He leaned up as though he’d kiss me, so I snapped my teeth in warning. He didn’t seem to understand what prowled inside me, the razor’s edge that stood between violence and lust. I longed to open his throat and ride his cock as his heart pounded its last.
His eyes flashed with want, and he claimed my lips in a searing open-mouthed kiss. I bit his bottom lip, but he only groaned and bucked his hips against me again. I tasted his blood—an aphrodisiac to my very soul, an offering he willingly gaveto my darkest instincts. My core throbbed with need, slick and ready for what he invited.
He broke the kiss to look at me with desire practically glowing in his cerulean eyes. “I have a right to know where my wife was…”
He was baiting me. Rather than run from my anger, he fed it, dumping fuel into the flames like he wanted to burn along with me.
And it worked. I smoldered with the need to fuck him into oblivion, to pour out my anger with teeth and nails and glorious release.
Even as I imagined the sound he’d make when I sunk my teeth into his hard cock again, the lust-addled part of my mind askedwhyhe was baiting me. He obviously wanted me, but there was always another layer with him, always a sly plan. What did I really even know about him…and how much of what I saw was the truth?
I had to grit my teeth to say, “We’re not doing that tonight, Saxon.”
He cocked a suggestive brow and rolled his hips again, and I could’ve wept from wanting him. Because no matter what devious games he might’ve been playing or how he might’ve been trying to manipulate me, there was fundamental truth in the spine-melting need I felt for him.
“You want to see another dawn? Tonight you’re going to tell me a story.”
“A story?” Amusement lifted his full lips, but I was deadly serious.
I pulled back, glowering down at him. “You’re going to tell me who your father sent to you in pieces.”
That killed his smile and reined in my desire. I wanted to hurt him, but not with my words.
He’d made reference to it casually at our wedding, then moved on, but I needed to understand the real dynamics. Was there any chance he was still loyal to his father? Could I trust him?
His touch fell from my hips, and I yearned for more even as I slid to my feet and crossed to a chair a safer distance from his strong hands and soft lips.
He sat on the edge of the bed, eyeing me warily. “My mother.”
The way he said it was so detached, and his expression so neutral, that for a fleeting moment, I didn’t understand that he was answering my demand. After all the horrors I’d had a hand in, my heart still pounded in shock.
“After other punishments lost their luster, and I began to turn from boy to man, he realized what leverage he had over me. By then, my mother had been sent from court to a house in the mountains. She’d been unable to bear him another child, though I suspect she may have prevented it. He kept her alive and let me see her just enough that he could use our bond to keep me in line.” He looked me in the eye. “He sent my mother to me in pieces, if I didn’t comply well enough for his liking or disappointed him. After the first few times, she took her own life to spare me the horror of it.”
How different our fathers were and yet how alike.
There was no manipulation in the bleak devastation on his face, no chance he was faking the mix of shame and guilt so deeply etched on his brow.
“Then killing him won’t be avenging only my brother.” There was a vow in my words that wasn’t spoken aloud, but the gods would’ve heard it all the same.
I will avenge her.
The promise came from the depths of my berserker soul, not from the reasoning, human part of me. It made no sense thatI wanted to carve out the king’s heart and offer it to this man to even the scales. My sorrow served no purpose, but my anger could.
His eyes widened and brimmed with awe.
I should go and cut the king’s heart out tonight.Bastian shouldn’t have to live another moment knowing that motherfucker still breathes.
I had no right to feel such things about someone who didn’t belong to me, someone I’d vowed to kill, but my berserker didn’t live by reason nor by rules. She’d claimed him even if I hadn’t. I would’ve fought her if I could’ve reached her.
Could the revelation itself be manipulation? Why was he so willing to be vulnerable if not to forge a bond he thought might influence me?
I missed the simplicity of my brothers. There were no games with Thorin nor Talon. They were as ruthlessly straightforward as could be. I never had to wonder about their motives.
“Sigrid, please let me stitch that,” he said, studying the darkness on my dress that kept growing.
“I can do it myself,” I said, using the knife I’d held to his throat to cut the bodice and underlayers of the ruined gown.
He rose from the bed and retrieved a tin from a wooden cabinet. Then he set it down in front of me and put his hands over mine. “You can. But you don’t have to. I guarantee I’ve stitched more wounds than you, and I’ll do a better job…and we both know it hurts less when someone else does it.”
