Chapter 1
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Hayde said as Taldon fucked him from behind.
Hayde did his best to take that fat cock. It was hard to enjoy a higherling that size because of the intense pain, especially as Taldon took him without regard for the fact that as a flit, Hayde wasn’t as powerful or as capable of enduring the pain. But he’d been fucked that way many times before, by much more powerful higherlings than Taldon—much more brutal immortals—so he knew he could bear the pain as long as he had to. He scrunched up his face and grasped the iron frame of the headboard, hoping that the way he moved his hips and pushed that ass back, working with Taldon’s rhythm, would make the higherling come sooner.
“You like that, bitch?” Taldon asked as he leaned close, pressing his chest against Hayde’s back. He whispered into his ear, “Tell me you don’t.”
“God no! Stop!” Hayde cried out, giving the sick bastard exactly what he wanted.
Taldon pulled out of him. He grabbed Hayde’s thighs. Hayde released the headboard as Taldon flipped him over, the intensity of the movement making Hayde’s body bounce on the mattress.
Taldon was on his knees in front of him. His white wings stretched out at his sides, nearly as erect as that fat shaft of his, the one that had Hayde holding back tears and whimpers when it was deep within him.
Taldon’s massive pecs shifted about as he gripped Hayde’s legs. “I’m going to breed your fucking hole,” he said before forcing his way back inside Hayde, who writhed about beneath him.
Taldon worked into a stride, kissing Hayde, who tried to dissociate from the experience, imagining another immortal in his place, one he wished had been there instead: Kinzer. But Taldon’s sloppy kisses stood in such stark contrast to the sizzling chemistry he shared with Kinzer that it made it impossible for him to transport his thoughts elsewhere.
Taldon leaned back up, made a fist, and punched Hayde in the face.
“Fuck,” Hayde said as he absorbed the blow.
Before he had a chance to recover, Taldon threw another and another, immobilizing Hayde, who gasped, struggling to catch a breath and orient his thoughts. All he could take in, though, was the pain from Taldon’s punches and the cock that filled him.
As Taldon hit him again, Hayde blocked it with his hand. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“I thought you said you liked it rough.”
Through a shaky breath, Hayde said, “You just surprised me with that.”
“Do you want me to stop? I don’t think you do.”
Taldon’s smirk assured Hayde this was part of whatever sadistic kink he was into. And certainly, Hayde was no stranger to those. Immortals had a taste for something a little different than mortals. Pleasure was one thing, but the combination of pain and pleasure and the nuances in between were far more appealing. And while he’d certainly had his share of rough sex—like any immortal—submission to some asshole higherling wasn’t his thing, particularly when it reminded him of the days of Heaven when he was a slave to so many who wanted to defile him, violate his body because that was their birthright.
Hayde calmed himself. “No, no. It’s fine. I like it,” he lied. Because he was a good liar—a great liar—but that came along with acting as a spy for the Almighty for so long. And it was one of the reasons he’d been so good at duping Kinzer into believing he’d done something so horrible, so cruel, so deceitful to him.
Taldon continued his assault, fucking him hard and offering the occasional blow. Hayde did his best to relax into the experience. In some ways, the pain helped because it numbed him from his awareness of how much Kinzer, the immortal he found so incredible, loathed him.
Taldon seized Hayde’s wrists and pinned them over his head, pressing them into the mattress. As Taldon took him, the pressure and pain he experienced were too much, and he couldn’t contain his screams any longer. He unleashed them—loud, uninhibited. Taldon’s mouth crushed down against his, silencing the sound.
Brutal, twisted, cruel. These were the things Taldon was known for. The things Hayde had been warned about when he had searched out the higherling for intel. Intel about where the fuck that bastard Janka had run off to after they discovered the truth: Janka hadn’t been helping the Almighty bring about the apocalypse, but he was planning his own. He had stolen the Christ from his creator, and now it was a race against time as Hayde struggled to track down that traitor of the realms to stop him from starting Armageddon.
Taldon released one of Hayde’s wrists and reached back. Moving quickly, he grabbed something from between the mattress and the headboard before Hayde felt something lock around his wrist.
As Hayde inspected what Taldon was up to, he saw he had his wrist in a metal cuff. “Holy fuck!” Hayde moved quickly, but just as soon, Taldon released Hayde’s wrist and seized the other, forcing it into a cuff as well. “You didn’t say anything about this, but I like it.”
Another lie.
That wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want to be there, crushed beneath this bastard of a higherling. He knew whom he wanted to be crushed beneath, but that wasn’t an option anymore. It would never be an option for him again.
Kinzer—the fallen Hayde had come to respect…to appreciate…to care for—believed Hayde had murdered his friend and ally, one of the few people in this horrible existence who Kinzer believed he could trust.
But what choice did Hayde have? When Kinzer walked in on him and Maggie, the dagger in her chest, he only had two options: tell Kinzer what Maggie had done, what she had begged Hayde not to reveal, or make up a plausible story. And with his own dagger inside her, Hayde knew Kinzer would believe the flit he hadn’t trusted only a week before that moment. It was hardly a stretch to make him believe Hayde had been the cause of his friend’s demise.
Kinzer had every right to hate him, to want him dead, and now Hayde dedicated his life to helping Kinzer win the war. Still, it hurt knowing that such a beautiful, amazing creature could find him so despicable because of his lie, especially when Hayde was doing it in service of the very woman who, with her last breath, had asked him to keep her secret.
“Is that all you got?” Hayde asked, his mouth filling with the taste of iron as blood rushed across his tongue from the previous assaults. He didn’t want to provoke Taldon any further, but to make his act convincing, he figured he had to plead for more.
And yet, as much as he didn’t enjoy it, the wounds Taldon created on his body would heal, and they would help him forget the burning agony within him…at least for a little while.
