Chapter 34 #2
“But I like this side of Bryony Devaliant.” I kiss her again.
“Demanding Bryony.” I grip her slip and drag it off her shoulder, following with my lips.
“Possessive Bryony.” I yank her clothes off the rest of the way.
The aetherlight dances over her bare skin in silver-blue patterns—catching on her cheekbones, the hollow of her throat, the dip of her waist. “Greedy Bryony.”
“I said shut up.” She pushes me away. “And take off your damn pants.”
That’s right. So fucking greedy.
You shouldn’t want her like this.
But I do. I’ve had more lovers than I can count, fucked my way through the centuries with males and females, humans and gods. I’ve seen Bryony naked, had her spread out beneath me, mapped her body, taken her over and over.
And she still leaves me breathless.
I strip out of my trousers. Power thrums beneath my skin—Aethertide making everything sharper, more intense, more present. A fever cured only by her.
Bryony looks my naked body up and down, slow and hungry, then drags a palm down her face. “It’s actually offensive how beautiful you are.”
“That’s the trick.” I sink to my knees in the grass.
Catching her by the hips, I draw her down until we’re skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat.
“Monsters are always beautiful. The prettier we are, the easier it is to fool a clever girl into letting us devour her.” I drag my nose along her jaw, biting softly at her earlobe.
“Would you want me even half as much if I were nice?”
“No,” she sighs, melting into me. “I really wouldn’t.”
My blood sings at the admission—victory and satisfaction. Because this raw, messy want? Knowing that does it for her, too? That is so much better.
Because I’m exactly what she needs. What she craves in the dark.
“That’s right.” I walk my fingers up her spine, relishing her little shiver. “You don’t need gentle. You need a lover with teeth.”
Tipping forward, Bryony nips at my jaw. “Put your mouth between my thighs.”
I lean down and bite the inside of her thigh, soothing the sting with my tongue. Then I’m shoving her legs wider. I look my fill, admiring the sight of her.
“Such a perfect pussy,” I say. “Tell me I’m the first to worship you here.”
A shiver rolls through her. She nods. Shy, almost.
Fuck, yes.
I grin slowly. “Let me show you how a god prays.”
Starting slowly, I taste and tease with barely-there kisses. Stroking, exploring, getting her used to it. Learning her taste. She makes these sweet little noises, fingers curling into my hair.
“More,” she moans.
“Patience,” I say with a light nip on her thigh.
I thrust my fingers into her. She arches off the ground with a sharp cry. I grin, running my tongue over her in a long, slow lick. Then I press my mouth to her clit and suck, light at first. A moan shudders out of her. I do it again, harder this time.
“Oh, fuck,” she gasps.
There it is.
Her hands grasp my hair as I eat her out. I pin her hips, holding her still for every swipe of my tongue and plunge of my fingers. I could feast on this pussy for days.
Drawing out her pleasure is the sweetest torment.
I crook my fingers just right and feel the tension singing through her, begging for release.
But I’m patient. I take my time, memorizing which licks make her moan.
What pace makes her shudder. The way I slide my tongue inside her pussy and her hand grips my hair hard enough to sting.
I work her through it, letting her savor me on my knees for her. Worshipping her just like I promised.
“That’s it,” I murmur. “Ride that high for me.”
Her breathing is shaky. She lifts her hips, chasing my mouth, fucking herself on my tongue. I grip her thighs hard and shove them wider, ruthless now.
She climaxes with my name on her lips. Her nails dig into my nape as I give her a few more little licks, ending with one last tender kiss to her inner thigh.
“I love the sounds you make when you come,” I whisper, nipping up her body.
I pause to cup her breasts, flicking her nipple with my tongue. A gentle bite before licking a path to the other. She moans, fingers scrabbling against my shoulders.
“Fetch the dagger from my trousers.” I nudge my hips forward, letting the head of my cock drag against her. “Side pocket. Mind the spring-loaded hilt.”
She fumbles for my discarded clothes and drags the weapon free. Before I can blink, she has the point beneath my jaw. I have to bite back a groan. She’s so damn beautiful.
“Leave it there until I tell you otherwise,” I say.
Bryony lifts a brow, head tilting. “Does a knife at your throat turn you on, Wolf?”
“You with a knife at my throat turns me on. And it’s a reminder of what we are to each other. We’ll always exist on either side of this blade. No catching feelings, not even when I’m inside you.”
I surge forward in a rough thrust that has her head slamming back into the grass. The edge of the dagger kisses my neck as I set a relentless rhythm. She’s not pressing hard enough to cut me, but enough to remind me of the cost. Of the price I’ll have to have her.
“Come on,” she says between panting breaths. “I know you can fuck me better than that.”
My hands tighten on her hips. “You want harder?”
“As hard as you can give me. Make me feel it for days.”
A distant part of me knows I should stop before I’m past all saving. I could love her, I think. I could let her crack my ribcage and curl her fingers around the misshapen lump I call a heart, hold it gently. Sift through the scar tissue until she finds something worth salvaging.
But she won’t find it. Because anything worth holding got burned out of me long ago. So instead, I’ll give her everything else.
I fuck her harder. Mean. I want to make her hurt for me. My teeth find her breasts, her ribs, her stomach. Marking her up, branding her with the shape of my need. I chase our mutual destruction until everything narrows to ecstasy and pain.
“Evander,” she gasps out.
“Say it again.” I punctuate the words with a dirty grind. I hitch her legs higher around my waist, hitting that spot that makes her tremble. “I want to hear it.”
“Evander.”
“Louder. Scream it for me.”
“Evander!” Her nails draw blood. “Fuck, right there, don’t stop!”
“What would the people of Luceni think,” I rasp in her ear, never easing up, “of their princess begging a god to fuck her good?”
She whimpers when I slide my hand between us. Circling her clit, pushing her higher.
“You think they’d still bow if they knew?
” I pant. “If they saw the marks on your thighs? The way you came apart for me? That their perfect, pure Princess of the Blood wanted it so hard she let me bend her over, lay her down, bite her, bruise her. Let me desecrate every fucking inch of her body. That her pussy gets wet for me before I even touch her. Come on, tell me. What would they think?”
Her nails dig into my shoulders. She doesn’t answer.
“Do you even care?” I press.
“No.” She locks her ankles around me to pull me deeper. “They didn’t treat me like I was real.”
She’s right. Because the woman writhing beneath me isn’t the one who stood before her subjects with that empty smile. This is Bryony—wild and demanding, the one who takes what she wants.
She’s the fierce creature demanding more, harder, now.
“Know what I think?” I find a merciless rhythm that has her gasping with each thrust. “I think they had it all wrong. You never needed to be protected. You need this. To be dirtied up. Fucked out. Screaming my name.”
She bites her lip. She’s close. I can feel it in how she tightens around me.
“You don’t belong on a pedestal,” I manage between breaths. “You belong right here. Getting fucked beneath the stars. In the wild. In the dark. With me.”
I grab her thigh and hitch it higher, watching her mouth fall open when I hit that perfect spot inside her. The knife digs in a little deeper. Climax hovers just out of reach, my veins heating. Sparks crackle along my skin. My wings ignite, and flames lick along my feathers.
Bryony’s grip on my shoulder tightens. “Evander!”
She comes with a strangled cry, her body arching off the ground. The blade slips, slicing burning lines into my throat, and the sting makes everything sharper. Brighter. Blood trickles down my chest, spattering onto her pale skin.
I’ve never seen a canvas so beautiful.
I follow her over the edge. My hands grip her tight as I spill inside her, thrusting shallowly. My magic explodes outward and slams into the earth around us. A concussive wave of flames that burns the grass beneath us.
Then there’s only silence. Just our breathing, the groan of branches around us, and the crackle of fire.
I tug the blade gently from Bryony’s slack fingers and toss it aside to lift her into my arms. She makes a soft, contented sound. Only then does she notice the surrounding foliage.
“You’ve singed your garden,” she says with a laugh.
I chuckle as I survey the damage. “I spared the roses.”
Her lips skim my neck, right over the thin lines where she’d marked me. Our breathing is harsh as I carry her inside.
“I can’t decide,” she finally says, “if I’m going to kiss you or kill you when this is through.”
“As long as you’re the last thing I see in this fucked-up eternity of mine, I don’t really care which one you pick.”
As we pass the door with the obsidian seal, I reach out and brush my fingers over the carvings in a familiar ritual—a habit as ingrained as the instinct to grab for a weapon when threatened.
“Are you ever going to tell me what’s behind that door?” she asks.
My jaw clenches. “No.”
“Gory trophies? Jars of viscera?” She’s prodding now, looking for weak points. Gaps in my armor she can worm her fingers into and pry apart.
I don’t smile, not even to maintain this delicate illusion of tenderness. That place is as sacred to me as this realm.
“That room is not up for discussion.”
I brace for her to argue. To pry and dig and excavate like she always does.
But Bryony just… settles. She rests her cheek against my shoulder and winds her arms loosely around my neck, a gesture so simple and sweet that it cracks my chest wide open.
I’ve murdered armies without blinking. Tortured enemies, ended bloodlines, and razed kingdoms to rubble and ash. But this? This is annihilating. This gesture of trust. Of softness.
Two things I sure as shit don’t deserve.
And this is why she can never know what’s in that room, I think as I shoulder into my bedchamber. All the dead things in there are for me, and they are the real dagger between us.
She’ll never look at what we are the same way again.
I gently lay her on my sheets. Bruises mottle her skin, vivid smudges blooming across her breasts, her belly, her legs. My marks.
Mine.
I trail my knuckles over a bite on her inner thigh. “I can heal these for you if you’d like.”
I’d rather lick them, I don’t say.
“I’ll wear them a bit longer,” Bryony decides with a secret smile, stretching languidly. “I’ve earned them.”
For a moment, I imagine keeping her like this—sprawled out in my bed. Well-fucked and satisfied, with my ownership unmistakable.
“Careful,” she murmurs, eyes fixed on my face. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Scheming.”
I settle in bed next to her and pull her on top of me, groaning as she settles right over my cock. Right where she belongs. The rut-fever stirs again, demanding more.
“Just enjoying you while I can.” I grasp her hips and guide her down, shuddering as I slide into her. “Enjoying this pussy, too.”
“I suppose you’d better make the most of it, then,” she says, riding me slowly, drawing it out. “It’s temporary.”
“Yeah, they do have that saying about mortal girls.”
“What saying?”
I curl my fingers against her skin, setting the pace, lifting her up and down my cock. “Not for a long time, just for a good time.”
The bed frame creaks as she rides me faster. “Know what humans say about gods?” She bites my earlobe, and I almost come right then. “That they’ll fuck you then forget you. But I won’t let you forget.”
“Oh really?”
“That’s right. When you take someone else into your bed in fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years from now, all you’re going to see is me.
My face, when you shut your eyes. My taste, when you’re kissing her.
My voice, when you’re inside her. I’m going to wreck you for everyone else.
” She rocks her hips in a slow grind that has me seeing stars. “I’m going to be your favorite memory.”
Something in my chest goes tight. I can’t look away from this fragile mortal woman who’s embedded herself beneath my skin. Because she’s right—I’m going to have to accept a world in which Bryony Devaliant no longer exists.
And I’ll be the one holding the blade that ends her. I have to be. Because anything else would be a betrayal.
I swallow hard. “You think so?”
“Yes.” She kisses me, soft and searching. “The most fun you’ll ever have.”
Maybe she’s my penance. My hamartia, as the Vartenans would say—the fatal flaw that will be my undoing. The price I pay for all my sins.
“You asked me if this was just the Aethertide,” I say, rolling us so I’m on top. Caging her beneath me, my wings flared. “A product of celestial meddling and biological imperative.”
“And?” Her fingers trace patterns on my chest, right over my thundering heart.
“I’d crave you in any lifetime. Across every eternity. Every version of me would want every version of you, whether I lived one day or ten thousand years,” I whisper against her mouth. “And damn me, you were a good time.”
I wonder if she’ll feel my touch for days. If she’ll ache with the memory of us. I wonder if the bruises I’ve put on her body will linger—a reminder of what we are. Of all the blasphemous, brutal things we’ve done.
I’m going to be your favorite memory.
No, I think as I kiss her. You’re going to be my cruelest one.