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They swayed over him, then over his room, the bed twice the size of any other king’s with its bending dark wooden posts and the two oblong windows on either side shrouded in red glass and copious vines. On one side of the bed perched a dark oak desk before a window, inkpots and parchment lined and piled neatly, and a small dining table with two seats. On the other side, upon the wall above another chest of drawers used as a nightstand, stretched a map.
Thick reddened blotches of ink had been splattered upon Sinshell—upon the landmarks he’d poisoned and murdered.
Tearing my eyes from the map to the king, who stood wearing that infuriating mask of indifference, the weight of the dagger in my hand increased.
And I raced from his rooms to my own.
Indecision and disgust and hatred and something else I didn’t want to acknowledge had my limbs tangling in the bedding until the moon had risen high beyond the windows.
Darkness gathered in patches over the floor and in the corners of the room, broken only by lighter shadows that bobbed and drifted.
Look at me, honey bee…
The dagger, tucked under the nightstand, was already warm in my hand when I bent down to retrieve it as though it had been ready and awaiting use.
I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew was what I was feeling—this broiling, unbearable ache that shattered in scalding waves behind my dry eyes. It fired every limb into action, my breathing into sharp shards of air, and encased my heart in a protective barrier of ice as I exited my rooms.
The hall was empty. No guards stood outside our doors for protection. I was willing to wager the king thought himself protection enough. The cocky, insufferable monster.
Would it curdle your blood to know that I like to play with my food before I eat it?
His soft tone, brutal words, had haunted me for hours. For years, my people had lived in fear and worry that soon it would be them. That soon he would come for us all—leaving no trace of us behind save for the healers I’d heard he’d stolen from us to help his own people.
Even then, they’d be bred into the blood Fae’s history until our heritage was so diluted with theirs, those stolen gold Fae healers would soon be wiped from most everyone’s memory.
No more.
I couldn’t bear it, this torturous game of lust-addled hatred and fear. Fear of him, fear of myself and of what he stoked to life within me, fear for my people and what would become of them should I fall prey to a murderous king and lose myself. Either in death or…
I couldn’t even fathom the thought of it, but this entity inside me, this fate-ordained disaster that seemed like some type of gruesome jest of the stars, made me feel it anyway.
I wanted it gone—over before it unfurled into something that would cost our people everything.
One of the doors opened with a thought, and shocked, I just stood there for a moment as it swung far enough to reveal the darkness within.
When I was certain the swaying shadows over the floor were just that, I crept inside, and the door closed with a near soundless click behind me. My eyes slowly adjusted with each careful step taken toward the ginormous bed.
In it, upon his back and shirtless, the king slept. His bare chest, sculpted by the stars and scarred by his own deeds, rose and fell. His arms, boulders of muscle, were folded behind his head, exposing tufts of golden hair in his armpits. His lashes crested his cheeks in curls of shadow, perfect lips parting with each soft breath.
Our kind wasn’t prone to such things as snoring, though I had thought the wolven blood Fae, even while not in their beast form, might do so. His scent—stars, his fucking scent was everywhere, and dizzy from it, I halted by the side of the bed, overrun with the urge to think this through, perhaps find another—no.
Teeth gritting, I threw myself onto the bed and pressed my blade to his thick, exquisite neck within half a failed heartbeat.
He smiled, a slow reveal of his teeth while his eyes remained closed. “Do it,” he purred throatily, and then his eyes opened, blazing and hooded. “Mate.”
Blood trickled as my hand trembled and the blade slid against his skin—that word said aloud cleaving all that I was in two.
His smile didn’t wane, but his arms unfolded and came around my body, hands gliding up my back. One clawed finger scraped over the gossamer, tearing the sheer white nightgown. That claw took its time traveling the expanse of my spine until my nightgown drooped over my arms, my breasts nearly exposed.
The king’s eyes never left mine.
The blade slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor as the king swatted it away and grabbed the back of my head.
My mouth crashed into his. Desperate and starving, I collapsed over him and my lips parted his, teeth catching his tongue.
He groaned, flipping me to my back, and loomed over me with glowing eyes. His head lowered, a rough laugh dancing over my mouth a second before he nipped my upper lip. “You truly wish me dead, sunshine?”
His wings, although not visible in this form, unfurled as shadows upon the walls, rendering everything except for him in total darkness. I didn’t, couldn’t answer. Horror tried to form a place in my vacant mind when my thighs parted, allowing his body to settle against mine.
He chuckled, the sound deliciously heated over my seeking lips. His forearms rested on either side of my head, fingers smoothing my hair from my face. “If you did, you’d have aimed for the head and not my throat, mate.”
I growled. “Stop saying that.”
A golden brow quirked. “Ashamed, are we?”
He knew I was, and I wanted him to know, as I hissed, “More than you’ll ever be able to comprehend, savage.”
If I’d offended him, he hid it well. Dade hummed, then recaptured my lips for a quick taste, murmuring between teasing brushes, “I want to properly shame you…” I felt him tremble when my hands slid over his back, muscle and sinew shifting. “I want to feel you, to torture you with my mouth, fingers,” he groaned, “my cock.” He swallowed, his voice changing, graveled. “I want you slick, so slick that your pulse will forever quicken at the mere thought of me.”
I moaned, pressing my hands into his toned waist—pressing him against me. His hips began to rock while his hand trailed down my side, taking my ruined nightgown with it. With his eyes on mine, he tore his mouth away, lips skimming my chin, journeying slowly to my thudding pulse. He pressed his tongue against it, and we each exhaled a sharp breath. Dragging his mouth over my chest, he then lifted high enough to gaze down at my breasts.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and then he was squeezing, licking, caressing, and driving me so wild, I was writhing underneath him, on fire and burning higher with every breath.
On his knees between my spread legs, my tattered nightgown split apart once more with a slow swipe of his claw. It tickled over my stomach, stopped right before my mound, and then retracted as Dade ripped the fabric with his hands before gazing at what lay beneath. He cursed again. “Do you always sleep with no undergarments?”
“I-I…” My voice was too thick, too useless.
“Do not answer that,” he rasped.
Unsure what to do with my hands, with my naked body on display beneath this giant male, his eyes twin pools of burning ocean upon mine, panic raced in.
And then he touched me. His eyes remained on mine, and he touched me with such careful precision, his lips parting with a low groan at what he found. “I fear I might explode in my pants.”