“I’m not yours,” I mutter, but the rasped words aren’t convincing as my lashes flutter, and my head swims with his nearness. Sandalwood and winter swirl in my nose, in my lungs,as he grinds his hips into my mine, trapping me between the glass and the unforgiving hardness of his body.
He doesn’t bother to correct me, his mouth twisting in disdain once more, as his gaze rakes over my shadow. “You’re right.” His fingers loosen at my throat. “The queen I knew would never allow the darkness control. She woulduseit as she was meant to.”
Abandonment and rage expand in the hollow of my chest. “You don’t get to come in here and judge how I’ve handled the past year, Corpse King,” I snarl, each of my words accentuated with a small fist to Niko’s chest. “You don’t get to have an opinion onanythingabout me, or this kingdom, when you left us both…when you laid down anddiedinstead of rising to fight.”
I expect Niko to flinch. I am as familiar with his wounds as he is mine—know which ones to press my fingers into, which ones he can bear and which ones he cannot. But when he tips his head back to let out a peal of wild laughter, I’m struck dumb by the sound. I stare at the bob of his throat as he laughs and laughs, each ring of his amusement furthering my rage until I swear it flames at the surface of my skin; until I’m certain I’ll combust with it and burn us both.
“Isn’t that what you’re doing right now, Willa?” Niko’s laughter may be irreverent, but his expression isn’t. “You may not be able to die, but you’re certainly acting as if you’re already dead. Moping around the kingdom, like we’re all at your funeral instead of your coronation.”
“Are you the only royal allowed to mope for centuries?” I bite back, my voice dripping with acid. I press my throat into his palm defiantly. “What’s wrong, Corpsey? Was the mainland not everything you dreamed it would be? Regretting playing hero and dumping your kingdom into my lap?”
“Who’s the true hero here, Willa?” His fingers tighten, and his gaze sparks with familiar madness—the kind that consumes notonly him, but everything he sets it on. “Because it seems to me there’s only one of us too scared of causing a little ruin to protect what’s theirs…”
His words are bitter and harsh in contrast to the gentleness of his fingers as he drags them from my throat to caress the arches of my collarbones. Down over my shoulders and across the dips of my spine. Heat sparks at my core as they trail down my back to cradle my ass; as Niko angles my hips closer to his, until every soft part of my body pressed against every hard part of his.
“You misunderstand me, Willa.” He presses his forehead to mine, until I’m drowning in the void of his eyes. Darker than night; darker than the shadow at my back. “I have never once played the sniveling hero. Not then, and not now. My saving the kingdom…my dying…every bit of it was selfish.”
I can hardly hear his words beyond the delicious heat of his touch; can hardly gather any of my thoughts from where he’s scattered them.
“My wants and desires have not changed, nor wavered.” His next words are a breath over my lips. “And now…I will take back every—” His fingers tighten on my ass. “—single—” He lifts me against the wall, pressing his hard length into the cradle of my thighs. “—thingthat’s mine. Even if I have to tear it out with my fucking teeth.”
His mouth is so close to mine, my lips brush his when I tell him, “None if it belongs to you. Not anymore.”
But it doesn’t matter, because Niko devours my words before they ever make it across my lips.
Chapter twenty-four
Niko’s body presses so close, I breathe only him. His ribbons dance over my skin, his tongue dances in my mouth, and star above, it all feels sogood.There is no shame, no shadow. There is only the icy sting of his death, and the warmth of the pleasure he gives, as his hands dive beneath the hem of my nightgown.
My want for him burns beside my hatred, for how dare he be the one who holds my relief when he is one who took it away? How dare he be the one to silence my incessant self-loathing when his abandonment was the catalyst for my spiral?
“I hate you,” I tell him, breathless and wild, as I arch my hips toward his searching fingers. His answering laugh rolls sweetly over my tongue as he brushes my underwear aside. “I hate you so much, Niko, I—I think I’ll burn with it.”
He dips a finger into me with an authority that makes my head spin—like he belongs inside me, and knows it all too well. “Is this what hatred feels like, Darling?” His own voice is breathless, hisdeath spiraling out like he’s lost his grip. A mirror of my own sanity, sliding so readily from my hold.
“Tight…” He adds another finger. “Hot.” Another. “Wet.”
I throw back my head with a moan as he stretches me, thrusting my hips to meet his fingers. Desperate to draw him deeper; to fill me until I no longer remember the ache of lost dreams and the ruin of shadows.
“Because if this is what your hatred feels like…” He withdraws, bringing his fingers to his mouth. He licks at the tips of them, a rumble of appreciation vibrating in his chest. “If this is what your hatred tastes like…Fuck,Willa…you can hate me forever.”
My cheeks flame at his wanton words, another moan gathering at the back of my throat as Niko glides his fingers through the wet heat gathered at my core. Then, with a wicked arch of his brow, he traces my lips, painting them with my own arousal. His gaze darkens with something dangerous as I open for him, drawing his finger into the warmth of my mouth. I suck hard, swiping my tongue along the pad of his fingertip, the taste of my pleasure and his skin an addictive elixir that ignites my blood.
I scrape my teeth lightly, before releasing his finger with a lewdpop.There is nothing funny about the feral edges of the way Niko watches me, but absurd laughter bubbles from my mouth before I can temper it. Because as his teeth dig into his lip and his entire body tenses, a wild part of me hopes to drive him as insane as he’s driven me—hopes he’ll release himself from the skin of civility he masks himself in, and ruin us both.
I tangle my fists in his shirt. “Iwillhate you forever. You made sure of that.”
It feels like a lie. It feels like the truth.
Niko’s responding grin should terrify me—as sharp and merciless as a blade—but it only spurs the insistent heat scorching through my body.
“Show me.” It’s a barked command, and star help me, my body lists toward him as if he rules it.
We crash together like a violent storm, an electric warring of ice and heat that shakes the foundation I’ve built my hatred upon. My hurt, my anger, my regret—all of it crumbles beneath the tempest of his touch. I revel in the bite of pain as his ribbons slide up my bare calves, while others wrap themselves around my throat, their possession pulsing against my skin. I revel in the friction of my soft breasts against the hard planes of his chest, in the give of my thighs against the sharpness of his hips.
I revel in the madness; in the punishment and salvation.
I dig my fingers into his back, holding on as his tongue dances with mine; as his teeth rake across my lower lip; as his moan reverberates between us, a release of the highest measure.
