirror.

He doesn’t look at me.

Behind me, his eyes wander the ribbons and strings fastened at the rear of my corset, then over the poufy spill of my backside.

His grip tightens on the curve of my neck. Then he’s pushing me forward, against the dresser.

The bite of the wood digs into my middle. The bones of my hips hiss against the pressure, but I’m guided to lean over the side and flatten my hands on the cool touch of the blackwood.

Nose nearly touching the mirror, I keep my gaze upwards—and watch him.

I watch him study me.

And he does, for a long moment, just rinses his gaze over my back.

I catch a wink in the reflection.

My attention swerves to his free hand.

The wink of silver—a short knife.

I bite back a wince as his grip tightens on the side of my neck. He holds me in place, no wiggle room, and brings the knife to the spine of the corset.

His gaze lifts.

The shadows that lurk around him thicken. His eyes darken with the suffocation of the dim firelight. And the deadly look he cuts through me is a statement. I feel the pinch of it in my gut.

I don’t move an inch.

He pushes the flat side of the blade to my back. The pressure clenches my spine. It slides upwards, pushing between the dress and the ribbons.

Ice-cold trickles of anticipation run through me.

Gazes locked in the mirror, he speaks in a rough voice, a warning, “I find it difficult to believe you don’t understand a basic order.”

A breath pins to my throat.

He yanks the blade, hard. “Dress nice.”

I choke on a gasp.

Severed, the ribbons fall away.

I feel the loss of them at my spine.

They flutter down my back, come spilling down my sides.

Before they have even hit the floor, he tugs again. One cut, two cuts—and the final third cut has the corset falling away.

A loose breath is tugged from me.

My breasts fall into their natural place, not held up by the constricting bodice anymore.

“You chose the ugliest gown I have ever seen you wear,” he says and steps back. “One I doubt is your style.”

I don’t move. I don’t think I’m meant to.

Silent, I follow him in the mirror as he runs me over.

The chemise is all that sticks to me, now. The skirt of the dress is sliding down my body at the most glacial pace I can stand. Slow, so slow, it shifts over my hips. Stockings catch on the fabric, then start to slip down my body with the weight of the dress.

Daxeel watches it a while.

But his patience cracks. He snatches out for the back of the skirt, all rumpled and layered at the swell of my backside.

He brings the knife with him.

My body jerks with the tugs and pulls of the blade.

He cuts it away.

The thumps of the gown hit the floor around my slippers. And it’s only then that I make to move. Pressing my weight into my hands, I push myself from the vanity table and kick off my slippers. The stockings slip off easily.

Daxeel watches, unmoving, a statue looming over me.

Slowly, I turn to look up at him.

The heat of his eyes sear into mine for only a heartbeat. Then his gaze drops.

It lands on the flimsy cling of the chemise to my breasts.

“You will be trouble,” he murmurs, reaching out his hand for my waist.

I wonder if he’s merely speaking to himself, voicing his thoughts.

His fingers coil into a tight hold on my side. “You will look for loopholes in my commands.”

He steps back.

His hold on my waist draws me with him.

Then he lifts his gaze to me.

His eyes flash. “Guess I’ll just have to be stricter.”

A yelp spears through me.

He throws me away from him.

The floor is swiped out from under me, and I land with a bounce on the bed. I’m staring up at the gold trimmed cerulean ceiling.

I dig my heels into the furs and push myself back; instinct retreating me from him. “Or kinder,” I mutter, small.

He prowls over me.

One hand dips into the mattress, the glisten of ink spearing over his fingers like frail branches of blackness. The touch of his other hand, ghosting fingertips, pushes up the hem of my chemise.

But his eyes are on me, burning holes through my soul.

His upper lip curls over the word, “ Kinder .”

He abandons the chemise, now bunched at my waist, exposing me.

Shoving his knee under my thigh, he reaches down for his trousers and tugs himself free.

A twist warps his full lips into something bitter. “You think you deserve my kindness?”

The mattress sways under me with the shift of his weight. The press of his thighs against mine locks me in place.

He fists the shaft, then drags the tip of his cock down my slick core—and the heat of disgrace is fast to flush me, burn my face hot, because too easily, too unashamedly, I am ready for him, and I hate that.

Still, resistance steels me.

Those little scraps of defiance that thrive in me, they flicker like tender flames over my bones.

The push of his cock against me is enough to clench my whole body, tense.

Daxeel doesn’t busy himself with luring out my pleasure, no tongue to roll over me, no fingers to gather my honey—

He doesn’t bother with kindness .

His gaze bores into mine as he forces his way inside of me, pushes against the firmness of my walls.

My breath hitches.

I grab out for him. One hand flattens on his nearing chest, the other clutches his inked bicep.

His muscles jump under my touch, turn to pure steel.

I utter the word in a shuddering breath, “Yes.”

Yes, I deserve your kindness.

Or at least, I want it.

I get the opposite.

A mask of shadows and cruelty looks down at me.

Daxeel slams into me in a single, smooth stroke.

And it knocks a cry right out of me.

I throw my head back. Lips twisting around a gravelled sound, I arch against him, as though fuelled by the need to escape the sudden intrusion.

He allows no such escape.

The weight of his hand comes down on my breastbone; he holds me down, pins me.

Shadows curve around me. Thick inky tendrils coil and skitter and unravel, until it’s all around us, embracing us—and we exist in a cocoon of darkness.

As if to mock me, the growl that shudders through Daxeel, it tenses his cock against my clamped walls.

“I gave you kindness once.” There’s a raspiness to his voice, a husky need, the same that darkens his eyes in these cruel shadows. “I looked upon you…” He slides out of me, slow and slick, all the way to the tip. “And experienced evate.”

I brace myself.

Fingers cutting into his stone skin, I seize up—and he drives himself back into my body.

The grunt echoes in my chest.

A cruel smirk slides onto his pinkish lips, and I think he might take a bite right out of me. “I embraced it.”

He doesn’t flinch, not at the blood my nails draw, dug so firm into his marble flesh.

A steel statue of shadows curved over me, his hips move, he finds a fluid, torturous pace.

The strokes glide in and out of me, in and out, in and out, not kind, not tender—not loving. Nothing loving in this, in the way he’s so clearly building up to savagery, the way he wants me to melt against his intrusion, ease the taut muscles of my body…

It works.

The furs embrace me, the shadows flick over the fallen bodice of my chemise, lash at my breasts; they unravel along my exposed neck, traverse my fluttering flesh to my parted lips—and delve inside.

I feel them.

I feel them like breaths on my skin, whispers at my ear, sharp bites of wind that find me.

A wispy breath escapes me—and I melt under the attack.

The touch of the shadows, it’s a peculiar cool, crisp warmth. I part my lips further, welcoming the shadow that flicks into my mouth. I feel it unwind over my tongue. The sensation lures a guttural moan from me.

Daxeel lures out my ease—he plays me like an instrument he has learned well, too well, and my legs relax, hiked over his grinding hips.

His words are a murmur I barely hear over the whisperings of the shadows, their skitterings, the lulled thumps of my heart pulsing through my body—

But if I listened closely, I might hear the danger, the edge of a blade. “Do you not see that it was kindness I offered you then?”

The cocoon swirls and shifts and flutters.

I feel the cool touch it all caressing my flesh, like peppermint breaths all over me.

He pushes into me, all the way, then more. An ache springs up around my core just before his hips shift, and he grinds himself against my thrumming clit.

My head falls back, lips parting around a raspy sound.

A throaty growl rumbles through him.

He hooks his arm around the back of my knee, then shoves forward, hard. All the way .

My moans strangle into a cry.

Spine curving off the bed, I arch into him, but it only gives him a better angle to fuck into me. My hands shove at his shoulders, but he pushes against my resistance like it’s nothing more than a breeze.

I make no mistake, this is a punishment.

He bites at my forearm.

The scratch of my skin is enough to strike a hiss through me. I yank my hands off his shoulders, out of his bite’s reach.

A frown cuts into my face, and I glower up at him.

There’s no pity in those dark, swarming eyes, not for me, not anymore. Bitterness swims in the ripples of his gaze, darkens the pits of his souls, and he growls out, “I saved you from another’s cruelty.”

Then he’s on me.

His hand pushes up my body to grip my throat—and he grips, firm. I gasp a breath through the constriction of his inked fingers wrapped around my neck and have just enough margin to catch a breath.

But Daxeel comes shoving up my body.

His cock slams into me deep, too deep, and his mouth crashes down on mine to devour my pitchy cry.

His firm mouth on mine is bitter. There’s no love to be unearthed in this kiss—this is a claim.

Huskily, he grunts the words into my mouth, his pace thriving, pistoning in and out of me, “I spared you from my own.”

My legs spread a little wider, my back arches a bit more, and I invite him further into me. because I am despicable. I am so ugly and horrid beneath the flesh—I shouldn’t be fluttering, I should be climbing…

But I am, and I am sick for it.

“I overlooked your circumstance,” he slams into me so hard that I jut up the bed, “your social status,” a throaty growl catches in him and, grip tightening around my neck, he brings me back down, impaling me, “your breed, your race, your poverty.”

Pace punishing, he fucks me into the mattress.

My hands grab at furs, twist and scratch, and I don’t know if I’m searching for an escape or support to hold onto.

I don’t know much of anything beyond that I feel small beneath him. And I like it.

Gods help me.

So sick, so twisted.

My moans are rising with the flutters spasming through my body.

I like being in the hands of a monster that can tear out a spine without breaking a sweat. These hands that wander my body, how much blood they have spilled—it shouldn’t thrill me, but gods it does.

I don’t think on how twisted that makes me. I dismiss it, must be my human side, because it certainly can’t be my litalf blood that makes me want to submit to him. Must be the human in me, this urge to offer him my body, my love, my submission.

I give it all too willingly.

Still, the shame itches over my flesh, a flush that reddens my chest and neck, the flames of shame on my cheek that I turn to him.

He doesn’t allow my escape so easily.

His hand shoves under my head, and he grabs a fistful of my hair. One hard yank and my face is forced to align with his.

My wince cuts through the cocoon.

Daxeel pushes his weight onto me. Other hand clutched on the back of my thigh, he shoves my knee into the mattress—and follows.

He hits into me at a new angle, too deep, and it’s one that fast has me squirming beneath him.

I’m pushing at him, scratching at his shoulders, kicking at nothing but shadows. But I don’t want to shove him from me, I want to keep him, I want him to find that home inside of me, because I want him to love me so completely, to stay in this obsessive haze with me, to never look away, to accept—always—that he is mine.

My chest heaves with gaspy grating sounds that tug out of me, like I just can’t catch my breath. A tremor runs down my leg, once, twice—and my heart stills in my chest.

Silence spears through me.

I feel the tug of a frown on my face, and I can only look up at him, at the twist of his mouth, so bitter, so hateful, as he grinds his hips and offers me that one scrap of pity.

He delivers me.

My head throws back with the arc that shoot through me. It isn’t unlike a thousand little sparklers and stars erupt along my trembling bones, those same grating sears of pain as he buries himself in me too deep, grinds against me too rough, and pain bites at the edges of my climax.

“I courted you,” he growls, and my moans are all that I have in answer, the moans and the whimpers as my walls clench around him.

He doesn’t let me ride it out, not a moment longer than he gave me, because he doesn’t offer me kindness.

He shoves away from me.

The cocoon shivers—then it vanishes entirely.

Darkness skitters back to him, layers that land on his ink-stained body.

I have little more than a moment to watch it before he’s grabbing at me. Hands snatched at my thigh, my waist, then he flips me over.

I land, sprawled, on my front. My body jerks with the loss of the climax, and I push back, as though I can find my way to him again, back to the pleasure.

My frown smooshes into the furs.

Fast, he’s on me.

A blanket draping over my body, his hand presses too firm into the small of my back, keeping me pinned in place, and the warmth of his cock is quick to find me again.

There’s no ceremony before he’s slammed himself back inside of me.

An unladylike sound burrows in my chest, a blend between a grunt and a groan.

My hands fist in the furs. Strands of it tickle my nose, itch at my lashes, and no matter how I try to turn and twist my face away from the furs, they find me again.

Daxeel shifts over me. His hand comes down on the mattress, right beside me, and I watch the inky glistens warp down his fingers.

Buried deep; hand flat on the small of my back; he curves over me like a snake ready to strike, a faerie hound pinning down prey it’s not quite ready to eat yet.

The warmth of his breath is a warning brushing over the shell of my ear. “I gave you kindness.”

And he bites down on my shoulder, hard.

My shout strangles in my throat, it flexes my feet on the furs, as though I can push my weight onto them and shove out of his reach.

Against my wound, his snarl is throaty, “In return, you rejected me with such venom that your slight is eternal.”

You broke my heart.

And so, he breaks me.

The sick part of it, the sickest part of all, is how we both relish in it. How we both find twisted pleasure in our shared poison.

Several more times this Quiet.