Chapter 9 Drayven
Drayven
To serve the Laughing God is to bleed eternally.”
— THE HUNTSMAN’S CREED
My body trembles with a possessive rage that refuses to subside. Florienne stands before me whole, unsullied—the golden rosebud on her sternum is closed. She is safe. Yet my mind has not registered that danger has passed.
I killed the beast and then hunted her down, but the path here had been fraught with wrong turns and mocking laughter. Each delayed step amplified my beastly instincts, just as Kasaros promised.
It’s nothing compared to how I felt when I found carnage in this courtyard.
Red, red, everywhere except her pale rain-slicked skin and blue hair.
The scene I came upon didn’t answer to logic.
She was here, my heart, my soul. But she was bound while another man—despicable scum—stood behind her with an expression I never want to witness on anyone but myself.
He looked how I feel when I indulge in my darkest fantasies about her—devouring her, claiming her as my own. Damned be the consequences.
I froze with rage.
But then, her tear-stained lashes lifted, and those innocent eyes locked onto mine. I saw my purpose, my reason for breathing.
Everything changed.
Instinct took over, and I became the monster the Laughing God made me. I unleashed a maelstrom of violence like never before, and I kept going. My fists rained down on his flesh until grass kissed my battered knuckles. Then I pulled apart his skin, his bowels, his bones.
The sound of clanking metal snapped me back to reality—she is still bound.
Florienne, my rose, is many things. She is a pillar of strength, of change. She has the iron will of a Goddess and the beauty of the stars.
Me—I am nobody. I exist only as her thorns, to bleed her enemies dry, so she is free to bloom.
But now I’m here, staring at her chains in my bloody fists, still mindless with yearning and possessive violence. Still trembling with the force of containing my urges because, without a subject for my rage, this storm inside me will shift into something I can use on her.
And she’s there, looking up at me with hopeful eyes like she used to, asking me the one question I can’t answer.
“Who are you?” she repeats, looking over my body, landing on places that score dread on my soul. My mask. My scarred and bloody knuckles. My eyes.
In the Labryinth, all lies are accompanied by consequences. Burns that sear your skin, branding your untruths. So I tell her the truth—the only truth I know.
“I am nobody,” I grunt, and toss the chains.
My first mistake.
Without something to occupy my hands, my instincts surge.
Bloodlust shifts into regular lust. Logic and reason abandon my head and all I can see or think is her, how good she will look splayed out before me, how I must finish what that other hunter started.
I’ve been hard since our kiss, but now my cock pulses and throbs with demand.
It needs to be inside her, filling her with my seed, staking my claim.
She is mine.
MINE.
“What are you doing?” Her eyes widen.
It’s then I realize I’m advancing on her, breathing labored. My lip curls back, intending to warn her, but a deep, guttural sound comes out.
She startles.
“Run,” I grind out.
“No.” She lifts her chin, but I see the doubt in her eyes. “Take off your mask.”
Her back hits the altar. Trapped. Victory howls within my soul while somewhere distant, my heart screams that this is not how it should go.
My hands clamp onto the stone, caging her between my arms. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, pushing her breasts, erect nipples, against the wet silk and directly into my line of sight. I can smell her fear, her arousal. She’s intoxicating.
“I said run,” I snarl, desperately clinging to the last shreds of my control. “Duck, crawl beneath my arms.”
Because I can’t remove them. My body is not my own.
My Florienne doesn’t back down. Her eyes flash with defiance as she reaches for my mask. I jerk away, my heart pounding.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” she whispers. “Drayven?”
The name pierces through the hot haze of lust. I shake my head. “That boy is dead.”
He died the night she was taken to the Pen.
“Then why won’t you show me your face?”
“I can’t take it off,” I admit, the words torn from my throat. “It’s cursed. It makes my instincts hard to control.”
“Dray…”
“That boy is DEAD.” My fists slam on the stone beside her. Cracks form. Debris crumbles onto the briars strangling its base, onto the pulpy remnants of the man who tried to touch her.
“I’m not running.”
“Foolish woman.” My face buries into her neck. My bloody fingers spear into her hair. “Reckless woman.” I run my nose along her throat, inhaling my drug of choice through the mask. “Don’t you see what will happen?”
“You won’t hurt me.” Her palm lands over my heart.
I pull her ear to my mouth and whisper low and deep, “I want to violate you. I want to own every piece of you, fill every part of you, devour you.” My lashes flutter when her moan sounds too much like need.
“I’m going to fuck you so hard, so deep, you’ll forget your purpose. You’ll forget you want to be free.”
Her fingers curl on my chest, digging into the leather strap.
“Then do it,” she breathes.
A growl rumbles in my chest. I lift her by her thighs onto the altar. My hands slide back down to her knees and part them a few inches, just enough to see. She gasps when I expose her cunt. I groan when I see it’s bare.
I thought I’d imagined it before—from high on the wall top. I thought the mask played tricks on me.
“Please, Flori. Run.” Weaker, softer, agonized.
Triumph flashes in her eyes, and I know I’m done for. It’s swiftly followed by the same look she always had when anyone told her what to do. Unbending. Unshakeable. Undeniable.
Deep down, she knows the truth. She hears it in the way I say her name, the way I look at her, the way I need her.
“Last chance,” I warn, voice low with animal hunger. “You don’t want this.”
Instead, she spreads her legs wider. The scent of her arousal hits me like a physical blow.
“You don’t know what I want.”
My control shatters.
I drop to my knees and bury my face between her thighs. The mask’s silk digs into my skin as I lap at her folds, tasting her sweetness through the thin barrier. She cries out, back arching off the stone. Her fingers tangle in my hair, pulling me closer.
Fuck me, I’m ruined.
My tongue lashes her clit through the mask.
The fabric grows slick with her arousal as I explore every fold and crevice.
She keeps making sounds of pleasure, keeps pushing my face harder against her flesh.
I can hardly breathe. But it’s not enough.
It’s never enough. Growling, I try to rip the cursed mask from my face.
It won’t budge. It’s like it’s glued to me.
“Oh Gods,” she pants. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
Snarling, I obey. I feast on her, drinking in her desire like I’m dying of thirst. And I am. I’ve dreamed about this taste my whole life. She is sweeter than any nectar of the Gods.
This. This is what Kasaros warned me about.
“I’m not just forbidding you to take it off. I’ll make it so you don’t want to.”
The magic binds deeper, tingling through me and intensifying my need. It erases sanity. It ensures I’ll keep returning to this until I’m balls deep and roaring my release.
Somewhere, he laughs. He knows he’s won.
Not yet.
She grinds against my face, gasping and moaning. “Oh Gods, yes… like that…”
I spread her legs wide for my feast, find her clit and suck hard. Her thighs quiver against my head as she builds toward release.
“Dray… Drayven…” she pants. The sound of my name on her lips nearly unravels me. “I need more… more of…”
I slide two fingers inside her, curling them to stroke that spot. She’s so wet, so hot. I imagine how she’ll feel around my cock, all slick and tight.
“Come for me, Flori,” I groan.
Her inner walls flutter against my fingers.
She climaxes, releasing a keening sound that echoes through the courtyard.
I don’t stop lapping every drop of her release, wanting her sweetness to drench my mask for years to come.
When I leave this Labyrinth, when I finally take it off, I’m going to wrap it around my fist and fuck it.
As her tremors subside, I rise slowly. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes glazed as she looks at me. She’s never looked more beautiful. And she’s holding her thighs wide, message loud and clear.
My cock strains. Every instinct screams at me to claim her, to bury myself deep. But Kasaros’s bargain stops me.
“If she reaches the end unclaimed, all brides go free. The Hunt ends.”
If I finish inside her now, she loses everything she’s fought for—freedom for herself and all women after her. The thought of her hating me for stealing her chance at real change is worse than any physical pain.
“Please,” she whispers, reaching for me. “I need to see you. I need to know it’s really you.”
I catch her wrist before she can reach the mask.
“Don’t,” I growl. “You’ll be disappointed with what you find.”
Her eyes flash. “Never.”
“Flori—” I choke out, but the touch of her other hand silences me.
Cool, soft fingers dig inside my breeches, down my lower abdomen. She finds my hard length and moans, stroking me. My hips buck involuntarily, driving my cock through her fist.
Hot sparks of sensation zip through my body, impairing my mind. I fall forward and grip the altar. Stone crumbles as I fight for control. My face buries in her neck, her hair. She smells so good, a mix of her cunt and roses.
“Tell me the truth,” she demands, increasing her pace. “Tell me who you are.”
I can’t speak, can’t think. A part of me wants to laugh—she’s still defying me. Still coming out on top. It should be enough to break the spell, but I’m addicted to exquisite torture of her hand on my needy cock. She tightens her grip, pumping faster, and I’m lost.
Pleasure coils in my gut, building sharp and fast. I’m helpless against her. Years of pent-up longing rush to the surface. I smell her musk in every breath I take.
“Florienne,” I growl, the sound muffled against her hair. “Please…”
Her other hand cups my face, fingers tracing the edge of the mask. “Let me see you,” she whispers.
I shake my head, even as my body betrays me. I thrust into her fist. The pressure builds, unstoppable.
“Say it,” she urges. “Say you’re Drayven.”
“That boy is dead.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Flori,” I groan. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know exactly what I’m doing.” Her thumb swirls over my tip, spreading the moisture there. “I’m claiming what’s mine.”
With a guttural sigh, I come hard, releasing hot seed over her fingers. For a blissfully suspended moment, the world narrows to just us—her touch, her scent, her warmth.
Pain explodes in my stomach.
I gasp and look down. Time must be in a loop. This must be a dream. A nightmare. The hell from which Kasaros crawled from. I feel like I’ve been here before.
Blood oozes from a wound beneath my ribs, from where the pointed tip of a sword breaks through.