Her fingers traced the burned handprints on my bare chest as though mourning them. She looked up at me again and said, “Then think nothing of me at all.”
The sapphire flames in her eyes made me grow brazen. “Do you want me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she breathed out. “But your favor isn’t something I deserve.”
There was a half-naked woman before me who had become the object of so many of my desires these past months. They blended together in a fog of hate, and lust, and a heady sense of having too little time to make my own choices.
My resolve broke.
“Then I’ll think later,” I groaned as my mouth crashed down onto hers. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, breasts pushed to my chest with nothing between us.
In one swift motion, I lifted her and pressed her to the atrium glass. My mouth moved down her neck, eliciting a gasp. Tracing the lines of scarring there with my tongue, I groaned as she hooked her thumbs into the waist of my undershorts and pushed down to free me. I pulled the lace of her underwear aside.
As her hand found my length between us and positioned me at her entrance, I groaned into her shoulder.
“Take what you need, my King,” she whispered into my ear.
Obliging, I pushed into her, and she cried out. I gave her no time to adjust to me before driving in again, reveling in the feel of her tightening around me.
Nails dug into the upper plane of my back. I grabbed a handful of her hair. In urgent fury, we both chased releases we didn’t deserve—retreating and colliding in a frenzy of need. The way she felt writhing against that glass was freeing.
I’d only been with one other and sex had never felt like this. Raw. Hungry. Mutually selfish. Wrong in ways that felt unjustifiably right. It was life and death, punishment and revival, passion and ruin.
Firose met my pace until we both cried out, and I spilled into her with a satisfied groan. Her head fell to the center of my chest, between the marks she’d left on me that terrible night when neither of us had control over our fates. We both panted.
Something snapped into place as she looked up at me, still coiled around my waist. The lust of the moment faded with the setting sun, but an aching sense of recognition settled in my stomach that I wouldn’t admit to myself or her.
The Source power in my veins felt fed.
Her irises were dancing with red flames, and in their reflection, I saw a glowing ring of light in mine.
After having come together, we didn’t share words or tender moments. Instead, we both walked silent and naked as the days we’d been born to the main house. It would be impossible to verbalize how incredibly reckless this all had become.
Guilt settled in my gut—I’d turned away Fen’s little sister out of respect earlier that day and then ended up pressing his ex-lover against a greenhouse window and taking her in an impassioned frenzy.
What in the Sources’ names had gotten into me? The answer to that question was a dark truth.
Rivolt was snoring in a chair in the sitting room. With a finger over her lips, Firose motioned with her other hand toward a bedroom door. Inside, she approached the wardrobe and opened it.
After tossing clothes that were far too small my way, she pulled on an oversized tunic and loose breeches.
As I slid up my breeches, I stumbled into a chair.
Firose responded by shushing me. Mussed and flushed looked good on her; she appeared naive even—at odds with the centuries-old scheming enchantress I knew her to be.
The tunic uncomfortably hugged every muscle of my torso, but luckily, the breeches fit without crowding spaces they shouldn’t have. Firose had to lace too-big boots tightly before she passed me a pair.
We slipped out the back doors without an inkling of where we should go to hide from the Death Origin. He would undoubtedlysearch for us once he noticed my relic hadn’t moved for some time.
Where would he be the least likely to look?
Chapter 38
Sybilla
The market bustled with anticipation for the first rainfall. The gentle rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance. No droplets had fallen yet, but I looked forward to the cool reprieve that the rain would hopefully offer tonight.
“Isn’t this marvelous? Why would youleave?” Elsedora said as she spun around me once before taking my hand. She’d hugged me when I told her of my agreement with Krait and promised to be there whenever I needed. However, she wasn’t subtle about her dislike of my conditions.
