Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“Because I’m not ready.” I try not to let my fear bleed through my frustration. “And you said it yourself—you’re not ready, either. You just won’t tell me why. War is coming whether we want it or not, and we both need to figure this”—I flick a hand between our bodies—“out before that happens.”
“Whose side are you on, Suraya?” My heart flinches at the use of my name. It feels unfamiliar and wrong somehow, as if we are strangers.
“How can you ask me that? I’m here, am I not?”
His eyes grow hard. “How do I know you won’t betray us to go back to him? What if your confusing feelings end up costing us everything?”
“That’s not fair.” I grit my teeth. “What if you decide that Zahre is the alliance you want after all? I don’t fault you for having been with her.
Am I jealous? Yes, of course I am, but that’s a natural emotion.
You’ve just spent so much of your life suppressing what it means to actually feel that you don’t even know what’s normal. ”
The king moves toward me, and instinctively, I move back. My breath tightens as he stalks me, and I match him step for step. I don’t even realize I’m being herded into a small room with a circular table until he lifts a hand and his shadows slam the door shut.
“Do you know why that is?” he asks silkily.
I gulp. “Why what is?”
“Why I don’t allow myself to feel?”
I blink at him, wary of the menace and slightly unhinged gleam in his eyes.
That and the fact that he is slowly undoing his sword belt, letting it fall to the floor.
Then go his epaulets. I’m torn between looking for an escape route and gazing hungrily at him as each piece of armor is detached.
“Yes, you told me, it’s your curse. You become the manticore. ”
The backs of my thighs hit the table as he closes the last of the distance, removing his crown and setting it on the polished surface. Darrius cages me between his arms, his rich scent musky and deepened but no less seductive. My entire body quivers as I brace my weight on the wood.
“Yes, love. I was cursed. And I have my father to thank for that,” he says, winding a hand deftly into my hair.
When his fingers catch on a knot, I let out an involuntary moan at the tiny bite of pain.
His bottomless gaze is so inky that I can drown in it, the menace eclipsed by desire, but I can see the jealousy crowding the edges of it.
“H-he did?” Somehow, I’m not surprised to know it was Fero; the brutality tracks.
Darrius’s fist tightens, yanking my head back, and he runs his nose up the column of my throat.
“Yes. That was my punishment for betraying him, you see, for helping my uncle, Saru, in the War of the Gods. I helped banish my own sire to the void where he languished in his own rot for centuries. As a parting gift, he returned the favor. If I feel any emotion—sadness, anger, joy, bliss, lust—the beast would take over. And if I ever found my soul-fated, I could never love her, or the manticore would be my immutable future, forever damning us both.”
I gasp when he sucks on my pulse hard enough to leave a mark. Shock at his words combines with lust at the movement of his wicked mouth, and I have trouble concentrating. “Are . . . aren’t soul-fated bonds sacred? How could he do that?”
“Father of the century, isn’t he?” Darrius mocks.
“Technically, he didn’t touch the bond. You see, he wanted to make sure I could never fall in love or I would become the beast forever, and you would be mated to a monster who would never be a man.
Our bond would die. He didn’t want me to unite our magic because it would make me stronger than him.
Together, my soul-fated and I would be unstoppable.
” He rears back, a muscle beating in his cheek.
He spins away from me with a noise of disgust, and I grip the edge of the table weakly.
“Cruel, isn’t it?” He laughs, but it’s an empty sound.
I stare at him. “How do you know that loving me means you would become the manticore indefinitely?”
He glances over a shoulder at me, despair in his expression. “Each time, my transformation to the beast has been longer. I lose myself a little more. When you were with him, I shifted for weeks, lost to blood and hunger and madness.”
Oh, sands. He means when I was with Roshan . . . intimately.
My face heats. Stars above, had he felt me bedding another man through the bond? I frown and think back to my first time in the aqueduct and the strange feelings I’d had reverberating through me, ones of hurt and displeasure. “You could feel . . . me?” I whisper.
His big frame shudders. “Always. But you chose him, and I could no more take that from you than I could stake my own claim. I would never condemn you to a future with a monster.”
“That’s also my choice to make,” I say softly. “I happen to have a soft spot for that monster, you know.”
My attempt at levity dies when he doesn’t react, and I lift a hand to his heaving shoulder.
He whirls, driving me backward, and wraps his large palm about my throat.
Sands, it should be wrong, but I love when he collars me like this, when he stares at me like he can’t get enough and I’m the only thing he needs to exist. “Didn’t you hear a word I said?
I won’t condemn you to this. That’s why I wanted to reject the bond. ”
“We don’t know that will happen, Dare. Maybe the answer to the curse is the bond.” I reach up to cup his face. “I have my magic back. We could try.”
Hope flickers for the barest moment before it disappears.
“No, I can’t risk you. And I can’t risk abandoning Everlea without a king with war on the horizon.
” He releases me so suddenly that I slump back.
Anguish twists his features. “Gods, I’m sorry.
I should take my leave. I’ve spent days with the Aspa?anā, weeding out Karkad’s treachery and the rot in my own court, and all I wanted to do was come back here .
. . to you.” He swipes angrily at his face.
“Only to hear you say you love another.”
“Loved,” I reply softly. “Yes, I loved him. But you cannot fault me for that, Dare, for not knowing we were soul-fated. You had other lovers, too.”
“That was sex, nothing more.”
Jealousy and desire punch through me. “And the beast didn’t take over?” When he shakes his head, resolve fills me. “Then have me like you did her. Without emotion.”
“Suraya,” he whispers.
“Will sex seal the bond?”
“Not entirely. There’s a ritual.” His lips part, pupils dilating with lust. “Is this what you want?”
“If we can’t beat the curse, I think you need to practice your control with the manticore. You said it yourself: It’s different now. With him. And he likes me.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“Last time, you connected with him and he ceded control to you. Don’t push him away,” I say, blushing wildly at the thought of our previous encounter. “He’s part of you.”
Holding his gaze, I reach for the straps of my dress and unfasten them, letting the soft fabric pool to the floor until I’m standing only in my undergarments.
He lets out a groan, his shadows flickering about him, as I kick off my slippers and reach down to step out of my undergarments.
I’ve never been much of an exhibitionist, but the idea of standing like this, bare, in front of him only makes me hotter.
“Fuck, Starbright. I’m covered in sweat, and you’re perfect. I cannot . . .”
Gods, I love when he calls me that name.
“You can. I need you exactly like this.” I lift my brows and point to his clothing, the rich, earthy scent of him doing maddening things to me. “Your turn.”
He reaches for his belt and then stalls. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. I won’t be gentle. I don’t know how to be.”
“I want you as you are.” I walk toward him and put my hand over his, undoing his buckle and then the laces of his trousers.
I’m unprepared for the size of his cock when it springs free at full attention.
I’ve only ever seen one of these before, and while they are comparable in length, his is curved and thicker than I’m used to.
A bead of fluid forms at the tip, and I bend to lick it off, moaning in my throat at the salty-sweet tang of him.
“Fuck,” Darrius groans as I envelop the silky head with my lips. I fist him at the base and take him as far back in my mouth as I can. But when I glance up and his eyes roll back in his head, I suppose I’m doing something right. “Enough,” he says, dragging me up to take my lips in a brutal kiss.
His tongue explores every inch of my mouth as he walks us back to the table, his erect cock pressed wickedly against my stomach.
Stars, I’m so wet I can feel my arousal leaking down my inner thighs.
He grips my chin, face harsh with tension.
For a second, his eyes flash gold, and I wonder if we’re making an irreversible mistake.
But every instinct inside of me says that we’re not.
“Last chance, Starbright. Are you certain?”
I smirk up at him, reaching down and making him hiss when I stroke him. “You’ve done this before as a dreamwalker. Let’s see if the real thing can match up.” When he doesn’t move, I squeeze hard. “Now fuck me like the god you are.”
Stars, the hunger in his eyes is almost too much to take. His gaze fucking immolates.
He kisses me hard and turns me roughly, hand to my spine and pressing me down to the table. He spreads my legs and runs a palm over the plump curve of my ass. “Gods, look at you. You’re fucking gorgeous like this.”
I feel his fingers slip through my folds and hear his grunt of approval at the wetness he finds there before angling himself into place.
And then he thrusts into me to the hilt.
Even though I’m drenched, it’s by no means an easy fit, the burn of the stretch making me gasp and shoving me to my tiptoes.
His cock feels like it’s splitting me in half, but I want this.
I want to feel every inch of him. “Darrius . . .”