Chapter 1
Noth
The line between love and hate was as thin as Maggie’s patience. Since what little she had just snapped, now was probably the wrong time to say “calm down”. Or tell her that the attempted murder she'd just committed was downright adorable. So I clenched the words behind my teeth.
If my Pumpkin, my witch, all-around pain in my ass, had thought that she could use her body to tempt me close enough for her to stab me, she was absolutely right. Naked from the waist down and pinned to my bedroom wall, she clutched a glittering hilt sprouting from my side. I would have laughed if I weren’t rapidly losing breath.
“Well, this is awkward.”
“Only for you,” she replied.
We both looked down at the dagger sticking out of myribcage, then at each other with a long, unblinking assessment. Charmingly out of her depth, she didn’t understand she was about to eat those words.
Prickles of excitement ran up and down my spine in proportion to the fine tremors in her hands that started when I didn’t collapse in an immediate heap. The burn of the dagger filled my chest with ragged agony and made it clear Maggie thought she knew what she was doing. Cold iron would kill an Elf slowly but surely, no matter their magic level. Too bad I was more than an Elf.
She had sauntered in here, full of confidence, and started with her acid tongue. Even that couldn’t compete with her scent of earth and the pink poppy that bloomed behind my grandmother's house every autumn. That was until she saw me half-dressed. Pulled forward on a string, I watched her warily as her color rose. Her hands had a mind of their own as she drew close. She touched those piercings lining my ears like a jewelry box. I had to close my eyes against her siren song, knowing this hunger was as stupid as it came. As her fingertips drifted over the metal and soft skin, I swallowed back my Nightmare Walker, refusing to shift. He wanted his mate with the hunger of a depthless void.
Those parted lips, that look of awe, I couldn’t resist the need beating at my insides. I shredded her dress from her easy curves and toned legs. Our pent-up history clashed our tongues and teeth together.
We had never told the others we met before. Then they would ask how. And why. And a whole host of other questions neither of us wanted to answer. Everyone might have guessed, as the Elven King with her human village under my care, that we would have a cute meeting to relate. The truth of her mentor’s death and the unbound sorrow that followed would have made awkward dinner conversation.
That undercurrent made months of her venomous barbs and my sharp retorts collapse into this. Me sinking deep inside her and her sinking a blade deep inside me. I couldn’t help wanting to cut myself on her, but I hadn’t meant it literally.
“Pumpkin! What have youdone?” The last came out as a snarl. One hand hit the rough stone wall behind her to keep us upright.
Her kiss-stung lips screwed up at the nickname, her lake-blue eyes sparking behind her long lashes.
“Shut up. The knife is in you, isn’t it?”
I circled her wrist, attempting to extract the blade.
“Oh, I noticed,” I said.
Her grip remained surprisingly strong, or mine weakened.
“If you wanted to hold hands you just had to ask.”
For a moment, her fingers loosened and I really thought she was going to hold my hand. Then she twisted the blade, making sure something popped in mychest. My cock jumped inside her despite the suffering between my ribs. I gasped what felt like my last breath. My little murderer. I wanted to fuck her again. Maggie struck the blade scant inches from my heart with conviction. I didn't think she was ready for the result to be raw lust on my face.
This was so wrong and so absolutely right.
I caressed her breast, teasing her again as punishment. My lips brushed her shoulder, her neck, dangerously close to where my Nightmare wanted to bite her. Treasuring her like the finest diamond was in such direct contrast to the violence she had just perpetrated that she unraveled beneath me.
“Oh my Godds,” Maggie choked out. Caught between fighting me and fucking me, her struggles to get away only worked her up and down my cock.
My temper snapped. There would be none of that. I plunged up into her dripping channel so she experienced every inch of me and my piercings.
“I'll teach you to pray to me.”
Trapped against my unyielding body, she tried a different assault. Her mouth dueled with mine, teeth biting with an edge of cruelty before I wedged my tongue between her lips. It tightened her every muscle. I hadn't thought about the gold studs in my tongue for a long time. By the way she slipped her own over them again and again, she loved them.
I sucked on her tongue as I surged into her depthsdespite the pain in my chest. Part of me wanted to keep her like this forever, the shock of me burrowed into her written all over her lovely, sharp features.
My Nightmare Walker prowled close to the surface, casting the ruby glow of my eyes over both of us. He smelled iron and his mate, yearning for both. My monster was so sure of that stupid trick Fate thrust upon us, he would pick my enemy like an idiot. Didn’t he understand his choice would only lead to disaster? This is why Elves didn’t have mates. Look at said knife sticking out of me.
My renewed strokes built her ruin. She pulled me closer, her breath growing short for the exact opposite reason mine faltered. Her hips met mine in a jarring symphony, all of her fight forgotten as her pleasure surged. I would see her undone even if it was the last thing I did. Pressing her against the stone wall, the flicker of her orgasm clamped her down on my cock. I stroked across her clit and she froze, arched against me so I could pound into her with abandon while she came.
Maggie’s body convulsed, and she drew me in with far more than her pussy. I found her magic–a tightly closed box next to her soul. It opened for me with every stroke of my shaft, begging me to fill it. I had a hard time denying her anything, even when she hated me.
