He released his grip on her neck, then licked the spot in a soothing manner before sinking his teeth into the pulse point there.
She cried out again.
“I asked you a question, Kadeesha,” he rumbled. “I want an answer. So figure that shit out. Breathe for me and find your words.” It was a glaring challenge, too full of his ego to be anything else. She managed to cut through the thickest part of the lust-filled haze because she’d be damned if she allowed him to leave this encounter thinking he’d thoroughly reduced her to a state of mindlessness with nothing except the power of his dick. Oh, he had done precisely that. But he didn’t need to be aware of the full extent to which he’d been successful.
“Fuck you,” she hissed. “Need you? Ihateyou.”
He withdrew from her until only the tip of his thick, magnificently long length remained inside. Even that was enough to stretch her so deliciously. She bit her tongue to keep from whimpering in protest. He watched her intently as he mused, “You and I both know you don’t mean that. At least not right now.” Then, he hooked his hands behind her knees, spread her legswider, and surged back into her as if to emphasize an additional point. His furious strokes were a punishment, a lesson, and a gift all at once. “You fuckinglove mewhen I’m inside you. Admit it, Princess.” Malachi’s adept fingers found her clit, pinched it while he moved oh-so-gloriously inside her. At the same time, his lips formed a seal against her neck, sucking and biting the flesh. It was too much. It unraveled the last of her pride. She cried out, “Yes! Yes! Fucking yes! I love all of it! You feel good! So damn good! I need you to … to keep fucking me just like this! More! I want more!”
“Good girl,” he whispered into her ear. “You look stunning the way you take this cock, the way you come undone around it, the way you scream my name, the way you come. Do it again. Come for me again now, love.”
His dirty words shot straight to her core. But more than that, his rich velvety voice tore through her, left her staggered in a way she’d have the presence of mind to be alarmed about later. For now, all she could focus on was how her nipples tightened painfully, the friction of them brushing against Malachi’s bare chest almost too maddening to bear. She palmed one of her own breasts, rolling the nipple between her fingers. Malachi snarled and slapped her hand away, delivering a sharp sting to her breast as he did. His hand replaced hers, pinching her nipple, and then his teeth clamped down around it. That combined with his relentless thrusts was all she needed to obey his command. She came for him, melting beneath him, melting around him. She screamed his name while digging her nails into his back and dragging them downward, scoring his flesh and drawing blood.
“I like that shit. Love when you do that shit,” he growled, his movements becoming more erratic. Then he was crashinghis lips against hers, kissing her senseless as he grew even more rigid inside of her and came as hard as she had.
Afterward, all either of them could do was pant. When he touched his forehead to hers and nipped at her bottom lip, she sat up so she could properly tighten her hands around his back and clutch him to her. She buried her face in his chest and inhaled deeply, letting Malachi’s crisp, woodsy scent envelope her. He was still seated inside her and her mind protested any distance between them before he even pulled away. Dimly, a warning blared somewhere in the back of her mind. But she couldn’t think straight with him so close. She was too lost in the feel and smell and heat emanating from Malachi to heed it. She needed distance. She needed air. She needed to push him away. But all she wanted to do was continue clinging to him, and she did. The same corner of her mind where the alarm sounded yelled at her that she’d waded into dangerous territory.
Chapter Twenty-Two
WHEN MALACHI FINALLY WITHDREW FROM HER,she bit her tongue so she didn’t do something untenable. However, if she thought they were finished, she was mistaken. Malachi stood up straight from where he was bent over her on the table, then he hoisted her legs around his waist, gripping her ass, taking her with him. She clung to his neck, assuming he was carrying her to the bed. But he bypassed it and strode into the adjoining bathing chamber. It was a space as massive and opulent as his bedroom. But while the bedroom was decorated with elegant brass, marble, and oak furnishings, the bathing room looked like some majestic cavern carved of smooth moonstone with various striations of indigo and cerulean. There was an enormous pool in its center, saltwater, judging by the pleasant smell that lingered in the air. Malachi kept ahold of her as he swaggered into the tranquilly warm pool and down its steps, sitting on the bottom one and settling her atop his lap so she faced him while straddling him. She widened her legs, bracing for the exquisite torment of him pushing inside her and filling her until she couldn’t see straight.
Yes!she begged him in her mind.Please!The fevered way she craved this male was terrifying, but she was too far gone for it to matter. She especially couldn’t find the energy to care while every divine inch of him was pressed against her core. However, merely pressed against her was exactly where Malachi frustratingly remained. When she splayed her hands against his shoulders for leverage to rise up and then sink down onto him and give herself what she wanted, Malachi’s strong hands held her in place.
“What are you doing?” It was a feat to keep her voice somewhat steady when she wanted to practically whine.
He held on to her hips with one hand and ran the knuckles of the other hand along her stomach, between her breasts, up the column of her throat. He ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip as he told her, “Don’t worry, love. I’m definitely not done hearing my name fall from these gorgeous lips tonight.” He fisted his hand in her hair and pulled her close, then kissed her until her heartbeat was an erratic thud in her chest and she could feel his heart pounding just as violently against hers.
“What are you doing?” she repeated, dazed. Although this time, she didn’t know if she was talking to Malachi or herself, or even what precisely she was talking about.
“I figured we really need to wash the day’s grime off. So, at the moment, we’re bathing,” Malachi answered. “Stand,” he told her. It was another clear command. However, with the absence of his cock inside her and no longer robbing her of all rational thought, she should’ve balked at him continuing to order her around. She could only attribute her not sniping at him and immediately listening to the fact that her sex was still slick with need and throbbed,ached, for Malachi to be back inside her.
Fuck me again.She had to bite back moaning a demand of her own. It would reveal too much, sound too needy. It’d irrevocably shift the precarious power balance between her and Malachi, leave him with all of it and her with nothing.
Malachi ran a bar of lavender-scented soap down her spine. Her shock at the deed hauled her out of her own head. “I’m curious about something, Princess,” Malachi said as he scrubbed the bar across her back, “what would Kadeesha Mercier be like if she wasn’t always meant to marry Rishaud?”
The question, coming from Malachi, no less, was like being doused with frigid water. She gritted her teeth and tried to twist to face him, so she could look upon the Apollyon king and discern why he’d asked her that, find out what the underlying intent—or game—was. But Malachi wrapped an arm around her torso as she pivoted and gently halted her movement. “I’m in the middle of something,” he said, now running the soap across her neck and shoulders, “so just answer the question.”
She stiffened at his insistence and the intrusiveness of what he’d asked. But then his knuckles rubbed into a particularly tight knot lodged in her left shoulder and she nearly moaned. As it was, she sighed and leaned back against him, silently urging him not to stop. Thank the Celestials, he took the hint.
“We were in the middle of a conversation about the woman you’d be if your fate was always your own and unbound from Rishaud,” Malachi prodded. He was taking advantage of the magic his hands were working to wring an answer out of her.
It worked because a genuine admission rolled off her tongue. “I’d be exactly who I was before my wedding day. The Aether heir who looked after her people and the first-ever female squadron general leading the first-ever all-female squadron of Kongamato Flyers in my kingdom’s history,” she said proudly.
“Mmmm.” Malachi’s response sounded a lot like respect. Then, silently, he moved his hand, still closed around the bar of soap, away from her shoulders and slid the soap across her butt and thighs, washing the remainder of her backside. He spoke again when his knuckles were kneading her lower back. “And what else? What about pursuits beyond those tied to duty and service? How would you make use of the eternity of freedom you’d have at your disposal—I mean, other than frequenting a sex den?” Malachi’s pitch held an unmistakable note of light teasing, and it was one more disconcerting thing to occur since he’d carried her into the pool. This time, when she went to whip around, he let her.
“What are you really trying to uncover with this line of questioning?” she demanded to know. Verifying that this was all some elaborate manipulation would make her feel more centered. Then the meticulous care he was taking to wash her clean and the personal questions would make sense.
Malachi shrugged, causing the warm, salted water to ripple around them. “I told you: I’m merely seeking to satisfy a curiosity.”
She eyed him sharply, refusing to accept that for the truth. And though logic warned to shut whatever was transpiring down at once and not give the enemy any deeper glimpse into the vital pieces that comprised who she was, something else she couldn’t quite identify beckoned her to do otherwise. Perhaps the temptation lay within his eyes. Their hue was lighter than normal, the gold flecks among the brown dazzling and vibrant and blithe in a way she’d never beheld before. Or maybe it was Malachi’s overall face that drew her in. It was usually set in harsh, unforgiving angles, filled with excessive hubris and deadly intent. As she gazed at him now, there was this staggering beatific,contented quality about Malachi that snatched her breath away. The dark, lethal version of him was undeniably alluring. But this facet of him was magnetic, and she shuddered to think the power Malachi would hold if he decided to wield charm as a weapon.
She found herself biting her lip, hypnotized by this seemingly light-spirited and winsome version of Malachi. Even if it was a guise, she could do nothing to fight against becoming utterly ensnared in its web. Which was how she found herself answering Malachi’s latest query in as teasing and light a tone: “I don’t just patronize Oleander House—I own that sex den, thank you very much,” she informed him. “So, outside of court responsibilities, in a perfect world where I got my way, I’d also live out my days enjoying what I built Oleander House for, which isn’tonlysex. It’s for respite. A place that people—especially women of the southern kingdoms, including myself—can visit and completely free themselves of stifling rules and etiquette and inhibitions and any expectations about how properladiesare supposed to behave.”
Once that inner truth had tumbled out of her, Kadeesha squared her shoulders and waited for some crass remark.
“I’m aware that Oleander House belongs to you, Princess. Your reasons for it and the Nkita are laudable. What you’ve built with both is impressive.”
She blinked; Malachi had handed her the compliment without any causticity behind it. It moved her to keep going. “My future has been tied to becoming Rishaud’s bride my whole life, and I’ve never wanted it. But I didn’t get a say because Sylas wanted it. Oleander House and the Nkita made me at least feel like I had snatched a tiny bit of living formyselfand on my own terms.So, that’s what I’d also keep doing with an eternity offreedom where I was unchained to Rishaud—simply enjoy living forme.”
