The moment my spine was flush with the cold stone, fleshless fingers slipped over my throat?—
“Don’t touch her there!” Belial barked. The sound of shattering bone exploded in my ears, the hand blown to bits on my next breath.
The last set of hands opted to hold my head down by my temples, and I didn’t miss the way they all shook in terror. One wrong move, and my possessive mate would shatter them from existence.
“Th–There are so many,” I panted, still in disbelief that there were so many souls packed into one grave.
Belial's rough chuckle scraped my skin like sandpaper. "Sometimes, I think you forget why I am called the Lord of Bones. I don't simply collect them. I own them, I control them, every shard, every ounce of marrow—it’s all mine. That includes yours too, Rayven.”
"You're fucked up," I gasped, as the skeleton hands pulled me tighter against the stone slab.
The demon cocked his head, his charms and chains spilling to one side as he analyzed my tone. "You're a good little actress, pretending you're not enjoying every bit of this as I?—”
The words froze in his throat when something on my leg seized his attention. His eyes narrowed into deadly slivers as he leaned over the sarcophagus, bracing one hand on its corner as the other skimmed over my shin. An involuntary hiss dropped from my lips when he touched something tender.
Uh oh.
I'd been cut in the hedge maze. It wasn't deep. The sting hadn't even registered until he touched it, but that didn't matter. Only he was allowed to mark my skin. In the thrill of the chase, I'd accidentally cut myself and, therefore, I had to pay the price.
Belial drifted closer to examine the crux between my thighs. He ran a gloved finger between my folds, muttering a curse beneath his breath when he found me absolutely soaking. “You have no shame these days, do you?”
I wriggled my hips, grinning like a mad woman. “Nope. You fucked it all out of me. So whatever you have in store for me, bring it. Your punishments are more like a reward anyway.”
Both his brows arched and, at that moment, I realized I made a mistake. “Ah, so the tongue fucking I was planning on giving you as a reward for taking on the blood oak is not needed then? The spanking I’m about to give you is reward enough, is it?”
“No! That’s not what?—”
"Turn her over," Belial commanded the skeletons, his booming command so loud it drowned out my protests.
The world flipped as the skeletal hands repositioned me, turning me over like some kind of baked good. Fitting, since I was about to be devoured.
Frigid stone kissed my cheeks, my breasts, my stomach. Since I was completely naked, aside from my boots, there wasn't much of anything to keep me warm.
"Looks like you could do with some warming up. You're shivering."
My pulse rammed at the hunger rife in his voice, and it accelerated when he threw his gloves down on the sarcophagus. They landed so close to my face that his musk of pine and strawberries embedded in the leather tickled my nose.
He was going to do this with his bare hands. It would sting more that way.
Catching his mischievous lilt, my muscles went rigid and he laughed. "You knew this was coming. And I, for a fact, know that you're looking forward to this. The last time I spanked you in this cemetery, you were so worked up that you had to finger yourself right on top of my old chamber maid’s grave.”
A fragmented “f–fuck you” was the only response I could scrape up, and before it had fully left my mouth, he delivered the first smack to the globe of my ass.
“Oh,shit,” I groaned against the stone, a half sob caught in my throat. The first strike had packed a wallop, and I knew the rest to come would be just as harsh.
My body tensed, waiting for the second blow to land. Several seconds crawled by. The sadistic bastard was basking in the tension.
The second spank came like a crack of deafening thunder. This one landed on both my buttocks so heavily that the bones holding me down rattled. I swallowed down my gasp as my skin burned like it was on fire.
Delicious flames of pleasure zipped up my back, making my hips rock into the following blows.
He hit me hard, because he knew that I could not only take it, but I ached for it. The insanity built, and each time his hand came down across my backside, I melted into a mess of husky moans and whimpers.
Good thing he didn’t have me count each spank, as he sometimes did. I could barely speak, let alone focus enough to keep track of each strike. I was too drunk on the pain, on the pleasure, and most of all, on Belial’s intense focus on my ass cheeks.
Another delicious curse fell from him as he crouched, close enough that his harsh breaths fanned my burning flesh, making me prickle like a freshly plucked Christmas turkey. “Bleeding Hells, you’re beautiful. There’s no color I love on you more than the hue your skin turns beneath my ministrations.”
His rough timbre oozed with adoration and love, while the next surprise smack to my ass contained no such softness. My mouth opened on a gulp, sucking down air like a fish out of water. Tears welled in my eyes, the pain and bliss of it all so overwhelming, every nerve in my body was on fire.
