She stiffened in his arms, leaning as far back as she could, and furrowed her brows in confusion.
He said it again. “I know, Calavia.” Steam poured out of his mouth. He was suddenly unable to control it.
“You weren’t supposed to know.”
Fire swirled through him in infuriating waves, stroking his frustration. “Know what? You thought you would be able to keep your humanity from me, while trapping me in this dying spot, until you got what you wanted from me? Until I fought off your enemies? What did you expect? To keep such a secret? How? If you have been here all these years, how have you kept her away? She is a thrall!” Astegur slammed his fist into the stone wall to his right, sending dirt into the air. “Thralls do not understand language, they do not protect unless they are enchanted, and they do not havepure blood!” What had he gotten himself into?
If he lived to see Vedikus once more, he would strangle the life from his throat. He caught Calavia looking away from him, her hands fiddling, her expression guilty. He glared at her. “What more have you not told me?”
“We need to kill those scouts. There’s no more time for this, please. If they tell the others—”
“If they tell the others, there will be nothing that stops them.” He gripped her hair and forced her to her knees before him. He tilted her head back until her neck strained from looking up at him. “Oh, hag, there is always time for battle, but there’s no more time for secrets.” He breathed smoke into her face. “I will have the truth now!”
Astegur hauled her up and dragged her after him as he stormed into the deepest recesses of the temple. He released her at the foot of her altar. He threw back his head and bellowed furiously, filling the room with his heat.
When he looked back down at Calavia, she had risen to her feet and was holding clumps of wax in her hands. “Astegur,” she said as he bared his teeth, “I don’t want to do this.”
He eyed her hands and reached for her. She threw the wax into his face and dodged him. He roared again, scraping it from his eyes. He saw her reach for another clump as his vision began to waver and spot. This time, when she threw her magic at him, he dodged and skidded on his cloven hooves, knocking her back into the altar, and capturing her to his chest.
“No!” She slammed her elbow, her feet, everything she had, into him but it did nothing to stop him from turning her around until she faced him.
He tightened his hold around her middle hard enough that her back bent. One of her hands came free and tore at his chest before he caught it in his fist and squeezed.
“The truth!” he bellowed. “Why is your blood pure?”
“I can’t!”
“I will not fight for a liar.”
“You will not fight at all! You just roar like the mist owes you for the blood you have spilled.”
She struggled against his chest, fighting him, and he just held her, stopping her from doing any damage to his flesh. But the more she fought, the more they cursed each other, the more the tension within him built. She would not settle. She was not tiring. Her eyes were wide with fear and desperation.
Her struggles excited his bestial nature, and his body primed fast and vicious.
Tensing, with his tail tapping wildly on the back of his leathers, he groped and touched her skin, her soft spots harder. The fire in his gut flooded his prick, hardening it to a painful point, lengthening it until he felt her fight against it. And as she fought, Calavia rubbed it mercilessly between them, making the haze in his eyes grow, and his bestial side spit and fumed.
Astegur grabbed her hair and wrenched her head back, slamming his mouth over hers. His lips mauled hers, nipping, sucking, and tasting, suddenly desperate with pent up rage, and the frustration he felt whenever she was near. From the moment he saw her in the flames, seeking his help, he had been furious. Why? The fury had grown and bloomed and now spilled out of him from every fiber of his being. She was a cursed human! Now a pure blood one to excite his darker side. A blight to his plans!
And he could not imagine her anywhere else but here, in his hold, where he could touch her at will. Where he could breathe his smoke all over her pale skin and lap its bitter taste up with his tongue. Where he could slip his scarred, horrid hands into her hair and force her to her knees before him.
He pictured her spreading her pale legs out for him.
He crushed her mouth with his, feeding off her startlement, her fear, and forcing her to bend to his will. When her lips opened in a gasp, he shot his tongue into her mouth and fought her tongue. The kiss was brutal, like he was, a promise to her that if they should live, it would always be like this.
Because he liked the power she made him feel.
Eventually, Calavia stopped fighting him, and he allowed her hands to come up and grasp his horns. Her legs ceased kicking and instead hooked above his muscled thighs. When she moved her lips against his, it was with hesitation.
Astegur ate her inexperience up like the starved beast that he was.
Her taste filled his mouth, wild, magicked, and fresh, with a bitter burn for an aftertaste. The faint smell of her pure blood drove his need, and he grasped Calavia harder to him, feeling her body mold with his… But he couldn’t get enough. His nails bit into her flesh, his teeth razed across her lower lip, and the mews she sounded urged him on. He sank his teeth into her flesh, and her blood filled his mouth.
His eyes went wide with shock, his mouth faltering on her own. Calavia whimpered and looked into his eyes as he realized what he was tasting.
“You are human,” he said rasped slowly. “You’re pure.” Awe laced his voice as a terrible excitement filled him.
“It’s not what you think,” she whispered.
