He groans, a broken, desperate sound as his head drops, his resistance crumbling. “No…”
I lift my leg, hooking it around his back with a yank toward me. “Vale…”
“Damn you, Elara!” He rubs the exposed head of his cock against the damp silk of my undergarments, finding the seam, finding the friction. “Fuck…”
“Inside!” I cry out, frustrated, bucking up, trying to capture him. “Put it inside!”
Vale humps me more frantically, a rhythm born of pure, unadulterated need. It’s messy and desperate, the friction searing through the thin fabric. I claw at his coat, trying to pull him down, trying to force the alignment, but he’s too strong. Too fucking stubborn.
He slams his hips against mine once, twice, harder?—
And then, with a guttural shout, he unravels.
I feel the heat of it, wet and sudden, spilling over my stomach, over the cotton, soaking into my underdress, but never touching the inside of me. He shudders, his forehead collapsing onto my shoulder, his breathing loud and harsh in the quiet grave.
He lifts his head, looking at the mess between us—the wasted seed pooling on my skin. And he laughs, a dark, dry sound.
He rises, adjusting his clothing, leaving me exposed and sticky and unfulfilled. “Close,” he whispers, the mockery returning to his eyes, though they’re still glassy.
I shove my skirts down, fury igniting in my chest like a flame tossed onto straw. “You fucking bastard!”
“Hardly.” He straightens his coat, chin adopting an arrogant tilt, and turns to place a boot on the wall of the grave. “You gave me permission to scratch an itch, so I scratched it.”
“My wish!” I shout when he readies to hoist himself up, leaving me covered in the proof of his mockery. “Is for you to marry me!”
Vale freezes. His boot slides off the clay. He stands there, staring at the wall of dirt mere inches from his nose. Slowly, painfully slowly, he turns back around. The mockery is gone. In its place is a stillness so profound it feels like the air has been sucked out of the grave.
“What?”
“You heard me.” I scramble to my feet, ignoring the dampness clinging to my body, the trembling in my legs. “You will become my husband.”
The air crackles. The temperature drops ten degrees in a heartbeat, frost instantly blooming on the roots protruding from the grave walls.
“Youdare?” Vale’s face twists, his lips curling back from his teeth. “Of all the things you could ask for—gold to fill this pit, an end to your brother’s pain, perhaps even a resurrection once he finally rots—you try to chainme?”
A jagged line of darkness splits his cheek, revealing the gleaming white of a skeletal jaw. The green of one eye doesn’t just darken; it rots away, dissolving into a hollow socket. He flickers—man, Death, man—as if his godly rage can’t be contained by human skin.
“I will not bind myself to a mortal!” he roars, the sound letting dirt rill off the walls. “I am eternal! I will not play house with a fleeting spark of life that will burn out before I even blink!”
“You have to!” I shout back, fear warring with a wild, desperate hope. His hostility…it’s too much. It’s too defensive. If marriage meant nothing in this, he would laugh. He would agree and let me age and die while he watched, bored.
But he’sfurious.
“I refuse!”
“You can’t refuse!” I step into his space, chest heaving, adrenaline flooding my veins. “Does it interfere with anotherwish? No! Does it break the direct wording of the curse? No!” I shout, breathless. “Does Death keep his word?”
He flinches. The supernatural rage falters, hitting the immovable wall of his own rules. The black fades from his eyes. Pallid skin weaves over bone.
Then, a cruel, twisted smile slices across his face.
He leans in, his lips brushing my ear, cold as the grave itself. “Fine,” he whispers, the word a scratching sound against my skin. “I grant your wish. I will marry you.” He pulls back to look at me, and the malice in his gaze makes me want to scream. “I will play your husband for twenty, maybe thirtymiserableyears. I will watch you wrinkle. I will watch your beauty rot. And when that last kernel of sand finally drops”—his hand comes up, gripping the back of my neck, not tenderly, but like a master claiming a hound—“I will take your soul, and I will drag it down to the deepest, darkest pit.”
Chapter
Six
Vale
