Chapter 31 #2
“So perfect,” he grits out, his voice thick with pleasure. He catches my lip between his teeth, biting down just hard enough to sting, grounding me in the sensation. “You feel…there are no words.”
I whimper, my hands clutching his shoulders, my nails digging in. My body is singing under him, melting around him, treacherous and eager. But my mind is still screaming.
The curtain!
Through the haze of lust, I spot it. The heavy panel hangs just to the right of the bed. I reach out. If I can just snag the fabric…if I can just pull it back…a…few—
Vale thrusts.
Hard.
The impact shatters my efforts like glass. A moan punches out of my throat, and my hand falls uselessly back to the sheets, my grip failing as pleasure blinds me white. He grinds against me, his hips rolling, hitting that nerve with merciless precision until I’m utterly wrecked beneath him.
I can’t do this. His weight is a mountain pressing me down, pinning me into the sheets. As long as I’m beneath him, I’m powerless.
I need leverage.
“Vale…” I gasp, my hands finding his chest and pushing, shoving against the solid wall of him. “Let me.”
He freezes mid-thrust, his breathing choked. He looks down at me, hair falling into his eyes, his pupils blown wide so the green is merely a thin, burning rim. “Let you what?”
“I want to be on top,” I whisper, the lie sliding over my tongue with terrified ease.
Surprise flickers across his face, followed by a flare of dark, possessive heat.
He withdraws slowly, agonizingly, leaving me empty and aching for a split second before he shifts.
He falls back against the pillows, spreading his arms wide in invitation, looking up at me like a man about to be devoured.
“By all means,” he rasps. “Take exactly what you need and want.”
I scramble over him, straddling his hips. The change in dynamic is instantaneous. Beneath me, he looks devastating—throat bared, slick chest heaving, his body a sprawling landscape of muscle and shadow.
I sink down onto him.
He hisses through his teeth, his head tipping back into the pillows, his neck arching. “Yes…”
I begin to move.
At first, it’s just to find the rhythm, to keep him distracted, but the sensation is overwhelming. He’s so big, so hard, filling me so completely that I forget to breathe. I ride him, grinding down, and his hands come up to grip my hips.
Not to control me.
But to anchor himself.
He watches me for a moment, his gaze dark and heavy with adoration, before his lashes flutter shut. The sight of him unraveling is intoxicating—the sheen of sweat on his skin, the flushed heat of his throat, the way his lips part on a silent groan as I pick up the pace.
I lean forward, bracing my hands on his chest, dropping my head so my hair curtains us both. I ride him harder, faster, chasing the friction, chasing the way his hips snap up to meet mine.
I’m close. To the edge.
To the truth.
“Elara,” he groans, his voice ruined. He reaches blindly for me, his hands sliding up my ribs.
Now.
My hand shoots out. My fingers tangle in the heavy fabric of the curtain. I grip it tight. I look down at him one last time—at the beautiful man beneath me.
Then I yank. Hard.
The curtain rings shriek against the rod, letting the heavy fabric fly open.
And the moon, sharp and brilliant as a blade, slashes across skin more pallid than a corpse.
It stretches across exposed ribs in some places; in others, only sinew, wet and ropey, banding across a frame where strings of flesh cling.
Shoulders broaden with a deep, cracking roll. Limbs lengthen beneath me, joints stretching, bones clicking into new angles as if the shape of a man was never more than a cramped garment he finally shrugged off.
I freeze, perched on Death, my thighs braced against something that is no longer soft flesh, but unyielding bone—mandible, sternum, ribs, and tendons that don’t give.
A scream rips out of me—raw, too big for the size of my throat. It’s just air shredded into pure terror.
He’s a monster!
I scramble off him. My feet find air where floor should be, and I tumble, hips slamming down onto the boards, the impact jolting through my spine and knocking another sharp cry from my mouth.
The bed lurches under the sudden shift as he jumps out. The rafters shrink around him.
“Elara…” His voice is bone and wind and something ancient dragging itself through a throat, coming from a skull where a man’s features should be: cheekbones hollowed on one side, nasal cavity a shadowed notch, pale skin draping in patches over sinew exposed and shifting at the jaw. “Do not—”
“No!” I scoot backward on my hands, frantic, breath coming in ragged, choking bursts. “Don’t come near me. Don’t…d-don’t touch me!”
His eyes take me in.
Not green.
Not even eyes.
Just black, endless pits that swallow the moonlight instead of reflecting it. Long fingers unfurl, bone and tendon moving under strain, and the motion alone detonates my panic.
“No!” I scramble on hands and knees, nails scraping wood, and throw myself under the table by the hearth like it's a sanctuary. “Don’t touch me!” The words tear out of me ragged and shapeless, more sound than language.
“Don’t—get away, get away, get away—“ My own voice is unrecognizable, pitched too high and climbing higher, the kind of sound that fills a room and bounces back wrong.
I press myself into the corner where the table leg meets the wall and pull my knees to my chest. “Go away, go away. Go away!”
A bare heel bone grinds against the wooden floorboards. Darkness bleeds together, weaving into black cloth. An exposed knuckle clicks as he turns away. A skeletal hand reaches for the door.
The latch lifts.
Cold air rushes in.
The door slams shut, the terror that screamed through my blood pitching down, dropping from panic into a heavy, suffocating shock.
I curl my knees to my chest and rock, back and forth, hands clawing at my arms, fingers digging into dead-cold skin. The room blurs, the shadows beneath the table stretching up to pull me down.