“You are hiding, Darling.”
“Yeah, I am,” I spit, anger and humiliation rising in my chest. I climb wearily to my feet. “I’m a coward. You never should have entrusted something so precious to me. Not your kingdom and not your heart. I can’t protect either of them.”
His eyes glint, devouring the rays of sun filtering through the canopy, as he, too, stands. Plants his feet. Readies himself, as he says, “Can’t is far different thanwon’t.”
Niko’s words are a spark to the tinder of everything jumbled inside me, and suddenly, I cannot breathe through the fire of it all. It burns at my lungs and my throat and my very blood.
“I can’t!” I shout, my throat ragged with both exertion and emotion. “You’ve seen what my magic does. WhatIdo!” Red spills over my vision, and though I know it isn’t anger at Niko, he bears the brunt of it as I launch myself at him, pounding my fists against the hard muscle of his chest. “Look what I did to, Sam! Sam, who has the purest heart of anyone I’ve ever known…the most beautiful magic…”
The words catch in my throat, lodged beneath a sob I’m terrified to allow out. Because if I let it free, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop.
“And don’t tell me it wasn’t my darkness, Niko, because whether it is mine to claim or not, it was my hand that destroyed him. I hurt innocent people and ruined the island’s most precious night.I shouldn’t be allowed to touch anything beautiful again. I should go back to a world of ugliness, because I don’t deserveanyof this. I don’t…I don’t deserveyou.”
Niko circles my wrists in his fingers, wrenching my arms down to my sides and pulling me tight against his chest.
“Is that what you’re after, Darling?” He searches my face. “Punishment?”
My face heats as a breath catches in my throat. Is that what I’m after? Is that what will finally pierce through the shroud of shame I’ve been entangled in?
“Yes.”
The admittance sends dark excitement and twisted anticipation curling low in my belly. There’s a relief in speaking the wish aloud, an instant weight lifted; to finally admit that Ihave gone from avoiding pain to craving it. All this time, Sam, Adira, and even Marina, have been trying to assuage the guilt—to make it lessmine.But Niko understands better than anyone that sometimes there is nothing to lessen it but to feel it fully.
Tell me again how I don’t deserve this pain.
His words to me so many months ago wreathe in the air between us like a bind. Niko knows the weight of guilt—how only in slicing yourself open will the pressure relent enough to take a breath.
He watches me for another long moment. I know the moment he decides, as he laces his fingers in my hair, firmly tilting my head to the angle of his liking. His obsidian gaze is endless, a chasm to fall into it.
“Who is the king of your pleasure, Willa?”
I nearly whimper, my thighs clenching at the savagery edging his smooth words—at the promise of relief at his hands.
“You are.”
He takes my lips beneath his in a brutal kiss, plundering my mouth with his tongue until my body goes pliant against him; until I can breathe nothing but the scent of his power, nothing but the taste of his delicious ruin.
“And who is the king of your pain?” The words are dangerous—decadent—and an electric thrill shoots through me.
“You are,” I whisper.
Niko’s smile is lethal. “Good girl. Now get on your knees and worship your king.”
My mouth waters as I kneel, the scrapes on my knees smarting anew against the warm stone. One of his ribbons winds around my throat as I gaze up at him, lashes fluttering in anticipation. The sun haloes the dark curls of his hair before its rays are swallowed by the onyx depths of his eyes, his tattoos, his death. Niko appears every bit the avenging lord of death I know him tobe, and as he slowly unzips his pants, heat lashes down my spine and pools at my core.
His hard length springs free, his dark laugh echoing over the water at the way I lick my lips. The ribbon at my throat tightens, my skin stinging with the touch of death. His scent swirls in my nose, all icy air and sandalwood, and a shiver of excitement threads through me.
“Now open that wicked mouth for me, Darling.”
I do as he asks, eager to take him. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted him; so long since I watched him unravel at my touch, his gorgeous disarray a secret belonging only to me.
Niko’s eyes glint with hunger as he swipes himself over my tongue, wetting the tip of his cock and smearing my lips. And then, without warning, the ribbon at my throat pulls tight and he thrusts all the way to the back of my throat. My eyes water and my knees burn, and as I struggle not to choke around his wide girth, something in my chest lightens.
“Fuck, Willa,” he moans, his voice a deep rumble. His death holds me in place, and warmth blooms through me. Because with Niko now holding my pain, my breath, my pleasure—everythingfeels lighter.
Breathing through my nose, I meet his gaze through the tears gathered on my lashes and relax my throat. He throws his head back with a wild groan as his cock sinks deeper. I hum in pleasure, working my lips around him as he pulls out of my mouth with a lewd pop.
“Star above, Willa…that fuckingmouth.”His voice is wild, a breath in a storm. “It was made for my cock.”
