Desperation to meld myself to him, to tear open his chest and crawl beneath his ribs—to splay his skin wide as he has mine and consume everything that has shaped him. To take what I’ve wanted so desperately to feel since I was a prisoner: the relief of death.
And Niko, with his ribbons of power and cruel refinement, is the embodiment of relief.
I’ve spent so long running from pain, that I’ve denied myself any form of pleasure. So now, I throw myself into it. Opening my thighs a fraction wider, I feel his pleased shudder vibrating through my legs. Higher, to where it isn’t only my magic that aches, but the core of me.
“I’m twenty-seven, give or take two centuries,” I amend. I’m rewarded for my honesty by the brush of his mouth, so gentle, I think I’ll come right out of my skin.
“No matter how you’re hurt, you can’t die?” he asks, his voice a hot whisper over my thighs.
I shake my head, sudden shame clenching my stomach. It’s a terrible thing to want for death when there are so many who would give anything for a few more moments of life. But what they don’t realize is what makes life sweet is its fleeting nature—the idea that if one is to live, one must livenow.
Niko notices I’ve gone stiff beneath his touch, glancing up at me through a curtain of dark lashes. His gaze is weighted, the pressure like the edge of a blade, but it’s nothing to the slice of his words. “Is that why you want me? To touch what you’ll never have? That’s rather twisted, Darling.”
Humiliation and anger spiral through me in equal measure. I try furiously to close my thighs, to brush away Niko’s touch and escape from beneath his scrutiny. My cheeks heat as he clamps his hands around my hips, pinning me in place.
“You don’t get to judge me, Corpse King,” I snarl, leaning toward him and baring my teeth, just like the uncivilized savage he thinks I am. “Do you know what it’s like to be taken apart day after day? To have your skin peeled from your bones? To have your body broken over and over and be left alone to heal? To have your organs removed and your throat sliced and your flesh boiled? To know nothing but unending agony, but also know there is no force on earth to stop it?”
I’ve leaned so close into Niko, I can smell the sharp mint of his breath. The ice of his death.
“You think I’m feral? That I act like a caged, wounded animal? Well, that’s what happens when there is no promise of death. When your own body betrays you and won’t do the one thing it’s supposed to: die. There is no relief for me,ever.You don’t get tojudge me for wanting a taste. For being so desperate for even the smallest bit of what I won’t ever have.”
Shaking my head, I push a breath through my teeth. “The plague may have killed humanity’s hope, Niko, but mine…mine was killed by immortality. There is no hope when there is no change, when the spiral is endless. When the pain is everlasting, and there will never be an end to it.”
Niko is silent for a long moment, but when I finally dare to look at him, there’s no judgement on his face. There isn’t even pity.
Only an understanding that goes to the marrow of both of us.Pain.Niko’s familiar and mine.
“Take however much of a taste you need, Willa,” he says softly, before yanking both my thighs forward. Too quick to catch myself before I tumble off the piano bench, but it doesn’t matter, as Niko’s there, cradling my body to his, pulling me into his lap. “Gorge yourself on it, if you must.”
There is nothing gentle about the way he touches me; his hands tug at my dress frantically as his mouth crashes against mine. He catches my moans of pleasure on his tongue as both the cool ice of his power and the hot brand of his skin war with each other over my body, enveloping my senses and tilting the world almost as readily as my magic had.
Niko’s skin against mine feels entirely untenable—it is both the pain of death and the relief of it, the end of the world and the beginning—and it is more addictive than any drug, more encompassing than anything I’ve ever felt. It’s been so long since the numbness of my circumstances have abated, so long since there was something other than hollow emptiness. Now, there’s all fire. My body burns at his command, and I want to be consumed until I’m nothing more than a pile of ash.
I wrap my legs around his bare torso, digging my nails into his shoulders and drawing him closer. He runs his hot mouthover my throat, clamping his lips gently where my pulse flutters. “You think you’re the only one who understands pain, don’t you, Darling?”
His words float through my mind in a heated haze as I bare my throat and roll my hips, grinding into the hard length of his erection straining against his sweats.
“But you are not in your agony alone. I am the lord of pain, both its disciple and its commander.” His words are a guttural sound, primal and commanding, and my body tightens in anticipation as his ribbons swirl behind him, painting us both in shadows of night. “I am it’sking.”
He clamps his teeth over my pulse, hard enough to bruise, just as he brushes the most aching part of me through my soaking panties. I cry out, gyrating my hips wildly as more wet heat pools at my center. He sucks hard, flicking his tongue lightly over the sting before pulling away with a dark laugh.
Fury and desire careen through me but my protests are lost when he fists his fingers in my hair and takes my mouth beneath his once more, swallowing every demand I have. Because Niko is right—he is the only one in my world and his who understands me on a base level. Who knows exactly how to break through the cold apathy of my existence, and light me up with feeling. The only one who knows how pain has torn me apart, flayed me down to nothing, and built me back up as something different.
And with him, I don’t need to hide what I am now, twisted and angry as it is.
His tongue dances with mine, and his fingers, needy as they are, tug at the tangled fabric of my nightgown. I join him with careless, fumbling hands. Desperate to be bare, to feel his skin, his magic. Together, we pull it off, tossing the silky fabric to the floor beside his ribbons.
“Willa…” My name rolls gently from his tongue to mine, given like a prayer. Exalting hands run the length of my spine, fillthemselves with my hips and press me closer to his chest. Each touch, a sacred ritual: a rite to bind us together. “You are—"
Niko’s words die in his throat as a harsh knock sounds at the outer door to his rooms. I jolt in surprise, the sound tearing me from a fever dream and thrusting me back into reality. Niko’s own brow furrows, his eyes blinking in a slow daze as if suddenly remembering a world exists beyond this atrium—one somehow corporeal enough to interrupt the force between us.
The knocking becomes more insistent. More frantic.
“NIKO!” Sam shouts. His voice, usually a calm rumble, is now a deep, ringing boom. Laced with sheer panic. It’s enough to plant a heavy stone of dread in the pit of my stomach. “Niko, it’s Marina!”
Niko’s eyes lock on mine, something close to regret flashing only for a moment before his face smooths. I watch him piece himself back together, fragment by fragment, until he’s armored in the swaggering assurance of the Carrion King. Whoever he was while we were tangled together—while he kneeled before me and pried me open—is decidedly not who he is now.
He lifts me off him, gently setting me on the floor before rising to his feet. I scramble up behind him, hastily throwing my nightgown back on and smoothing my hair in vain, as he disappears from the atrium and into the study beyond. He’s already placed a palm to the door by the time I careen around the corner, sliding across the parquet floor.
