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Ada
My bones chilled.
I hugged myself and took a step away from this man… this stranger who looked nothing like Enosh.
The branches of a nearby willow warped his features as they shifted in the biting breeze, casting shadows across the valleys of his sunken cheeks. From this angle, the moonlight reflected off his glistening eyes, leeching all color from his face to pale anguish.
My throat narrowed. A trick?
He rose and turned toward me.
My right heel lifted from the ground.
He stopped himself. “You are scared of me.”
“S-scared of y-you?” Equal parts of fury and fear shifted in my core, volatile and erratic, putting me on edge. “You to-ossed me into a hole, let me rot, and commanded child corpses to b-bury me alive. I’m terrified of you!”
His lips parted as though to justify his actions, only to press into a thin line as he lowered his head and raked a hand through his raven hair. He gripped the roots and yanked, mumbling beneath his ragged breath. He shifted from one leg to the other, not like him at all.
Who was this man?
He lifted his gaze to me once more, his expression so unguarded it showed every distressed crease between his brows, every agonized distortion along his twitching jawline. What was I supposed to do with that?
The next time his lips parted, an audible gulp resonated the night before he stepped toward me. “Forgive me… please.”
Hackles rising, I stumbled back until the skeletal remains of a child’s foot crunched beneath my heel. Enosh never asked for forgiveness, and certainly not with a please, making this stranger terrify me more than the god ever had.
Because I didn’t know him.
Didn’t know what to do, what to expect, or why he kept shifting his balance without pouncing.
I dug my dirt-caked fingers into my bodice, quivering under the stranger’s pleading stare. He paled with each passing second, as though Enosh’s mask of cruel indifference bled right off a face that looked ages old, wrinkled by the hardships of a hundred lifetimes.
He took another step toward me. “Little one—”
“Do not come near me!” I shifted my torso against the wall of little skulls and bony chests. “Leave me alone.”
His brows drew together, closely framing the pained look in his eyes. “I ca
He took another step.
Slow. Deliberate.
And another.
Panic clogged my throat anew, and every instinct in my body told me to run. Run! Where? Anywhere that wasn’t here; anywhere that wasn’t with him.
“Come to me. Not to your master, but… to me.” Stalling his advance, he opened his arms, beckoning me into his embrace. “I only wish to hold and warm you.”
I fought the ghostly tug beneath my breastbone—how it pulled me toward the arms of a monster, with the warmth emanating from his fingers as a lure.
A trap.
No, I would not fall for it. Would rather drown than succumb to his promise of comfort. Comfort I’d wanted. Needed. Had begged for, only to be denied over and over again!
I didn’t want it anymore.
Not from him.
Refused to need it still.
I raised my hand as though it might ward off the devil. “I would find more warmth in the embrace of a corpse!”
He flinched. “Ada—”
“Don’t call me that!”
A dozen hairline cracks veined across my quiet heart, bleeding liquid anguish into my rib cage. Little one. Mortal. Wife. I could handle all those things, but not my name.
Not from his lips.
Not after… this.
Sidestepping along the line of children, I advanced toward the gate. “Do not come closer.”
He didn’t.
Nor did he allow more distance to grow between us, mirroring my steps up the slight incline.
I understood I couldn’t escape him, for each of my steps existed only at his permission. All I wanted was to run from this traitorous tug in my chest, this ache to throw myself into his arms—if only for long enough to prove that I could.
Another sidestep.
My foot caught on a rock.
I stumbled forward, paddling the air. By the time I regained my balance, Enosh had crept up on me, keeping less than a foot’s distance between us that quickly filled with warmth.
My eyes flicked to the gate.
I bolted.
Even before my foot left the ground, Enosh slung his arm around my middle and pulled me against the all-engulfing heat of his body. “Calm yourself.”
“No!” Anger flared to life at my core, and I shoved at his chest. “Let me go!”
“Never.” His other arm came around my waist, anchoring my hips against his body, submerging me in the scent of ash sprinkled over snow. “Call it obsession or call cruelty. I am close to calling it something else entirely.”
A scream dislodged from the back of my throat as I shifted and wiggled, fighting against his tight grip and its glorious heat with everything I had. But no matter how I squirmed, he only held me tighter.
“Shh…” he whispered against my ear. “Please forgive me.”
The way he hushed me and dared to ask for forgiveness fueled my anger into rampant rage. I squirmed, elbowed, kicked. My hands balled into fists, hammering his chest like a woman possessed while my mind tumbled into a frenzy.
It was too much.
Too fucking much.
The shock of my death, the child in by belly, the bitter loneliness of my miserable existence fraught with everyone’s scorn… I deserved none of this. Was tired of everyone pushing me around like chattel!
“I reacted in anger, for little terrifies me more than the thought of losing you.” Enosh’s voice turned rough and shaky. “But I ought not to have done this. Forgive me.”
“You buried me!”
Slap.
Enosh’s face jerked back, the imprint of four fingers rapidly shading the bottom of his right cheek where I’d struck him.
I froze for only a second before I lifted my chin. “Go ahead. Throw me right back in. Make it twenty days… make it a month!”
He swallowed.
He cupped the back of my head and pulled my face against his pounding heart, letting his lips brush over the shell of my ear. “I love you.”
His words fractured something inside me, pulling my legs out from underneath me. I didn’t want his love—it was too painful, too unpredictable, too damn destructive.
Enosh held on to me, trying to steady me on wobbly legs. Eventually, he gave up and let me gently sink to the ground, lowering himself with me as he kept hugging me, hushing me.
“I hate you.” For holding me the way I’d needed him to—instead of being his cold, indifferent self—turning me into a needy, trembling mess.
“I would rather have you hate me for eternity than not have you at all.” His lips brushed the corner of my mouth, kissing me as he brought one of my legs over his, positioning me astride him. “But at least allow me to love you.”
The way he pushed me down onto his growing erection sent a jolt through me. “No!”
“Shh…” he hushed me once more. “Is this not what you want? Not what you long for? My kiss? My attention? The heat of my cock between your legs?”
Squirming in his hold, I lashed out at whatever came into reach as my mind descended into violence. Red lines streaked his neck and chin where I scratched him while shrieking like a banshee.
Maybe I’d made it out of the grave, but my sanity had not. Or maybe I needed him to retaliate—to strike me, spank me, bury me. Anything to contain how I longed for him, ached for him to hold me tighter as I rocked my hips toward his.
But Enosh neither dodged my assaults nor made me stop. No, what he did was much worse. So much worse.
He let me.
Enosh tolerated it all, shoving a finger beneath my dress, pushing my braies aside before he ran a knuckle over my clit. “Keep going, little one. Scratch me. Strike me.”
I did.
My core heated with every scraping attack, each slap of my palm, burning away the sorrows that had worn me down for too long. Too long. Everything, from the gossip I’d endured and the judgment, to the unfairness, I released into my balled hands.
And it felt good.
Freeing.
A sudden swath of warmth against my cunt told me Enosh’s breeches had vanished. Leaning slightly back—his palms braced against the grass on either side—he lifted me up with his hips, increasing the delicious pressure against my sex.
That felt good, too.
Losing precision and vigor, I kept dropping my little fists against his chest with hollow thuds. All the while I shifted my hips faster, rubbing myself on his rock-hard shaft until my nipples grew to aching points, but… oh, it wasn’t enough.
“No, my wife would not want to escape me, would she?” He stared at me, the red lines on his face already vanishing. “For I am the beat in her heart, the blood in her veins, and the heat she desperately clings to.”
My insides clenched at the smugness hiding in his undertone, nothing but the trace of his arrogance simmering beneath the surface of his baritone. I observed the faintest twitch on his upper lip, as though his mask tried to return.
But I wouldn’t let it.
Refused to continue this madness.
I would shatter that mask tonight.
Instead of wasting time on another attack, I shifted my hips until his crown nudged my entrance. When I pushed back onto his cock, he clenched his eyes shut, letting his groan mingle with my whimper.
I quivered at the mercy of feverish heat and how I rocked him deeper into me. Mmm, how his cock pulsed inside me, hot and hard, warming me in ways he’d denied far too many times.
Enosh stuttered out a breath and let his forehead drift against mine. “Mmm, how nicely your needy cunt grips me.”
I thrust against him, joining in our shared rhythm as I succumbed to the warmth it provided—a shred of wicked comfort in a hell of eternal cold and heart-rending solitude. I chased every spark that tingled around my clit, every convulsion in my lower belly.
I shoved his chest until his back hit the grass, loving how it made him lengthen inside me. His hands wandered to my waist, pushing me down with each of his upward thrusts, letting my clit press against his hard body.
When Enosh’s breathing quickened, he expelled a guttural groan. “Say my name!”
I bore down on him, grinding and rubbing, until an all-consuming burn erupted between my legs. “Enosh—”
Scorching, sweltering, red-hot heat rippled across my core, spreading into every limb, into the tips of my fingers, my toes, and even into the roots of my hair. Everything tingled, sending a whole-body shiver across me, leaving my skin a landscape of pebbles and raised hairs.
Enosh sucked in a breath, stiffening beneath me. His hips stalled—they always did before he reached his peak. Gods were unpredictable; men were not.
I slipped off him and scooted up to his chest.