Chapter 21
FELORé
Alek’s knife fit perfectly in my palm, its handle warm, heavy, and the blade impossibly sharp, such that it would cut him if he so much as twitched against it. But that was the thing. He’d never twitched.
Not even now as I lay across from him in his bed, beneath his silken sheets, barely a pace between us.
He was unmoving, smoking like a fucking thurible because he insisted, and calmly staring at me like he was awaiting whatever was to happen with the grace of a much more seasoned vultus. Even if his eyes were a little wild.
What the fuck was I doing? Was this trust? Was this me trusting him? He’d told me not to. You wouldn’t trust the darkness of a nightmare, and you shouldn’t trust me.
But here I was. Word after word, choice after choice, possession after possession, I was trusting him.
My swallow was dry. “I’m going to try to be subtle. As subtle as I can.”
“Subtle,” he whispered, the word lingering between us as his gaze dipped down to my mouth. “And what shall I do, human? While you’re being subtle.”
What a question. What an answer that wanted to spill from me.
You can fucking lie there and look exactly how you look which is goddamn enough, and I want your ghost hands on me or maybe your actual hands on me, and fuck you, Alek. Fuck you for existing.
“Nothing,” I said, peering up through my lashes. “Just lie there.”
His tongue skated across his teeth. “Just lie here.”
My gaze wandered down to his strong chest, to the muscles of his biceps and abdominals, and the candlelight that danced over his soft skin. “Lie there.”
He finally nodded, and it felt like a confirmation, only too soon because neither of us was ready for what was to come. Of that, I was certain.
I gripped the handle of the knife a little firmer in my palm. Then I gently pressed the blade against his throat. He tipped his chin back when I angled it upward toward his strong jaw, his breath rising high into his chest.
Then he chuckled. The sound was low, dark, and brutally sexy as it prickled down my spine without mercy.
“Point taken, Snow Fox.” He winked, carefully lifting the cigarette to his lips. “Point taken.”
My mind was buzzing such that, for a moment, I forgot what it was I was supposed to do. I’d not had to pleasure myself in a very long time, probably years, as there was always one of them to do it for me.
And gods, did they do it well.
I pulled open the tie of my trousers—his trousers that I was wearing. They were so big on me that it didn’t take much to wiggle my hand inside and grip my cock. Subtle was what I’d said. No sounds. Minimal movement.
His gaze zipped down to my hand.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I want you looking at me, that way I can see if they change.”
He followed direction splendidly, lifting his pretty gaze to meet mine. His eyes were intense, but not the demonic red of a normal vultus by this point. They were still the warm molten copper that apparently haunted my dreams now.
“And what if they do?” he asked. “What if they change?”
“Then that’s helpful for me to know, isn’t it?” I said, holding the knife firm. “So, keep them on me.”
He exhaled smoke, careful not to move as he tapped ashes onto the expensive sheets like he didn’t give a fuck about them. Or about anything. “For a moment, I forgot how bossy you were.”
I gripped my cock in my free hand. “Did you also forget how much you liked it?”
A smirk twitched his full lips. “I don’t think I could forget that.”
I let myself stare at his mouth where his sultry half-smile lingered.
It’d be impossible not to use him as fuel to turn myself on, and why shouldn’t I?
Beautiful, infuriating demon with all the long, inky lashes, the sharp cheekbones, and the jawline as cut as his stomach.
Everything about him was just so damn masculine. That was it.
He was a champion of masculine energy, even down to the way he treated the security of the human chained to his room. No, especially that.
I stroked myself a little harder, leaning into all of it. The way he stared. The way he looked with the knife against his throat. The way he naturally smelled.
It was difficult to distinguish with the herbs he kept continuously burning, but beneath roasted cardamom and star anise was the distinct smell of ashes. And earth. Something sweltering. Something sweet. Something that begged to dance over my taste buds.
This was the second time I’d found myself desperate to taste his cum. Gods, just once.
I pressed my eyes shut and stroked a little faster, leaning into that scent, imagining what it would feel like leaning into his mouth. Touching my lips to his. How it’d feel to cup the muscle of his chest in my hand and smooth my thumb over his nipple just to be the reason it got hard.
When I reopened my eyes, he was still watching me. But something had changed.
It wasn’t like his eyes were bright red, but a tension had crept into his body, bunching his shoulders and constricting his jaw.
My nostrils flared as I continued stroking myself. Well, I maybe liked that, too, didn’t I? Not the danger, necessarily. But I maybe liked to know that I was…affecting him.
His Adam’s apple bobbed against the polished steel of the knife. “How does it feel?”
I stopped stroking to catch my breath. “You’ve never pleasured yourself?”
“We’re not talking about me,” he said, his voice low. “I want to know how it feels to you.”
My tongue wandered over the back of my teeth.
“Human,” he said, his voice more silken. “It’s just a question. That’s all.”
Yes, but a dangerous question? A question I should probably not be answering?
“It feels…” I trailed off, stroking myself from base to tip, picturing his hand instead of mine. “Adequate.”
He inched a fingerbreadth closer, eyes flitting down to the blade hindering his neck like he loathed it. “What would make it feel better than adequate?”
You. YOU touching me would make me feel better. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Prince.”
“Who says I’m concerned—?” He gasped. Then it transformed into a chuckle when I pressed the blade tighter against his throat.
“Like I said, just lie there.”
He inhaled a drag of smoke, a smile curling his lips as he said, “That’s right. So that you may concentrate.”
I licked my fingers.
“Concentrate on whatever it is you’re thinking about,” he said, gaze dropping to my hand.
“Yes.”
“Which is…?”
Oh, I should not answer that with honesty. I probably shouldn’t answer at all.
But he must’ve taken my silence as some personal confirmation, because his twisted smile only grew. “Snow Fox. Are you thinking about me as you stroke your cock?”
The way he said cock—fixed and fervid; lingering on the k—had to have been on purpose. Like he was trying to make my heart race.
I didn’t back down, still stroking as I said, “So what if I am?”
His eyes sparkled, lit up, and I knew it was treacherous territory I was slipping into, but it was also delectable. I held his gaze as I spat onto my fingers.
“You’re a sex demon, Alek,” I said, gripping myself again. “What else are you good for? If not to look pretty for me as I stroke my cock.”
He bared his brilliant teeth. Then he wormed an inch closer and asked, “Do tell me how you think I’m pretty.”
“Do tell me how you don’t care about this blade on your neck.”
He grinned, like he didn’t give one fuck about this blade on his neck as he repeated, “You think I’m pretty, Feloré.”
“I don’t know what to think about you, Alek.”
“Can I tell you what I think about you?” he asked, and I could almost swear he’d managed to wriggle closer somehow. “I think you’re special.”
Danger. Danger, danger, danger. It was ringing throughout my body.
“There is something so fearless about you, Snow Fox. Something unbearably sweet.”
“I’m not sweet,” I said. “I don’t know why you think that.”
“Oh, but you are.” Blade be damned, he was crowding into me, and I was letting him. “You’re so fucking sweet that it hurts.”
I should be running. Something was telling me that I should be somewhere else, anywhere but this bed.
So, then why wasn’t I? Why was I still here under these soft sheets with him, with a part of me yearning to hear what he had to say? Tell me how I’m sweet. Tell me how I’m special. Wrap your ghost hands around my neck and tell me.
“I know I cannot touch you, Feloré,” he whispered. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t offer my assistance.”
My spine arched a little as I stroked. “What kind of assistance?”
“I can tell you what I would do to you,” he said. “If this were some other lifetime and I were some other demon.”
I swallowed the water pooling in my mouth. My mind knew better, but my body was screaming yes. YES. “That’s a bad idea.”
He chuckled. He was so much closer than when we started, close enough that his scent of ashes and earth blitzed my senses as he glanced down at my working hand. “And what of this, my love? A good idea?”
No. No, absolutely fucking not, but here we were.
“I promise to behave,” he whispered. “I don’t even have to use words. Sometimes words are not enough anyway.”
My heart hastened when he gently gripped my jaw in his fingers.
“May I?” he asked, and I didn’t know what I was agreeing to, but there was something so mischievous in his expression. “Hello, Snow Fox.”
My eyes rounded.
Had he…said that? It sounded like his voice, but at the same time, it didn’t. It was too wavering, like the rumble of distant thunder carried by the wind.
Still. I’d heard it, so he had to have said something.
“What was that?” I asked, eyes dipping to his sensuous mouth. “That was you?”
He smiled, coughing once like it syphoned his energy. Then he wet his lips. “If I could, I would lick the length of your spine.”
I gushed a breath, but it was so thrilling. Too thrilling to care that he’d said something rather misbehaving indeed. “How are you doing that?”
“Practice, my love. Lots and lots of practice.”
The true answer: power. This prince was old world power in a nineteen-year-old body.
“I would start right here,” he said, back in his deep voice, pressing a warm finger onto my neck, just below my ear. “And I would end…”
Chills traced the length of my spinal column as he smoothed his finger downward, all the way. All the way down.
His finger stopped on the very tip of my tailbone. “Here.”
My cock was growing harder as I stroked.
“Gods, but would I? Would I end there?” He inhaled a drag, smoke permeating between us. “Or would I just keep licking?”
That last part he did not say. That last part was unearthly, high and airy, like the words were whirling around my skull.
“What do you think, Snow Fox? Keep licking you? See how sweet you really are?”
I gritted my teeth, eyes half-lidded as I continued to touch myself.
Smoke coiled from his nostrils. “How would you like it if I ate your perfect ass?”
I whimpered, in part from the ghost voice scratching at the windows of my mind, but also from the taste of his herbs on my lips as he blew smoke between us. Fuck, how delirious.
“If I held you down and ate your sweet ass like it was my last meal,” he said, “would you beg me to stop?”
I gripped my cock tighter.
“Or would you beg me to keep going?”
A tiny moan escaped my clenched teeth.
“Either way,” he whispered, his smile white and demonic, “I’d still get to hear you beg.”
My breath sizzled between my teeth. “How fucking filthy you are.”
“Oh, absolutely, baby.” He eased an inch closer. “Filthy and deranged and goddamn obsessed.”
I peered up at him through my lashes.
“See, I don’t want anyone else to have you.
” He was wound so tightly, as tightly as me, and I couldn’t tell if we were still playing roles or if this had evolved into something deeper.
“I hate the thought of someone else’s hands on your body.
Someone else’s mouth on your skin. I hate it so much that I think I’ll outlaw it. ”
An intense and wanton desire ripped through me, lighting my fingertips on fire. “You can’t do that.”
“The fuck I can’t.”
I whimpered when he scraped his fingernails through my hair, wrapping tingles around my ribcage. I was still stroking, lost in the sensation of his hand on me. Lost in his words.
“My kingdom. My rules,” he whispered, a wickedness curling into his tone. “And I say no one else touches you, my little forbidden fruit.”
Chills bristled the hairs on my arms. “What if they do?”
“They’ll regret it.” He gripped my hair by the roots, tilting my head back, exposing my mouth to his. “I’ll make it slow and agonizing. And excessively cruel.”
Fuck. Fuck, I was going to come.
“No one touches you.”
I swallowed hard.
He brushed his lips over mine, whispering into my mouth, “Only me.”
A raspy cry poured past my lips.
“Because you’re mine, darling,” he said, his fingers tightening even more.
My body felt like it was going to slingshot across the room and then through the sky as the pressure fostered in my lower abdomen like a rumbling volcano.
“You’re fucking mine.”
I was coming.
Gods, hard. Hard.
Muttering unending curse words into his mouth, coating my hand in so much wet as this demon snarled back at me, the sound like gravel and pure sin, and it was so much, and so good. His grip tightened on my hair, jerking my head back to meet his gaze, and I splashed my stomach in ribbons of white.
I was being pulled into two separate directions—the pleasure soaring me high into the heavens and the pain pulling straight down into hell.
There wasn’t time to think.
I yanked the knife from his neck, dug the sharp tip into the flesh of my palm, and forced myself to slash.
My voice was a husky mess that broke into a cry while he watched. Mouth open. Eyes wide. Fully fucking mesmerized.
I squeezed my fingers into a shaking fist above his ribs, emptying a stream of crimson red over his wound.
Echoes of pleasure spasmed my muscles while the sight of my blood dripping down his side did something else entirely.
I couldn’t describe it, but it was sick. And strange. And fucking delicious.
“My gods,” I panted, swallowing once with a throat so thick and dry, as I shut my eyes to catch my breath. To feel.
After a moment, I blinked my eyes open, but the gaze of my young prince was not his. It was dark. It was the color of a blood moon. It was demonic red.
My brows furrowed as my stomach tightened in panic. “Alek—”
That was when Alek twitched.