From above, deadly spiked icicles rattled and fell. Small ones chimed and shattered over them like raining glass. Kedar’s helmet and shoulders took the brunt of them, but several nicked her—one on her cheek and another on her hand. When alarge, sharp-tipped one fell between their bodies, she grabbed it without thought. The extreme coldness against her palm was a shock, reminding her that she was alive. That she couldfight.She’d harbored so much fury and sadness inside of her with nowhere to go for so long—and here he was.
She brought the icicle’s point to the hollow of his throat. It was unlikely she could push it through his light armor before he slit her throat, but it didn’t matter.
His plasma dirk pushed a little harder against her own. She barely registered the sting of a forming cut.
They stayed like that for a small eternity. Pressed together, wrapped around each other. They were at once lovers who fought and clawed their way to each other across dimensions and time, and sworn enemies in a fatal and final embrace. Maybe they were never meant for anything but this—broken promises, unspoken words, holding ruin at each other’s throats.
They made death an intimate act.
Vessa pressed her other hand against his defined pectoral, the pin blade held between two fingers, her nails clawing into his skin. His hearts were a war drum beneath her palm. Her fist curled around the icicle rested against his neck, where she could feel each swallow, and the beat of his pulse. And her legs were wrapped around him; around the body he had spent years shaping into a weapon made to kill her.
She tightened her thighs around his waist. Pulled him in. Her nails dug into his pec deeper, drawing blood. The heat of it dripped over her fingers, and she hummed in satisfaction.
Kedar’s breath hitched as he moved his free hand to her torn hip. His fingers sinking into the gash was both misery and something else altogether.
He pressed impossibly more into her until the tip of the icicle broke through the fabric. Pressed into him. Groaning, he let it dig in further.
Body to body. Blood to blood.
Tension filled every pocket of space between them.
“Your scent,” Kedar rasped, “has infiltrated my senses. And it’s like your heart is pumping in my chest. You have used some ancient magic to bewitch me.” He dragged a breath in, smelling her. “I hate what you have made me.” He pulled his plasma dirk from her neck and let it fall to the cavern floor. “But I want you even more.”
His confession was a cataclysm. Kedar tore the hole in her suit with a frenzy, ripping the fabric and exposing her ribs and stomach. He wrapped a hand around her bruised side, squeezing as his thumb brushed over the underside of her breast.
She arched into his hold. Dark and forbidden desire took her over. “What are you going to do, Kedar?”
He trailed his hand up her body to press two bloodied fingers against her lips. “I can’t get you out of my head,” he snarled low.
She opened her mouth in a gasp, and his fingers moved past her lips, pressed down on her tongue. The metallic taste of her own blood flooded her mouth. She fought the urge to gag as she glared at him.
“There’s that fire I remember,” he murmured more to himself than her. He ground his hips against her center, the painfully hard length of him hitting parts of her so perfectly that she couldn’t help but moan around his fingers. And she hated herself for it.
Vessa licked them, drawing a rumbling purr from him. Then she bit down. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood as the warmth of it flooded her mouth. He grunted, and when she let go, he merely smeared her saliva and combined their blood over her lips, down her chin.
Then he wrapped his huge hand around hers—the one holding the icicle to his throat. He completed some circuit, and she suddenly felt everything too much.
The past rushed forward, twined with the present. Love and hate. Trust and betrayal.
“I despise you,” she whispered with every bit of her being. But gods, there were other three-worded statements she meant just as much. I need you. I hate you. I miss you.
Kedar took the icicle from her numb hand, dropping it to the ground. She wanted to hurt him, maim him, tear him apart with her bare hands. With claws, and teeth, and a thousand tiny cuts. But she also wanted to claim and mark him, take and be taken. Fury and desire twisted inside her, consumed her. She used the pin blade on his top and with jagged slashes was able to expose his torso. Crimson bloomed from a dozen wounds.
Snarling softly, Kedar stepped away from the wall. He unwrapped her legs from around his middle, signaling for her to stand. She was unsteady on her feet. With his bare hands, he ripped her suit more, and pulled the tattered remains from her. He revealed her breasts, then her hips. More and more, until she was naked before him.
They moved at the same time, and he lifted her again. Her back hit the cold cavern wall, and she hissed out a breath. But then Kedar was pressing against her with all his feverish heat.
His hand worked between them with a frantic need, undoing the binders of his pants and pulling them down from the side. “I just need to get you out of my system. Fuck you until I can close my eyes and not see you there.” He hooked his arm beneath one of her legs, opening her up, putting her under his control. “Fuck you until I can’t scent you like you’re right beside me.”
They would never be free from each other. Not even in death. But her need matched the desperation in his voice as he raised her up, angled her for the taking. His cock slid across the underside of her curves to her opening.
“The scent of your arousal is driving me insane,” he growled as he swiped his head through her slick heat.
“Show me,” she demanded. Her voice was full of smoke and hunger.
Kedar fit his hard length between them. Her mouth watered as she took in the view before her. The girth and length of him,gods. His broad, dark-purple head, glistening with her wetness, led into the first bulge of three, with the one closer to the base being the largest. Ridges ran horizontally up his shaft. Her center pulsed with wanton need.
“You will take all of me,” he said as he lined himself up with her wet opening. “Every hard inch.”
