Chapter Twenty-Two #2
He tilts his head, considering. His fingers ghost over my clit, the barest pressure. “No.”
The denial hits like cold water, except I’m still burning, still aching, still so close I could scream.
His fingers return, landing right where it wrecks me most. Two fingers slide inside me while his thumb works my clit.
I’m already wound so tight that it takes seconds before I’m sobbing, tears streaking down my face.
“Please—Legend, please—”
He stops.
“Three.”
Fucccckkkk. My whole body is one raw nerve, oversensitized to the point of pain.
The ache between my legs has turned into something that throbs with every heartbeat, desire twisted into a physical wound.
He’s still fully dressed while I’m spread naked in front of him, and that somehow makes it better.
He unfastens his pants with deliberate slowness, pulling himself out where I can see. He strokes himself slowly, veins rippling over his cock, sweat pooled at the crux of his chest.
“Look at you,” he says, voice rough. “The most powerful being in existence, and you’re begging me to let you come.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” His hand moves faster on himself, using my desperation as fuel. “You hate that you want this. That you want me.” The corner of his mouth kicks up, humor laden in his tone. “Say it.”
“Fuck off.”
His free hand finds my clit again, circling with pressure that makes me cry out. “Say it, or I add three more rounds.”
The combination of his fingers and watching him touch himself is going to kill me. “I want you.”
“Want me to what?”
“I want you to fuck me. I want you inside me when I come. I want—” My voice breaks. “Please, I can’t—”
He stops touching me. Keeps touching himself. “Four.”
By cycle seven, I’m incoherent. My body won’t stop shaking, clenching around nothing, every nerve ending firing.
The denial has transformed into something beyond arousal—it feels like being eaten alive from the inside out.
Legend’s control is cracking more visibly with each round.
His breathing harsh, jaw clenched tight, the hand on himself less steady.
“Who owns this cunt right now?” His fingers slide through me again, gathering wetness. “Tell me.”
“You do.” The words rip out of me. “You fucking own me, are you happy? You win. Just please—”
“My perfect, desperate girl.” He traces my clit with his thumb, watching me shake. “So wet for someone you claim to hate.”
“Legend—”
“Eight.”
The shackles vanish.
I drop like my strings have been cut, knees hitting stone. Before I can process the sudden freedom, he’s on me, flipping me onto my back. I gasp as cold floor bites into my heated skin.
“Your turn,” he says, and there’s something wild in his eyes now. “Do your worst.”
The power shift is instant and absolute. My hand wraps around his throat roughly and his smirk darkens. The Nightkin’s approval roars in my chest.
Yes. Show him what happens when he plays with dragons.
I flip us with strength that surprises us both, straddling him on the floor. “You don’t get to come until I say so.” My hand tightens on his throat. “Just like you did to me.”
“Haide—”
“Shut up.” I grind against him, letting him feel how wet I am but not letting him inside. “Eight times, Legend. You’re going to suffer for every single one.”
I sink down onto him in one motion and we both groan. He’s thick enough that the stretch burns perfectly— exactly what my body has been screaming for. But I don’t move. I clench around him, smiling as I watch his hands fist at his sides. “Beg.”
“Fuck you.”
I lift up until just the tip remains, then drop back down hard enough that his head cracks against the stone. “Wrong answer.”
I ride him with violence, taking what I need while denying him his. Every time his breathing shifts, every time his hips try to match my rhythm— I change it. Stop. Slow down. Speed up. His hands come up to grab my hips and I pin them above his head.
“No touching.”
“Haide, fuck—”
“That’s one.”
I lean down and bite his neck hard enough to draw blood, still moving on him, and he makes a sound that’s half growl, half moan. The Nightkin purrs encouragement that borders on voyeuristic.
Make him pay, Hellpet. Make him remember who he belongs to.
“You feel that?” I clench around him deliberately. “How wet you made me? How desperate? This is your fault.”
His hips buck up and I stop moving entirely. Just sit there with him buried inside me while he pants beneath me.
“Haide—”
“Two.”
I start moving again, slower this time, drawing it out. His hands break free of my grip and grab my hips hard enough to bruise, trying to control the pace. We’re fighting even while fucking—both trying to dominate, neither willing to submit.
“You’re mine,” he growls, surging up to bite my shoulder.
“Prove it.” I shove him back down, riding him harder. I hate you.
We’re both close—I can feel it in how his thighs tense beneath me and how his breathing has gone ragged. My own orgasm builds like a storm, pressure gathering in my spine, my stomach, between my legs where we’re joined. Just a little more, just—
“My turn.” He flips us, pinning me beneath him on the cold floor and driving into me with enough force to punch the air from my lungs.
“Legend—”
“Shut up and take it.”
He fucks me like he’s trying to break me, each thrust bottoming out. I give as good as I get, nails raking down his back hard enough to draw blood and my legs wrapped around him to pull him deeper. Curses, threats, claims—they come tumbling out of us both.
“Mine,” he snarls against my throat.
“Yours.” I gasp back, then bite his ear. “And you’re mine.”
“Always was.”
The confession breaks something in both of us. The fight shifts into something else—still rough, still desperate, but underneath it is the truth neither of us can run from anymore. We’re mated. Bonded. Two halves of something that was always meant to be whole.
My orgasm builds like pressure behind a dam, everything tightening, coiling, ready to snap—
A gasp tears out of me, but the sound doesn’t make it past my throat.
Because it isn’t a gasp at all.
It’s a choke.
I’m fucking choking!
Water slams into my mouth, nose, and lungs before my brain can catch up. All at once, I’m thrashing in cold black nothing, body twisting hard enough to wrench something in my shoulder as I fight for a surface I can’t see.
The water is everywhere. My powers tighten within me, the flames fighting for dominance against its biggest enemy.
Panic hits fast and stupid, a brute-force sort of fear that has no room for pride, only instinct. My eyes snap open into darkness, bubbles bursting past my face while my chest convulses around the desperate need to breathe.
What the fuck?
My arms cut through the water but hit nothing. My boots kick, finding no ground. For one sick second I think this is it, that I finally survived everything only to drown like some incompetent fool because Fate got bored and decided she wanted a laugh.
Then, I see it.
A crack of light above me, thin and wavering, and I throw myself toward it so hard my muscles scream. My lungs burn, pressure swelling inside them until it feels like they might rip clean through my ribs. Still, I push harder. Up. Up. Fucking up.
My hands break free first, then my head, and I drag in a breath so violent it turns into coughing before I’ve even finished taking it.
Cold, filthy, glorious air.
I choke and claw at the bank, fingers sinking into wet sand and old ash as I haul myself out of the water like something half-dead and too mean to stay there. My body hits the ground hard and I roll flat on my back, coughing as I stare into the ugly ass sky, recognizing it instantly.
It’s dirty and bruised with that permanent shade of ruin only known on Exile.
“The fuck, Legend?” I scream, my voice ripping out of my throat and making me wince.
The world tilts when I sit up too fast, and I clutch at the ground for balance. Water spills from my hair down my back, soaked clothes clinging to every inch of me. I wipe at my mouth with the heel of my palm while trying to get my bearings, gagging at the salty flavor on my lips.
Exile. I’m back on fucking Exile Island.
Only—
The shoreline is wrong, or maybe right depending on how you look at it.
There’s no smooth pathways carved by the Nightkin’s neat little obsession with order. No rebuilt stone, or polished stretches of dark beach made beautiful by force and rich, dark tar.
There’s no structure in the center or calm gifted walking around with dark masks made of my man’s magic.
No, this is the Island from before him.
Chaotic. Raw. Bloody. My eyes fall to the dried streaks scattered in the sand.
Wind tears over the cliffs with teeth, carrying the scent of brine, rot, and that familiar air of violence that makes the whole place feel less like exotic land and more like a living wound.
My stomach twists.
“What kind of fucking shit is this?” I mutter, pushing myself up onto one knee. “An illusion right when I was about to—”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand. My head snaps over my shoulder, getting smacked in the face by my wet hair in the process.
Something is coming.
The feeling hits before the sound does: a pressure change in the air that makes my spine tingle. I’m on my feet in the next breath, every wet muscle in my body protesting as I pivot toward the hillside.
Instinct takes over, boots tearing through the bloodied sand as I head up the slope.
“Nightkin?”
I’m met with silence, but worse, I feel it.
Empty. I feel fucking empty.
“No.” My chest seizes as stupid wounds, both old and new, rear their pathetic heads.
He wouldn’t toss me out again, would he?
Didn’t strip me of our bond again, did he?
The beast didn’t leave me, right?
“Beast!” I scream, lungs pumping faster.
Still, I’m met with no answer.
My teeth clench.
I want to be angry. I grasp for it. But I can’t help the stinging in my eyes. Weakness.
Worthlessness.
Abandonment.
I sink my teeth into my lips to stop the trembling, growling through the ache.
I stop when I reach the top of the hillside.