27. Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
N iko devours my gasp of surprise, his tongue sweeping along mine. The scent of him overwhelms me, all icy air and sandalwood. He smells of death—of pain—and suddenly, I can’t remember why I ever avoided it. I crave it with a fervor that pulses through me like electric currents, sparking through my ribs, lighting up my heart.
His hands are in my hair, on my throat, breasts, ass, as he spins me around and crushes me into the glass wall, pressing the entire length of his hard body against mine. My skin heats, and my head swims, as I fist my fingers in his shirt to keep myself upright. Suddenly, it’s as much of a fight as it is an embrace. He pushes, and I push back. He sucks, and I lick, and we both moan, as he grinds his thick erection into my hip.
Niko tugs the neckline of my dress off my shoulders, tearing his mouth away from mine to lick at the tips of my breasts. I yank his shirt over his head with a frenzy I don’t entirely understand, and then dig my nails into his skin. Niko’s moan vibrates through me as I claw at him until I draw blood. I don’t know whether it’s to punish him or to anchor him to me.
The heat of my anger, my hate, has morphed into something far deadlier; far more addictive. It runs through my blood like a drug, and when he answers my claws with a soft bite of my nipple, I whimper, pushing my breasts needily into his hot mouth.
Reckless, reckless thing.
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, the words pound, but as Niko hikes up my skirts and grips my bare thigh with a punishing passion, every thought goes blurry. He’s insatiable as he moves over my body, worshipping, but entirely unmerciful. The furious need of it all has me licking at his bare chest, moaning into his skin, as he rips my underwear aside and dips two long fingers into the wet heat of me.
Niko groans against my throat as I clench around his fingers, a strangled sound of need and reverence. My eyes roll back into my head as he sucks at my neck, devours my mouth, fists my hair. Niko consumes me feverishly. Like he could gorge himself eternally, and his want will never abate.
His ardency should terrify me, as it’s never a good thing to be someone else’s addiction. But the same mad obsession surges through me, and I only want more. More of the danger of his touch, more of his pleasure edged with his pain. His power pulses around me, in me. A frozen tundra, a winter wind. It is silence and relief, it is horror and pain, and I welcome it to my skin as he begins to pump his fingers more furiously.
In Niko, I find the one thing I’ve always been denied. The high of him, the cold of his death warring against the heat of his body as he stretches me around his fingers until I’m whimpering, is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. And I cannot get enough.
I ride his hand wildly, drawing his mouth back to mine, matching his need with my own. I moan his name onto his tongue, and he fucking growls in response, an animal driven only by his most base needs. And the thought that I am the one who can fill it, that I’m the one who satiates him, has wanton desire pooling at my core.
Niko’s hand comes to my throat, his fingers wrapping around the delicate skin. I lift my chin, pressing into his hand until my breaths become short and restricted. He draws his mouth from mine to watch as I squirm on his fingers; watch as my skin flushes and my mouth parts and my eyes roll closed. His fathomless gaze glints with nothing short of absolute obsession.
Then, with one hand still pinning me to the wall, the other abruptly retreats from under my skirts. I whimper in protest at the sudden emptiness, a desperate little sound I don’t think I’ve ever made in my life. But he keeps me in place, his gaze soldered to mine, as he brings his fingers to his mouth and sucks. Ever so slowly, his tongue works around his fingers, his eyes rolling closed as he licks every drop of me from them like he’s tasting the rarest of delicacies.
My body pulses as the ache in my core ignites. I writhe beneath his palm with another keening whimper, desperate to lunge at him. To taste every bit of his skin, to consume his death and make it my own. To lose myself entirely in him.
But Niko keeps me where I am, running his hungry gaze up and down my body, as he winds his ribbons slowly back toward him. They slither around his wrists and ankles; climb up his throat.
I don’t know what Niko sees—a needy, sweaty, mess, probably—but his eyes deaden like a fire doused. He snaps his hand away from me and rakes it through his hair until the black strands stand on end.
“Fuck,” he mutters furiously.
And without another word, he spins on his heel and disappears through the door.
I don’t see Niko the rest of the day, and he doesn’t come to bed that night. He doesn’t even come to his chambers.
I yank the silk sheets up around my throat, hating the smell of him lingering in the fabric. Hating him —for leaving me alone in his bed with my nightmares and regrets. A fierce part of me still feels like hunting through the Lunaedon to demand answers for everything. For what I’d learned of his past; for why he’d told me no one could ever want me; for why he’d ravished me, and then run away like he’d been disgusted and furious with what we’d done.
A far more vulnerable part of me is thankful for his absence. My cheeks heat every time I think of what happened on the balcony, and I don’t think I’ll be able to face him without dying of humiliation. I’m exactly as pathetic as he said I was.
What the hell had I been thinking, throwing myself at him like that?
I’d have to be pathetic to want you.
For a few years after my escape from the camps, I chased pain like an addict. My body had been stolen from me during my imprisonment, and I’d had no control over how it was used. Hurting myself had been my way of trying to get it back, a sick, twisted method of regaining agency. I recklessly and systematically destroyed myself. They’d ruined me, but I could ruin me better.
I’ve vowed since then to treat myself with more care, to protect my body. And here I am, freefalling back into the ruinous habits. Because what is my want of the Carrion King but a fatal habit? Have I learned nothing? Am I doomed to always want the things most poisonous to me?
And what did it mean that Niko had wanted me back so fiercely, despite his cruel insistence otherwise? I hadn’t imagined the possessive desire in his touch—a need bordering on actual insanity that had sparked in him and consumed us both.
I still don’t understand his fear in those moments after he grabbed my hand; still don’t understand why he won’t let himself have what he so clearly wants, even if it’s fleeting.
Since we met, Niko has denied himself any sort of pleasure. He remains inundated in his pain.
I should have left him to it.
But even now, I don’t want to.
My skin grows hot as I writhe around, trying to get comfortable. As if there’s a position that will relieve the furious race of my thoughts, the unsatisfied fire in my core. The sheets stick to my calves, tangle around my feet. Kicking them into a pile on the floor, I heave a defeated sigh and lurch from the bed.
My heart jackhammers against my ribs so hard, I’m sure it’ll break the bone and fly out of my chest. My frustration bubbles to the surface, and I give the pile of blankets another petty kick, launching them toward the window, before I tear through the bedroom.
I pause in the study, taking in the quiet, neat appearance and wrestling with the urge to destroy it. To toss all Niko’s books to the floor, to throw the cushions off the chair. To upend some of his carefully crafted control the way he’s upended mine. If he thinks me a petulant child, I’ll prove just how right he is.
With a defeated sigh, I rein in my destruction. Not to spare Niko, but because I like his rooms. The soft beauty, the neat order in an otherwise orderless world. Instead, I pad into the atrium. The piano glistens in the starlight, still pushed over to far side of the glass. I wheel it back to the middle of the room, before taking a seat at the bench and spreading my fingers over the keys.
A few solemn notes ring through the air, the noise nothing like the beautiful sonance Niko coaxed from the instrument, but bringing memories of it all the same. It reverberates in my chest, soothing some of the discomfited prick of my skin.
I curl up on the bench, tucking my knees close to my chest. The velvet seat is small, but small feels better than the aching emptiness of Niko’s bed. Closing my eyes, I drift off as the note fades into silence.
It seems only a moment later that a few deep chords, far more consonant than the ones I’d played, vibrate through my dreams, dancing along my body and pooling in my brain. I stir to find Niko leaning over me, his fingers moving softly over the ivory keys.
Noticing I’m awake, he stiffens and steps back, hands folded behind his back in an oddly uncomfortable manner. He has always moved with a self-assured air, both as Niko and as king, like he’s certain of his place in the world. Smooth and arrogant, like someone who’s never had their power challenged; who’s never felt the suffocating pressure of another’s boot on their throat.
The dichotomy of the king I’ve known with the man who stands before me now is stark. He rocks back and forth between his bare feet, restless and discomposed. His gaze flutters everywhere but on me, snagging overlong on the door, like he’s considering bolting through it.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” he says after a stilted moment. “But I thought you might fall off in your sleep.” He gestures vaguely to the piano bench. “And you’ve already fallen off enough things for the day.”
“For life,” I amend, lifting my head drowsily. “And of all the things you should apologize for, waking me with music isn’t one of them. I’d never sleep again, if it meant I could listen to you play.”
I’m too tired to measure what the admittance will cost me; to weigh the risks and rewards of my honesty. So, I don’t. I only give him more of it. “You promised not to leave me alone, Niko.”
He doesn’t shy away from my accusation. “You’re right,” he admits. “Forgive me for being guilty of the same cowardice I’ve accused you of.”
Before I can begin to sort through the rise of emotions his apology beckons to the surface, he steps further into my space, his lean frame towering over mine.
“Willa.” He says my name like a breath in the midnight air. “There was a reason your father sold you to those camps. It wasn’t just in exchange for your sister, was it?”
His words clang through me like alarm bells, and fear spikes over my skin. Familiar, like the honed edge of a blade. The innate sense to run. To wriggle free from the bindings Niko’s attempting to wrap around me.
I push myself to sitting, planting my toes on the floor. I gaze up at him, trying to determine how much he knows, but his stony expression gives nothing away.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I reply neutrally, tossing the thick curtain of my hair over my shoulder, and keeping my face carefully blank.
Something like rage flashes in his eyes, and my body tenses as I imagine all the ways the king could extract the truth. The touch of his ribbons had been glacial and silent—how would it feel if it wasn’t just a brush of death, but to be inundated in it?
But Niko doesn’t move to hurt me. He only lowers himself to kneel at my feet. He isn’t wearing a shirt, dressed in the same gray sweats he’d worn when he saved me from my nightmares. The intricate sprawl of tattoos is stark against his snow-white skin, but my gaze skirts over the delicious carve of his abdomen to where his fingers rest on the bench on either side of me.
He’s left them bare.
I snap my eyes to his in question.
With slow intention, he wraps both of his hands around my thighs and gently pulls them apart, fitting his body more snugly between them. Kneeling as he would at an altar.
“You were right to call me a coward,” he admits in a soft voice. “I have been terrified to touch you.” His thumbs begin to circle softly over my inner thigh. “But not for the reasons you think.”
I nearly shudder in pleasure as the calloused pads of his thumbs scrape softly against my sensitive skin. But I keep myself stiff, warily watching Niko bowed before me. He’s beautiful at my feet—dark eyes and pale skin. Severely angled cheekbones and soft, lush lips. A study in contrasts.
“I haven’t touched anyone since I killed the Aeternalis.”
The words rend straight through my heart.
Pan died two hundred years ago. Could it be possible Niko hasn’t touched anyone in over two centuries? The thought opens an unexpected hollow of grief at the center of me, for how horrible to be starved of another’s warmth for so long? Even in the depths of my isolation, I’ve always been able to seek out the company of others, even if it was temporary.
Niko’s fingers move wider, sliding up the expanse of my thigh toward where I’m already soaking wet. Where I’ve been aching since he abandoned me in this same room, hours before.
My head swims at his touch, ice and heat warring over my skin with each gentle swipe of his thumbs. His long fingers press into the outside of my thighs with a possession that makes me want to lower the steel wall around me; to pull him into me and let him drown in my touch.
And when he peeks up at me through his thick lashes, it becomes harder to remember why I haven’t already done it.
“Do you know why, Willa?” he asks in a low voice.
Dread winds through me along with my renewed desire, the emotions fighting so furiously in my stomach, I fear they’ll vibrate right through my skin. I want to flee; to run so far from Niko he’ll never be able to find the depths he searches for. I want him to never stop touching me, to baptize me in his death and pain; to hold me down and dig into the soul of me; to steal my secrets so that I no longer have to carry the heavy burden of them alone.
Indecision keeps me frozen in place, and for a moment, I wish time would freeze along with me. That it would stretch and warp, keeping me in this stasis where the world is warm and the Carrion King looks at me like that.
Niko draws his eyes away from my thighs, glancing around the room. Then he laughs.
A gasp escapes me as I follow his gaze to find the atrium, the windows, the sparkling stone trees, have all blurred together in a riot of shadows. Like him and I are speeding through time, and everything else has frozen in place.
“It seems you’ve found the place your magic has been hiding, Darling,” he purrs, resuming his strokes of my skin. Higher still, his calloused fingers rolling lightly over my hip bones.
If this is the place of my power, it isn’t a place of whimsy. It’s a hole of desperation, fed both by my fear of Niko and my want of him.
When his gaze returns to mine, it’s lethal. “But that isn’t the only power you’ve been keeping from me, is it?”
When I don’t answer, that smile he’d worn the first night we met graces his face. The elegant, cruel amusement of a man who always gets what he wants. “Two hundred and seven years, eight months and thirteen days. That’s how long it has been since I’ve felt the warmth of another, because it isn’t only my ribbons that are lethal.”
If I hadn’t already accidentally frozen us in time, his words would have certainly done it. Ice cold awareness drips down the back of my neck, as Niko reaches behind me to pluck one of the blooms I brought home from Adira’s.
He cradles it in his palm, and my breath hitches as the flower wilts before my eyes. In a blink, black necrosis spreads over the bright orange petals, devouring the bloom’s vitality until it’s a twisted, dead thing in Niko’s hand. The same as he’d done the night I fell into Letum. I thought it was the touch of his ribbons, but now, I understand my mistake all too well.
Niko doesn’t just wield the power of death—Niko is death. His power, his heart, his skin, his soul. All of him.
He crushes the decayed remnants of the flower in his fist, the once vibrant bloom crumbling into little more than dust, a smudge of black ash against his palm.
Suddenly, I see everything clearer—both of us pushing the other away to keep our own secrets, while simultaneously being drawn together.
Niko was never being cruel by holding me at arm’s length. He was trying to protect me in his own twisted way, all while keeping the shameful secret of who he truly is. And I’d been so determined to keep my own, I hadn’t considered that the disgust and anger spilling from him in my presence may not have been about me at all.
It was a mistake to shy away from the depths of him, because in my misunderstanding, I’ve unintentionally dumped my secret into his lap.
Because the truth is, it doesn’t matter that Niko’s touch is deadly.
I can’t die.