It’s not what I imagined tonight would be like.
Because yes, I imagined tonight. Over and over again, ever since her grandfather announced we had to wed and produce an heir. With all my brothers going off and getting consorts and wives, I thought maybe fate had finally intervened for me. Yes, I’ve craved Phoenix since the first time I met her in that forest ten years ago.
But craving is nothing new to me.
I’d thought about getting close to women in the past. I knew I had a handsome enough face. Back before my wings were cut off, women were ready to see me as an angelic being or a god, so they wanted me for various reasons—to worship, to partake in what they thought was some otherworldly power, or hell, just for the novelty of it.
But all it took was barely making skin-to-skin contact once and watching a human woman’s cheeks begin to cave in with starvation before I leaped away from her in horror. Turns out you can’t lie down with the Horseman of Famine without consequences.
So I never dared try again. I rarely even let myself be around humans. Hence me the running off to a forest in the middle of nowhere after I healed and crawled out of the grave where my brothers buried me and… stopped to stay awhile. Awhile that turned out to be two hundred years.
As for Phoenix and me, well, it was never like that between us. I never let it get there. At first because I didn’t know who or what she was. Plus, I was such a broken shell of a monster when we met in that forest, barely able to string thoughts together, much less words.
In later years, it seemed too foolhardy to wonder that she might be the one woman I could actually touch, just because of her unique heritage. There was also the fact that after she left me at her grandfather’s compound, we weren’t exactly speaking.
For almost two hundred years before I met her, I’d had no one in the world. I’d suppressed every craving for company and disciplined myself against every desire for touch. After our first meeting, when she helped bring me back to life in that cabin, I convinced myself she didn’t need me ruining her already complicated existence.
Until fate—or at least a homicidal angelic AI—brought us back together.
When her grandfather decreed the blood oath could only be satisfied by us mating, for a few brilliant days I’d felt a wild joy that maybe, just maybe, this could be real. That I could have this. Withher.
I look into her eyes now.
For once, I tell her the truth—and myself. “Making love to you is all I’ve been able to dream about.” My voice is rough. Honest. “Night after night, Phoenix. All I’ve dreamed of is you.”
“Louder,” she mouths, gesturing with her hands. But something flickers across her face first. Surprise?
Then it’s gone, and I’m reminded that this is all a farce. She’s not really my wife, not in truth. She doesn’t actually want this.
She doesn’t wantme.
“Oh god,” she cries out, bringing me back to the performance. “Layden!”
She bangs the headboard harder.
I get it. I really do. Phoenix knows me better than anyone—better than my brothers, better than myself sometimes. I like to think I’d give her the world and more if she’d let me.
But maybe I’d only fill her with an endless void so big she’d never feel full or content again. Maybe I’d consume her exactly like her grandfather consumes his victims.
And maybe she knows it.
So I climb up on the bed, still angled away from her. I bounce the mattress with my knees so the bedsprings squeak loudly.
“Phoenix,” I groan her name like a prayer, helping her bang the headboard into the wall in a steady rhythm.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Her voice rises higher with each exclamation. She’s really selling it, head thrown back, that long neck exposed.
Then she screams out my name—”Laydeeeeeeeeen!”—and we both collapse on the bed.
Breathing hard from the exertion of the performance.
Both of us completely unsatisfied.
The silence that follows is deafening. I can hear her breath evening out beside me. And smell her perfume mixed with champagne from the reception. We’re lying on this massive bed in our wedding night suite, and I’ve never felt more alone.
After a long moment, Phoenix turns her head toward me. “Well. That was...” She trails off.
“Convincing?” I offer.
