They destroyed who I was, stripped away everything that made up Willa Darling Fredrik. The only thing left was the burning inferno. Waiting for the moment to catch everything around me and bring it all to ruin.
It remains even now, two centuries later, as I stare down at the Lord of Death in a world named for the one thing I can never have. Watching Niko grant it with hardly a thought has been its own form of torture. And I fear touching him has only made my longing far worse—the silky feel I’ve always been denied, the relief of pure void, of endless silence, is too delicious to resist.
Absurd laughter threatens to bubble from my throat as I stare down at the king, ensnared just as surely as if he’s caught me in a steel trap. He stares up at me from between my thighs, the soft pads of his fingertips continuing their lazy exploration of my skin. His touch is gentle and tantalizingly slow, even as his black gaze sharpens into a deadly line. One dissected between lust and danger; worship and obsession.
“Are you going to run, Darling?” he asks so casually, I wince. He reads the lines of me so clearly. Like he’s memorized me word by word. “A vicious creature like yourself, used to the comfort of the shadows. I imagine the light must be burning you alive.”
My heart thrums, a ruthless rhythm I’m certain he can hear. I feel exactly as he’s said: exposed and vulnerable. Like Niko’s peeled back muscles, and blood, and even bone, to pierce through the armor I’ve been wrapped in for so long. Suddenly, everything feels far too raw: like he’s thrust his hands into my chest and scraped out what’s inside.
And I can’t bear it. Can’t bear for another to see the mess of me. The decay, the abandonment, the scorched ruins of who I am.
But like the predator he is, Niko senses my urge to flee. The pleasurable caresses cease, and he cages both my thighs in his long fingers. His grip is so hot, I half-expect to see scorch marks in the form of his hands on my skin, and I wonder how I ever thought him cold. How I never realized he burns likeIburn.
His eyes glint in wicked challenge. “Not so fast, Willa. I’m already on my knees. I won’t let you go before I have the chance to crawl beneath that smooth, unmarked skin.”
Suddenly I hate him. Since the moment we met, Niko’s found the swiftest ways beneath my walls—always pushing me toward a terrifying edge even as I dig my nails in to resist. And now, he’s captured me as he would a wild animal. Tempting me to lash out, to strike with my claws and run away.
I hate him for knowing exactly how to press me; just how hard to squeeze before I shatter.
And I hate that in only a few simple sentences, he’s revealed something far more terrifying than my secrets—that Iwanthim to know them. The corrosive acid that normally races through me, that has driven me away from anything that threatens toseeme, is hardly noticeable beneath my sudden desire to beseen.
Why?Why is it Niko I’ve allowed to lay me bare before him? Niko, who I’ve allowed to stare and stare and not cower away from his gaze?
He smiles up at me, dark and mischievous, like he already knows exactly what he’s won.
“You are a cunning thing,” he says in a praising purr that makes me want to preen before him. “You’ve always counted on people not paying attention, haven’t you? Never seeing you well enough to notice the oddities surrounding you.”
His fingers unlock, resuming their devilish ministrations. I bite my lip, trapping my moan in my throat as renewed heat laces over my skin.
“You miscalculated with me.”
I raise a brow in annoyance. “How was I supposed to know your skin is poison?”
Niko shakes his head slowly. “I don’t mean today. You miscalculated by thinking you wouldeverbe invisible to me. I have seen you since the moment I carried you from that beach, Willa.” I shiver at his dark words. “Every detail. Every color. I have studied too much of you for you to ever be able hide.”
His words leave me breathless, and there’s a violent tug from somewhere behind my heart. I gasp, as the world around us suddenly spins back into motion. My head swims and my heart flies into my throat as the room upends. Colors spin and swirl, like time races to make up for what its lost, greedily pulling everything forward.
The only thing in focus is Niko: his fathomless eyes, the sweep of his dark lashes against his snow-white skin. His face is one of pure focus, a ravening expression that speaks to his barely tethered self-control.
My own feels like its spiraling wildly beyond my reach. Like it’s escaped through the gaping hole Niko’s torn open in my chest and refuses to be ensnared again. In an effort to stave it off, to hold onto something familiar and tether myself back into my anger, I dig my teeth into my lip.
“You should have bled out from your tiger-beast’s claws,” he says, running his fingers over my bare shoulder. Then continuing down my arm and lightly over my wrists. “You should have been wounded by your run-in with the Strayed. And you, most certainly, should have collapsed on the beach right beside me as soon as you picked me up and touched your skin to mine.”
“Nice of you to finally take notice,” I reply, but the words hold no bite. They’re breathless and warm, just like his hands.
Niko grins, before dropping his eyes to where his fingers spread wide, running slowly up my calf and thigh to the hemof the pale blue nightgown. Brushing the fabric up to my hips, far enough to reveal my flimsy underwear beneath. He leans his cheek against the soft flesh of my thigh, inhaling deeply with a satisfied noise—a reverent sigh that digs into my chest, and threatens to snap whatever paltry control still remains.
“How old are you truly?” His voice rumbles against me.
“Twenty-seven,” I reply automatically.
He nips at me, scraping the sensitive skin of my inner thigh with his teeth hard enough to elicit a squeal. Furious heat tears through me, and that same place behind my heart, the one that froze time and then spun it back, together pulls taut.
The place Niko has spoken of, where dreams and desires live and breed in the darkness, untethered by the expectations of the light. The place of my magic.
For a wild moment, it rises up, a shimmering wave of both darkness and light, as hungry for Niko as I am. The need for release is so urgent it aches, and I don’t know whether it’s a need to hurt him or to bind him to me.
Or how to manage either of those things. My magic has only appeared in moments of desperation, andthismoment is feeling more desperate by the second.
