I lean down and kiss him again. His hands run over my back, tracing the curves of my muscles. He doesn’t argue with me, doesn’t try to escape me. The shadows return, wrapping around me in a thick cloud. I feel him stirring between my legs.
Then the unmistakable feel of his seduction magic wraps around me. Every nerve ending seems to stand on end, waiting for histouch to devour me. He doesn’t move. His hands hold me still as those shadows tease me. I gasp as they slide between my legs.
Then he’s gone. Where his body had been before is just an empty bed. Where there’d been an insistent pressure under me, there’s only air.
A rough hand tangles in my hair from behind me and pulls hard. Another hand slides seductively across the painfully desperate skin of my stomach to grasp my breast. His thumb and index finger find my nipple and squeeze.
I moan as I feel his now naked body lean over me. “I crave you, Fiona Thorne,” he whispers in my ear. “From the moment I touched you in the Crimson Tower, I’ve been drawn to you. You asked why I tried to take off your clothes on the dragon roost, and it’s because I wanted to see you, to touch you, toconsume you.”
His cock presses against my pants, and I grip the sheets under me. It’s impossible to hold back the moans.
His lips find my neck, and instead of the sensuous kisses he’s left before, these are hard with more than a bit of teeth.
Shadows climb over and under my pants and boots, covering my entire lower half in them, and suddenly I’m naked.He sent my pants and boots to the Void.He pulls harder on my hair and grips my breast tight enough to leave fingerprint bruises on it.
Then he releases me, and I turn around to see him getting off the bed. I whirl around to face the Prince of Bones, the Champion of Beauty and Death. He’s the man I’ve fantasized about for months, ever since that first meeting when I robbed him. There was never any doubt he was handsome in a way no human man could be. I’veseen that face, the hard lines that seem to be sculpted. I’ve admired the lips that look like they were created from rubies and the eyes which burn with a fire I barely understand. I’ve felt the raven-black hair which looks as if it were stolen from the midnight sky.
Now I see the rest of him, which he’s kept hidden under tailored riding jackets and waistcoats. It’s a body made for war, but there are no scars or blemishes. No one is born with muscles like that. He built that body. From the thick forearms with pulsing veins to the broad shoulders wrapped in striated muscles to the prominent collarbone.
My eyes move down his body and take in the wide and just as muscular chest. His stomach is lean yet thick. The jutting lines of his hips point to the one part of him I’m both terrified of and drawn to.
His cock stands at attention, the tip glistening in the firelight. It calls to me even as a terrified look crosses Azric’s beautiful face. “Why’d you leave?” I whisper.
“Because you terrify me. The way I feel when I touch you is dangerous. I don’t know if I want to control myself with you. And I want to do so much more than touch you.”
I slide off the bed and let my bare feet touch the black duskthorn floor. Each step seems to send quivers through the Prince of Bones. His fists clench at his sides, and his jaw tightens as he stares at my naked body.
“You don’t need to be soft, Prince of Bones. I’m not made of glass, and I certainly won’t shatter at your touch. If you hurt me, you can always heal me, can’t you?”
Heclenches his jaw tight enough to crack teeth as I stand in front of him. “I want this,” I say. “I want you in all your dark glory, and if that means I have to go through a little pain… Well, pain doesn’t matter, does it, Prince of Bones? But life does. You may be the Champion of Death, but every time I’m near you, I feel the life hiding inside you. I would trade pain to see that life even once, Azric Cyrus.”
His eyes soften yet burn hotter, and he reaches for me, his crimson nails running over my cheek. But everything stops. His hands don’t move. He doesn’t breathe. There is no pulsing heartbeat in the veins of his neck.
The world becomes very, very quiet. No, not quiet. Absolutely silent.
Then there’s a soft voice no one could ignore, even with the way my body feels. “Hello, Fiona Thorne. It is high time we finally met.”
Chapter 47
They are coming.
The Black feels them already.
He says they cannot fight in the Sea, but do I trust him?
Why does he not leave the land and stay here in safety, then?
~The Darkness, Words in the Void
Fiona
I whirl around to see a woman who stands shorter than me, covered in a gray, gauzy shroud of a dress. The veil covers her face entirely, and the only skin I can make out are her pale hands that end in sharp gray nails and the skin exposed by the deep v-neckline of her dress.
Instantly, I know this is not some Godforged I’ve never heard of. No, this is a goddess, and my body freezes. There is only one who’s ever been described like this. Saelira, the Goddess of Destiny. Even amongst the gods, there are squabbles, but no one dares bicker withher. She took no part in the war games of Nyth, never claiming a kingdom as her own.
My mind whirs with any information that I’ve ever heard about her. “Saelira,” I whisper and kneel to bow my head, acutely aware of my nudity and the situation I was in only moments ago with Azric. There’s nothing against any of the gods’ rules for the two of us to be intimate together, but being caught in the act still seems like I’ve done something wrong.
The goddess steps toward me, her bare feet making no sound as she steps. “Stand, Fiona Thorne. We must speak.”
