45. The Sun Also Bleeds
Chapter 45
The Sun Also Bleeds
CINDER
I want to go home.
I’m going back to the Common World, and I might not come back. But I haven’t had a moment alone since my stepfamily got banished.
I can’t say it wasn’t satisfying. Watching everything my stepmother ever wanted get ripped from her greedy, power-hungry hands. But I’ve had enough of the ugly side of Midnight.
However, I find myself escorted to my chambers by Kaison and the King himself.
“I am so very sorry for your misfortune this evening, Cinder,” the King says, though the wheels of his brain seem to be spinning too fast to be that sincere. “But I am now seeing the benefits of your presence. I believe the best course of action is to move up the date of the wedding.”
“I—I don’t think I can.” I feel numb and cold all over.
Kai shoots me a strange look. Is it hurt?
I’m too in my own emotions to parse his out.
“Nonsense,” the King says, walking to my closet. “You simply have cold feet, but I know what will help with that.” He pulls out my glass slippers and I practically choke.
Kaison goes deadly still.
Before either of us can react, the King sets them on the ground and stomps down, smashing them to bits. They are nothing but powder by the time he is done with them.
Shock and panic war for dominance within me. I can't catch my breath. I have no way home. No escape. The guards aren’t going to let me waltz out of here and cross the border. I am truly a prisoner of King Charming. A scream builds but gets trapped in my throat, rubbing it raw with unexpressed anguish.
I want to lash out, to claw at the King's smug face, but I can't move. I'm frozen, paralyzed by the enormity of what's just happened.
“Get out,” Kai says in a low tone.
The King regards his son with new appreciation. “Perhaps you aren’t the disappointment I always thought you to be.”
“Get the fuck out,” Kai repeats, his gloved hands clenched tight.
The King merely chuckles. “You can keep your pet after all, my boy. Turns out there are many doors she can open I hadn’t considered.” With that he sweeps by and out of the room, the door shutting behind him.
Kai and I meet eyes. The intensity in his gaze sends a shiver down my spine. There's anger there, yes, but also something else. Something that makes my breath catch in my throat.
He swallows hard. “Cinder, I?—”
“You can thrall.” I state it as a fact. A terrible truth. You'd think I’d get used to facing them by now, but it still turns my stomach and prickles like needles at the nape of my neck.
“Yes, I can, but I almost never use it. Cinder, you can trust me. I promise I would never do anything to hurt you.” He rambles, his words tripping over each other to assure me.
“Kai, I know.”
“You. . . what?”
“I know you won’t hurt me.” The words come out almost defeated. Because despite everything, despite all logic and self-preservation, I do know. I feel it in my bones.
“You know,” he says slowly, disbelief coloring his tone.
He sounds like a parrot, and I’d normally rib him for it, but I’m not in the mood.
“I know you won’t hurt me because you love me.”
It hangs in the air between us, heavy with implication. I see pain flash across his face, quickly masked but unmistakable. My heart constricts, aching for him, for us, for this impossible situation we've found ourselves in.
“And Kai?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you too.”
The vulnerability of the confession terrifies me. But I can't hold it back any longer. Not when everything else has been stripped away.
We stare at each other. A beat passes between us. And then we cross the distance to collide in the middle, a mix of mouths and limbs. His cold is calming, soothing, reassuring, and I want to surround myself in it.
I meant it about leaving Midnight, but I planned to take Kai with me. One night without him, and everything turned to shit. Not just because my step-monsters attacked me, but because I wanted him by my side. I want those stupid fucking nicknames he doles out. I want to make sure he doesn’t feel alone in a crowded room.
This time there aren’t any games. My dress was already practically pulled apart at the seams, and Kai dismantles the rest. He’s perfectly dressed, but I waste no time pulling off his coat, ripping off his shirt, and dragging my tongue up his abs.
“Fuck, Cinder,” he hisses.
I need him, I need him so bad, I’m fucking molten between my legs. Still, I pull down his pants so I can take him into my mouth. The feel of his velvet flesh and cold piercings raking against my tongue and the roof of my mouth only drive me wilder. When I gag a little on his reverse Prince Albert, he lets out a feral groan, hands tangled in my hair.
“Please baby, please. . . fuck. . . let me taste you,” he begs. He tugs my hair, gently pulling me away from his cock. With a sweep of his arm, he clears the dresser of all my little spooky pumpkin spice tchotchkes.
“Hey,” I protest.
“I’ll buy you more,” he reassures me before pushing my knees apart and dropping down. Sliding two fingers into me, he attacks my clit with his mouth. A gasp slips from my lips, and I grip the edge of the dresser, rocking into him.
“Say it again,” he mumbles into me, a raw vulnerability in his tone.
“I love you.”
“With my name, say it with my name.” He’s desperate, a cross between a feral beast who is claiming me and a lost little boy who needs me to give him something he’s never had before. And I can’t help but give it to him.
“I love you, Kai.”
Whatever he does next can only be described as supernatural. The speed at which he licks, sucks, and thrusts into me has me coming in seconds. I scream even as my nails dig into the wood.
I barely blink before I find myself on the bed.
“Been hiding your vampire speed much?” I ask breathlessly.
“What can I say? I’ve wanted to take my time with you.” He covers my body and engulfs one of my breasts in his hand, squeezing and pinching me into a higher fervor.
“Fuck me, Kai,” I tell him, grasping his shoulders.
“Thought you’d never ask, my unholy hottie.” He gives me a lopsided grin that makes my heart skip two beats then somersault.
He slides into me and for the umpteenth time I’m overwhelmed by his girth, and the piercings I am now climbing, pulling him into me. My blunt nails bite into his shoulders, trying to gain purchase as Prince Kaison fucking Charming claims me from the inside. All my parts. All of my black shriveled soul. All of my broken pieces and my ugly past. He wants it all.
And I want all of him.
“Cinder.” My name escapes him in a pained, pleading moan. “I’ve never wanted anything, anyone more than you. I’ve always wanted you.”
A bubble swells in my chest, creating a confusingly full pressure against my ribcage. If it pops, I'll explode in a gory mess.
His words penetrate the haze. “What?”
He licks his lips as if in preparation. “I used to follow you to the cliffs. I’d watch you paint for hours and I wished you knew me. I wished we could be friends because I was certain you were the only one who would truly understand me. I loved the way your eyes got serious whenever you were lost in drawing. I used to wish you’d draw me.”
Each vulnerable confession is punctuated by a long drive in and out of me, making it hard to focus.
Is this for real? The bright heat inside me swirls and tightens, pushing me toward a feeling that could shatter me.
“I think I’ve always loved you,” he says. Fingers tangle in my hair, angling me to look at him.
“Kai,” I arch my back, thrusting up into him, needing more. He’s so deep, he fills me so much but it’s not enough. “Bite me.”
He stills. I want to squirm and force him to move again, but I hold his gaze.
“You said it can be good for me. I want to feel it. I want to feel it with you.”
“I—” he swallows hard. “I can’t do it without marking you.”
Kaison clenches his jaw, attempting to hold onto his composure.
“Hey,” I yank his hair a little to get his attention. He blinks and refocuses. “You already have.”
With a surge of dominance, I flip us over, straddling Kai's hips as I take control. His fingers dig possessively into the flesh of my waist as I rise up and then sink down onto his thick length. A filthy moan rips out of me—I can't help it. Being so full of him this way hits different.
I ride him hard, chasing that high I'm desperately craving. Kai stares up at me with hungry, glazed eyes. Then he surges, crushing our bodies together as he piston-fucks up into me. My head drops back on a garbled cry, his hand fisting in my hair to hold me in place.
I tense, readying for that familiar pain as his fangs pierce my flesh. But it never comes. Instead, the glide of his teeth into my throat is the most incredible fullness—like his mouth was crafted to fit the sensitive curves there. It's as if his bite was designed specifically for me, his fangs settling into the sleek divots of my flesh with bone-deep precision. It's so perfect, so right, like the final piece slotting into place after being empty for far too long. With his cock buried to the hilt and his fangs in my neck, I've never felt more deliciously complete.
Then Kai sucks, and every nerve ending in my body ignites with ecstasy.
My stomach tightens and I almost come right then.
“Oh fuck,” I pant, my walls fluttering around him. “Oh fuck, it feels so good.”
Like he can read my need to be even more full somehow, Kai shoves three fingers into my mouth, stretching my lips but not far enough to gag. I swirl my tongue around the digits shamelessly, savoring the taste of him mixed with the tang of my own desire.
He doesn't let up, driving up into me with relentless thrusts that leave me breathless and scrambled. I'm overwhelmed in the best way, stuffed full of Kai on every level—his cock demolishing me from the inside, his fangs embedded in my throat, his fingers dominating my mouth. Yet I still crave more of him.
Power unfurls within me, a searing wave of heat that blossoms from my core and spreads outward in scorching trails along my veins. It's as if molten gold has replaced my blood, pulsing in time with my thundering heartbeat.
The fire spreads upwards in searing trails until it spills over into Kai's mouth with every pull of his lips against my neck.
He moans around the wound, the vibrations resonating through me as he clutches me closer like I'm made of precious fucking stardust. When he finally wrenches away, he's trembling hard, staring at me with a mix of awe and primal hunger.
“Cinder,” he rasps, voice tight with an emotion that borders on reverence. “Oh fae lords. . . you taste like. . . like the fucking sun.”
He latches onto my throat again and the heat entwines us, surrounds us in glowing heat. Every nerve is alight in a storm of blistering ecstasy. We’re fucking and ascending and boiling and nothing can be this good.
I didn’t think we could get any closer than fucking but Kai is in my blood, in my heart, in my soul, and I want him there forever.
An ancient power roars through my veins, that eldritch force that's been shackled until this moment of complete surrender to Kai. The realization is staggering—for too long, I was the victim, the prisoner, the gutted little human. But not anymore. With this vampire between my legs, owning every cell of me. . . I become Death, the motherfucking ruler of a crimson empire that burns hotter than a thousand suns.
The orgasm detonates—a scorching supernova that rips me apart atom by atom with blinding intensity. I throw my head back on a scream so guttural, so earth-shattering that I feel it reverberate in my fucking fillings. My body suspends as waves of rapture crash relentlessly through me.
Kai isn't far behind, my volcanic walls milking that icy release straight from his balls. He lets out a sound so visceral that it shudders straight into the base of my spine. The clash of those frigid jets colliding with the magma in my veins only amplifies the high, dragging out each shattering pulse of ecstasy until I'm sobbing through it.
I've no concept of how long we remain locked in that elevated state, our energies crashing together in a continuous cosmic tempest. Time is meaningless when we're bound in this single, transcendent moment of fucking rapture.
I’m not sure how long it goes on before I find myself wrapped in Kai’s arms, his tongue sweetly lapping at the shallow punctures in my throat. “My dark goddess. . . fuck, so sweet. . . spice and sunlight. . .”
“Probably because of all the pumpkin spice,” I say, still feeling lightheaded.
“Then we better keep you flush in the stuff,” he says seriously.