27. The Stag and the Wolf #3
In a bolt of blazing, shimmering passion, his lips were on mine.
Breath left my throat with a muffled moan at the soft yet rough and strong feel of him.
Riot pulled me flush against his chest, gripping my lower waist. As my lips collided with his, our breaths ragged and wanting, I tangled my fingers into his hair.
Soft as silk, it fell through my touch, and his magic cascaded over me like a weightless waterfall of power and light.
Fang and antler danced amongst the blooms again.
Were I the wolf or the deer?
The stag or the lycanthrope?
Flashes of white stained my vision behind my eyelids, and when I opened my eyes, pulling away from his kiss, the circle of fox flame beneath us was glowing like stars. The questions died on my tongue as Riot regarded me with a hunger that left me breathless. “Focus on me,” he commanded.
Despite the glimmering magic igniting around us, turning the dreary woods into a small wonderland, it wasn’t difficult to focus on Riot.
Slowly he unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his chiseled middle.
Our lips crashed to each other again, broken only by the tug of my corset as he loosened the ties, dropping the ivory and red patterned silk garment to the ground. The blood of a wounded stag.
My hands greedily roamed his chest, the feel of his teeth scraping against my neck drawing a moan from my throat.
Riot’s magic caressed my being, warming my belly, blinding me to anything but him.
I tugged at the waistband of his pants, and catching my cue, he stood, looking down at me like a glowing being from beyond the realms. He dropped his pants, his length springing to life as he radiated.
“You’re a god,” I awed. Not as a compliment or exaggeration—he had to be. There was nothing else that existed that was anywhere near what Riot was. He was magnificent. Was I just now seeing it, was he just now allowing it, or was this his first time showing me all of him?
Riot’s lips lifted in a half smile. “Take off that skirt and those fishnets that have been tormenting me, Rumor. You have been nothing but a torment.”
Unzipping my skirt, I shimmied it and my stockings off, leaning back, naked in the flowers. Riot’s eyes prowled my naked form.
The wolf assessed his prey.
I waited, a deer accepting death.
“You…” Riot admired. “Are agonizingly beautiful.”
I crossed my leg over my knee, accentuating the curve of my bare hips. “Not bad for a rat, huh?”
Stepping forward, Riot huffed a laugh as he dropped to his knees.
“If I’m a god…” He crawled over me, and my breath hitched in my chest. “And I worship a rat… what kind of god does that make me?” The feel of his palm trailing over my breast had my head rolling back.
His touch sank lower, skimming over my stomach.
My hips rocked forward, searching for more, awaiting his touch.
“Can’t I take my time with you?” Riot admonished, each word said against my lips.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t want slow, and I definitely don’t want gentle.”
A low growl rumbled from Riot’s throat as his fingers finally sank into the wetness pooling at my slit. “Is that so, rat? No romance?”
My whimper was a plea as his digits toyed at my entrance. “I have no use for romance. Fuck me hard if you’re going to fuck me at all, Riot.”
“Such a cutthroat little thing you are, Rumor Malefic. Unfortunately for you, after this, you will most tragically be mine. I’m not just going to fuck you—I will avow you.”
Reaching down, I found his throbbing girth and palmed him. Sucking in a breath at the size and weight of him, I moved my hand up and down. His long hair cascaded around us, mixing into my black hair like snow on coal. “Pretty words from a pretty boy,” I teased.
Moving then, he pinned me beneath him and positioned his tip at my entrance. I let out a small moan of need. “A harrowing cry from a dark enchantress.”
With that, he slammed into me. Not with loss of control, on the contrary, with so much focused control and show of concerted, passionate strength, I cried out in agony and bliss. “Riot,” I whined. “Goddess, you feel good.”
“Fuck, Rumor. Fuck,” he groaned, as he moved in and out, hitting me at my deepest points. Magic washed over me, my magic drawing forth to meet his. While his power was a stark and sharp thing, as it met mine, rough and knotted, they slipped together in a dance of familiarity.
A stag and wolf, so different, somehow the same.
Antlers and teeth colliding.
Our bodies moved; our magics danced.
The precipice of my pleasure exploded in bursts of stardust around us. Riot’s release followed after, blinding the forest in white, extracting every molecule of satisfaction from my being.
He shouldn’t have felt this good.
Why did he feel that good?
How did our magics move with each other, and why did our powers react in such a way?
Was it all him? Was it me? Or did the two of us together create something distinctly its own mythical creature?
This wasn’t love, or care, it couldn’t be—I wouldn’t allow it. He was going to help me. Riot was on the edge of working to aid me in getting my sister back. This act of passion could tend that ember into the fire I needed from him. It could work.
It was wrong.
That’s all this was—wrong, and nothing more.
I’d do what I had to do.
Though it was confusing—it felt really damn good.
After minutes, or hours, I couldn’t be sure which, I caught my breath as Riot collapsed on top of me.
My body spent but alive with delight at the same time.
Inching my palms under Riot’s chest, I shoved him off of me and onto his back.
He looked over, lazily twirling my hair in his fingers, and began to laugh.
“What is so funny?” I snapped. “What about what just happened is amusing to you?”
He leaned up on an elbow, wrapping my hair around his fingers and giving it a gentle tug. “This.”
Pulling my gaze from his stupidly perfect face, I noted the white hair entwined in his grip.
My hair was black, not white.
Sitting up, I pulled my hair off its resting place on my back and onto my shoulders. Riot sat up, looking as pleased as a cat who’d caught a canary. “It suits you. Being mine looks good on you, rat. Well, I suppose you’re a two-toned rat now.”
The hair that fell over my right shoulder was black.
The hair that fell over my left shoulder was white.
White, just like Riot’s.
Jerking my corset off the ground, I covered up. “What the hell did you just do?” I hissed. “You had no right to change my hair of all things.”
Riot lifted a shoulder in mock innocence. “Go tell Spade I fucked you so good it altered your appearance. He’ll love that.”
“Is that what this was?” I screeched, lacing my corset and pulling on my skirt.
“Some byproduct of a brothers’ quarrel? Well, you can both go fuck yourselves.
” I jerked a bundle of fox flame from the patch on the ground and found my wolfsbane in a purple pile.
Tucking both blooms into my pockets, I made to stomp away when Riot called after me.
“Same time tomorrow?”
Raising my hand over my shoulder, I flicked him off.
It was all a game to him, wasn’t it? A way to pick at his brother, a way to fuck with me, and now to actually fuck me.
My pride squeezed in my chest. I’d thought for a moment that he actually liked me…
I’d maybe thought for a moment that I actually liked him.
Again, those thoughts were ignorant, and not what I came here for. The blooms radiated against me as I marched toward the castle, knowing that I traversed the land needed to complete my next hex.
Graveyard dirt surrounded me.
And now I’d hex the Blackthorne Boys again.