Mila could feel the caution that permeated Hugo and Liana’s bodies in every breath she took. But it was Zacharias’s fear that chilled her blood. Still, she needed to hear the answer.
She lifted her palm and curled her fingers. An imaginary fist tightened around Rufus’s thick, corded neck, cutting off his breathing. His eyes started to bulge out of his head when he gave. “Because you’re human,” he choked out.
Mila loosened the tightness of her ghost fingers. “And?” she purred. She had all the time in the world to wait for Rufus’s answers. He didn’t.
He coughed and glared at Zacharias. “Every king of Krim is forced to wed a human, breed with her, just so he can keep his crown. We are the stronger people, yet we bow to the whims of man. It is not right.”
“And you looked to correct the right,” Zacharias growled softly.
Rufus’s chin lifted in defiance. “I could not depend on you. You are weak, so weak you actually fell in love with the human. Instead of just forcing her to be a breeder, you gave her your heart.”
Mila drowned out the urge to turn and look at Zacharias’s face to see if Rufus spoke the truth. Had Zacharias given her his heart? Did he love her? Could he love her after knowing her for such little time?
She refocused her attention on Rufus. “What exactly did you have in store for me?”
The bastard smiled at her, a chilling spread of lips that could not mask the evil that lay inside him. “Before or after I raped you?” he taunted.
Mila felt Zacharias jerk as he pushed at the force field that kept him immobile. His roar of outrage and pain ripped through the air to coalesce in the already thick atmosphere that surrounded the group.
She tilted her head to the side and regarded Rufus. “After.”
Rufus shrugged, or at least attempted to in his current predicament. “After I disposed of you I was going to use his grief against him.”
She ground her teeth. Questioning him was worse than pulling teeth. At least the teeth gave a little.
Maybe he just needed a little more pressure…
Rufus’s face paled and he grabbed his chest. She knew he could feel her fingers around his heart.
“Why?”
“Mila!”
“Why?”
Rufus’s gaze darted to Zacharias. Seeing that the man was as powerless against her as he was, he turned and answered her question. “I wanted a real gargoyle to control the throne and I knew that if Zacharias died, his seat would go to another.”
“You were going to spellbind him to you.”
Four sets of eyes turned to Liana at her words. “He would have been no more than your puppet.”
“Yes,” Rufus sputtered out as blood spilled from his lips.
The air around them dampened and thickened. Anger and fear darkened the atmosphere.
“I will not have his death on your hands, Mila.”
Mila didn’t bother to turn her gaze to what she knew was Zacharias’s livid face. “What exactly are you going to do about it?”
“Just because I have allowed you the power does not mean you have full reign,” Zacharias thundered.
Mila gasped in surprise and pain as a blast of power surged through her veins, setting every inch of her body on fire. The pain was excruciating, mind-numbing, and for just one moment, stars shimmered in her gaze. But she fought off the hold the pain had over her.
“Mila, don’t let the power control you. You must cage the queen. You must fight the bloodlust.”
Zacharias’s words were choppy, sounding as though he spoke from miles away. It was difficult for Mila to focus on him, his words, the plea in his voice. But it was that heartfelt anguish that lured her away from the dark abyss where the power that lived inside of her was too strong a drug for her sanity.
Mila turned and saw him. Zacharias stood at the end of a long dark tunnel. Mila took a step toward him, walking away from the drugging power that surged through her veins. With every step the pain lessened, the power diminished, and she felt better, more like herself.
“Zacharias,” she called. Even to her own ears her voice sounded distant, weak, and empty. She took another step toward him.
And the air around her seemed to thicken, clinging to every inch of her skin. It caressed her, soothed her. Calmed her. She gasped, taking it in, basking in it. With every breath she took, the painful energy deep inside her loosened and unraveled. Zacharias’s long, corded arms wrapped around her shoulders, wrapping her in his strength, his care, his comfort.
The moment his arms surrounded her, the last of the churning field inside her dissipated, exploding and erupting from her in a great blast that shook the forests.
Mila looked up into Zacharias’s eyes. There was so much pain, passion, and fear in his gaze. The concern for her settled over her skin to sink deep into her flesh. No man had ever felt for her what she saw in his eyes.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Liana and Hugo had captured Rufus. She flinched inside as she saw what she had done to him. With her powers.
Her gaze lifted to Zacharias’s. “Take me home.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nobody’s Perfect
Mila intertwined her fingers with Zacharias’s, staring at the difference in their colors. She had been aware of their different races, but it wasn’t until that moment that she understood what it meant. Her skin was a deep, mahogany color with a red undertone that always gave others the impression she’d just come from an island vacation. His skin was lighter, more mellow, but no less enticing with its rich caramel undertone, a remnant of the amount of time Zacharias spent outside.
And they were different in so many other ways. He was tall. She was short. He was all muscle. She had a good twenty extra pounds on her. But she had never felt closer to a man in her life.
Which was the only reason she wasn’t running for the door as he told her his tall tale.
She chewed her bottom lip as she regarded him. Even though she had been there, witnessed what he was trying to explain, Mila could not believe that he was an actual gargoyle and she was an actual witch.
Queen of the witches, no less.
So why did she feel like she was the queen of the insane?
“What makes you think I’m this Moon Queen?” She purred as she moved her hand down Zacharias’s toned torso, one nail tracing the fine line of his six-pack until she reached the growing bulge between his strong thighs.
After coming back from what Zacharias called the Obsidian Forests, they had taken showers. Separately. She was still a little moist as she sat next to him in the plush, black robe he’d handed her.
And all he wore were white linen drawstring pants. How she longed to unravel his tie with her teeth.
His callused fingers curled around her wrist, preventing her hand’s descent. Her gaze snapped to his. He smiled, a slow sultry smile that made her breath hitch and her pussy flood with desire. “You must focus, my love. We can play later.”
She moved closer to Zacharias, hearing and feeling the desire in his voice. She frowned when he placed both of her hands in her lap and stood. He gave her his broad back and stared into the mirror above his dresser. “You are the Dark Moon Queen. Krim has waited over a millennium for your return.”
She pursed her lips. “You still haven’t told me why you think I am this queen?”
He turned to her. “How can you ask that after what happened in the Forests? How can you ask that after feeling all that power?”
She squirmed underneath his gaze, the weight of his words. Then something occurred to her. “If I am the queen, why didn’t I feel any of these so-called powers before?”
“Are you telling me you haven’t felt any of your telekinetic powers before?”
“No,” she lied through her teeth as a searing childhood memory sliced through her mind. She had been three and determined to get the large container of sweets her mother kept on the top shelf, away from the children. Less than a minute after she entered the kitchen she ha
d the opened jar in her hand. She could still see her mother’s horrified gaze when she realized what she had done. At least what she thought Mila had done.
To this day, she believed Mila had somehow safely climbed the counters and pulled the jar to the floor.
It was the only explanation her mother had been able to accept. She now understood how difficult it was to believe she was something other than normal.
“I can’t be your queen.”
Zacharias stiffened at her emphatic declaration. Slowly, some of the tension left his body. She could feel him trying to calm himself. Slow his heartbeat. Push past the pain and anger he had felt momentarily.
She stared at him in shock, unsure of why she could feel his emotions.
“I don’t ask that you be my queen. I’m just telling you that you are a queen.”
The presence of the pain inside Zacharias registered just as his words did. “Are you a king, Zacharias?”
He leaned against the wooden dresser. His fingers clenched tightly along the carved ledge. His knuckles were white with tension. “Hugo questioned Rufus. He admitted that he used the magnifying spell on you, on us. My guess is that the emotions, the powers you feel have been affected by it.”
He gave her a tremulous smile. “I’d like to think it wasn’t all an effect of the spell.”
She stared at his feverish gaze in the mirror, allowing his words to settle. “No, it wasn’t all the spell,” she murmured as she remembered the moments she had spent in his arms.
Whatever had been happening between them hadn’t been magic-induced. At least not the hocus-pocus kind. No, it had been the pure, unadulterated lusty kind.
She sighed. She couldn’t wait until later.
“What I don’t understand is how he was able to get you out of the castle without my notice?” Zacharias mumbled to himself. “He would be fast, very fast as a gargoyle, but I would have sensed him.”
Mila shifted on the bed. The moment they had left the Obsidian Forests, Zacharias had grabbed her and shifted into his gargoyle form. There had been a moment of pure shock and then he had spoken, calming her fears.
Gargoyle or not, she knew Zacharias. When they had landed on the castle roof, he had stood still while she looked him over. She took her time feeling his soft, firm, impenetrable skin. His deadly, sharp claws. Even the tail that whipped around nervously as she examined him.
“You’re so beautiful,” she had murmured, looking up into his eyes. The memory flashed into her mind as she stared at the beautiful man in front of her now.
Mila knew the exact moment Zacharias realized how Rufus had gotten her outside the castle. He stilled, his hand gripping an ancient ivory hairbrush. The handle snapped in his hand.
“He did not have to take you outside, did he, Mila?”
She shuddered at the gruff sound of his dark voice. Gone was the lover she had come to care for. She licked her parched lips and took a step forward. One hand reached out to him. “Zacharias ‑‑”
He turned away before she could touch him. He fiddled with an item on the top of his dresser. She doubted he even knew what he was doing. But Mila found herself unable to break her gaze away from the tense movements of his long, callused fingers. Fingers that had loved her, touched her like she was something truly precious.
Her gaze caught his in the silver mirror. One eyebrow lifted, daring her to deny what they both knew was true.
She had been trying to leave him.
The coldness of his emerald gaze scared Mila more than Rufus’s venomous touch ever had. She had finally crossed the line that made her actions unforgivable in his eyes.
For the first time in her life Mila regretted a decision. She should have trusted herself, her feelings for the male before her. She should have trusted him.
She stepped forward. “Zacharias, I’m so ‑‑”
His gaze caught hers. “Hugo will see to it that you are returned to your home safely.” Zacharias started to turn from the mirror, from Mila, when her hand on his arm stopped him. He stared pointedly at the small, dark fingers curled around his thick wrist. Determined, her grip tightened. His eyes lifted to catch hers. “I have no desire to bind myself to a woman who does not trust or want me.”
His words were spoken through clenched teeth. The coldness of his voice, the determination in his eyes, slid over her skin and chilled her to the bone. Her fingers, lifeless, fell from his wrist. He turned and strode through the doorway.
“Hugo will be here momentarily.”
He called the words over his shoulder. Zacharias didn’t even bother to look back to see her grief-stricken face.
Chapter Seventeen
Hatin’ Love
“Yup, he be the one who just pushed the Dark Moon Queen herself out the door. Just like she was nothing. Like she wasn’t the prophesied queen of Krim.” There came a snort. “And to think me mum told me to marry a gargoyle, ‘cause they lived for love. That one makes me believe they hard all the time, not just at night.”
The mumbled words of the old woman drifted to Zacharias as he strode through the hall. It was just one time of many that he had overheard the mutters quickly spreading like wildfire through Krim.
He had not expected people to like his decision. The kingdom had, after all, been waiting a millennium for Mila’s return, but the blatant disrespect, that was something unexpected.
Hugo stepped in front of him and closed a door softly behind him. “She’s right, you know. Although I would say you threw her out as though she was trash, something to be discarded.”
Zacharias glared at the man in front of him and clamped his teeth on the retort that wanted to come. He counted to ten before he felt the tiniest semblance of sanity return to him. It was not the first time in the week since Mila’s departure that Hugo had made his opinion known, but today it grated against his skin more than it had in the past.
And before it had hurt like a bitch.
Today it hurt like the bastard son of a bitch.
He turned away from Hugo’s handsome, stern face with a growl.
Today was the day of his binding. And the whole world, or at least his household, was conspiring to make him feel as though he were going to the gallows.
And wouldn’t death be preferable to spending eternity with a woman you don’t love?
With a savage curse, Zacharias pushed away the honest thought.
“I still don’t understand why you let her go.”
Zacharias whipped around. He was tired of pretending the angry sore that was his heart was fully intact. Every day he ached for the one who did not want him. Every day he prayed for the pain to end. He understood all too well why rejected gargoyles died weeks after their loved ones had turned from them.
He lived only for the day when death would take his heartache away.
“You think it was easy for me to let the woman I love leave me? But regardless of what she thinks, I am not a beast to chain her to me against her will.”
“But you have no issues with chaining yourself to another woman against your will?”
Zacharias’s chin lifted in defiance. “I will do what is best for my people. It is a king’s duty to make sacrifices. And I am not being chained against my will. I happily go.”
One dark eyebrow lifted in patent disbelief at his statement. “Sacrifices I can understand. What you are doing is no sacrifice. You are a fool. You know that, right?”
He shook his head. “No. For once I am thinking. Although I cannot forgive Rufus for his actions, he was right. Love is a dangerous thing.”
Several hours later, as Zacharias sat on his throne, staring across the room at his queen to be, he decided that he was finally losing his mind.
And his household had driven him to the edge of sanity.
For one moment, as he had walked the long corridor to the room where he had been coroneted, the room where he would be wed, he swore he saw Mila. And now as he sat on his throne, feigning delight at the shrouded presence of his bride, his trait
orous nostrils were filled with Mila’s distinctive scent.
He ground his teeth and focused on the woman in front of him. She knelt at his feet. She was covered in the traditional heavy black lace that was only used for a Dark Moon harvest binding. He could not see a single inch of her. Not even her fingertips.
And he did not know who she was.
He had asked the priest and Hugo to choose a bride for him, any bride. They had done just that.
She moved slowly, rising from her knees, until she stood before him. He immediately noticed two things. She was short. And she was all curves. Lush, plump curves.
Curves that reminded him of Mila.
Again, the whispers of her scent flowed to him. He could hear the sound of his teeth grinding against one another as pain lanced through him.
His memories were driving him crazy.
The slow, soft sound of drums drifted through the pungent, tense air. Several of the binding guests relaxed. He realized then that they had feared the binding would not occur. He couldn’t keep away his sharp, cold smile.
The woman moved one hip to the beat of the drums. Thump. Thump.
Her skirt shifted the slightest bit with the deeply sensual movement. Unwillingly, Zacharias found himself trying to catch a glimpse of her skin. She moved the other hip in the same manner, keeping her torso still. Heat seared Zacharias’s veins. A flash of a memory knifed through his brain.
Mila moving her hips above him, grinding her pelvis against his, as she shattered around him.
The crowd shifted in their seats. Zacharias realized the low rumble was a growl…coming from his throat.
The beat picked up. The masked woman turned around, giving him her back. Zacharias got his first glimpse of an ass that had to have been heaven sent. It was large, full, and sweetly rounded.
She rolled her body from her head to her feet so that she moved like a snake, a wicked gypsy floating with the wind, as every inch of her followed the sound of the drums.
Zacharias licked his lips and moved forward. Anger and desire shifted through him as he watched his unknown bride-to-be dance. He did not want to feel the passion for the woman in front of him. Its presence ignited a fire in him that was just as powerful as lust. And just as dangerous. His fingers curled around the carved arms of his throne. A quick glance down told him his knuckles were white with his rage.
Monstrous Kink Page 8