Chapter Eight #6
I opened my mouth to tell him if he let me, I’d bring him to his true mate—a woman just as ruthless, calculating, and treasonous as him. I opened my mouth, and nothing came out. Not because the curse held my tongue... but because Alisdair did.
He captured my lips in a rough and hungry kiss. Alisdair molded me to him—fitting our bodies together like puzzle pieces.
His hands were everywhere. Caressing my thighs. Tangling in my waves. Memorizing every dip and curve. Slicing up the remains of my clothes.
He nipped my lips, demanding entrance. The rough, forbidden ecstasy of our tongues tangling weakened my knees. I stayed upright only for Alisdair’s grip on my ass—holding me firm to him, wrapping my legs around his waist, moving his hardness between my middle.
Alisdair broke free and threw me. I swallowed a cry, soaring across the sheets and landing on the pillows. Muscles rippled on his back as he stalked toward me—the predator and his prey.
He kissed the inside of my ankle, making me shiver. My skin was alive like it’d never been before. I was acutely aware of the silk tickling my back. The glow of the flickering orblights, casting our shadows over the fireplace. The press of all the things I needed to say, lodging in my throat.
No.
I could say no. I could end this. Deny him the pleasure of ravaging my body like he denied me my freedom. His caged bird didn’t have to sing.
He skated up my thigh, his lips following in his hands’ wake. Little whimpers escaped my mouth under rough, biting kisses.
More markings. More claims of absolute ownership... and only one word to remind him I belonged to no one.
“Say it.” Alisdair shredded my undergarments—a flimsy barrier that was no match for him. “Go on, say it.”
I swallowed hard. He couldn’t know what I was thinking, and yet somehow, he always did.
“Say what?” I rasped.
“You look as though you have something to say, my queen. Do it,” he hissed through gritted teeth, gaze pinning me through. “You have my ear, as you have my bed, as you have my soul. Tell me what troubles a little bird.”
I held his gaze, body shaking. “I... I wish that you would trust me. There are things that you don’t know. Forces that are playing us both for a fool. If you let me go, I can put all things right.”
“Let you go?” He tsked, swirling a finger around my pussy, collecting the drops of wetness already coming. “I have let you go. Every night. You cannot fault me for your not being quite fast enough.”
I tensed. “Why are we playing this game?”
“Again you ask me questions I’ve answered many times.”
“Because your answers are lies!” I exploded. “You can hardly keep the mocking smirk off your mouth when you spout them! You don’t want me, so let me go!”
Alisdair sighed as he slipped one finger past my folds, then another.
My breath caught on a moan. Never had I hated myself more than when I dropped my knees, opening myself wider to him.
“Very well,” he said, his husky voice wrapping around my ears. “If everything I say is lies, then let me tell you something you’ll know is true.
“I will never let you go.”
My fingers stilled curling in the sheets.
“It is only the runes binding my soul that I allow you the illusion of running from me, and even then I gnaw at the leash—pouring everything I know of magic into burning them away during your precious head starts—just to catch you all the faster.” He dove in to the knuckles and spread his fingers, stretching me wider than I was ever meant to go.
“It doesn’t matter what you do, or what you say.
You can shout to the heavens of small, mole-ridden cocks.
You can bring Lumenfell to ruin. You can betray me and our conquer of Elva, but I will never run slower.
As long as the moon and stars reign, I will chase you to the ends of the world and beyond.
“You are mine, little bird. My toy, my pet, my wife, my queen. So tell me—” His fingers jerked, striking that spot dead-on. My cry almost smothered him. “Do I lie?”
Body trembling, I gazed into his eyes... and shook my head. He wasn’t lying.
“I ask you again,” he continued. “Do you have something you wish to say to me?”
One word. That’s all I had to say and he’d pull out, walk away, and leave me to the torment of my failure in peace. Alisdair did own me in nearly every way. He didn’t have to have my body too.
“No,” I hissed clearly. Firmly. I let the power of it sink into my bones, and then— “I have nothing to say.”
“Good.”
We leaped at the same time—mouths colliding in a chorus of moans and clashing tongues.
I reached for Alisdair’s shaft but he was faster. He grabbed my hand and pinned it over my head. The other hand met the same fate.
His kiss was rough. The grip on my wrists iron-clad.
I bucked, trying to flip him. He snarled and pinned me down harder.
Were we fighting or fucking? I wasn’t sure.
Maybe both. All I knew was my body thrummed with pure, naked excitement and all the wrongness that came with.
More truths than one were revealed that night.
I wanted this man, this body, this cock, and there was no point denying it anymore.
My whole life I’ve done what I’m supposed to do. Been the good and responsible girl, denying myself of all the pleasures that weren’t already taken from me. For good and responsible girls, there was nothing more morally decayed on this earth than desiring Alisdair Shadowsoul.
He was a monster and a murderer. He courted death and war with a smile on his face, and tightened the screws of my cage while daring me to complain.
There was a reason the curse was turning him into a beast. Not a bird, or a cheetah, or a wolf, or a mole rat.
But a vicious, deadly beast only conjured in nightmares.
It was because that was the pure state of his soul, and knowing that I brought such a creature to heel between my legs, was hot, desperate need that burned my core to cinders.
Alisdair clamped my wrists with one hand, then shredded my bodice to ribbons. My breasts fell prey to his ministrations—his rough calluses gliding over my sensitive skin, leaving a trail of popping goose bumps leading the way to the innocent nub.
My moan poured from my lips.
Alisdair tweaked my nipple with abandon, making it ache with need. He descended like a swooping raven faeriken. Taking my nipple in his mouth, he scraped it mercilessly with his teeth.
“Fuck!” I cried out, pure heat shooting through my veins.
Alisdair was incredible like this. Rough, demanding, slavish to my pleasure, and distracted.
Bringing my knees between us, I kicked him off me.
“Argh!” he snarled, flying back on his back. I pounced on him, pinning his arms down. “You’re going to regret that.”
I smirked. “Promises, promises.”
Straddling him, I feasted on his body—palms flat on his chest and beginning a slow journey down. My toy, my pet, my husband, my king.
My fingers skated over the jagged scar on his chest. Bending down, I kissed it.
Thump-thump.
I froze, lips puckered. His heartbeat? Did Alisdair put his heart back in his chest? When? Why?
“You are a strange one,” he said softly, drawing me up. “Unpredictable. Unknowable.”
My smirk returned. “I wouldn’t say that.” Rising up, I dropped my knees on his arms, and my pussy on his lips. “I’m sure you can predict what I want you to do next.”
Alisdair’s grin mirrored mine. “Oh, but you do make yourself so hard to resist.”
The room spun. In a blink, I was looking up at the ceiling. I strained to get up and found I couldn’t. My shoulders were magically glued to the bed. “Ugh! Why must you always be in control?”
“Why must you always be too weak to make me cede control?” His palms slowly rolled down my body, flattening me to the sheets, then spreading my legs wide. “Once again you blame me for your shortcomings.”
I tried to kick him but he was already ducking down. Already taking control.
Riiippp.
Something soft and silky wrapped around one ankle, then the other. He bound them tight. I stared at him in confusion as he lifted my legs and stuck his head between them, dropping my ankles on his shoulders.
I made a shocked noise when he bent me in half, dropping his hard, muscled body on mine.
A swift, hard bite on my lower lip was all the warning I got before Alisdair pushed all the way inside, filling me to my limit.
“Uh,” I moaned—anchored by the sudden sharp pains above and below.
Propping his arms on either side of my head, Alisdair drew all the way out to the tip, then thrust back in.
I screamed, eyes rolling up in my head. Every muscle in my body clenched.
“Hmm. Not quite loud enough. Let’s see if I get it right the next time.
” He started pumping— No, bouncing. Alisdair found that spot and he pounded it through relentlessly, going faster and faster until I popped on and off the mattress with every thrust. I was getting hit in the face with my own knees.
If he was seeking louder screams, he achieved that on the second thrust. I grunted, moaned, and screamed so loudly, my cries echoed through the missing wall—sounding my ravaging to all of Lumenfell.
“Yes, yes, ah, fuck! More, Alisdair. Harder!”
Alisdair was a man possessed, growling as he pumped faster still. Shredding the sheets trying to hold on to something real as raw, dirty pleasure carried him away.
It was too much for me. Pressure built in my lower belly, rising to a fever pitch. I wouldn’t last for one more second.
Alisdair struck that spot, and I screamed, back arching off the bed as explosions of light, heat, darkness, color, and pleasure ravaged my shuddering body. My cries scraped my throat raw, climbing higher and more unhinged when Alisdair stiffened.
He seized up—claws tearing straight through cotton and goose feathers as hot, sticky wetness exploded out of him and filled me to the brim.
He didn’t bother to get free before collapsing on top of me. He flattened me in half—weakened by his desire for a tiresome little bird.