“Fuck me,” she said. “Fuck me like you hate me.”
I ripped her off my cock and dropped her to the floor. In a swift motion, I had her against the wall, hand to her throat. Warm blood dripped from the gash I’d left over my fist as I pressed into her arteries, watching her eyes roll until she saw stars.
“Hate you? Oh, my Love…” I crushed my weight into hers, forcing her against the stony hearth. “Anyone can fuck you like they hate you. But me? I can fuck you like a demon.”
My free hand went to her head, scraping against her scalp as I took a handful of her hair.
“Yes,yes,” she pleaded.
I dragged her to the table, and she clutched the far lip greedily.
I slammed into her, salivating over her moans, but it wasn’t enough.
She needed more. Deeper. Harder. She rocked backward, ass slapping into my hips until she got the depth she craved.
Cheek pressed against the wooden table, she issued her next command.
“Hit me.”
I slapped her perfect, pale ass so hard it left a welt.
“I said fuckinghit me!”
And so it went.
We fucked in the snow, scraped raw by the ice. She grabbed my still-wet cock, dripping with her juices, and sucked me clean while she straddled the open mouth of her not-yet-cold husband’s face. She grabbed my hand, pushed it to her hair once more, then plunged her face into the mead as she drowned with her next climax.
Seven times the first day.
Three times the next.
Twelve times the day that followed.
“You have to eat,” I gasped the morning of the fourth, shocked by her stamina.
“Then give me something to swallow,” she murmured before her lips swallowed me whole.
There were demons.
And then there was Sigrid.
Love wore many faces. No matter how it looked, one thing remained the same: her life was hers. She could be curious. She could be sweet. She could be violent. And to love her meant to hear her, believe in her autonomy, and embrace her in every form.
Chapter Twenty-One
A THOUSAND YEARS OF COLONIZATION
Blood stained the Egyptian sands in 1217 as I laid waste to Pope Innocent III’s bloodthirsty crusades. Horus had his people covered, but we’d been awaiting this moment since this conclave. The falcon-headed god of war locked eyes with me as we unleashed wrath on the chainmail and crosses that dared to touch his faithful, as Heaven and its brainless battalion tried, and failed, to capture Love—Nefru—myhuman.
I was holding six-year-old Colel’s hand in 1517 when the first Spanish ship beached on sovereign Mayan soil. I protected a child, her parents, her brothers and sisters, and anyone who followed as we made the most of a life on the run from Cortés and the conquistadors that followed. We found joy in the crystal blue, clean waters of cenotes, we found an abundance of food, of shelter, of sun, but her gods were not my gods, and her people not my people. When twenty-three-year-old Colel dropped my hand to return and fight for her kingdom, she became Buluc Chabtan’s.
I watched over Hiso’s home, a distant guardian, permitted at arms’ length by the Shinto, when Portuguese missionaries arrived in 1599 Shogan territory. The first ships had landed in the foreign nation nearly one hundred years prior. It was foolish to hope they wouldn’t find us.
A commotion drew me from her home the day peaceful monks arrived, decades into their studies of the new world and its mother tongue.
I followed Hiso as the family slid open the door, walked past the cherry trees, and watched the newcomers pass under the city’s red arches.
White leathers, shimmering sword, and a nearly apologetic slope to his shoulders, Lucky stood in the middle of the road as the brown-robed Portuguese walked around him to spread the word of their god to Hiso and her villagers. We said nothing as the future unfolded before us both.
