Chapter 4
FOUR
ALLERIA
I don’t mean to fall asleep.
I’m sitting with my back pressed to the invisible wall, knees pulled up to my chest, watching him.
If his eyes open, I want to see. I need that warning, even if it won’t save me.
But at some point my eyes must have closed because the next thing I know my head is jerking upright and my heart is slamming against my ribs.
It’s still night. The ring of mushrooms glows faintly to my right, and the fae—
The fae has moved.
He’s not where he was. I twist, pain shooting through me, and scan the hollow, searching for antlers, for wrong-colored skin, for any sign of movement.
There! At the base of the largest oak. He’s slumped against the trunk, one leg stretched out and the other bent, his forearm resting across the knee. His head is tipped back, and the antler tips are resting against the bark.
He’s asleep.
My eyes track over him. The torn tunic hanging crooked off one shoulder.
The muscles in his forearm where it rests over his knee.
His bare shins and feet smeared with dirt.
And my mind replays the moment he pinned me down.
The weight of him across my thighs. The solid press against my hip.
I can still feel it—the phantom imprint of his body holding mine to the ground, the way I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except lie there and wait to see what he’d do.
My stomach turns. I redirect my gaze higher, toward his face, but that’s worse because all I can see are the antlers.
I drop my gaze to his chest and hug my knees tighter.
One breath. Two. Ten. I count them because it gives my mind something to do that isn’t replaying his hand on my throat.
It doesn’t work.
I keep counting and I keep feeling those fingers pressed against my windpipe anyway. That slow squeeze, and the way the world turned dark at the edges while those gold, odd-shaped eyes watched me struggle.
Twenty-three. Twenty-four.
At some point, my vision blurs, the trees smear together, and my head droops forward.
The next time I wake, the black above the branches has thinned to a flat, colorless gray.
The cold has sunk so deep into my bones that I’m not sure I’ll ever be warm again.
My throat is raw, my ribs throb with every breath, and my fingers sting.
I’m so thirsty that my tongue feels swollen, sticking against the roof of my mouth.
The fae is no longer in his spot against the tree. He’s standing inside the mushroom circle, head tilted slightly in my direction, eyes closed. He must have moved while I was asleep. I didn’t hear him. He could have killed me. The thought chills me further.
His fingers flex, then straighten.
I press my spine harder into the invisible wall at my back. I can’t look away. All I can think about is that hand on my throat, his foot slamming into my ribs.
His eyes open.
Those pale gold eyes find me across the hollow. Every muscle in my body locks.
He steps out of the mushroom ring and comes toward me.
I should get up. I should run. But my legs won’t obey me, and even if they did, there’s nowhere to go. The barrier is solid at my back, and he’s already halfway across the hollow, moving with those long, unhurried strides.
Two more steps. Three. Then he’s standing over me. I have to crane my neck to see his face, past the antlers casting shadows across his features.
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. My throat is too dry, and my tongue sticks to my teeth. It takes two attempts before I manage to speak.
“I won’t run.” My voice comes out thin and frightened. “I swear I won’t. Please don’t hurt me.”
His hand shoots out.
I flinch, arms flying up to shield my face. But he doesn’t hit me. His fingers close around my wrist instead. His grip is so hard I know there will be bruises later.
“Don’t.” It comes out as a whimper, and I hate myself for it.
He ignores me and lifts my hand between us, turning it palm up, and examining it in the early morning light. Dirt is crusted deep into the lines. Dried blood rims the ragged edges of my nails.
I’ve never been this filthy. Never been this helpless.
Never been this scared.
His other hand rises, and for half a second it hovers above my palm. I don’t understand what he’s doing, what he wants, and I’m too scared to ask. His finger runs slowly along each of mine, tracing the bones beneath the skin.
Is he going to break them?
I jerk my arm, trying to pull free, and pain lances through my already-tortured shoulder. His grip doesn’t loosen. His fingertips drag in a slow line across my palm.
At first my brain refuses to process what is happening. A thin dark line appears on my skin. It doesn’t look real. It looks like something being done to someone else, to a hand that isn’t attached to my body.
Then the pain arrives.
Heat rips across my palm. I gasp, my fingers curling inward, to close around the wound and protect it. He forces them straight.
“No!” The word tears out of me. “No. Stop!”
He doesn’t stop.
Blood wells along the cut. It pools in the center of my palm, then spills over. Warm ribbons run between my fingers, drip from my knuckles, and fall to the forest floor in fat, dark drops.
The sting sharpens as cold air hits the open wound. My hand jerks in small, useless spasms that I can’t control. His fingertip is still pressed into my palm, the edge of his nail turning crimson.
He’s watching the blood and the expression on his face … the patience, the hunger …
My free hand claws at his forearm.
“Stop! Please. Please stop.”
He presses his fingertip into the wound.
White explodes behind my eyes. The pain is a living thing now, pulsing with my heartbeat, radiating up my wrist and into my forearm. He smears the blood across my palm in slow circles.
Then he lifts my hand higher.
I brace for another cut, another bright new line of agony. My breath comes too fast, the world spinning in dizzying turns.
He dips his head … and presses his mouth to my palm.
No!
His lips are hot against the wound. Too hot. Hotter than skin should ever be. I try to pull back, try to wrench free, but his grip is iron.
His tongue touches the cut, a rough, wet drag through open flesh and I feel it everywhere. In my hand, my arm, my chest. My whole body goes rigid.
The sensation is wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
He drags his tongue through the wound again, slower this time, gathering the blood against it in one long stroke.
Every nerve ending screams.
“What are you—” My voice is high and thin. “What are you doing?”
He swallows. My stomach heaves. I can see his throat move. He’s taking my blood into his body. I twist in his grip, gagging, and his fingers dig into my wrist until the bones grind together.
His tongue moves over my palm again, and this time … this time the sensation doesn’t stay where it should.
No. No, no, no.
This is a monster with his mouth on my skin, drinking my blood. There is nothing about this that should feel like anything except terror, agony, and violation.
But my body isn’t listening.
Every nerve is focused on the swipe of his tongue, the pull of him drawing blood from my palm. Something deep inside is coiling, tightening, waking up in response to his mouth on me.
A low sound vibrates against my palm. Satisfaction. Pleasure.
He’s enjoying this.
Horror crashes through me, thick enough that I choke on it. My body is responding to him, to this. And he knows. He has to know. He can probably taste it in my blood, feel the way my pulse has changed.
His tongue licks through the cut again, slower than before, and my back arches.
I can’t stop it. My body bows toward him, and a sound comes out of me—high and breathless, and nothing I’ve ever made before.
The shame hits me so hard that my knees buckle.
I’m making sounds for him. My body is arching for him. He’s drinking my blood, and I’m … I’m—
Tears spill down my cheeks, dripping over my lips, tasting of salt.
I hate him. I hate him with every shred of self I have. But I hate myself more for responding. For making those sounds and for the heat between my thighs that I can’t deny, can’t control, and can’t take back.
His lips press harder against my palm.
And then he sucks.
The pull is obscene. I feel it in the pit of my stomach, between my legs, in places it has no business being. My free hand flies up to push at his chest, but the moment my palm touches him, I don’t push him at all.
I clutch.
My fingers fist in the filthy material and hold on.
A sob rips out of me. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know who I am. The girl who got into a carriage yesterday to hunt a fae is gone, and what’s left is this trembling, weeping thing that’s responding to its own violation.
He drinks from me, slow and unhurried, his tongue working the wound, coaxing more blood to the surface, and lapping it up with sounds that vibrate through my entire arm. Low, satisfied sounds that make my stomach turn and my hips shift, seeking friction that isn’t there.
“Please.”
I don’t know what I’m begging for anymore. For him to stop. For him to keep going. For this to end.
When he finally lifts his head, I’m wrecked.
My breath comes in a mixture of gasps and gulps. My body is trembling, warm in places I can’t think about. I can feel the wetness of the wound throbbing in time with my heart. The other wetness, too. The one I’ll never speak of, or acknowledge.
My hand hangs limp in his grip.
His eyes open. The gold burns brighter than before as his gaze moves over me, taking in the tear tracks on my cheeks, my swollen lips where I’ve bitten them bloody, the rapid flutter of my pulse in my throat.
“Human.” His lips curve up, stained with my blood.
I don’t answer. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Everything inside me has shattered, and I don’t know how to put the pieces back together. His smile widens, displaying sharp white teeth, then his gaze drops back to my hand.