Chapter 10
Izael kissed her as if that action alone would eat her soul. And if it were only that simple—then her soul would be where it belonged already. But no. No. Tonight would be about a very different kind of exchange.
He hadn’t expected to lose his temper with her. How happy he was that he had, though. To see her spitting and fuming at the collar—it was so much better than if he had explained the situation to her and she chose to wear it, mournful and forlorn.
No. This was better. Let her be angry. Let her feel wronged. Let her mind rage while her body surrendered.
And how it would surrender to him this night. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said that he was intending to make this night easy on her. He wanted her to feel just a little bit punished when she woke up the next morning. But if he was going to regain her trust and convince her to use her wish to love him, he knew he should take it slow. Gentle. Kind.
That had clearly gone right out the window.
Instead, he had told her the whole scheme. Saw the horror in her eyes turn her lust for him darker and all the more volcanic. By the Morrigan, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever lain eyes on.
He was also not lying when he said this arousal that he was suffering would drive him to oblivion if it were not resolved. But doubt prevailed. He was a gentleman, after all—and so he had given his songbird the chance to retreat. The chance to tell him that he had misread the desire in her eyes.
When she only watched him in frightened need, lips parted as she gasped for breath—when she was speechless—he somehow loved her more. With his sharp nails, he ripped her top to shreds, tossing it aside. Her bra followed a moment later—never breaking the kiss.
But he wasn’t done terrifying her just yet. No, there was a further level of fear that he would like her to experience. He wanted to show her just what she was in for this night. Turning her back to his chest, he pressed her tight to him.
Settling back on a collection of pillows at the base of his tree, he propped himself up at an angle. He wanted the perfect viewing angle, after all. He grasped Alex’s breasts, squeezing the warm, soft flesh.
Unable to fight the moan, she arched her back into his chest. She was half lying on his chest, half sitting where his tail met his abdomen.
Using both his hands and his tail, he quickly stripped her of the rest of her clothes. Much better.
Kissing her temple, he pinched her hard nipples, chuckling darkly in her ear as she cried out in pain. “That’s the kind of singing I want to hear tonight. But we’ve only just begun.”
Little by little, he wrapped his tail around her, parting her legs wide. So slowly that he hoped she didn’t quite notice through all the rest of his ministrations. He wanted her to find herself exposed and defenseless when she saw the reality of what she was in for.
Curling his tail, he lifted a portion in front of her.
Perhaps she thought he might have resembled more of the anatomy of a man—perhaps she thought they were located right where she was sitting. Either both were likely the case, judging by how her eyes shot wide as saucers and she thrashed, her desire to run away suddenly renewed.
It was too late. She was trapped in his coils.
He slapped a hand over her mouth to dampen rather violent obscenities she was suddenly issuing in his direction. “Now, now…you can’t say you’re that surprised. I did warn you, didn’t I?”
She thrashed again, elbowing him. He couldn’t have cared less. One hand still clamped over her mouth, he slid the other down her stomach, trailing over her navel and slowly lower, until he found her core. He moaned at what he found before he couldn’t help himself and drove two of his fingers deep into her eager, waiting body.
She wanted him. She needed him. Just as badly as he did her.
Love will follow. Love must follow. But for now—just now—I’ll relish this.
Listening to her muffled curses turn to moans of pleasure, he removed his hand from her mouth while sinking a third finger into her, slow but unstoppable. “That’s it, songbird…that’s it…now—last chance to tell me to stop.”
Air left her lungs like he’d punched her in the stomach. She was trembling, her body clenching down around him as twinges of pleasure shot through her. But her eyes were locked on him, on what he was going to sink deep into her body if she didn’t turn him away.
A fourth finger, stretching her, sent her eyes slamming shut as he did his best to prepare her. If it hurt, the sound she made said otherwise. Ecstasy crashed over her in a wave as she clamped down on him, release coursing through her. One of her hands tangled in his hair, clenching it tight, the other holding on to his wrist for dear life.
He hummed, more than a little pleased, into her ear. “If you liked that…just think of what it’ll feel like.”
Alex growled in breathy frustration. “Fuck you?—”
That very much was the plan.
She’d lost her mind.She’d lost her fucking goddamn mind. What was she thinking? Look at him! She was going to—he was going to—they weren’t even human! They were anything but! And for fuck’s sake, there were two!
Panicked thoughts raced through her head even as Izael’s hands wandered her body. She should tell him to stop. Just open her mouth and say “no” or “I changed my mind.” Anything—literally anything!
They had emerged from his body, some three-quarters of the length down his tail. It meant he could be at her back, kneading her breasts or sinking his fingers deep into her body—while at the same time he could lay his two inhuman things on her stomach.
“Don’t be shy,” he murmured into her ear. “They’re not the part of me that bites.” He nipped her ear.
I’ve lost my mind. His insanity is contagious. But she couldn’t help it. Curiosity and need won out. She ran her hand over one of them, feeling it twitch against her fingers as she grasped its length. It wasn’t human—pointed sharply at the end and ridged along its length. It was certainly longer than anything she was used to, if maybe on the slightly slimmer side.
The problem was that was one of them.
There were two.
Undulating his tail, he slid the one length through her grasp, moaning in her ear. Reflexively, she tightened her grip, finding herself biting down on her lower lip as she watched. It was hot to the touch—almost impossibly so.
All questions of why, or how, or should, were completely thrown from her head. He was right. She wanted to know how they felt. If she could handle him. What it would feel like to try.
Grasping his second in her other hand, she let him set the speed.
“That’s—ah—that’s it—” He wrapped an arm tight around her, holding her still. Shuddering, he pulled himself out of her grasp. “Mmh, easy there. Don’t want to end before we’ve begun.”
When he drifted his tail lower, panic took over. “Wait!” Sitting up, she tried to push them away.
Grabbing her wrists with his hands, he yanked her back down, pulling her wrists up over her head and pinning them there with another coil of his tail. “Sssh, now…” His hands ran down her stomach to her inner thighs, before taking one of his strange, inhuman lengths in his hand and guiding it to her entrance.
“But—I?—”
He thrust the one inside.
All words fled. Her back arched as something that felt like pure electricity arced through her. No, it was not on the slimmer side. And she could feel every single ridge, every single one of the strange barbs. She reeled from the sheer sensation of it.
It was when he began to move that sound finally left her open mouth. It was a small cry, with each stroke inward that pressed against her, filling her, leaving such a wonderful ache.
His hand was grasping his other length, pressing it to her body, sliding it back and forth over her sensitive ball of nerves.
She couldn’t take it. Her ecstasy climbed to the peak again, quickly sending her reeling farther into white noise as he never slowed, never relented.
“F—” That was the best she could do.
Izael chuckled, raspy and thick with his own pleasure. “You’re so beautiful, my songbird. Are you ready? Watch…”
He withdrew from her. But only to grasp his two lengths together in his hand. She went tense, jerking in fear. They would not—they couldn’t?—
“Shush, songbird,” he cooed, kissing her cheek before running his tongue along her skin. “Relax…let go. I have you. I have you. You’re safe with me.”
Swallowing the rock in her throat, she let out a shaky breath.
“That’s it. Good songbird.” He pressed himself against her entrance. The pressure built, before one slid inside her.
She jolted in sensation as it sent more pangs of pleasure snapping up her spine. When the pressure built again, she let out a whine.
“Remember to breathe.”
The pressure built.
And then it was there.
Just the start of it.
She wailed, her breath catching in her throat. No, she had entirely forgotten to breathe. And it was a few seconds before she didn’t have a choice. Her lungs burned. She gasped for air, her head reeling.
“I warned you.” He licked her cheek again. He wasn’t moving, having the kindness to stay still while she adjusted.
Daring to look down, she couldn’t believe it. She felt so full, so stretched—and they had only just begun. He pressed his tail closer, proving her point, and his two lengths slid deeper into her.
“Oh—fuck—” Throwing her head back against him, she shut her eyes. “Izael—I—can’t?—”
“Soon. And you are.” His hand grasped hers, guiding it to where they were joined. He pressed in farther before sliding two inches back, slowly creeping his way deeper inside.
It felt like nothing she had ever experienced before in her life.
Pleasure. The ache of it. The feeling of every part of his strange anatomy and its friction against her. Pressing her hand against her abdomen, she could feel him there. Before long, all of him was buried inside her. The realization and the sensation sent her crashing into ecstasy.
Why she expected him to start fucking her in the conventional way, when all of this was so very unconventional, she didn’t know. But now that he was embedded deep within her, the ache unlike anything she’d ever known was possible, it seemed he had no interest in leaving.
He threw a coil over them, cinching her body to his. The deep, guttural noise that left him was feral as he tightened his grasp. The pressure deepened as he cored himself somehow that much harder inside of her. It was that tightening and releasing of his grasp that had her lungs burning for air again.
“You are so beautiful—mine—my beautiful songbird—” Izael bit down on the tender part of her neck where it met her shoulder, teeth digging into her skin. He gripped tighter, squeezing her.
That was when she felt it.
The impossible heat of him. One and then the other began to let go as his release came over him, sending her pitching headlong after him.
He roared against her, arms circled around her as that volcanic heat inside her grew to a fever pitch.
Everything went fuzzy around the edges as she saw spots in her vision. Unable to breathe, unable to think, able only to feel as ecstasy coursed through her like wildfire. Everything went dark. Her last thought before it claimed her was to wonder if this was how she was going to die.
And whether it’d be worth it if she did.
Well,damn.
Izael lifted Alex up in his arms and slithered over to his hot spring. She’d wake up in a few moments, he was certain. He’d squeezed just a little too hard when she had already been a little too thin on oxygen.
Silly songbird. He’d told her to breathe.
Setting her down in the water, leaning her against the shore, he gathered his soaps and a cloth and began to bathe her. She was so beautiful, seemingly sleeping in the moonlight, a maiden of some human tale of old.
And he, the evil fae who had come to claim her.
For once, the stories would have been accurate.
“I am going to spoil you rotten, my sweet songbird.” He sat next to her, holding her close to his chest. Couldn’t let her drown, after all.
He would remember the sensation of her around him for the rest of his years. It had been sublime. Her fear. Her eagerness. Her ecstasy. It had mingled together into such an intoxicating drug, he hadn’t lasted nearly as long as he would have liked.
His kind could go for days, if the mood struck them.
Not with a fragile mortal, you fool. You’d shatter her pelvic bone and likely puncture an internal organ. He chuckled. Death by sex would not be the worst way to die, I suppose.
Resting his head against hers, he hummed her a quiet tune. He loved her. More than he thought was possible.
And she would love him sooner rather than later.
There was no way he could survive otherwise. Stroking her damp hair, he kissed her temple. ”You are mine, little songbird. I don”t care how many worlds will have to die to convince you.”