Chapter 21 Malice
MALICE
Malice doesn’t know what has gotten into him.
When he woke, it felt like he would die if he didn’t touch Aerin.
If he didn’t have her. Something possessed his body, his mind.
All he wanted was control, over her body, over her soul.
He’s always been domineering in bed, but stoic.
Not like that, with every emotion rushing to the surface like a surging river. Gods, the way he gripped her face…
His cock doesn’t agree with his mind.
Aerin didn’t seem to agree with his mind either. The scent of her arousal overwhelmed him, made every logical thought fuzzy and far away. The hot water of the shower pounds on his back, one hand bracing against the wall and the other tugging on his cock.
He can’t clear his mind of her. How her body responded to his.
The feel of her pressed against him. The way she’d rolled her hips over his thigh, grinding her core against him.
The breathy noises that escaped from her mouth.
Then her lips, how she eagerly opened for him.
The excitement in her eyes when he gripped her face harshly.
He pictures guiding his cock into that mouth, her luscious lips wrapping around him. Aerin, worshipping him.
Malice shoots cum across the shower wall, feeling sick with himself. After his shuddering fades, he presses both hands to the cold tile, letting his head hang between them, water dripping from his hair.
What the fuck is wrong with him? Is this what the blood-bond does? Shatters every bit of self-restraint he has?
Yes, he’s always been attracted to Aerin Tolvare.
But he doesn’t want to be with her. Doesn’t want to want her. Their kiss before was only because she pushed him. She’s always pushing him. He loathes her beauty, her curves, her conniving nature. She is selfish and spoiled and rotten to her core. Isn’t she?
Malice is even less sure than before. Repeating his mantra feels like a betrayal. Yet he should despise her more now that she trapped him into a lifelong bond simply because she couldn’t mind her own business.
He doesn’t.
Scrubbing his hair with shampoo, Malice lets out a brusque exhale. It must be the blood-bond settling. He’ll get better control over it. Just as he does everything else.
As he scrubs his body, rougher than he needs to, Malice feels her, just there, between his ribs.
To the left of his heart. Like a piece of her living inside of him.
He rubs the spot thoughtlessly, about jumping out of his skin when his body responds with a shiver and his cock springs back to life. As if he’d just touched her.
Fuck.
Malice snatches his hand away, turns the shower to cold, and attempts to scrub any remnants of the last twenty-four hours from his skin.
When Malice shoves his shame down far enough to swallow facing Aerin again, he leaves his room. The smell of Aerin’s blood smacks him in the face so hard his heart leaps into his throat and he finds himself scrambling out of the hall to find her.
He skids to a stop so fast he would have toppled over if it wasn’t for his wings.
The smell is Aerin’s blood; it drips off her fingers to the floor from a slow healing gash on her forearm.
Aerin is repeatedly dipping her fingers into the wound, coating them before painting runes on the wall in front of her.
Instead of roaring at her for such recklessness, Malice schools himself. Locks everything down inside, shuts it behind door after door until that rage feels far from him, hardly a part of him at all.
Aerin paints the last of the runes on the massive windows that line the walls of the living room. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, the sight would be terrifying. Bloody symbol after bloody symbol crosses the expanse of the entire room. Across every window, around the front door.
Malice knows exactly what they are: wards. Protective magic. Aerin is imbuing the apartment with her own runes, her own magic. She is negating the wards the King placed, cancelling them out with her own.
After painting the final rune, the symbols glow golden before sinking into the walls. The only blood left is in the spots on the floor, the slow drip off her fingertips.
“Don’t you think you’ve bled enough today?” Malice asks her as she dips her fingers in her arm again, poised to paint more runes.
Aerin looks at him over her shoulder, a small smile gracing her features. Malice hates how beautiful she is, he really, really does.
She turns back to the window before speaking to him.
“I need you to do a sweep of the apartment. I want every camera, every microphone of my father’s gone.” She keeps painting. “He will no longer be privy to us.”
“What’s changed?” Malice asks her. It can’t just be their newly forged blood-bond giving her the confidence to defy the King of Valtara.
“I’ll explain later,” Aerin tells him, her concentration not the least bit broken. Malice doesn’t like her bleeding, feels sick with it.
Much of Malice wants to ignore her request until he gets his answers, but he begrudgingly begins dismantling the closest camera.
It doesn’t take him long to strip the apartment, dropping the tiny cameras onto the table as he goes.
He fishes a detector out of his things and does three full sweeps before he’s satisfied that he found them all.
While he works, Aerin continues to place wards. First protection wards, then noise wards, down to the cleaning wards. She replaces every single one of her father’s, erasing all hints of his magic from inside the apartment.
They finish their tasks around the same time, Aerin crossing to the kitchen sink. She cleans the knife she used to open her arm.
Malice comes behind her, crowding her into the countertop, looking at her wound over her shoulder.
He finds his hand holding her wrist, cradling the injured forearm over his own.
Aerin is formidable, yet, tucked in his arms, she feels small.
He carefully rinses the wound in the lukewarm water.
Despite her breath catching, Aerin’s body relaxes back against his.
“You should have let me, Princess,” Malice’s voice is raspy even to his own ears. His head buzzes with her proximity and the sickly-sweet scent of her blood.
“We needed to act quickly.” Aerin also sounds breathless. “Royal Guards are probably on their way.”
Aerin doesn’t seem nervous about that inevitability, and so neither is Malice. He will protect her. He will always protect her. She is his bonded-mate. Now, until the end of time.
Together they watch as her arm slowly stitches itself closed. Her blood glistens. The idea of her blood being taken feels repugnant, yet Malice remembers the warmth, the rush, the overwhelming bliss he experienced.
He aches for it. His body practically vibrating, his fingers tightening around her wrist as the temptation hangs before him. A poisoned apple ripe for the taking.
“Something is happening,” he whispers into Aerin’s hair, unable to take his eyes off the wound. “I want…” He can’t bring himself to say it. He wants her to just know. He wants her to gift it to him.
“Tell me,” Aerin whispers.
Malice hesitates, watching as the wound closes to form a pink line down her forearm. Soon it will fade to white. Then it will be gone all together.
Falling away from her, Malice braces against the counter instead, using both arms to keep upright. Aerin seems disappointed by his sudden absence. She looks at him, questioning.
“Tell me.”
This time it’s not a request, but a demand. The blood-bond seems to know the difference. The little seed of Aerin inside him snaps against his bones like a rubber band. There is no stopping the words that fall from his lips.
“Your blood.”
The words hang in the air until anger blooms inside of him. Until it’s bursting out of him.
“I wanted your blood.” His voice is vicious, accusing.
Aerin flinches. It takes a long moment for her composure to return. When it does, Malice is looking at the face of the girl in the tabloids. Uninterested. Apathetic. Utterly bored.
She says nothing when she walks away.
Malice stays furious, long after Aerin disappears into her room. Any hope that she would change after becoming bonded-mates disappears down the hall with her.
Malice grinds his teeth, taking his anger out on the cameras and microphones, smashing them to pieces using only his bare hands and the underside of his boot. When he’s finished, he sweeps up the remnants and trashes them, feeling only marginally better.
He runs his fingers through his still damp hair, refrains from tugging on it.
He wants to sit her down and force her to tell him everything.
He wants to demand answers, about her powers, her history, her plans.
He wants to bend her over and bury his cock in her, until she can’t think about anything but him.
Malice scrubs his face again. It’s the blood-bond. It’s only the blood-bond. Maybe, if he keeps telling himself that, it will become true.
A loud bang against the door jolts him from his thoughts.
Like a breeze, Aerin blows down the hallway. She showered and changed into tiny shorts and a cropped t-shirt. Her hair is pulled up in a messy pony with all her piercings on display, including two blue gems in her belly button. Malice is certain those hadn’t been there this morning.
Malice flanks Aerin as she approaches the door. Someone pounds against it. It sounds like they are trying to force their way in. No matter how angry he is at the Princess, he’ll still protect her. That’s his job, in more ways than one now.
Aerin looks at Malice directly, her hand hovering over the doorhandle.
“It’s important, for my safety, that you let me handle this. Do you understand?”
The blood-bond snaps again, against his bones, forcing his submission. Malice finds himself nodding, despite fighting against it.
[What the fuck?! Did you know it would be like this?] Malice demands.