Chapter 18
Blair
The next two floors were much less productive. Instead of another restaurant date or, oh I don’t know, a freaking movie, the Biwban continued on their trauma-bond crusade and simply threw more crap at us to fight. Floor Two involved giant squid people with barbed tentacles and laser-beam eyes.
They at least gave us guns for that one.
The trial may not have made me fiend to have babies, but it was fun as shit shooting up a bunch of robot squids.
Floor Three was a jungle of man-eating plants.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what that could possibly do to bring us closer together.
Osid promptly set the room on fire before I ever had to figure that out.
Despite the fact that the entire Crucible was a simulation, the nanobots involved were still flammable.
Which seemed like an oversight on their part, given the men on this planet went shooting off flames like forest fires were their personal mission in life.
The fire spread out of control quickly, and both the tower and the entire west side of the BCI had to be evacuated to contain the flames.
When I was wrapped tightly in a flame-retardant blanket in the BCI courtyard with a slew of Biwban frantically flying about, Osid tried a different tactic.
“Cut me,” he said.
I stared down at the shiv in my hand. It was carved from a plain black toothbrush.
Identical to the one I’d found in the bathroom of my sleeping quarters.
I considered the shiv for a moment, letting my finger trace along the sharp edge, then looked up at him.
“Assisted suicide seems like a big leap from one rejection, Osid. Have you considered that there might be other fish in the sea?”
“You say such strange things.”
“Me?”
The king sank to his knees in front of me, and his eyes became level with mine. “This isn’t suicide, I’m offering you the Ash Rite to assuage your ire. Strike where you must, but leave me my eyes.”
Fire crackled from the blazing tower. Sirens blared as the Biwban hurriedly tried to bury the flames in foam. Which meant every last one of them was too distracted to see the psycho in front of me asking for a shank with stipulations.
“I don’t…follow?”
Osid sighed, then took my wrist and guided the shiv to his bare chest, pressing just hard enough for the skin to sink around it without breaking.
“I have angered you, yet you do not have fire of your own to burn me properly. A makeshift blade is the best I can do in these conditions. I swear to you that I will not move until you have carved out my sins. Take your vengeance so we may be done with this and kiss.”
I blinked. “You want me to stab you because I’m mad at you.”
“Yes.” He nodded once, his face impassive as if getting shanked by an ex-lover was a mundane occurrence. Though, it was Osid. I wouldn’t have been shocked if a few of the scars on his chest came from a spurned paramour.
“Then kiss you?”
“Yes,” he said again. A look of relief crossed his face, like he’d finally seen a dog he was trying to train sit properly.
“So let me get this straight. You whittled your toothbrush into a shiv, and now expect me to carve into you like a jack-o-lantern. Kiss and forget, and we live happily ever after. That’s your plan?”
A muscle quirked in his jaw. “You’ve spent the better part of our time together trying to kill me for every perceived grievance under the sun—”
“Perceived!?”
“Surely you can’t find fault with this too? I am offering you retribution. A task most rulers would find beneath them.”
I placed the shiv over my heart and fanned myself. “Oh, Your Majesty, what benevolence! Surely one so common as myself couldn’t damage your pretty royal skin?”
A low chuckle preceded the smile. His eyes dipped to my lips; a dark molten something took over them.
Our stares met, and that bone melting gaze stopped my heart.
Thrills shot down my spine before I could get a hold of myself.
Heat fluttered in my lower belly. My thighs pressed together, trying to stave off my body’s treachery just as he leaned close enough to where that amber scent would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. “You think I’m pretty?”
I pressed the knife against the chest I wanted to lick. “Oh, I could just stab you for real!”
Only a few inches separated us. Every nerve in my skin was alive. My breath stalled, as if I couldn’t remember if I was on the breath in or the breath out part.
Firm hands rested on my thighs. He paid no mind to the dark-red flower blooming around the knife pressed to his skin.
Bringing his nose to the crook of my neck, he consumed me on a slow inhale.
His eyes drifted shut as he leaned in—the faintest touch of his lips on my neck as he asked, “We’re in agreement then? ”
He smelled so good…
“You’re fucking crazy.” The words cracked on a moan I forced down.
His hands slid behind my knees, spreading my thighs apart, before dragging me forward until my legs were wrapped around his waist. “I won’t deny that accusation. I’d still rather be crazy than this bad of a liar.”
Indignant, I leaned away from him. “Who’s lying?”
Strong, calloused fingers trailed up the back of my neck, Osid took a handful of curls and pulled, exposing more of my throat to his waiting kiss.
He tasted the hollow of my throat. Wet droplets hit my thigh.
I gasped and pulled back on the knife, but Osid took hold of my wrist and let the shiv bite into his skin.
His whispered breath lit fire in my veins. “Poor, prideful thing. You lash and spit at me because you think that’s the only form of resistance you’ve been afforded. Hate stains the mind too much to recognize friend from foe.”
“We are not friends.”
“Nor are we foes,” he insisted. “I’ve felt it, too, you know.
The pain and anger of being stolen from everything you’ve known and forced to play at the whims of others.
You may not have chosen me, nor I you. Call it the cruel machinations of an uncaring corporation or the divine will of a dark humored god”—he paused and slipped a hand beneath my shirt to drag his nails down the curve of my spine.
The flesh pebbled in his wake—“this body can’t hide its want for me any more than I can keep my hands off you. ”
Teeth nipped at my ear. My breath hitched.
Osid groaned deep in his throat before his tongue played against the jaguar skull on my neck.
“We don’t need to be enemies. Sink those claws into me, and I’ll thank you for it.
Kiss me here, and I’ll let you spend the night working this ire out on my body.
Tie me up as I did you, and whip me at your leisure. Feed me nothing but your cunt.”
In my mind’s eye, I could see it all too clearly. Osid knelt in front of me as he was now. Rope coiled around his bare muscular arms like a red string of fate. More pinned across the delicious expanse of his rippling chest.
His tail lashing behind him in anticipation, thighs spread wide, his cock erect and weeping as I teased my foot against its head. How the fat droplets of pre-cum would smear against the pale scar just below his navel.
His shaft would pulse as I tugged the rein around his neck—engorged, desperate, flushed so deep it was nearly black.
“Please.”
The whisper slapped me back to reality, where a king was still kneeling between my aching thighs.
The burning need in his gaze only sank me further into the fantasy. How he’d whisper and beg through hungry groans as that ribbed tongue licked my clit, mouth open and greedy, my free hand holding him in place by those jagged horns.
That’s right, Your Majesty, I nearly said aloud. Eat this pussy.
“Stop fighting me and be my queen, Blair.”
I pushed away from him. “You and your stipulations.”
Osid sat back on his heels. The slow grin sent a shiver down my spine. “You’d have me without them?”
“We’ve already established you can’t handle a fling.”
Immediately the hold on my body turned possessive. His voice deepened to a rasp that would have almost been deceptively calm if it weren’t for the flickering sparks at the end of his long tail. “We are not a fling.”
“See, there you go again.”
“A ceasefire,” he said when I began to pull away.
“…I’m listening.”