by Evelyn Avery
Except Christian Grey never had to hold himself back from killing anyone during kinky sex.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked, proud that my voice only wavered slightly.
“Ease my longing with softer hurts. For example, at this particular moment I’m wondering what it would be like to parade you through the castle for all to see just like this, naked as the day you were birthed. I imagine that your embarrassment would taste like sugar, sweetening the very air on my tongue.”
My mouth fell open in shock and I fought to school my face so my reaction wouldn’t be what made the decision for him. If he knew just how much I would hate that, it would make him that much more likely to do it.
“But you don’t have to hurt or embarrass me to take the power you need,” I reasoned, hoping my words were actually true. “Don’t you ever want to be gentle?”
“At times,” he acknowledged, with a different sort of heat in his eyes. “I always want to have you, in all the ways that it would be possible for one person to experience another. But the finer details shift with my mood.”
If I’d had any doubts that he wanted to fuck me, they were gone. It was all the other things he wanted to do that maybe want to run away screaming.
“Is it because you hate me?” I asked, genuinely curious despite my unease.
Killian seemed to consider that for a moment. He lowered his head so that a fall of pale blond hair covered his face and hid his expression. For several silent moments, I became convinced that he wasn’t going to answer.
When he finally did, some unnamable emotion had entered his voice.
“I hate what you have allowed yourself to become as much I loved who you used to be. I don’t know if my former love for you can overcome how very much I want to see you writhing in pain. But we will discover the answer to that question together in time.”
I still had no memory of this other person he seemed convinced that I used to be. Princess Liminalia. Even the name was entirely foreign, unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It would take a lot more evidence to convince me it was true that I’d lived a previous life as a fairy princess, but it only made sense to play along for now.
And if it were true, I’d want to explain to him that he’d picked the wrong answer to an obvious existential question. If I couldn’t remember being Princess Liminalia, or whoever, then that made us two different people in every way that mattered. A person is defined by what they’ve experienced, what they know about themselves. And she and I led very different lives, apparently. Yet here I was, paying for whatever wrongs Killian believed she had committed.
It simply wasn’t right. Or fair.
Saying that out loud would probably only piss him off again.
“I can apologize, if you want.” I watched his face for signs that his anger had come fully to life so I could back off if I needed to. “But it wouldn’t be sincere. I can’t truly be sorry for something that I don’t remember doing.”
“Perhaps I can be sorry enough for us both,” he mused, surprising me. “That’s what made you leave in the end, I think. When my darker urges finally became too much for you to bear.”
The tormented look on his face made me want to offer him something, an olive branch.
“I read the story, The Tale of the Erlking, even though I don’t know how much of it was true. Liminalia loved Killian, that was obvious one every page.”
The Erlking studied my face with sudden intensity, as if trying to discern some difference between what he saw now and his memories of before. I tried to stay relaxed under his scrutiny because I knew he teetered on the edge between hate and love, anger and obsession. And I had no idea what might eventually tip him to fall on one side or the other.
He finally did touch me then, making my breath catch in my throat as I momentarily lost the ability to breathe. Gloved fingers stroked my cheek, lighter than the fluttering wings of a butterfly against my skin. The touch was uncharacteristically gentle, especially given the stormy emotion barely held in check that I saw in his eyes.
Without warning, he gripped my chin bruisingly hard between his fingers. He forced our faces together, so close that our lips nearly touched. This close up, I saw that his eyes were so much more than a silvery blue. The iris was multi-dimensional, full of dozens of different shades between the deepest blue and the brightest argent. I saw the froth of crashing waves against a crystalline shore and the luminescent gray of a shark fin slicing through the inky blue of deepest ocean.
Deep enough to drown in.
My own eyes widened as I tried to pull away and his grip tightened. The war he waged with himself was visible on the battlefield of his face, expression alternating between lust and rage. It was impossible to know whether he wanted to eat me out or eat me breakfast.
Realistically, it was probably both.
For a moment, I thought he would kiss me and maybe even welcomed it. Then I felt the brush of his lips against mine as he spoke. “We are both prisoners here, make no mistake. And we will suffer this imprisonment together, neither of us the better for it.”
The Erlking did kiss me then, teeth pressing hard into the tender flesh of my lower lip with only slightly less force than it would take to break the skin. But it was enough pressure to force my mouth open as he used the crushing strength of his fingers on my jaw to keep it from closing. This was something that could barely be described as a kiss, not when that same word was used for gentle pecks on the forehead from your grandmother. He owned my mouth, obviously unconcerned with whether I got any pleasure from it.
This was meant to be a preview of the way that he would own the rest of me. Maybe even a warning.
Unwanted desire surged through me. In a moment of what I could only describe as pure insanity, I wanted him to bite me and draw enough blood that both of us could taste it. I wanted to know exactly what he worked so hard to hide behind that veneer of mockery and disdain.
It didn’t take long for me realize just crazy that sounded.
I tried to fight him off, suddenly terrified of where this savage kiss would lead. My hands came up to beat against the muscled wall of his chest but I would have had better luck trying to move a brick wall. He didn’t even try to control my arms, just let me pound my fists against him as if he didn’t even feel it at all.
A moment later, he let me go as abruptly as he had snatched me up. His nostrils flared as he glared down me. Weakness made the room spin around me as I fought off a wave of dizziness and my vision blurred.
“Your breakfast is getting cold.” His face had returned to the familiar cold mask. He withdrew from the bed, seeming to gather himself together even though his gaze never left my face. “I will allow you the rest of the day to collect yourself, but you will present yourself in the great hall for dinner. After that, we will begin.”
And with those ominous words left in his wake, the Erlking swept from the room and slammed the door shut behind him.
Captive of Dreams will release on May 28th. Preorder it today!
And one more thing before you go…
One more thing before you go…
I started writing this book on a whim, not really thinking that it would see the light of day. This book was intended to be the thing I wished I’d been able to get my hands on as a fantasy-obsessed teenager. And now it’s become something so much more.
This moment, with you here reading this, has so long in the making. From the hours I spent poring over mapmaking software to get the Underground out of my head and onto (digital paper) to the obsessive notes I made myself about my version of the faerie world. I even have several handmade versions of Izzy’s lariat in my craft room because I wanted to get the descriptions just right.
Why am I telling you this?
Because this book was a labor of love and sacrifice, including my time, more than a few hours of sleep, and maybe even a few bits of my sanity. But now, it’s out of my hands and it’s in yours.
And I need to know what you think
.
Whether it’s glowing praise or the harshest criticism, I desperately want your feedback.
Please consider leaving an honest review. I would appreciate it more than you can know.
Thank you so much for reading (especially this far), and I hope you’re enjoying this journey as much as I am!
Keep Dreaming,
Evelyn Avery
Also by Evelyn Avery
INTO THE LABYRINTH
Stolen by Shadows
Captive of Dreams (Coming June 2020)
Forged in Darkness (Coming July 2020)