Chapter 22
FELORé
“Fuck,” I hissed, pressing the knife hard against Alek’s throat.
But he had this glazed-over look about him, like it didn’t matter. Like, Oh, well. Kill me if you must, Snow Fox. And that was because he had other concerns.
I flinched when he swiped his fingers over my stomach, gathering as much of my spilled cum as he could, which dripped in a glaze of white down his elegant fingers.
He plunged them into his mouth, twitching harder, hollowing out his cheeks to suck. Then he did it again. And again.
“You taste,” he whispered, slipping his wet fingers over my skin, gathering cum, licking them, “like nothing I’ve ever tasted. Like rapture.”
I was…unable to move.
My heart was hammering. Where I was pressing the blade against his throat had started to bead in blood, but he didn’t even seem to notice as he collected every drop he could, muttering a string of curse words beneath his quickened breath.
When nothing was left, he gently curled his fingers around my wrist where I still held it over his wound. He looked completely lost in himself as he brought my bleeding palm to his mouth. And began to suck.
I gasped, my forehead crinkling as he sucked and sucked. He was swallowing my blood. He was drinking it like he’d never tasted anything better.
“S-so good,” he whispered, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth as he held my palm against it. “Everything about you, human, is so fucking good.”
I whimpered. I should’ve been trying to squirm free, but I let him press my palm against his mouth tightly. I let him swallow more blood. And more.
“It’s perfect,” he whispered.
My senses were beginning to clarify as I tried to wiggle my hand, but he clenched it tight.
“You taste like life, baby,” he was saying to no one. “You are life.”
I tugged my palm away with a strong yank, and he snarled like a beast, but I twisted the blade, pushing the pointed tip into his Adam’s apple. “You don’t want to hurt me, Alek. I know you don’t.”
He blinked hard. When he spoke again, his words were strained, like he was battling himself just to say them. “I-I don’t. I s-swear, I don’t.”
But then why was he gathering my chain in his hands? Squeezing it so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. I wanted to run, but at the same time, I couldn’t afford to let this knife budge.
He licked the bead of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth and said, “C-c-igarette.”
The word was shaky and Vultaen, and it took my brain a moment to wrap around it.
“F-fucking ciga-re-rette,” he repeated, his abdominals tightening, like he was suddenly in pain. “Now!”
I scrambled off the bed, yanking as much of my chain as I could, while my panicked gaze searched the room. Cigarette, cigarette—then I spotted one on his desk. My chain jangled as I charged for it.
“Light it,” he hissed.
Fuck, I’d never done that. I didn’t know how, but I’d seen him do it a hundred times. I clenched it between my lips, sucking it as I held the tip over a flame from a candle, my hands shaky, but I got it. It was lit.
I twisted back around, halting cold at what I saw. It was the way he looked.
He was shirtless, smeared in blood, sitting up in the bed, and clutching the headboard behind him like he could break it with his bare hands.
His eyes were reddened and absolutely wild while the muscles of his chest twitched.
Even his long tongue had wandered from his mouth, licking the last remains of my blood from his lips.
He looked just like a sex demon. A lethal creature of darkness. So. Fucking. Hungry.
“Bring it to me,” he said, bouncing a foot, his voice distorted around the edges, like it was transmuting into its natural form, and I couldn’t help but feel every drop of fear as I started toward the bed.
It hit me too late as I glanced down at the cigarette in my hand. It was this. It was the fucking cigarettes. That was how he controlled it.
“Put it between my lips,” he said.
I froze, clutching the cigarette in one hand and the knife in the other.
“I told you I didn’t want to hurt you, and I meant it.” He clenched his teeth as the muscles of his stomach tightened and rippled. “But you need to bring me that now. Now.”
“Okay,” I whispered, nodding as I started toward him, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet. “I am. See? I am.”
But it was hard to believe this tiny cigarette would fix anything, just like it was hard to believe how blind I’d been this whole time. I didn’t see it before. I didn’t fucking see it!
He gripped the bed tighter when I stepped close enough to reach him, holding my gaze as he said, “No matter what I do, put it between my lips.”
No matter what he did? My heartbeat was thrashing, sounding behind my breath as I leaned in closer, and closer.
Then his hand snapped out, snatching my wrist, yanking hard. I stumbled toward him.
“You’re doing fine,” he said, his voice deeper, darker as he squeezed my wrist. “Put it between my lips.”
But I couldn’t. He was preventing me from getting close. He was clenching my wrist where I held the cigarette hard enough to crush my bone, like something inside him didn’t want him to smoke it.
“I can’t,” I whispered, trying to force it closer.
“Yes, you can.”
“I can’t! You’re stronger than me.”
His body was starting to squirm, parts of it trembling like he was fighting with himself. Then he yanked me forward with a rough tug, and I lurched onto the bed.
“You’re going to have to smoke it.” He was nodding as he pulled me on top of him. “Smoke it and force it on me.”
I tried to push myself off him, but he’d grabbed my chain, dragging me down as I fought.
“You can do it,” he said, his voice shaking. “Come on, Snow Fox. Smoke it. And kiss me.”
Fuck! His fingernails were digging into my thighs. He was losing himself.
Kiss him. All I needed to do was kiss him.
I sprang forward, straddling his narrow waist with my knees. Then I sucked the cigarette as hard as I could, filling my lungs with fragrant smoke while he gripped my thighs, gaze falling down my body.
With smoke burning my lungs, I clenched his firm jaw in my fingers. Then I crushed our mouths together.
The moan that poured from him was so deliciously desperate, like he was trying to feed, trying to come alive with a single kiss.
But if he wanted the single kiss, then he’d have to take the fucking sedation.
I exhaled fully into his mouth, keeping our lips sealed so nothing could escape, and he had no choice but to breathe.
He wasn’t drinking from me. Maybe it was the smoke, or maybe he just didn’t know how, but he wasn’t taking anything, even as his spine arched and nails dug harder into my skin.
His body jolted in protest when I broke the kiss, but I pressed my palm firmly over his mouth to hold the smoke in. He whimpered, blinking up at me with his red eyes so longing. So full of want.
I held his striking gaze, sucking in another deep drag. Then I lifted my palm, kissing him once more, slowly that time, emptying my breath into him.
His hands were still rubbing my thighs, his eyes still red, but something about him had changed. I could sense it. Like a sentience had slipped back into his body.
I sucked in more smoke, blowing it in cool curls over his lips as I whispered, “Alek, is this you?”
His eyes rolled shut as he breathed it in, holding it in his lungs.
“Is this you?” I repeated. “Are you back?”
“No. No, I’m afraid it didn’t work.”
My eyes bulged.
“What if you tried kissing me just once more?” he asked, a hint of a smile curling one side of his mouth. “That should probably do the trick.”
I blinked.
A joke? That was…a joke?
I was on top of him, my hand was a stinging, bloody mess, I just barely avoided certain death, and he was fucking joking?
Blame it on his flippancy in this moment. Or his flippancy since the beginning. Or maybe the pain in my hand or the collar around my neck or the adrenaline falling around us like a heavy rain, but I couldn’t stop it.
I reared back. Then I slapped this demon hard across the face.
A grunt flew past his lips as his head jerked to one side, and for a moment, time stopped.
But then he burst into a chuckle—because of course he fucking did—and the sound was low and sultry. Sexy.
He was still laughing when he twisted back to me, stretching his chiseled jaw side to side, and gods, I hated it.
I hated how he didn’t care about anything. I hated how I cared about everything, including him.
I especially hated how I did not hate him. Not at all.
“You know what, Prince of Novithia?” I said, leaning down into him, jamming the cigarette between his teeth. “Fuck you.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, holding it between his teeth as he tried to snatch my arm, but I twisted free. “Snow Fox, wait—”
“Do not.” I stumbled from the bed, swiveling around to jab a finger at him. “Do not Snow Fox me. Do you have any appreciation for what kind of danger I’m in? What could’ve happened just now?”
“I did not mean to make light.” He pushed himself up to a seat. “For that, I’m sorry—”
“And those,” I said, flinging a hand toward the cigarette between his fingers. “That’s how you do it. That’s how you pretend to be so different.”
He parted his lips to speak, then resolved into a nod. “They’re how I manage.”
“Manage? Manage what? To lie to everyone, including me? You should’ve fucking told me, Alek.”
“I tried,” he argued. “I tried to say no, but you insisted—”
“You should’ve fucking told me about you,” I shouted. “How you’re not different. That there’s nothing broken inside you. You should’ve told me the truth, so at least I would know what I was dealing with.”
He stared at me for a long time as a heaviness settled over the room. “When?”
I searched his gaze. “When what?”
“When exactly would you have me tell you the truth, my love? The second we met?”
I bounced a little.
“When you showed up chained to my room, was I to say, Oh, I’m sorry for your luck, terrified human, but just so you know, I want to lick every inch of you?”
My nostrils flared.
“Hello, terrified human. My name is Alek. Am I a virgin? Why, yes, I am.” He swung his legs off the bed, pushing himself to a stand. “I’m also consumed with thoughts of you. Consumed with what it’d feel like to hold you down and fuck you.”
I gulped.
“Feloré, was it?” The smoke swirled around him as he winked. “Well, you sleep tight now.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough for it to bleed. I had nothing to respond. Because he was right.
“You and I both know you would’ve tried to stab me in my sleep, my fanged fox—you still might, and I can’t even say I’d blame you. But I lied because I had to. I lied to protect your sanity.”
I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want to be standing here with nothing to say.
“Not to mention, protect you from the wrath of this crown.” He tipped his chin toward the knife still clutched in my palm. “I understand, Snow Fox. But my father sure wouldn’t.”
“Why do you care about protecting me?” I asked, the fight draining from my voice.
“Why? It makes no sense.”
He chuckled a little, but there was no humor in it. “It’s that difficult to imagine, huh? There’s no part of you that can look at me and see anything other than the cruelty of my kind.”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to see or how to feel.
“You’re alive, not because it’s easy for me, but because I want you alive.”
Gooseflesh pebble down my arms at the same time my heart fluttered, and I struggled to tamp either of them down.
“I am not lying when I say I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt any human.”
My eyes narrowed. Wait. “Wait, that is why you haven’t eaten? Because you don’t want to harm a human?”
“Oh, if only,” he said, shaking his head, sighing like he was weary. “If only it was just harming.”
Chills scattered across the back of my neck.
“I cannot do it—no, I won’t,” he said, reaching a hand out, then letting it fall. “I won’t be the reason the life drains from a human’s strange but impossibly lovely eyes.”
As if I wasn’t already shocked silent. As if everything I learned tonight had not been contradictory to a whole lifetime of intuition. My tongue was barely able to wrap around the words rolling over it.
I wanted to shake him as hard as I could for some reason. “But you’ll die, Prince. The life will drain from your eyes. Do you not realize that?”
He shrugged a shoulder, like that wasn’t news. Like he’d already resigned. Then he said, “What is the point of living, if that is what I must live with?”
My heart. It melted.
It melted inside my chest so profoundly, so devastatingly, that when I looked upon his sick face, I suddenly saw the weight of each freckle, the pain underscoring each crease, and the sorrow behind the purple smears beneath his eyes.
I didn’t have the words. I didn’t even have the thoughts. What I had was a paradigm shifting inside my body in real time.
Here stood a vultus. Here stood the enemy. Here stood the future king of this realm, and his heart was possibly as pure as the angel bone still clutched in my palm. Furthermore, I believed him.
The knife fell from my fingers, clattering onto the floor with a clank. I couldn’t be so sure why I did it. Why I rushed to him. Maybe, I just wanted to show him some mercy as I pulled his body into mine.
His arms hovered in the air around me as he tensed, like he didn’t quite know what to do. Then the future king hugged me back.