Chapter Twenty-Five #2
With an eye roll, Laleh had mimicked kissing the air.
“Then for tonight, I guess you’ll have to be satisfied with your imagination.
Maybe you should wish on a star for the best dream-railing of your life.
” And just then, on the heels of her words, a silver streak had arced across the heavens.
“Star gods! Hear our plea for the sake of finicky virgins everywhere!”
“Laleh!”
I’d snorted as we dissolved into drunken giggles.
That had been the night—the very first night—I’d lain in bed and silently wished for the other half of my soul to appear in my dreams if I couldn’t have him in reality and if he even existed.
Embarrassed heat drizzles through me at the recollection.
Because my perfect dream lover had come in bursts of starlight and shadow, and I’d woken shaken and spent . . . from a starsdamned dream.
Only it hadn’t just been a dream.
“It was you,” I say. “All those times.”
“Yes.” His intense focus is on my mouth. His shadows flutter around me, and I feel my own magic rise to their gentle touches. “I want to kiss you. I want to know if your lips taste the same as they do in all my darkest fantasies.”
My core goes liquid.
Stars . . .
I have to be smart and strong—giving in to my desires and the melting invitation in his eyes won’t get me the answers I seek. “But you said you intended to reject the bond. You didn’t want this then, so don’t pretend now.” Anger douses the embers of lust. “You said so before.”
Onyx eyes flash. “I was protecting you!”
“You were protecting yourself,” I say, stepping sideways and walking to the window, where I can breathe air that isn’t him. “You didn’t want me.”
He scrapes a hand through his hair. “I do want you, that’s the fucking problem.”
“You have a poor way of showing it.” I narrow my eyes. “Why should I even believe you when all you’ve done is push me away? Why, Darrius?”
“Because as much as I crave this, you will be the fucking end of me!”
The bitter admission explodes between us, and my heart feels as if it has been torn from my chest. Gods, I can’t breathe. “If I’m so fatal to you, why keep me here? Send me back home.”
“Because you’re not safe there.”
“Good thing I’m not your problem,” I snap.
He scowls, eyes flaring gold again. “Why couldn’t you have stayed where you belonged? None of this would have happened if you hadn’t come here.”
“So it’s my fault?” Hurt blooms beneath the blades of both our words. “Did I ruin your precious plans with your Aspa?anā bride?”
“Gods, how are you this obtuse?”
I rear back. “I don’t know. How are you such a fucking coward?”
The smallest flinch catches my eye. Guilt surges, but the hum of victory runs through me, too.
The formidable, fearsome nightmare king is capable of being hurt.
There’s a foul power in it, but I revel nonetheless.
That fathomless stare glitters, his shadows writhing as he stalks toward me.
Chin aloft, I hold my ground in front of the windowsill even when he invades my space.
“Is that so?” he snarls, peering down at me, eyes dark with resentment, embittered lust, and fury as tenebrosity lashes like a knot of inky serpents around him.
A similar cocktail wars inside of me, only my starlight wants to burn everything to the ground. Sands, I’m sinking so deeply into an abyss of anguish and anger that it makes me heedless of the danger. “Yes. You’ll tuck tail and run at the first sign of trouble. Darrius Nightsong, the craven king.”
“You speak of things you do not know,” he grinds out. “I. Am. Cursed!”
“And yet in spite of said curse, your manticore fights for what he wants. Can you say the same?”
In a flash, a powerful hand encircles my throat.
It’s a loose hold, but I go still nonetheless.
Eyes on mine, he doesn’t stop there. The king cages me against the sill with his body, lean hips imprisoning mine, and his free hand fisting in my loose hair.
He pulls, making my back arch slightly, and desire burns through me at the press of his groin on my stomach.
His hard groin. A depraved shudder runs through me.
Nostrils flaring, his lips part.
“Are you afraid of me, Starbright?” he rasps, that gravelly voice doing more to me than his controlling hold. His thumb caresses my hammering pulse.
I bare my teeth. “Never.”
He bends, mouth ghosting over my jaw to my earlobe.
He bites, and I wince even as lust shoots through my veins.
Beneath my bodice, my nipples bud painfully, and a traitorous, throbbing heat gathers in my core.
My magic rears up, runes unspooling down my arms as my bracers flare.
That unsettling, predatory gaze flicks to the silvery coils and darkens even more.
His tattoos writhe, snapping at my skin.
Not for the first time, I wish the cuffs gone so he can feel the full answering force of my magic.
I’m far from unprotected, not as I yank my dagger from its holster and wedge my arm up between us to press the point of the blade to his throat.
Shadows instantly wind around my forearm, but I keep my hand locked in place as a drop of blood swells.
Sands, the sight of it shouldn’t enflame my lust even more, nor should I have an indecent desire to taste the scarlet bead.
Perhaps I am as much of a monster as he is.
I laugh coldly. “We all have demons, don’t we?”
“Not like this,” he says, his gold-sheened onyx stare drilling down into mine.
“A god cursed me to never consummate my soul-fated bond that is my divine right. Anything I feel will trigger the curse, and when I claim my soul-fated, I will be condemned to the beast for eternity.” He scoffs, an awful, derisive sound.
“So you see, Starbright, my so-called demons herald my end. Can you say the same?” he asks mockingly.
Dazed, I blink at him, thoughts churning. Anything he feels? As in emotions or physical sensations? Is that why he has been pushing me away every time we get too close? Why he’s been keeping me at a distance? Because he feels too much?
“Are you going to kill me, pátnī?” he murmurs, unaware of the chaos unspooling in my mind.
“What does that even mean?” I snap.
His eyes bore into mine like burning embers. “Wife.”
“I’m not your wife.” A shiver climbs my spine.
“The Royal Stars have decreed it so.”
“Fuck them,” I spew recklessly.
The king smiles slowly . . . a full one that curls his lips upward and makes starlight sparkle in those night-sky onyx eyes.
My breath hitches when he laughs. Laughs!
Sands, it’s fucking beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound like that, but one thing’s for sure: I absolutely do not ever want to hear that again because of how utterly weak it makes me for him.
“That irreverent tongue of yours, Starbright, will earn you their wrath.”
“Still obsessed with said appendage, I see.” That saturnine gaze drops to my mouth. I lick my bottom lip, and his eyes dilate. “Infinitely.”
My heart is still fluttering at the stupid effect of his laughter.
His fist tightens, tugging my head back, the sting of my scalp riding the pleasure simmering in my veins.
Looming over me, he presses down, and the tip of the blade sinks into his throat, the bead of blood becoming a small rivulet that runs into his collar.
“Don’t.”
“You think a mere blade can stop me?” he murmurs, and then groans as I lick my dry lips again.
“I’d welcome any blade for a single taste of you.
Let you bleed me dry. Tell me to stop, Suraya, and I will.
” His entire body shudders as if he’s been holding himself back the whole time, as though he’s about to climb out of his skin.
“I am selfish and craven. And I fear I am not the least of what you deserve.”
“But you’re what I need,” I whisper, lowering my arm and releasing the dagger so it clatters to the floor between us. “Exactly as you are.”
His eyes widen with despair and hope, the shine of gold eclipsing the obsidian for a frenetic heartbeat before that beautiful jet stare returns.
Desire rides him, as does the curse. His fingers on my throat tighten, drawing me up to my tiptoes.
A small snarl escapes him as he angles me to where he wants me, and then his mouth crashes into mine.