With a savage snarl, I lunge at the Carrion King.
His ribbons are faster. A blur of darkness, a touch of ice and silk, they spear between us, entangling my feet and knocking me off balance. My stomach leaps into my throat as I stumble sideways over the waist-high balustrade. My nails scratch helplessly against the slick stone as I pitch forward, the breath shooting from my lungs at the sheer drop to the sea below.
The gladius falls from my grasp, disappearing into the crashing waves, and a cold panic races through my veins at the knowledge I’m about to meet the same fate.
Then a strong hand wraps around my wrist, pulling me back over the railing. Spikes of pain tingle from the contact as Niko yanks me backward and hauls me up against his chest. His grip is like iron as he stares at me in shock, his breathing so wild that each of his breaths press the carved heat of his chest more firmly against my breasts. His eyes are frenzied, flickering between myface and where his bare fingers are still wrapped tightly around my wrist.
I brace for his fury, but it’s his other emotions burning alongside it that pummel me so forcefully, I almost stumble backward.
Shock.
And a devastatinghunger.
The world around us narrows, the colors of the atrium, of Letum, all blurring like a watercolor painting. The only thing in focus ishim.
Niko blinks suddenly, dropping my wrist like my skin has burned him. His palm spreads wide as he clutches it to his chest, stepping quickly away from me.
The distance between us smolders and pulls, a tether drawn too tight. But neither of us move to cross it again, as we stare at each other. Niko gazes at me like he’s never seen me before, his body entirely still.
Thoughts fire so rapidly across his face, it’s impossible to pin down one emotion. They’re too fast, too convoluted—one bleeding into the next before any can fully settle. And I feel the same, unbalanced and slightly hysterical. His touch lingers on my wrist, a mirror of the expression on his face—wonder edged in horror. It had been so cold, it burned. Relief and agony.
His death swirls between us, careful once more not to so much as brush my skin. Why had it been so quick to touch me when I attacked, if Niko can’t die? Had my words truly wounded him deeply enough that he wanted me dead, even if it meant never opening the wards?
I inhale a sharp breath. “Look…I think we can both admit we overreacted.”
It isn’t an apology, and he doesn’t seem to take it like one. Niko hardly appears to hear me at all, just continues to stare atme warily—like he’s just now realized the breadth of danger he invited into his palace.
I push a breath through my teeth, trying to calm the acid rushing through my veins. I shouldn’t have lashed out at him. I should have been more measured in distracting him, lulled him so softly away from my secrets, he never even realized what he’d missed.
But calm collection has never been my strength. Not when I’m cornered.
“Look, I’m sorry for touching you. I know you don’t like it, and it was wrong to—”
The words never make it out of my mouth, because fast as lightning, Niko grabs my hand for a second time, drawing me against his chest and crushing his lips against mine.
Chapter twenty-seven
Niko devours my gasp of surprise, his tongue sweeping along mine. The scent of him overwhelms me, all icy air and sandalwood. He smells of death—of pain—and suddenly, I can’t remember why I ever avoided it. Icraveit with a fervor that pulses through me like electric currents, sparking through my ribs, lighting up my heart.
His hands are in my hair, on my throat, breasts, ass, as he spins me around and crushes me into the glass wall, pressing the entire length of his hard body against mine. My skin heats, and my head swims, as I fist my fingers in his shirt to keep myself upright. Suddenly, it’s as much of a fight as it is an embrace. He pushes, and I push back. He sucks, and I lick, and we both moan, as he grinds his thick erection into my hip.
Niko tugs the neckline of my dress off my shoulders, tearing his mouth away from mine to lick at the tips of my breasts. I yank his shirt over his head with a frenzy I don’t entirely understand, and then dig my nails into his skin. Niko’s moanvibrates through me as I claw at him until I draw blood. I don’t know whether it’s to punish him or to anchor him to me.
The heat of my anger, my hate, has morphed into something far deadlier; far more addictive. It runs through my blood like a drug, and when he answers my claws with a soft bite of my nipple, I whimper, pushing my breasts needily into his hot mouth.
Reckless, reckless thing.
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, the words pound, but as Niko hikes up my skirts and grips my bare thigh with a punishing passion, every thought goes blurry. He’s insatiable as he moves over my body, worshipping, but entirely unmerciful. The furious need of it all has me licking at his bare chest, moaning into his skin, as he rips my underwear aside and dips two long fingers into the wet heat of me.
Niko groans against my throat as I clench around his fingers, a strangled sound of need and reverence. My eyes roll back into my head as he sucks at my neck, devours my mouth, fists my hair. Niko consumes me feverishly. Like he could gorge himself eternally, and his want will never abate.
His ardency should terrify me, as it’s never a good thing to be someone else’s addiction. But the same mad obsession surges through me, and I only want more. More of the danger of his touch, more of his pleasure edged with his pain. His power pulses around me, in me. A frozen tundra, a winter wind. It is silence and relief, it is horror and pain, and I welcome it to my skin as he begins to pump his fingers more furiously.
In Niko, I find the one thing I’ve always been denied. The high of him, the cold of his death warring against the heat of his body as he stretches me around his fingers until I’m whimpering, is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. And I cannot get enough.
I ride his hand wildly, drawing his mouth back to mine, matching his need with my own. I moan his name onto histongue, and he fuckinggrowlsin response, an animal driven only by his most base needs. And the thought that I am the one who can fill it, thatI’mthe one who satiates him, has wanton desire pooling at my core.
Niko’s hand comes to my throat, his fingers wrapping around the delicate skin. I lift my chin, pressing into his hand until my breaths become short and restricted. He draws his mouth from mine to watch as I squirm on his fingers; watch as my skin flushes and my mouth parts and my eyes roll closed. His fathomless gaze glints with nothing short of absolute obsession.
