Chapter 35 Madness Incarnate #2
Valen’s grip on my wrists tightened, and when I looked up at his face, I saw that his pupils had dilated until only thin rings of black iris remained visible around their edges.
His breathing had grown shallow, controlled, as if he was fighting his own battle against whatever forces were at work between us.
“Why,” he asked, his voice dropping to that dangerous whisper that seemed to resonate in my very bones, “would I give you that satisfaction? You are exquisite in your desperation, my queen. Absolutely magnificent.”
The praise sent fresh heat spiraling through me, and I found myself leaning further into his grip. My body seemed to have developed a will of its own, responding to his words, his touch, his presence with eagerness.
“I’ll do anything,” I breathed, the words emerging as both promise and threat. “Anything you want. Just please—“
I broke off, unable to articulate exactly what I was begging for. Touch? Release? More of his divine blood? All of it seemed equally necessary, equally urgent. The fire in my veins was growing stronger with each passing moment, demanding satisfaction in whatever form he was willing to provide.
Valen’s head tilted to one side, studying me with the focused attention of a scholar examining a particularly fascinating specimen, before moving to cup my cheek, the touch electric against my sensitized skin. “Look at you,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Look what you’ve become.”
I turned my face into his palm, lips brushing against his skin without my conscious intent. He tasted of salt and winter and something metallic that reignited the fire in my veins. A moan escaped me, the sound unrecognizable as my own.
“Insatiable,” Valen observed, his thumb tracing my lower lip. “Ruined.” His voice dropped lower, rougher. “How pretty you look on your knees for me. Beautiful, with my blood on your lips.”
He leaned in, his eyes never leaving mine as his tongue traced a slow, deliberate path across my bloodstained mouth.
The contact was electric, sending shockwaves of pleasure radiating through my body.
I couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped me, my bound hands clutching desperately at the air between us as my body arched toward him of its own accord.
The taste of him lingered—copper and divinity and something darker that spoke of ancient power. My lips parted further, seeking more, hungry for whatever he would give me. But Valen held my face still, his smile widening at my frustration.
“Such a greedy thing,” he murmured against my mouth, his breath mingling with mine. “Desperate for even the smallest taste.”
His words should have been the final humiliation, but they sent another wave of molten desire through me. I rubbed my thighs together desperately, seeking relief from the building pressure.
“You would let me take you here?” Valen continued, his voice growing rougher with each word. “In this filthy dungeon, on these cold stones, anywhere I wanted?”
As he spoke, something changed in his eyes.
They began to shift, colors bleeding through like oil through water.
Black seeped in from the white edges, red, deep and rich as arterial blood, filling his irises.
This was Vharok looking at me—not the mortal king he pretended to be, but the god of blood and domination in all his terrible glory.
It sent a thrill of pure want through me so intense that I gasped audibly.
“Yes,” I whispered, my voice emerging as barely more than breath. “Anywhere. However you want me.”
Chains rattled through the back of my mind, distant but furious. Death’s voice rose like a wind through my bones, a silent thunder of protest that tore through the divine haze for a heartbeat… and then faded, swallowed by the hunger inside me.
Valen’s grip tightened painfully, fingers digging into my jaw with bruising force, forcing all my attention back to him. “I could take you right now,” he said, voice dropping to a rough whisper. “And you would thank me for it.”
I nodded frantically, desperate to make him understand the depths of my need. I needed him. I needed release. My bound hands lifted, seeking contact with any part of him I could reach.
His thumb pressed against my lips, and without conscious thought, I parted them, taking his thumb into my mouth.
The taste of him exploded across my tongue—salt and power and something indefinably divine that made my entire body hum with recognition.
I sucked gently at first, then, with a smirk, I flattened my tongue and slowly licked from the base of his thumb to the tip, flicking the pad of his finger the same way I had his piercing on our wedding night.
A shudder ran through his entire frame, his careful control cracking just enough to let me see the desire beneath. His breathing hitched, his free hand clenching into a fist at his side, and for just a moment his godly composure slipped entirely.
He wanted this. Wanted me. Despite all his games and cruelty and calculated distance, he was no more immune to whatever was building between us than I was.
I needed release, and I needed it now.
Suddenly, a surge of divine fire raced through my veins, more intense than anything that had come before.
This wasn’t the warm, spreading heat of transformation.
This was consuming, overwhelming, a wildfire that threatened to burn away everything I was and leave only primal need in its wake. I recognized it immediately.
This was the madness, the price of shared blood Valen had promised.
But recognition did nothing to blunt its power, did nothing to help me resist the way it stripped away the last vestiges of control I had been clinging to.
My entire body trembled with the force of it, muscles coiling with tension that demanded release.
The ache between my thighs became unbearable, a gnawing hunger that eclipsed every other sensation.
My skin felt too tight, hypersensitive to every brush of air, every whisper of silk against flesh.
Even the collar around my throat had become a source of maddening friction, each breath making it shift against skin that blazed with unnatural heat.
I tried to maintain some semblance of the controlled seduction I had been weaving around him, tried to hold onto the predatory confidence that had felt so right just moments before.
But the divine essence coursing through my system had other plans.
It wanted movement, action, the immediate satisfaction of every dark impulse that had been building since our first encounter.
My mouth released his thumb with a wet sound, and before he could react, I launched myself forward.
The movement was pure instinct, driven by a need so fundamental it bypassed conscious thought entirely. My bound hands reached for him desperately. I needed his touch, his skin against mine, his power flowing into me until this terrible ache finally found its release.
But Valen was faster.
His hands shot out to catch my neck, holding me back with strength that reminded me exactly what he was—not the mortal king he pretended to be, but a god whose power dwarfed anything I could hope to match.
The frustration of being stopped, of being denied what I needed with such desperate urgency, tore a sound from my throat that was part growl, part sob.
“You forget yourself,” Valen hissed, pulling me forward, his face inches from mine. Close enough that I could almost taste his breath. “I decide when you’re touched. I decide when you’re fucked. I decide when you’re allowed to breathe.”
“Please,” I gasped, straining against his grip. If only I could get a bit closer. “I can’t— I need—“
The words dissolved into an incoherent cry as another wave of sensation crashed over me, my knees buckling from the force of it.
My vision blurred at the edges, the world narrowing until nothing existed except Valen’s face and the terrible, gnawing emptiness that his touch could fill.
I was drowning in want, suffocating on my own desire, and he was the only source of air.
His grip tightened fractionally, stars dancing at the edges of my vision. The lack of air combined with the poison within me sent waves of dizzying sensation straight to my core. Each heartbeat throbbed between my thighs, a relentless, pulsing ache that demanded satisfaction.
“Please,” I mouthed, the word soundless with my airway compressed.
Before my eyesight could go black, his grip loosened just enough to allow a shallow breath, and I dragged air into my burning lungs. But I needed him inside me more than I needed the air. Needed his lips, needed his cock, needed his blood. “I need—“
“What you need,” Valen interrupted, his grip tightening again, “is to heel like the beast you’ve become.” His other hand came up to brush a strand of hair from my face, the fleeting contact sending sparks racing across my skin.
For one breath, maybe two, I stilled. Some deeply buried instinct responded to the authority in his voice, the pressure of his hand, the implied threat.
My chest heaved with rapid, shallow breaths, but I didn’t move.
Didn’t struggle. Just watched him with eyes I knew must be wild, dilated, desperate.
It was a momentary victory for him—a second of compliance that seemed to please him immensely. His grip on my throat loosened slightly, his thumb continuing its maddening caress along my jaw.
“Such a good little beast,” he murmured, and the words should have enraged me, should have recalled me to myself.
Instead, they broke whatever fragile control remained.
I lunged forward again, using the slack he’d given me, and this time my teeth found their mark—the same place on his neck where he’d bitten me, the vulnerable junction of throat and shoulder.
I bit down hard, tasting salt and clean sweat and then the hot copper burst of blood as my teeth broke through skin.