Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
The First Wound
Erevos
Erevos had believed he understood hunger.
He had existed on it. For centuries, he had harvested emotions without preference, consuming them as easily as breathing. But this . . . This was ruinous.
Lyssena’s scent rolled off her in waves so thick he could taste it in the air, could feel it dissolving into his shadows, could feel it sinking into him like molten gold poured into hollow spaces. Her nervousness, her anticipation, the fragile tremor of trust beneath it all—it was overwhelming.
He was drinking without meaning to, and it made focusing nearly impossible.
She sat exposed before him, breath uneven, thighs parted by his hands, and for the first time in his long existence, Erevos understood distraction.
“Lyssena,” he said, his hand remaining on her leg. He wanted to touch every organ of her body. His songbird was just too soft.
Erevos’s shadows trembled around them, and his cock grew heavy.
It strained forward, brushing against the edge of the table as he leaned closer; the pressure felt too good. The sensation was foreign and distracting and almost maddening.
He shifted his weight. Just slightly.
His thighs moved in a restrained, slow, back and forth against the wood, seeking relief without abandoning his focus, friction sending flickers of sensation through him that only sharpened the hunger pooling at the center of his being.
Lyssena inhaled sharply at the movement, and he saw the way her gaze flickered downward. Saw the flush deepen along her neck.
Erevos drew his tongue slowly over his teeth, tasting the air between them, tasting her.
Her scent had changed. It was richer now, and so much warmer.
It was inviting.
“You are . . . intoxicating,” he said, his voice lower than before, threaded with something rougher, something no longer composed.
Her emotions tangled and untangled at that, and he swallowed them instinctively. He had imagined touching her countless times in the privacy of his own thoughts. Imagined the softness of her, the way her body would respond, the sounds she might make.
But imagination had not prepared him for reality. For the tremble of her thighs beneath his hand. For the way her breath stuttered when his thumb moved a fraction lower.
For the sight of her exposed like this, trusting him, offering herself to the god with no name.
He leaned closer, lowering himself until his face hovered near the heat of her, violet gaze lifting briefly to meet hers, and his knees met the floor.
She was watching him, wide-eyed. Flushed and breathing hard.
And entirely his.
I will be gentle, he thought as his gaze lowered back to the curls between his songbird’s legs.
His jaw tightened as he felt her scent, and his tongue glided against the back of his teeth.
None of it would be gentle; Erevos was starving.
Erevos nearly asked her what he was meant to do.
The question hovered at the edge of his thoughts, and yet here, before the soft, trembling heat of her body, he felt inexperienced in a way that both unsettled and thrilled him.
But the impulse faded as quickly as it came, because Erevos wished to discover everything all by himself.
Slowly, he opened his jaw, stretching it wider than any mortal man’s could manage, his long, thick tongue sliding forward between sharpened teeth as shadows moved around him. He did not hesitate.
He lowered himself the final inch and dragged his tongue over Lyssena’s most intimate place, over the part of her she had never shown him.
His songbird released a high, broken sound at the first slow stroke of his tongue against her skin, a sound so soft and unguarded that his shadows shuddered violently around them. His hunger flared.
He had thought her scent overwhelming.
He had believed nothing could surpass the sweetness of her devotion, the golden ache of her trust as he fed upon it. And oh, he had been wrong.
Her skin was warmer, softer than anything he had ever touched, and the taste of her made something tighten deep within him.
A growl rumbled low in his chest as he pressed closer, flattening his tongue and sliding it deeper between the folds Lyssena carried, parting her gently at first, then more firmly as instinct overtook anything else.
“Erevos!” she cried, her voice fracturing into breath and need as his tongue brushed over a small swell hidden between her folds. He felt it beneath the broad stroke of his tongue.
What was it? He did not know.
But he knew it made her tremble, he knew it made her say his name.
For the first time, she called him like that, and the sound fed him more fiercely than devotion ever had.
A dark, possessive pride unfurled inside him, and he circled the small swell again, slower, testing the pressure, watching the way her thighs quivered, the way her hips lifted helplessly toward his mouth as though her body itself begged for more.
He was intoxicated by everything. The heat of her against his tongue, the wetness growing with each stroke, the scent thickening in the air until it clung to him like a second skin.
The more he tasted her, the wetter his Lyssena became.
Her arousal coated his mouth, smeared along his chin, and glistened against the shadows that curled eagerly along his jaw.
He wanted more. He wanted to push deeper, to pry her open and drink from her until she shattered beneath him while her cries became louder and louder.
Erevos wanted to drown in it.
In her.
In the endless, exquisite proof that his songbird responded to him, that he, who had once believed himself sustained solely by emotion, could now hunger for flesh.
He dragged his tongue slowly downward through her folds, parting her. There.
A small entrance, hidden beneath warmth and wetness, softer than the surrounding flesh and clenched as though guarding something within. His shadows stilled.
So he had been right.
His songbird did possess a place meant to be entered.
The discovery sent a pulse of dark satisfaction through him, and without fully understanding why his hunger sharpened so suddenly, Erevos pressed the tip of his tongue against that tight opening and nudged forward.
He expected her to cry out again in pleasure.
Expected her hips to lift the way they had when he circled the sensitive swell above.
Instead, the moment the thick tip of his tongue breached her entrance and slid even a fraction inside, Lyssena let out a loud, broken whimper, her thighs snapping shut around his head with startling force. Erevos froze instantly.
His shadows recoiled violently from the table’s surface, flaring outward in alarm as he withdrew at once, lifting his head, his gaze flashing upward to her face.
“Lyssena,” he said, “did I wound you?”
Her breathing was ragged, her fingers clenched tight against the wood, her chest rising and falling in uneven pulls as she forced her thighs to loosen around him, though her entire body trembled.
“It—” she tried, her voice thin, breath catching. “It hurt.”
Hurt . . . He had meant to bring her pleasure.
A low, unstable growl rolled through his chest, not at her, but at himself, at his own ignorance, his own failure to understand the fragility of her human body.
“I will not continue,” he said at once, beginning to rise, shadows thickening as though preparing to pull her away from the table entirely, to shield her from further harm. “I apologize.”
But Lyssena reached for him, gently placing her hand on his.
“It is normal,” she breathed, her cheeks flushed, her voice shy yet steadying. “The first time . . . it hurts. My mother said so.”
“You are certain?” he asked.
Lyssena swallowed, her thighs parting again, though more hesitantly this time.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Just . . . go slowly.”
Erevos inclined his head, though inside he felt anything but slow.
He lowered himself again, his shadows settling against the table’s legs to anchor him there.
Erevos traced downward from the swelling, flattening his tongue and dragging it through the slick warmth between her folds, feeling how readily her body parted for him now, how the wet heat gathered more generously than before, coating the broad muscle of his tongue until it gleamed.
He studied the change in Lyssena’s breathing as he moved. He tasted her blood while gripping her gown that was made of him. When he reached her entrance once more, he did not press immediately. He lingered.
He let the tip of his tongue circle the rim, mapping its shape, feeling how it tightened in response to each touch.
So small, so guarded, so his.
Erevos moved slowly. He nudged forward again, gently, easing just the tip of his tongue inside, allowing her body to stretch around him rather than forcing his way through.
The inside of her was hotter than the outside, softer, more yielding, yet circled him in the way her hand did on his cock before.
He pushed a fraction deeper, and he felt her part around him.
Erevos felt the slick walls tremble and tighten before easing again, as though learning him even as he learned her.
A broken sound slipped from Lyssena’s throat. It was similar to those she made when she felt good.
Encouraged, Erevos drew his tongue back slowly, feeling the way her inner walls dragged along its length, coating it more thoroughly in her arousal, and then he pressed inward again, deeper, savoring the sensation of parting her from within.
Each time he slid in and out, she released that same unsteady sound, her hips shifting against his mouth as though chasing the movement. He felt everything.
He wanted to know how deep she could take him. He wanted to see how her body changed if he altered his rhythm. So he did.
He pushed his tongue deeper, holding it there for a suspended moment, then slowly withdrew, only to thrust back in, and the reaction he earned made his shadows ripple violently across the floor. His cock pulsed between his thighs.
He had nearly forgotten he had it at all.
Another thick bead slipped from the tip, trailing down the heavy length and falling uselessly toward the floor.
Without lifting his mouth from her, Erevos summoned his shadows, feeling them coil around his shaft as they wrapped him from base to tip.
The next time he slid his tongue into her, he tightened the shadows at the same time.
The combined sensation made heat run through him, his hips jerking against the restraint of his own shadows as pleasure lanced up his spine while his tongue remained buried inside his little songbird, feeling her pulse and quiver around him.
For a moment, his mind emptied entirely.
He was aware only of sensation, of the hot, silken interior of her clasping his tongue.
Of the slick sweetness coating his mouth, of the pressure of his own shadows holding him in time with the thrusting of his tongue.
Lyssena’s voice grew louder now, no longer shy or startled but openly trembling, each breath spilling into another of those soft sounds that vibrated against his face. He did not understand the language of these noises.
But he understood their meaning.
And he had no desire to stop.