CHAPTER TWENTY
I open my eyes to the soft film of sunlight shattering through a loosely knitted patchwork of branches.
It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen daylight that I simply lie still and watch tiny particles drift through the streams. The air is a buttery scent of cloves, pine and honeysuckle.
It looks lingers across my skin and hangs from the woven tapestry of vines arching over the bed.
A grin touches my lips as I notice the sheer drapes falling from the grand posts I know hadn’t been there the last time I saw the bed.
Vaelith.
I turn to find him, fingers extended, but closing into an ocean of cold satin. My head lifts and I scan the space, the columns of still trees growing throughout the room. But there’s no sign of the devil I’m hopelessly in love with.
My hair is damp, I note, running my fingers through the strands, pushing them back from my face.
My skin feels soft, smooth like the time I went to the spa with Mom.
My guess is Vaelith washed me and the image of him squeezed into a bathtub, cradling me to his chest and washing me has my heart skipping.
It’s not the first time he’s done so after a long, hard — no pun intended — session of him and my boys exhausting me. The in-ground tub constructed from the very earth itself was specifically designed to hold us both comfortably. But he’s always so gentle when—
I bolt straight up.
I remember.
I remember everything.
I remember the dirt sliding out from beneath my feet, the tumble of lights as I crashed from me world into this one.
I remember wandering, moving deeper through the maze of trees, heavy bush and a seemingly endless terrain of wilderness.
I was just beginning to panic. Thinking I’d gotten myself lost in the mountains, that Mom and Dad were going to be worried sick when they can’t find me.
It’s unclear how I found the gate. The short garden wall choked with vines. But the thought of finding help had me pushing through.
I rub the patch of skin between my brows as I try to remember the haze stretch of fog still soaking much of the images. But I have the memory of waking up and finding a giant beast with fur and antlers standing at the foot of the bed. His eyes glowed an inhuman red as he bared his fangs.
“What are you doing here?”
My response, like any normal person when facing an eight-foot-tall creature with talons as big as they are and a skull face was to scream and threw myself off the side of the bed.
“Get back!” I screamed, racing to the nearest tree and tearing off a branch, which had enraged him.
He snarled and I swung. I got him a few times when he lunged for me. We were both showered with leaves as I got him on the shoulders, chest, his face.
I somehow wound up tossed on the bed. The branch snatched from my fingers and him pinning me down. I was sure he was going to eat me, especially the way he was trembling with rage.
But he lost his fur to vines and his skull was replaced with the most beautiful face I had ever seen. The red dimmed in his eyes but still lingered as he stared down at me.
“How did you get here?”
His voice, still gruff and husky had a whole other effect on me that I knew I shouldn’t be entertaining.
He was a legit demon.
Some devil creature who is most likely going to torture me before flaying my skin for supper.
“I know you can talk,” he muttered, unimpressed by my staring.
“Give me a minute!” I snapped back. “I have a lot of feelings right now and I’m processing.”
His eyes blinked, but my fingers were reaching for the thick coil of roots across his chest. I tap it with a finger.
“Is this real?”
“What...?” I went for his antlers next, for the ivory arches. He smacked my hand. “Stop that.”
“How are you real?”
He scrambled off me, his branch still in hand like he’s ready to smack me with it.
“How are you in my bed?”
It seemed settled that I wasn’t allowed to leave. That I belonged to him now. A turn of events would make any book girly purr with delight, but I knew I had to get back. It had already been days, and Mom and Dad were probably freaking out.
That did not mean shit to him. I broke into his castle and rightfully, he can do whatever he wanted
But he never locked me up. Never mistreated me. He made sure I had food, even though he never ate, and so many beautiful dresses. He took me with him all over the kingdom and showed me his world.
He was still an asshole, but he made me laugh and listened when I talked. Really listened. Whenever I mentioned something I missed, it would appear the next day, except my parents.
“Humans aren’t supposed to be here, little one,” he always said.
It was months later while I was watching him rebuild a garden after a thunderstorm destroyed some of the flowers that I realized I was falling for him.
Not just a crush or a sexual fantasy daydream, but actually in love with him.
It was a crazy thought because he had made no inappropriate advances.
The few times our hands had brushed, he had jerked away like I burned him.
But I’d seen the way he’d watch me. The way his eyes would turn a faint red when he did something that turned me on.
I couldn’t figure out how he always knew until that afternoon when I was watching him move through the garden.
Muscles flexing. Big hands lifting and cutting.
The way his long legs moved across the grass.
It had been a mild afternoon, but I was sweating.
My panties were soaked. It took everything in me not to shift and. ..
He appeared in front of me, eyes a wild red as he bared down on me with all that raw, rugged heat. His massive silhouette blotted the sun as I sat on my picnic blanket in my pretty blue dress.
I didn’t even pretend to fight when he shoved my skirt up and dove face first between my thighs. I dropped to the ground and spread my knees. I dragged my neckline down, baring my breasts and meet his hungry gaze at I teased my nipples and rode his face.
“Don’t stop,” I begged, curling my fingers into his antlers and cumming all over that tongue of his.
“That fucking smell,” he snarled, climbing over me. I was put on my knees and made you take guys cock what his hands in my hair. “How long did you think you’d be safe from me?”
He didn’t knot in me. He probably thought it would be too much the first time, but it had been the most incredible experience of my life and I became addicted.
It was never enough. The more he fucked me, the more I needed it.
Maybe it was how thorough and dedication he was to my sweet suffering, but I wanted him every waking minute.
But as ruler, his kingdom needed him, too. I was a big girl and did my best to behave and wait for him, but he’d meet my gaze from across a crowded room and I was wet.
“I’m making you a playmate,” he panted into the side of my neck one afternoon when he was supposed to be working.
Instead, I was straddling a log with him behind me, knot locked deep inside me.
“I don’t want anyone else,” I told him.
Vaelith laughed sharply. “Do you think I would ever let another man touch you?” He pulled me up and back against his chest. “They would be a part of me. Fragments of my soul. They will be yours as I am. They will worship and love you as I do. That will protect you when I can’t.
And fuck you the way your greedy cunt needs. ”
I tipped my head back on his shoulder. “You’re not tired of me, are you?”
His kiss was brutal, angry and ravenous. I was breathless and bruised by the time he freed me.
“I will never tire of you. I will never want another soul the way I ache and yearn for you. You are my heart. The very thing keeping me alive. I will keep you until the very end of my existence.”
We married that afternoon with his cum running down my thighs and his scant on my skin. He bound our hands in a simple ceremony with only us and a handful of his trusted advisors. Nothing flashy or grand. Simple. Intimate. Us and the rest of our lives.
The next day, as I was wandering the woods outside our bedroom, they appeared.
Three dark souls that chased me through the wilderness and took me while my husband watched.
He stood with his shoulder against a tree as my boys took turns ruining me at his feet before he pulled me onto my knees and took his turn.
I love my life here.
I love my kingdom.
But I love my king with a blinding madness that has me scrambling out of our bed. I rush to the wardrobe and grab the first dress off the hook and drag it on.
My heart is pounding with a giddy rush of excitement and happiness as I race out the door.
I know exactly where to go.
I know the path. My feet know the way as I run.
There are still hazy patches in my memory, but I know enough. I remember enough.
Built from earth and vines, the castle looms far in the distance.
A sprawling metropolis of lush vegetation and foliage that spans into the distance.
Arched bridges join buildings over deep slits of water so blue the sky should be jealous.
Everywhere, creatures roam. Each moving with their own purpose yet still stop to bow as I race past.
It has been eight years for me, but hundreds for them and still each one recognizes me like no time has passed. I suppose it’s hard to forget the only human to show up on their doorstep.
I round a bend and stop at the stone corridor with the wooden doors at the end.
My breath thumps. An erratic patter that only escalates as I stand and stare at the only thing between me and Vaelith.
Choking on emotions I can’t separate, I run. I close the distance. My weight hits the barricade and the hinges give. They swing open with a deafening crash.
Vaelith bolts to his feet. His gaze jumps from me to the place behind me. Hands giant claws at his sides.
“Rina?”
I close the distance between us and I’m caught when I throw myself into his arms.
“I remember,” I breathe into his neck.
“Leave!” he barks, scooping me up.