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Ada
I sat in the small tub Gretchen had brought, posture stiffening whenever Enosh rubbed a soaked rag over my back. Even though steam billowed on the surface, his touch brought chills to my skin. What sort of monster would stir up a child’s corpse? And let A
I pressed my hand onto my mouth to stifle a sob, a sick feeling twisting my gut. “She was a little girl, Enosh… probably not even four when she died.”
Behind me, a low growl trembled his chest. “We will not speak of it.”
“Can you imagine the desperation of a mother if she offers her warm body to the god who cursed her only child with eternal cold? To let him fuck her in the most ungodly ways—”
“By nature, I fuck in godly ways,” he scoffed, tossing the rag into the tub with a splash. “Luring nothing but the sweetest moans and gasps from your skilled lips.”
Only trickery. “You’ll stir neither lust nor longing out here.”
Because there was none.
Because there never would be.
“My woman is particularly contentious this night.” He hauled me up by my arms until my face met his icy stare, water splashing around calves that wanted to snap. “Shall I tell you how many times you came apart with your quim tight around my cock at your own inclination? Will the rebellion of your mind ease or worsen for knowing?”
My pulse sped up.
Not true.
“However much of a god you might be at the Pale Court… out here, you can’t disguise loathing as lust or pain as pleasure.”
He lifted me out of the tub, his whisper against my ear like metal scraping over rock. “Oh, my little one, that suits me just fine, because neither can you disguise the opposite.”
Fragrant straw crunched beneath my shoulders as he lowered me onto the bed, the air perfumed with dried lavender hanging from the rafters. Standing at the end of the bed, Enosh peeled off his clothes, watching me like a predator might its prey.
When he climbed onto the bed, naked and hard, I kicked my useless legs, shifting back for distance. “Stay away from me.”
“Shh… remember?” His hand clasped around my foot, bringing it to his face before he placed a kiss on my ankle. “Never deny me your warmth or I shall withhold my touch.”
A gasp parted my lips as he trailed his tongue along the inside of my calf. “I don’t want your touch.”
“No? Your body doesn’t prickle when I do this?” The back of his hand stroked up along the inside of my thigh as he inched between my parted legs, letting my skin tingle. “Your bones tremble for my attention, little one. Your flesh screams for my touch. It speaks to me, its master, and I answer it fluently—a language perfected over the course of a month. Listen!” His fingertips ghosted over the curls between my legs, barely touching, driving up the anxious beat of my heart. “Mmm, your breathing becomes quicker as your veins swell with blood, urging me to touch right… here.” He pi
He climbed over my crooked leg as he continued to torture my nymph. He lay down beside me, one arm angled to support his head as he whispered, “My poor woman came to me so deprived of touch, shu
Familiar pain a
His finger entered me. Pulled out. Pushed in again. “But I worship your body, can’t you feel it? How I circle, push, and dip… bringing you the sweetest pleasures?”
My breathing hitched.
No. Not true.
Not true, not true, not true.
I turned my head away, disgusted with myself over how his finger penetrated me easily, pressing my i
“Mmm, I am a flawed god, but nobody can accuse me of impatience.” His smile-hardened lips brushed along a tendon on the side of my neck, his breath warm against my earlobe. “Do I not stroke and pet and dote on you for hours, little one? Tease this little bud until it peeks from its hood, hard and needy? Like this. Mmm, yes. Slow. Gentle. That’s how my woman loves it.”
My lungs stalled, putting a crack in my voice. “I feel nothing.”
“Is that so?” My lie earned me a thrust of his finger before he curled it inside me, letting delicious pressure expand there. “You’re not holding your breath right now? You’re not clinging to that exhale as if it will help you ignore how my finger spreads you? Fills you? Almost makes you moan but— Ah… you need the thickness of my cock. Do you feel it?”
I shook my head.
“I do,” he whispered, twirling a blonde strand around his finger. “I feel the tingle on your scalp, the stiffness in your right toe as you arch it, the tension in this muscle right here.” His fingers slipped behind my neck, rubbing a sore knot at the left base of my skull while his other hand added a second finger inside me. “I feel every cell in your body and how it longs for me, aches for my touch after years of scorn and neglect. Oh, my little one, let me worship your body the way your man ought to.”
I simmered in a confusing mix of disgust and desire as I breathed into his touch. “It’s not real.”
It couldn’t be.
I wouldn’t let it!
But… oh, his skilled hand.
“Stop denying and give in to me.” His fingers abandoned me as he slowly brought them between our faces, before he stroked them into my mouth, hooking them behind my teeth, letting the cream of my arousal spread tart across my gums. “Mmm, my little one got herself all wet again, making such a needy mess between her legs that I shall tend to. Let me have a taste of my woman’s cunt.” Slanting his mouth over mine, he drove his tongue to part my lips, moaning at the taste he found there. “Oh, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, you desire this as much as I do. You crave the undivided attention of my touch, how I listen to your muscle’s every whim, answering your body’s every plea.”
My vision speckled.
“Little one,” he whispered, “you’re holding your breath again. Your lungs are burning. Breathe. Breathe! There… that’s my good mortal.”
Air rushed into my lungs, and I blamed it for how my nipples hardened. A sense of emptiness filled me where his fingers had been only moments ago, aching to be filled after years of abstention. It hurt, letting moisture gather on my forehead—and more between my legs in maddening waves of aching need.
“Shh, I know where you need me.” Two fingers trailed down between the valley of my breasts, along my belly, and through my curls until they thrust inside me. “Mmm, I left you wanting once, but never again, my precious woman.” A scoff. “How the blood buzzes around your heart whenever I say that word. Precious.” My chest turned weightless for a breath, and another as his lips brushed along the shell of my ear where he whispered, “Precious.”
The word crawled into my veins, spreading right through me with torturous heat. My body fevered, pelvis shifting toward the hypnotic rhythm of his fingers stroking me, the large palm that rested against my nymph, indulging it with constant pressure.
At the first cautioning tingle around my nymph, I sucked in a sharp breath. “I hate you.”
“Shh, do not disguise your lust as loathing,” he crooned inches from my ear, curling his fingers inside me, promising wicked pleasure with how he palmed my tender nub. “Give in to me. You know you want to. Want me to drown you in pleasure until you resurface and bloom. Ah, you are so close, my little one.” His breathing came faster, harsher, panting against my neck with each thrust of his fingers. “Mmm, such heat around your pulsing gem. Release it. Let go.”
I cried out at the torrential wave of pleasure as a riptide surged through me, lifting me to the highest high before it dropped me into the shameful gorge of defeat. Something fractured inside me with my next inhale—perhaps my sanity, though likelier, my self-respect.
“Good girl.” Enosh’s purr broke against my forehead, where he nuzzled the fine wisps along my hairline. “Mmm, do you believe it now, little one? That you long for my touch?”
My ragged breathing soon hiccupped into a pathetic sob. How many times had I succumbed to this man and how easily he weaved pleasure through me? Had I truly been so deprived of touch, of attention, of the feeling to be wanted that I enjoyed this depravity?
His finger stroked through the middle of my forehead and down to the tip of my nose. “Why would you want to escape such pleasure?”
Reality crept back into me one strained inhale at a time. Perhaps I was mad, or lonely, or debauched—God’s bones, maybe I was all three at once. Nothing but a mere mortal with a beating heart, pitted against the devastating whims of a virile god.
He could have my body.
But never my soul.
Never its surrender.
Braving his sly grin, I shifted away from his touch. “No pleasure in this world could make me want to stay around your corrupted character.”
Something cracked in the abyss of his gray eyes. For a grin-dropping second, it appeared as though his mask broke in too many places all at once. Unable to sustain his air of superiority, the age-old face behind the decaying veneer contorted in… yes, anger.
It screamed around a god enraged, barely contained by his mortal form. The room shook in much the same way the ground had earlier, and the glass in the window clattered. Did he do this? Because he was mad? Mercy god, what angered him so? Escape was but a dream already faded.
His hand went to my throat, right above my collar, not choking me but clasping hard enough as if to let me know that he could. “I hold you for hours after we coupled, feeding you from one hand while the other strokes your hair until all tension leaves your muscles. The little skin I have left at my disposal, I weave into the finest dresses, and the softest pelts line your bed.” His forehead lowered against mine, and his eyes closed as he shifted his mouth against my lips. “Kiss me.” He slammed his mouth to mine, kissing, suckling, and when my lips remained stiff and still, he nipped me. “Kiss me!”
His roar stilled my breathing, but I found a sliver of confidence in how his hand slipped off my throat to the sound of dust raining from the crossbeams. “Make me.”
A breath barreled out of him.
A second passed.
Two. Three.