42. Biting Back the Truth
Chapter 42
Biting Back the Truth
CHARMING
“ W hat happened? You almost pushed your stepmother off that cliff.” I don't wait to follow her into her chambers.
I threw open the door to find Cinder already half-undressed.
I drink in her pale moon skin and those perfect nipples that taste as sweet as the rest of her. My body responds instantly with a primal need, throbbing with desire and desperate for her touch. But I push aside my physical cravings, knowing that there are more important matters at hand. “If you did that. . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Humans didn’t kill fairies in Midnight. If she had done it, it would mean certain death.
There wouldn’t even be a trial. With my father looking for any opening to rip this engagement apart, he wouldn’t even have paused before thralling Cinder and putting her to death in some creatively fucked up manner.
Fear has me amped up to the max. She doesn’t know how close she came to fucking dying tonight.
Cinder shakes her head.
“Tell me,” I urge. Power expands in me. My vision turns clear and precise.
Tell me, Cinder. All my thoughts pinpoint on her, willing her to bend to me.
I whirl away, shutting my eyes tight, realizing I almost thralled her to find out what was wrong.
Fuck, she’s got me turned inside out. Killing humans, kneeling before her, trying on women’s shoes. . .
“I need you to bite me.”
Her calm statement has me turning around. Cinder stands there, piercings back in, sans makeup. Her glossy black hair is wind-blown from being outside and her violet eyes are so clear, it makes it all the easier to see the storm raging underneath.
“Cinder.” My words come out strangled. “No.”
“You have to,” she says taking a couple of steps forward. “You heard them. If you don’t mark me then this whole thing is over.”
She draws near and I catch sight of a strange fury in her eyes, as if she’s possessed.
“We don’t have to do this, Cinder. We can call off the engagement.” I scrub a hand over my face, trying to ignore the physical effect she’s having on me. This has all gone too far. The way her stepfamily affects her. . . it’s painful to watch. Which is nothing compared to how she must feel being in forced proximity to them. I can’t imagine having to be forced to fraternize after they turned her into a slave in her own home.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I have to be here. My father was drained by a vampire. I have to find out who did it. If we break it off, I’ll never find out.”
Sidling up to me, she pushes the strap of her dressing gown over her shoulder before tilting her head to the side. The long sinew of her neck is perfectly offered up to me and my mouth turns to cotton. Something primal pulsates inside me.
Feed.
Bite.
Fuck.
Claim.
My hands squeeze her arms, and I have to keep from using bruising force. The pressure in my chest is building so quickly, I fear my ribs will blow open in a matter of minutes.
Oh fuck. She’s giving herself to me. If I bite her, everyone will always know she’s mine. My balls tighten at the thought of seeing my teeth imprinted into her flesh as I fuck her.
My nose slides over her collarbone as I take a shuddering breath I don’t need.
She’s right. We need to do this for our engagement. And then after I take the throne from my father, she would still be mine. I’d be hers.
She doesn’t have to mark me the same way. I’m already fucking hers, body and soul.
“I know you want it,” she whispers in a ragged voice.
What she says stops me cold.
Underneath her words, there is resentment, or maybe disgust. It turns my stomach.
I release her so fast, she stumbles.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Her eyes turn round as the ‘O’ of her lips. She’s dazed from my about-face. The gown strap dips, revealing a pert, pierced nipple. I swallow hard, ignoring her state of undress and my raging needs.
“I’ll tell you what I’m not doing,” I say with a cold stiffness that sets up in the core of my being. “I’m not going to let you think you are just some blood bag to me.”
Cinder’s eyes narrow and I know before she even opens her mouth she’s about to hit below the belt. “You’re afraid of yourself. Your own power. So instead you throw away all your real power and pretend you are this shallow well. That you’ve never had a real thought and you are only good for a fuck and a good time. Prove me wrong. Show me you can do this.”
I try to laugh it off, but my face is tight and a weight presses down on my chest.
“I’m afraid of myself? Well, you’re afraid of everyone else . You don’t even trust your close personal friends. I can see that, so I bet they can too. How can they miss that you always hold a part of yourself back? No matter how much you love them, you are always waiting, expecting them to turn on you. You’re waiting for them to let you down, betray you, leave you.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she hisses.
“No? I know you suffered inhuman torment and pain at the hands of monsters after your father died. That even before that you were so lonely you feared you’d cave in on yourself from the hollowness that loneliness carved out of your soul.”
Was I talking about her anymore? Yes and no.
“But then you got out, and instead of fully living you protect yourself from inside the safety of a fragile, hollow shell.”
Accusation and hurt glint in her eyes. “I am not fragile, and I’m not hollow.” Her words come out in a ragged rasp.
I’ve hit the mark and she hates me for it. I don’t blame her.
“Yes, you are and it’s fae fucking beautiful. You say I pretend nothing bothers me? Well, we have that in common, my little black parade. You pretend nothing can get to you. But we are both two live nerve endings, so sensitive the slightest real touch hurts us so deeply, so ferociously, that we think we might die.”
My lips hover over hers now. Our breaths mingle, though I have no true need to pant like I do. But she makes me feel like my heart is beating, like my blood could boil.
I’m laying everything I feel at her feet, and it feels like dying. Like jumping over the Midnight Cliffs, plummeting toward the waves of ice water crashing over jagged rocks that will gore me in moments.
In my head, one thing repeats over and over as I glare down into her flaming violet eyes.
Let me love you. Let me love you. Please, fuck, let me love you, Cinder.
“I’ll never break you. Not even when you beg me too.”
Even as I say it, I question if it’s a lie. Could someone like me promise anything like that?
Fear fills her eyes as they search mine.
I take a step back, too affected by our proximity. “This started out as a transactional agreement, but you didn’t know what you were agreeing to,” I say coolly.
“Yes, I do.” She sighs with exasperation, shooting me the purple death.
It’s time she knows the truth. As much as I want her, she shouldn’t trust me. I’ve done nothing to reward her trust. Rap is right. She needs to know I’ve held back secrets, that I’ve used her.
Then she’ll give up this insane idea to go through with the marking.
“No, you don’t. I didn’t ask you to be my bride because I needed help fending off the husband hunters. While it certainly hasn’t fucking hurt to be known as yours to keep them all off my backs, the true reason is I am using you. Using you to inspire the rebels to go through with a coup against my father. I want the Mice to bring down the crown.”
I don’t know if I’m trying to be honest or hurt her. I only care that this rattles her enough to give up the idea I need to bite her. No matter how much the larger part of me wants that—to claim her, to devour her, to make her mine for all of time.
That gives her pause. “That’s insane, Kai. You are part of the crown.”
She adjusts the strap, covering up again, thank fucking witchtits.
“I know,” I say through gritted teeth. “But it has to be done. And the only way is to get the Mice to trust me by using you as a symbol, as a sign that I am to be trusted.”
The stunned silence reverberates around me.
“Jack,” she says. “You’ve been trying to convince Jack to get the Mice on board. He’s one of them.”
I nod my head, feeling defeated. “Yes. They think I’m a trap set out by the King. But you have been helping convince them I’m not like my father.”
There. I've given up my dirty secrets and now she can hate me. Maybe she’ll cut off this engagement and go back to the Common World. I’ll figure out some other way to deal with my despotic father. The thought of her leaving tears me apart but I refuse to be the one to make her confront her worst fears. I won't be the cause of her pain and suffering.
Cinder sucks in a sharp breath. “Then let’s do it. Let’s show them.”
That throws me.
“What?” I expected anger, outrage, another knee to the nuts maybe, but I didn’t expect acceptance. “Aren’t you pissed I lied to you?”
She shrugs. “We were both using each other, that was always the deal. The specifics are less important. Seems more like your business than mine.”
It’s as if an entire castle’s worth of stone walls come slamming down. This Cinder has no feeling, no connection because she is a brick wall. And I fucking hate it. Just when I think I'd been disassembling the fae fucking thing, it’s back up in my face.
“And now that you’ve unburdened yourself of this secret. . .” Her lips thin with determination. “Kai, we have to go through with this. The engagement can’t continue unless you mark me.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck monkey. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Why doesn’t she get it? Why is she pushing me away? This is about more now, and I can’t hurt her. I refuse to.
“If you don’t do this, I can’t find out who killed my father.” Her tone is even but her violet eyes flash with fear.
“Maybe it’s better you don’t know. The deeper you dive into this, the more it crushes you. You should go home, Cinder. Forget all this. Work at the Poison Apple with your friends and leave Midnight in your past.”
Leave me in your past.
She shakes her head. “I can’t do that anymore. I need to know what happened. Marisela told me. . .” She nearly pulls her hair out as she paces to the bed and back. “She said all this crazy shit about my father abusing her. That he was a monster. Which has to be bullshit, but some of the things she said. . . the cigarillos.” Then as if cutting off her stream of thought, she stops and stares up at me. “I’m going to find out the truth about who he was and why he was killed.”
“Why?” My arms fly out. “Your father doesn’t define who you are. It shouldn’t fucking matter what he did or didn’t do. He’s dead, and you’re alive.”
She closes the space between us until her devastating scent wraps around me like a warm blanket.
“Kai, I need you to bite me.” Her voice drops to a low, commanding tone.
You’d never know right now that I’m the one with royal authority.
Slender fingers skate up the back of my neck before her short nails scrape lightly against my scalp, pulling me to the crook of her neck. I inhale her deeply, my nose brushing along the soft pale skin of her neck again.
Underneath me, she shudders.
Oh fuck. I want it so bad. To sink my fangs into her, to let the blood that calls to me slide down my throat. I want to leave marks so that everyone knows she’s mine. Every time she looks at it or closes a dog collar over the raised scars my teeth left, she’d know I possess her body and soul.
My hands curl around her impossibly tiny waist. So small, so fragile. So broken. But shattered into a hundred even more beautiful pieces I’d gladly cut myself on if I could hold them in my hand.
I’m fully shaking now. The bloodlust, the need for her roars to the surface, demanding.
Pierce her.
Drink her.
Mark her.
Fuck her.
So I do what I must.
I drop the softest kiss where her neck meets her shoulder before I step away, forcing her to let me go.
“No.”
When I pull back, I see an expression that far exceeds the purple death. If she could incinerate me with her outrage, she would. In fact, I swear I almost smell something burning.
“Why?” Her question is a blend of pure agony and hatred.
I have to scare her off this idea. Off this entire endeavor. It’s getting too dangerous. It’s going to hurt her no matter what, I see that now. So I’ll do what I never thought I’d do.
Show her the real me.
“Because I love you.”
I close the door between us, locking it for good measure. My chest is in danger of caving in on itself, and I press a hand to it to brace myself.
There’s a crash and then something shatters against the adjoining door.
For the first time, I realize neither of us are going to come out of this unscathed. I’d been a fool to think that taking the crown wouldn’t create a body count. I just didn’t count on it being like this.