30
Flare
I plowed through the haze, yanked aside my sheet, and raced toward the sound. Having abandoned his bed, Jeryn hunched on the floor of his chamber, with his back against a wall laced in begonias. Clad in only a pair of loose pants, he gripped the sides of his bent head, fingernails knifing into his hair.
It was indeed a nightmare. Some demon had slithered into his mind.
If it were me, I would have been quivering, lashing out, or rocking back and forth. But the prince stayed motionless. The naked muscles of his shoulders strained with tension, and the veins in his arms bulged like the roots of a tree.
Muffled noises grated into a pillow wedged between his upturned thighs and chest. To others, it might sound like coarse grunts. But I heard the shouts, the disorder he fought to conceal.
In my cell block, I’d never taken the suffering of my neighbors lightly. However, those bellows and sobs had never shocked me, because they’d been expected. But Jeryn’s turmoil overturned every memory I’d had of him, the disturbance cracking like a shell inside my chest.
Dropping to the ground, I scrambled on all fours. The villain prince didn’t see me crawling his way, yet he knew. Maybe he’d grown used to how I smelled or sounded. Either way, we moved at the same time. With his head bowed, Jeryn tossed the pillow and reached for me. A brittle sensation got stuck in my throat as I caught him, and then my feelings gave way to violence. Something had wounded him, and for the first time, I didn’t like this thought.
I didn’t like it at all.
In the dark, I swung one leg over his waist, climbing onto his lap just as he pulled me into him. I faced Jeryn, my thighs splitting around his waist, the short hem of my nightgown bunching high enough to reveal the profiles of my backside. His arms clamped around my middle, wrenching me closer until my breasts slammed against his bare torso, our bodies fastening together. And when my hands wove around his neck, the prince shuddered as though my touch had a devastating effect.
Heat emanated from him more than it did from me. It eclipsed the humidity tenfold, a bead of sweat leaking between my collarbones and landing on one of his own.
Amid the shadows, our limbs tangled into knots. His massive physique encased mine, and his damp forehead found solace on my shoulder.
“My grandaunts. They’re old. They could be dead,” he hissed, the words avalanching from his mouth as if they’d been corked for a thousand years. “My parents. They’re ill and don’t know where I am. They don’t have me. I’m not there. I’m not there for them.”
“Shh,” I whispered, to no avail.
“I’m a healer,” he ranted. “I heal my kingdom, but … I’m not a healer. I’ve tortured people. I’ve maimed them,” he muttered in a haunted tone. “What have I done? What the fuck have I done ?”
I wouldn’t shush him about that. He needed to say it, and I needed to hear it.
“I used them,” Jeryn realized. “I used so many people to treat others. And I’m not there to change it. I’m not there to fix anything. I’m not there. Who’s healing Winter? Who?”
I heard it in his voice. This wasn’t just the terror of a bad dream. It was also the maelstrom of panic.
While the sun had set, Jeryn had revealed himself to me. Afterward, we’d been talking about his home, which must have triggered him, ambushing the peace we’d found. Out of nowhere, epiphanies blew through a formidable barrier and took this man captive, from his gruesome history, to every horrific deed, to his isolation from Winter. Our talk had made him think of the family he wasn’t there to help, the ailments he wasn’t there to fix, and the people he’d wronged.
“More prisoners will be used while I’m stuck here,” Jeryn said, breaking like a wall of ice under pressure. “My family’s going to die without me. They might be dead already. And I’m going to die here too. But I don’t want to die here.”
That last part hurt. I couldn’t say why, could hardly grasp where my heart fit inside this hurt. I yearned to defend the rainforest, not a more enchanting realm to be found on this continent. But I didn’t have a family anymore, whereas his living relatives waited for him.
Jeryn’s kin needed their ruler. His patients and subjects depended on him, and born souls could finally benefit from his skills. If he were still in Winter, he’d have the power to help them.
During our talk, I hadn’t considered that. But he had. The moment his mind had shifted, he’d gone there.
His palms burned through my nightgown, his grip crushing the material. “The siren shark,” he rasped against the crook of my shoulder. “I could have been bitten. It could have … I could be… and not know it yet. I could be dying without knowing it.”
That wasn’t true. He’d battled that shark and won.
For me. He’d faced that horror for me.
But maybe part of him was dying in another way. And maybe I was too. So maybe we could save each other.
Strapped in his arms and ensconced in these ruins, I couldn’t draw images of comfort into the sand. Instead, I did the only other thing left and brushed my fingers through his hair, the mane slipping through my fingers like a cascade. Over and over, I combed through his roots in a tender rhythm.
The prince stiffened, his frame going taut like that of an animal, unsure what to make of this gesture. As if the touch could be a threat.
Despite his loving kin, this man had a deeper experience with pain than affection. The sort he’d kept hidden. The sort he’d inflicted. He had mentioned keeping his panics mostly to himself, wary of burdening his family too often or causing them emotional strain.
So who else had been there for him? Who had calmed the terror?
I coaxed my fingers through the layers. As I swept my hand from his jaw to the side of his mane, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear, a gasp sliced from the prince’s lips.
Like I had stung him. Like this feeling hurt.
My lips swam along his ear. “Jeryn.”
The whisper stroked the ledge of his skin. The prince drew in another sharp breath, as though the word had found a crawlspace, a rift to dissolve within.
Slowly—so achingly slow—he lifted his head a fraction. His open mouth dragged over my flesh, pressed to my pulse point, and stalled there.
My heart rate doubled, drumming against the place where Jeryn’s lips rested, his hot breath pumping into my flesh. The spread of my legs enclosed his waist, on the brink of inching wider to accommodate more of him.
As though he sensed this impulse, a hiss diced through Jeryn’s teeth. “Flare.”
Not an encouragement but a warning. And yet, the cut of my name from his tongue achieved the opposite of what either of us should want. My pussy clenched, the delicate folds chafing his pants. I had taken to sleeping without the scanty drawers and briefs I’d woven. Although it was more comfortable at night, I had forgotten this precarious detail. But the rough texture of Jeryn’s pants abraded my crease, the friction reminding me far too late.
We hadn’t moved, yet the contact drew slickness from my walls, and the intimate lips swelled. He must feel the outline of my cunt because a severe noise rumbled from Jeryn’s throat, the masculine sound haggard.
“Flare,” he muttered. “Get the fuck off my lap. Now.”
More than a command, it sounded like a plea. A cautionary threat meant to protect me, to keep me out of harm’s way, because going farther might wound me. Because I would regret it.
And that’s how I would become your greatest regret.
It didn’t take a seer to predict where this would lead, the precipice we teetered upon, the rules we were in danger of shattering. We’d been in this position before, with my legs astride his body. Except during the lightning rainstorm, I’d been facing away from him, too repelled to look at his face while I came.
This time, I stared into his eyes while strapped around him. And he stared back. Which felt much worse.
This couldn’t happen again. Not with an evil ruler. Not with the enemy. But was he either of those things anymore? Yes and yes. I still hated him for all the people he’d enslaved and tortured. However genuine, one conversation wouldn’t change that fully.
But at this moment, did I care? The answer tightened in my slit, the private flesh of my cunt aching.
Half of me wanted to punish this prince. Half yearned to console this born soul.
I couldn’t explain it, and I didn’t want to explain it, and I wasn’t about to explain it. With this monster, I gave up trying, because I’d rather feel, and feel more, and more.
This hadn’t come out of nowhere. This disarray had been building long before the lightning tempest.
Provoked, my fingers snuck up the back of Jeryn’s scalp, eager to bury themselves in his mane and pull on the roots.
In a flash, his hands seized mine. “Stop,” he uttered, the entreaty too faint to have come from such a whipcord frame.
My head misted, yet I hesitated. Although I would never force anyone, the unmistakable husk in his tone betrayed him. That, and the fear. My touch scared him, but not out of disgust.
Switching directions, I swept my fingers over the crown of his head. With light motions, I draped my hands through the layers, urging him to disarm with me.
The impact ricocheted through his form, his eyes clenching shut as he committed another crime. On a groan, his mouth traced over the sunburst collar encircling my neck.
And every fiber of my being detonated.
His lips skimmed the tattoos cruelly and feverishly. Then he kissed me there, his mouth pulling my flesh between his lips. And the heat of his tongue followed, the smooth flat racing up my throat.
Oh, Seasons. He wanted me, craved me, hungered for me. And I wanted him back.
I wanted the pain of his touch, and the agony of his tongue, and the ferocity of his cock. I wanted to be taken, to be split open, to be ridden. I wanted us to wreck one another’s world.
“Why you?” I begged while scraping through his hair.
Why him? Of all monsters, why this one?
Jeryn’s body strained, as though tormented by the same question. Like a starving man, he plied my throat with open-mouthed kisses, his lips feeding on the sunbursts. My eyes flipped to the back of my head, my cunt melted, and my shaky fingers dashed up his scalp.
“Fuck,” he seethed against the inked symbols.
The illicit sound oozed down my spine as I bowed into him, disturbing the roots and clinging for support. With every sweep of his tongue, a fractured moan dropped from my lungs. The merciless contact turned me into an explosive—a glowing ball of flame, with the power to drain the ice from this man’s veins and turn him into flint.
Hellfire, that’s what happened. His mouth became that flint, and my body became kindling, smoking and sizzling. Pinned against him like a spread butterfly, anticipation robbed me of oxygen.
Sultry air drenched the chamber. Glowing blossoms quivered from the bushes outside.
His face burrowed into my throat, licking and sucking the sunbursts like he wanted to consume them, to erase them. And my skin liked him so much for that. I drowned in his scent and his groans and his touch, each forbidden pass of his tongue like an apology, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.
I straightened, swooped down, and grabbed his face. Finally, I beheld the prince’s expression, from the sharp irises to the inflated black pupils, from the half-mast orbs to the unhinged jaw—from loss to lust, with nothing held back.
His attention riveted on me … saw me.
I didn’t love him. Yet I understood him, and I thirsted for him, and there could be more. Little by little, there might be so much more.
I fixated on his corrupt mouth, longing to soften the contours. With a ravenous gasp, my mouth dove for his own.
The motion triggered a swift response. At the last moment, Jeryn reeled back, his palms grappling my cheeks.
“No, my little beast,” the prince husked. “Far too easy.”
His torso heaved against mine. Wound up like a spring, I panted into him.
His little beast. For the first time, the nickname sounded like an endearment. To that end, ambition lit his face, an impulse that urged me backward.
Far too easy.
I realized what he meant. I’d known this experience before, only this time a thrill fired through my blood.
With a hooded gaze, the enemy moved toward me. Instinctively, I skittered off his lap and launched to my feet.
Jeryn rose like a wolf on the hunt. In the shadows, the dark prince stalked my way.
As feral calls played through the rainforest, I walked backward toward the chamber’s exit. In my wrinkled nightgown, I must look as rumbled as he did. Tousled blue hair fell around Jeryn’s face, the snags indicating where I’d cleaved through the mess. Low slung pants skimmed his waist, his hipbones visible along with every cobbled muscle stacked across his upper body. If I peered closer, a wet mark would reveal where my pussy had drizzled onto him.
But I wouldn’t peek, because I’d have to come nearer. As the prince had said, that would be too easy.
We’d begun like this. Captor and captive. Predator and prey. Tonight we would continue that way, except with another desire in mind, a different kind of chase. One that nobody was here to witness or judge or stop.
This hidden world was ours. Within it, we could be as wild as we wanted. Whoever caught the other would have their pick of the pleasure.
“I shall give you a head start,” Jeryn husked.
“I don’t need it,” I whispered.
And his lips tilted a fraction. “Then run.”
That instruction, I would heed. Twisting, I bolted from the chamber.