He seems to grow a foot as he slips out and thrusts back in, his gaze capering between my face, my breasts, and his shiny ridged shaft. Our fit is tight, but my walls are so slick that he eases in and out without difficulty. The liquid meeting of our bodies, this song that we are composing seems to echo everywhere.
Konstantin’s face contorts as he nears the precipice I’ve been gamboling through for the last hour. He stills, heaves in deep, calming breaths that don’t calm him one bit. I cover the hands he’s fastened to my thighs with my own, which makes him jump and subsequently hiss through his teeth. I take it the tiny amount of friction almost swept him over the edge.
“I take a birth control tonic. In case you care to finish inside me.” Granted, Faeries and Crows can’t reproduce, but since I’m notjusta Crow…
The tendons stand erect in his neck. “You will be the death of me…” I’m about to chide him for reiterating the loathed phrase, when he adds, “…xhina.”
My protest withers as the term sinks deep and consumes me, making both my heart and stomach writhe. He comes; I don’t. Which annoys him immensely. He pulls out, sets down my legs, and starts rubbing my clit, but I quiet his determined strokes by apprehending his wrist.
“What?” he growls, tone as sharp as his probing stare. “Fuck, I said it again, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“It’s just an expression to me.” He smooths a lock of hair off my damp forehead. “I promise to do better and stop mentioning death and dying around you.”
“It’s not— Well, not this time. It’s what you called me.”
His brows gather.
“We’re not even truly betrothed,” I remind him gently.
He searches my stare. “Marry me. For real. I’ll get a priest. Or a Crow. Or a?—”
“You don’t have to marry me to have sex with me.”
“This has absolutely nothing to do with sex!”
“Your emotions are heightened at the moment, Konstantin. You aren’t thinking this through.”
His eyes narrow. Though he made his stance on my mating anyone but him crystal-clear, his hasty words were spoken in the heat of the moment.
“Once my novelty wears off, you’ll move on to the next woman. Or you’ll go back to being celibate. Trust me, you’ll regret this. Perhaps not in a month, or in a year, but over time, you’ll want your tidy life back.”
Anger restructures his face as he straightens and squares his shoulder.
“I’m chaos. I’m unpredictable. I’m loud and ill-mannered. In the long run, if we’re not true mates, our vastly different personalities and upbringing will drive you to insanity.”
“Stop putting the blame on me.” His nostrils flare. “If you don’t want to marry me becauseyoubelieve you’ll grow bored, then just saythat,” he snaps, his tone vibrating with such hurt that heat shoots into my lids and blurs all the angles that make up this beautiful man.
How fast we went from devastating passion to passionate devastation…
“I’m not scared of growing bored,” I croak.
“Then what the fuck are you scared of?” He rams his hands through his mussed locks, springing strands that were still wrapped.
I sit up, feeling too exposed, sprawled as I am on the bed. “I’m twenty-five. You’re a century and a half older. You’ve seen things. You’ve experienced things. You’vedonethings. You’ve…you’ve…lived.”
“Marriage isn’t a death sentence, Isla.” He sounds defeated now. “Instead of seeing and experiencing and doing things on your own, you’d just get to do them all with me.”
He crouches, then cradles my face between his hands.
“I realize you’re young and that my certainty must be daunting.” His thumbs arc underneath my eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m not scared.” My voice catches on an obstruction in my throat.
One that transforms into tears—actualtears. I never cry. I palm them away, in a rush to make them vanish.
“I’m not,” I croak.
