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I squeeze her hips so hard I’m sure to leave marks. “Do it now. Cut me.”

She unbuttons the top of my shirt and pushes it off my shoulders. The sight of her wonder and delight in my chest being her blank canvas makes all the blood in my cock rush forward.

“Now, Arkana. Please. I’m going to cum any second,” I plead.

She whimpers as she drags the point of her blade across my chest. My skin warms and tingles as my blood trickles out. “Bell…”

I lift her hips and then slam her back down my shaft. We both cry out. “Taste me. Lick me fucking clean while I cum inside you.”

Her lips quiver as she hovers them over my flesh. Her tongue lashes out first, a trial run, a preview. Stars explode behind my lids as I pinch them shut. The second her mouth presses against my chest, I lose all restraint.

“Is this not enough trust for you, my love?” I bolt up from the chair, her legs wrapped around me, and slam her against the wall. I thrust inside her while she sucks at my wound like a starved bat, feral and sensual in how she moans.

“Bell!” she screams as she contorts, her back arching. The flood of her essence unleashes, soaking me so much it drips down our thighs.

I smack the wall and release an unhinged moan like a battle cry as I fill her with my thick cream. It’s as if she has crawled inside my skin, lain with my bones, and pumped life back into my black heart with her bare hands.

“I want your bloody mouth now, beloved.” I find her lips and sigh the second they part for me. My ears ring when our tongues collide. Fire fills my veins, sending me into a frenzy, or quite possibly an early grave, as my heart beats so fast it’s unnatural.

I don’t want to be anyone else but who I am. I moan as I let go and surrender to this woman’s diabolical hold. She gasps when it happens. When the realization hits her. When she feels my tongue split and curl around hers.

I pull back, my pulse wild. When we lock eyes, I see her confusion. But I cannot turn back. I stretch my tongue out between us and allow her to see how the tip separates into two fleshy halves. “Say something,” I murmur.

If she stabs me again, it will be to the death this time. Or she’ll send for her uncle and brothers. The whole of Nocturnus. And they will lock me in the crypt like the monster they think I am. She will turn away from me as others have done before.

“Arkana…” I need her to put me out of my misery or give me a chance to run before the whole town comes for me.

“What are you?” she asks on a breath as her cunt still pulses around my cock.

“I don’t know.” That is my truth. It’s all I can tell. “Do I repulse you now?”

She looks deep into my eyes, then down at my lips. “It makes me want you more.”

I feel another tremor in my cock, a reawakening. I grab her throat. “Are you sure? No one can ever know, Arkana. You have no idea what they’ll do to me.”

“You’re my husband. They can certainly try, but you’ve seen how I wield a knife.” She smirks and tilts her chin up. “Now, put that diabolical thing back inside my mouth.”

There are moments that define you and shape what’s to come. I thrust my forked tongue back inside her hot little mouth and almost cry. She is the first woman I’ve ever kissed this way without having to hide.

Damn the gods and the ravens if anyone thinks they can ever take her away from me now. Fate has indeed brought me to her for a reason. And now I am as darkly hers as the moon is to the night.

When we finally break apart for air, she staggers back against the wall, off balance and disheveled. Her eyes flick past me to the two servants who still stand in attendance, their eyes trained on the floor. “Damn…”

I claim one of the blades that rests on the arm of the chair still. “I cannot take a chance.”

She shakes her head. “No need. They are bound to us and this house.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “You don’t know that for sure. People will do all sorts of things for a bit of coin. Trust me on that.”

She steps in front of me, blocking my path to our sniveling servants. “I’m the daughter of a Nocturnus elder. They were bound by ritual. My father made sure of it. Trust me.”

This place is beyond strange. How could I doubt for a second that she would be alarmed by me? I fear the secrets she carries may be far more dangerous. I grip the knife still. I have never left a stone unturned. Never. “Arkana…”

She stalks over to the one called Percy. “Show him.”

The young blond man slowly pushes his sleeve up, revealing a row of markings that decorate his forearm. “Mors vincit omnia,” he mutters.

Fuck. It’s the same thing the coachman whispered to the horse before I killed him. Because he knew what was coming for him. “Death always wins.”