Chapter 14
Madness
Note to self: don’t get in the way of my lioness murdering Violence.
I watched from a short distance, my heart a pulped mess that oozed more vital fluid with each sad pump.
A striking fierceness had come over Cat’s face, pressing her lips into a deadly line, sharpening her eyes, and a little thrill went through my belly when I saw her hands clenched around Fuzzball’s reins.
My wife was going to kill someone today.
Would she let me kiss her again once her bloodlust had been sated? Would she allow us to lay her down in the blood-streaked grass and remind her how well we knew her body, how quickly she could catch fire for us? Or would she leave once she’d got her vengeance, and never look back?
I gnawed on my bottom lip, unable to take my eyes off her as Death and Tor laid out a rapid plan. They wanted to turn around and leave; I could see it in their body language. But they knew, like I did, that Cat wouldn’t walk away from this place without what she’d rode across the domain to claim.
Good thing I’d prepared an army while she was away at Cruelty’s mansion.
I jumped down from Sana’s back, pulling a stray blade of grass from her mane and fussing over my second-best girl for a minute.
She was eager for the journey, eager to sink her teeth into some vauns too.
She’d been bored for weeks, and a girl could only go so long without brutally eviscerating something before she got restless.
“Save your brutality for our enemies, remember?” I murmured, resting my head against hers for a minute. “No biting our friends.” She grumbled, but I sensed her acquiescence, given more freely than earlier thanks to the presence of so many vauns.
“Lioness?” I called, crossing the wild prairie grass to stand beside Cat, proud and severe atop Fuzzball even as the shadow shire dropped her head to rip out clumps of grass.
Cat glanced up from where her attention had fixed on Death and Tor, their heads bent together, whispers terse and resolute. “Why do you call me that? I’m not actually a lion, right…?”
“Don’t be silly.” I gazed up at my wife, a sharp stab in my chest. “You’re a jaguar. But I didn’t know that when I first saw you, so pretty and strong and dangerous as you—well, I shouldn’t tell you that. We’re supposed to be letting your mind remember things slowly, so it doesn’t hurt.”
“I want to know.”
I chewed my bottom lip, conflicted. It was too soon to overload her mind with memories she didn’t have access to yet. I didn’t want her precious brain to crack apart.
“You’ve made your lip bleed,” Cat murmured, and I froze as her thumb brushed my bottom lip, pulling it free of my teeth. “Sorry,” she said quickly, “I don’t know why I—”
I had my hands at her hips in an instant, dark magic dripping from me to push her leg over Fuzzball’s back so I could pull her down to my level.
The second her feet touched the ground, I kissed her hard, nipping her bottom lip—but careful not to break her skin unlike mine—so she’d let me have a taste.
My dangerous, lovely, hypnotically beautiful wife groaned the second my tongue swirled over hers, claiming every bit of her for myself.
“Madde!” Death snapped.
I ignored him, kissing my perfect lioness deeper, stroking over the roof of her mouth, sucking her tongue in pulses that made her groan and melt against me.
Her body burned against mine, so hot I willingly risked burning my hands to explore the dip of her waist, the divine flare of her hips, and that taunting place where thick thighs kissed her cute, rounded ass.
“Madde, what did we tell you?” Miz growled, but I just pulled Cat closer, notching her against the aching hardness between my legs.
I was fucking delighted when her hips began to grind, mindlessly chasing her pleasure as I kissed her so completely we wouldn’t have to worry about shattering her brain.
I’d make it melt, turn her whole body into a languid spill of pleasure.
“Miz, look,” Tor breathed, and I had a vague sense of him catching Misery before the spoil-sport could interrupt us.
Good, because my lioness’s hips churned against me now, blatantly using the aching length of my cock to stroke her clit.
“My perfect lioness,” I sighed, dragging more air into my lungs so I could kiss her forever. I buried a hand in her hair and used it to hold her in place as I scraped the length of her tongue with my teeth, swallowing the soft whimper it invoked.
My other hand found her waist, encouraging the roll of her hips as her breathing began to hitch, her hands curling into the front of my shirt—black silk and boring, a reflection of my former mood.
To reflect my current mood, I’d have to drench my body in red silk and pink velvet and heart patterns.
I was so happy. So damn hard. So full of passion that there was no way I could be called Madness when I was so clearly Love.
Cat’s shoulders tensed, the line of her body tightening, and I groaned as she took control of the kiss, kissing me.
It was harsh and domineering and sent a thrill all the way to my toes.
Hot pleasure boiled up so fast, ripping a grunt from my throat.
Cat swallowed it with a greed so consuming I forgot she didn’t remember me.
But her body knew me. It arched towards me, her breasts crushing my chest, her hips clashing with mine as her thrusts grew out of control. She grabbed a fistful of my hair, and I damn near purred.
“Harder,” I groaned into her mouth, a tingle moving down my spine when she immediately tightened her grip.
My next moan pushed her over the edge, and her release was a thing of beauty.
Open mouthed, rosy cheeked, with her eyes screwed shut and the loudest, most bewitching moans filling the space between us, filling the entire prairie.
I came so hard my whole body shook, completely at her mercy, full of devotion for my perfect lioness.
“Fuck,” she breathed when she’d stopped grinding against me. She tried to move back, but my greedy hands caught her, kept her close. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Don’t apologise, little one,” Death said with so much tenderness it gripped my heart and squeezed into a bloodied pulp. “Madde started it.”
“Did not,” I protested, though I wasn’t opposed to restarting it.
My hands wandered down the irresistible slope of her spine, burning the feeling of her into my palms. Whole, alive.
No slit in her throat. No emptiness in her eyes.
On the contrary, her eyes were a wildfire, and I had to bite back a groan.
“Our lioness touched my lip; she started it.” I gave Death innocent puppy eyes. “I’m only human.”
“You’re undead, and you should know better.”
“I couldn’t help it.” My bottom lip pushed out. “I missed my wife so much, and she tastes so good.” I flicked my tongue at him. “Want to see for yourself?”
Death’s eyes narrowed, a warning I was dancing close to his temper. The chill that rippled through me was enough of a distraction that I didn’t see Miz stomp across the long grasses until he grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenched my face away from Cat’s, and thrust his tongue down my throat.
It lasted a second, two at the most, but when he released me, my knees had jellied and Cat had to catch me to stop me face planting the ground.
“Mm,” I said, swirling my tongue around my mouth, coming out of the shock. “Tastes like blood and rosewater. Who’s next?” I looked hopefully at Tor, then Pain.
“We’re not kissing you,” Tor huffed, surly as he crossed his arms over his chest. I blew him a kiss because I didn’t want him to get too jealous, which he’d better appreciate because I had to lift a hand off my lioness to do it.
“Guys,” Pain said sharply. “We have a problem. They heard us.”
Colour splashed over Cat’s cheeks as she realised us meant her. She’d been so wonderfully loud, her moans so hypnotic I wanted to feel them on my skin, fill my senses with them, drown out every other noise in the world with the sinful sound of my lioness climaxing over and over and—
“Madde,” Tor snapped.
I lifted my head and found them all several steps ahead, shielding behind a grassy mound to inspect the field and tower below. “Hm? What? Sorry, I was thinking about how pretty our wife sounds when she comes.”
“Do you have any wild ideas about how to handle that?” Miz asked, a little snippy but that was to be expected. You couldn’t survive on one taste of madness. It was an addiction, and he’d already be craving more.1
“Handle…” I peered over the hill and winced. “Right. That.”
The twenty vauns now trudged their way up the hill towards us and the spirits that fixed their milky eyes upon where we hid.
“Let our lioness devour them?” I suggested.
Death gave me an unimpressed look, eyebrows lifted. “Any serious suggestions. We might be able to find a way around to the back of the tower, but that only handles the vauns. The spirits encircle it completely.”
I grinned, a thought striking like a bolt. “Ding!” I said, holding my hand above my head in the place of a lightning bolt. Only Pain snickered, but that’s because everyone else was grumpy and old. Pretty Boy was like me; cool, youthful, exceptionally handsome and dripping with power.
“You have an idea?” Misery asked, not taking his eyes off the vauns as they ascended the hill.
“Fear not, my darling Misery—”
“Not your darling—”
“I created a special army for just this moment.”
Well, I didn’t know it would be this moment, but I knew we’d need them. I sank into my magic, the shudder of insanity blended with the slow coil of death, and crooked a finger. Summoning them. Calling them to me.
Come, come, my beauties.
“A poltergeist army?” Death asked, hope softening the edges of his voice.
“The undead?” Tor guessed, giving me an appreciative glance.
“Better.” I grinned, sweeping out my arm as they burst into the prairie, flowing over the hills and down into the field to unleash themselves upon the encroaching vauns with all the ferocious, ankle-biting energy of goblins. “My babies,” I said proudly.
“Dachshunds,” Cat breathed, her eyes so wide I saw flecks of silver and moon-white in her eyes. “Ghost dachshunds.”