Page 22 of His Eternal Claim

The heat in her eyes turns to ice.

She shoves at my chest, her movements frantic, her small hands hitting my shoulders with a strength born of betrayal.

“Don’t touch me,” she spits, her voice trembling. “Get off me. If you’re going to be his puppet, then keep your hands off what doesn’t belong to you.”

I don’t move. I can’t.

I am anchored to her by a chain of my own making.

My grip on her thighs tightens, my knuckles turning white. The obsession is a fever now, a sickness that overrides the flickering remains of my conscience.

“I can touch you,” I snarl, leaning back over her, pinning her wrists to the table above her head. My body is pressed against hers. “I can touch you because I bought your life with my soul. I can touch you because there isn’t a square inch of you that I haven’t already branded.”

She stares up at me, a single sob breaking from her throat. But she doesn’t stop fighting. She looks at me with a cold, terrifying clarity.

“So that’s it then?” she asks, her voice dropping to a whisper that cuts deeper than any blade. “You’ll just take me against my will now? Is that the kind of king you are, Zagreus? A rapist?”

The blood in my veins turns to sludge.

I look down at my hands pinning her delicate wrists, and for a second, I don’t see the man who loves her.

I see Elio.

I see the dead eyes of my Father reflecting back at me in the mirror of her terror. If I choose her, I’ll lose her forever. And if I don’t, I’ll have power enough to get her back.

I want to tell her I’d never hurt her. But looking at the way I’m holding her, the way I’m forcing my presence on her because I can’t bear the thought of her leaving, the line between protection and possession has blurred into nothingness.

I am the monster. And the monster just realized it has claws.

Chapter 10

Sick Obsession

THE REQUIEM | Present

Open your legs, Dolcezza.”

There is a strange kind of warmth between my legs. I’m stretched full, and the delicious burn sends jolts of electricity up my spine, circling my throat and leaving through my mouth as a lewd moan.

His warm, rough hands circle my waist, pinching the roundness of my belly, and cupping my breasts as he pounds.

“You like my cock, Dolcezza?” I can’t form a word. One of his hands is wrapped around my throat. My eyes widen as he pushes into me more and some more till I feel the girth of his cock stretching my walls. “You claim to hate me while this cunt weeps for me.”

“You killed… him…” Words barely leave my lips before his cock is hammering inside me. My body jerks, the pleasure blurring the line between agony and ecstasy.

Every time he hits my depth, it’s like a brand being pressed into my soul, reminding me that no matter how far I run, my body is a traitor to my mind. And I am a prisoner to his ruthless hands. Hands of the man I loved and hated with the same breath.

“I did not kill him,” Zagreus growls, his voice vibrating against the shell of my ear. It’s so dark and unrelenting I cannot recognize it. “Cry for him if you must, Selene, but you’ll do it while you’re coming on my cock.”

His grip on my throat tightens, focusing every nerve ending on the place where we are joined. The friction is a slow burn. Rhythmically, the destruction of the woman I thought I was. I want to fight him. I want to scream that I hate him, that he is a monster, but my hips are arching of their own accord, begging for the very thing that is ruining me.

“Say it,” he commands, his pace turning frantic. The bedframe groans against the wall. “Tell me whose mark is on your soul.”

“Yours,” I sob, the word escaping me like a confession under torture. He swells inside me, the heat rising until it’s a physical weight. “Always yours.”

The moment I say it, he snaps. His release is a violent, jagged thing, flooding me with a warmth that feels like molten lead. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, his breath ragged, his fingers still digging into my hips as if he’s afraid I’ll evaporate if he lets go for even a second.

I wake with sheets tangled around my legs.