Willa tilts her head with a wanton smile, sliding her hand slowly down one breast, rolling the pink tip lazily between her fingers before continuing downward. She slings a leg over the arm of the throne to sit in the same lascivious manner I do. My mouth waters and my cock aches, as she bares herself entirely to me. Wet, pink, perfect.
I thread my death around my wrists, the agonizing lash of pain the only thing keeping me tethered to reality. Keeping me from lunging at her the same way I had in the atrium, desperate and starving. Because a part of me has always known that Willa is starlight—there one moment and slipping through your fingers the next. I don’t know how long I’ll have her, so if this is it, I’m determined to make it last. To savor every moment.
Willa slides her delicate hand further down her stomach with a wicked grin, meeting and holding my gaze even as another moan works its way out of her throat. Her lashes flutter as I prowl toward her, brazen desire and delicious obstinance burning in those stunning irises. I grip both sides of my throne, leaning over her. Her eyes are lidded and glazed; her cheeks flushed as her glistening fingers begin to move faster.
“You always have to learn the hard way,” I purr.
A hint of uncertainty flickers behind her desire, but I don’t give her the chance to consider it further. Instead, I move between her open thighs, close enough to feel the pulse of her hand against my pants. I lean in, and Willa’s mouth parts as she spreads herself wider to accommodate me.
Her breaths come in short little gasps as she squirms toward me. I can feel the need radiating from her—need to be kissed,to be taken. But I only whisper against her lips, “Death does not share.”
Willa’s answering moan threads through me, scorching my veins, hardening my cock. Her breaths turn to soft whimpers, as she works her sweet center more furiously. “You like that, don’t you Darling?” Willa’s entire body is flushed, ripe and beautiful beneath me. “My violence, my possession. Youcraveit.”
Willa nods desperately as her eyes roll closed, pushing her breasts toward me, wetting her lips with her tongue. Feral, wild thing, she’s so close to the edge, I can practically smell it.
“I don’t think you understand what it means, Willa.”
With a dark laugh, I unwind my ribbons from my wrist, and faster than she can react, wrap them tightly around hers. Pulling her hand up to the armrest of the throne, I bind her there. Her eyes fly open, and she exhales furiously at the shock of pain, the denial of the pleasure she chases.
“It means…your pleasure ismine,” I growl, the sound more animal than human.
Willa’s mouth pops open and her eyes flare, even as she moves her other hand to her pink center. Stubborn, brave, brash woman. With another laugh, I bind that one as well, and a moan escapes from between her lips. Willa chases pain the way she chases pleasure, and I will be her king of both.
She squirms desperately, her gaze both furious and dazed, as I take hold of the throne and spin the chair to face the windows.
“Is that what you want to hear, Darling? That you’re mine? That I’ll fucking kill anyone who touches you?”
Her lashes flutter as she writhes against my death’s hold, straining, not to get away, but to draw closer. To press herself against my death, to lose herself in the pleasure and agony of it.
“Say it,” I command.
Her eyes are hateful and glazed, as they meet mine. “Yes,” she admits breathlessly. “I want to know every horrible thing you’d do to keep me.”
She doesn’t understand what she asks; the terrible things I’d do to keep her beside me. The ways I’ve dreamed of trapping her here, locking her away in the Lunaedon forever. Because though she is naked and vulnerable and lovely, spread like a feast before me, she is the one who holds the power. The power to steal away my respite, my relief—the illuminating beauty in my world of darkness.
Her breathing turns short, labored, and for a moment, I admire the way my darling endures pain. With small gasps, with trembling muscles. She doesn’t fight against it. She allows it into her, to edge her pleasure even higher. And I understand her need, the one buried in her bones—if we control the pain, we control its hold over us. We reorder it into something that cannot harm us, but instead, defines the good with its brutality.
“Tell me, Niko,” she begs, gazing up at me in a way that sears through my chest. “Please.”
I smile darkly. “A king kneels before no one, Willa. Not his enemies, not his subjects.” I release my knees, sliding over her body, as I fall to the ground before her. “But I will get on my knees for you. Every fucking day.”
Willa whimpers, as I run my fingers over her inner thigh reverently, pressing my mouth to the soft skin. She shivers wildly, and pleasure spreads through me at her eager response to my touch. To the rest of the world, Willa is cold as steel—hard and unfeeling.
But with me, she’s fucking electric.
“Look out at the world, Darling.” I say, inhaling deeply, letting the scent of her arousal burrow into my brain. “Look at everything I’d burn to the ground for you.”
She doesn’t know how true it is. What I’m giving up by giving in, and how fiercely I’ll hate myself for it later.
Willa’s answering moan echoes off the spiraling ceilings, before resounding back to surround us both, as I finally lean in to taste her, to devour her the way I’ve imagined since the moment I held her on the beach. I lick her in deliberate strokes, groaning into the heated center of her as her taste explodes in my mouth. Circling her entrance before running my tongue back up to her swollen bundle of nerves.
Though I swore to savor her, there is nothing languishing about the way I lick her. Her sweet, wet warmth is silk beneath my tongue, her taste emptying every thought from my head, but the need to take more. It’s an unyielding yearning, an addiction of the worst sort, that I’ll never be able to outrun.
I have not felt anything but the ice of death in two centuries, and the divine pleasure of Willa is enough to bring a lump of emotion to my throat. I am pain, death, emptiness. But Willa—she is so fucking full, so vibrant and beautiful, it humbles me to the point of tears.
She vibrates with pleasure, her hips bucking up toward my mouth as I take her clit between my lips and suck. Her eyes roll back, as she grinds against my tongue, my laugh of dark pleasure skittering over her.
“Eyes forward, Willa.”
