“Because in the end, I still win, regardless,” he grunts, and then his fingers are hard on my hips as he speeds up, thrusting up into me. Even on top of him, I have no control, and I’m not sure I even care anymore.
“Atlas,” I cry out, on the edge of orgasm. My fingers clench in his hair, my other hand digging into the soil beneath him. But I don’t shatter yet, not until his teeth sink into the sensitive spot on my shoulder again, not until he snarls the one world against me flesh like a brand.
“Mine.”
I explode, and on instinct, I clamp my teeth around the closest place to my mouth, the side of his neck. He snarls against my skin, but I don’t release my hold even as his blood fills my mouth. His hips jerk against me and then he follows me over, his warmth spurting inside me, prolonging my orgasm.
For long moments, we stay locked like that, both of our teeth buried in the other’s neck, joined between my thighs, both panting hard. There’s no red in my vision anymore, at least. Otherwise, I’m far more disheveled than I’ve ever been. My hair hangs around me like a curtain, at some point coming loose from the knot on top of my head. My dress is still bunched around my waist. Atlas still somehow wears his boots.
Slowly, I release his neck, licking at the wound until it closes. Only then does he do the same to me, his tongue rasping against my skin in a way that makes me purr and ache to grind down on him again. He twitches inside me even as he collapses back into the dirt, his slanted eyes staring at me through narrow cracks.
“I won that argument,” he grunts, completely serious.
I try to hold it back, try to keep my lips from curling, but I can’t. Laughter spills from my lips at the look on his face, at the sight of the pixie dust covering and embedded into his skin. He’s beautiful, capable of being brutal, and the only person besides Peter to ever break me from my bloodlust, and he didn’t even have to use his power to do so. I shake with the mirth tumbling from my lips and when the smile curls his lips up, too, and he starts to chuckle, he leans up and wraps his arms around me so I’m straddling his lap.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, placing his forehead against mine. His large hands splay against my spine, barely touching against where my wings meet skin. Even after everything, even after we viciously bit each other, even after I drank his blood and hurt him, he’s worried about me.
“There’s no red in my vision thanks to you,” I murmur, threading one of my hands through his hair and holding on. My other holds onto his shoulder, stroking one of the places I bit him. It’s healed now, has been since seconds after I released him, but still, something about the spot makes him shiver.
Still locked together, I feel him harden again inside me, and when his hand gently rocks my hips against him, my breath stutters.
“Atlas. . .”
“Hmm?” He presses his lips against my jaw, running his tongue gently there, nipping. All the while, it’s a slow rocking, a slow build up. This isn’t the fevered frenzy of before. This is something else, something with too many emotions.
“We should go find the others.”
“Don’t,” he chides, his fingers clenching me harder, his length stroking inside me, driving my need higher.
I grimace. “Don’t what?”
Atlas leans back and meets my eyes. “I can feel you preparing to run, Pixie.” He presses a gentle kiss against my lips. “You don’t have to run from me, from this thing between us.”
“It’s a bad idea.”
“All the best ones are,” he argues, still rocking my hips frustratingly slow against him. “Don’t make excuses that don’t make sense, Your Majesty.”
I chuckle. “You’re entirely frustrating, Berserker.”
“You mean sexy, handsome, sensual—”
“Perfect,” I rasp, looking into his eyes and rocking harder against him. “You’re perfect.”
And even though it’s dangerous and a little foolish, I let the Berserker claim me there, and when he offers himself to me in return, I take it, crying out my orgasm for all of Neverland to hear.
Though it’s the most foolish thing I’ve ever done, a single happy thought gets in, but I can’t even bring myself to care, not when I hand my heart over to the Berserker with the cocky grin and a soul full of life, not when he looks at me as if I’m not a monster in the slightest.
Neverland help me. . .
Chapter Eighteen
WENDY DARLING
I stumble to a stop the moment I hear it, the moment I feel the shift and change in the bond between Tink, Tiger, and me. The others follow my lead, staring at me with lowered brows. We’re all panting with the effort to keep up with them, even though we were seriously failing. Tink has always been fast, but when she’s in bloodlust, no one has ever been able to pace her. . .
. . .except, apparently Atlas can.
I turn to Tiger with wide eye, my chest rising and falling from the effort, ignoring the questions in everyone else’s eyes.
“No one has ever broken her bloodlust without being shredded,” I rasp, trying to catch my breath.
“What does that mean?” White asks. He’s less out of breath than me, though I expect nothing less from a rabbit. March is breathing similarly, one of the few not panting at all.
Calypso shoves through the group, her eyes wild, her hair a tangle around her face. Her breath is ragged, made worse by the panic in her veins. “Is she killing my brother?” She’s panicked—even I can sense that. She doesn’t know what the Pixie is capable of, only has the image of what Tink looked like before she bolted. I’m sure it’s terrifying to see your little brother take off after the beast that hides under her skin.
Cheshire shakes his head, reaching out for Cal in an attempt to calm her down. His ears swivel on his head, no doubt hearing more than we can. “They’re not fighting, Cal.”
“What does that mean!?” she shrieks, moving to go after Atlas but Cheshire stops her. When she starts to fight him, he grimaces.
White tilts his head and frowns, glancing at Jupiter to see if she hears but I can tell she doesn’t. Still, she smiles, understanding what’s happening far faster. “We need to move further away,” White murmurs. “I can hear them.”
Cal jerks out of Cheshire’s hold. “What the fuck are they doing?!”
When Cheshire chuckles in exasperation. “I was trying to spare you, but. . .” He leans over and whispers in her ear. The warrior woman blushes crimson and scowls when Cheshire leans back.
“Christ, I could have gone eternity without knowing what my brother prefers. Thanks for that, asshole.”
Cal turns away with one last look in the direction her brother disappeared in. She grimaces again and follows the rest of us as we move further away. Hook takes my hand, pushing his hair from his face so he can look down at me.
“You sure he’s going to be okay?”
I snort. “She’s the Wicked Pixie Queen, but she’s more human than she thinks. Atlas will be fine, Pirate.”
Now that we know Wolfbane will attack the moment we get close to the barrier between the Dark Side and ours, it limits our movements. We can’t simply walk along the edge until I feel something, not without risking attack or loosing someone. At least Wolfbane isn’t one of the World Breakers Flam spoke of. Silver linings and all that.
“So, what now?” White asks. “We can’t walk the line and we know the door is on the other side.” At the end of his words, the earth rolls beneath our feet, shaking for long seconds before settling. “And we’re running late.”
“Late for what?” Tiger asks, wrinkling her brow.
Jupiter waves the words away. “He means we’re running out of time.” Giggling, she grins up at White. “Rabbits and their watches.”
“I have an idea,” I murmur.
“Absolutely not,” Hook growls.
“I haven’t even said the idea yet!”
Hook crosses his arms and looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak.
“I can sneak over alone—I’m
at no risk of dying because he wants me alive—and I can search for the door.”
“Oh, is that all?” Hook shakes his head. “You’re not going over alone to search. If you do that, it’s because we have no other choice, and we’ll find some way for you to not be by yourself and at his mercy. He could throw you in a cage, Wendy Bird.”
“My doors feel like a tugging in my gut.” White pulls a key from his waistcoat. “I use this to open the door, but I don’t really need it. I just use it to channel my power. In a bind, and without enchantments locking the door, I could open it with my power, but it would drain me more than using the key. I can open a door anywhere back to my hall of doors, but there has to be the right climate for it.”
“But I don’t have a key,” I whisper. “Not that I know of.”
“Wait,” Hook says, interrupting the talk. “Why can’t we just leave through your door?”
White shakes his head but I beat him to the answer. “We tried when we first met, right after I was Chosen. I couldn’t step through, because it isn’t a Neverland door, and we all belong to Neverland. We tried for hours to make it work, and nothing ever did. At the time, I was resigned to my fate, to being stuck here forever.” I shrug. “And well, the world wasn’t dying so I didn’t keep trying.”
“But now we have more reasons to fight for it,” Tiger says, taking my hand and offering support. We may be different Daughters, may lead our people differently, but in this, we’re together.
“We’re going to have to find a way to sense the door, and then we have to figure out how to open it,” White says, cringing. “It won’t be easy, but then again, nothing ever is.”
Hook’s eyes trail over to me and I can feel his reluctance. I know he doesn’t want to say what he’s about to. “I have an idea, but I want you to know I don’t support it and it’s going to be a last resort.”
I grin at him. Even with everything going wrong around us, even with the threat hanging over our head and death around the corner if we don’t succeed, I grin, because at least I get to spend the possible last moments with my pirate. “I think we’re already at the last resort stage, Hook. “
Sighing, he runs a hand through his hair, the silver and gold in his ears glinting. “Then I suppose we’re going fishing.”
Chapter Nineteen
I lay in the soil, my skin coated with dirt, blood, and bits of earth that got torn up from our love making. I feel as if I’ve burrowed into the ground with as much of it that coats us, but I’m not that worried about it. My hair is wild around my shoulders, no semblance of the style I keep it in while the pale silver ends get just as dirty as the rest of me. My breath saws in and out of my chest, far worse than when I’d been in bloodlust, but I don’t care.
Atlas lays beside me, his breaths just as ragged, his skin just as coated in blood and grim. The bites I’d given him are already healed, just as mine are, but I can see the evidence of them in the blood patterns. His muscles twitch with exertion, and the way he lays, his eyes closed and an arm thrown behind his head, his other hand in mine, he’s so beautiful. The image of his sharp teeth flashes through my mind, teeth that are perfectly normal now, and I shiver, though not in fear. My teeth are one of the signs of bloodlust, but Atlas? His are a sign of something different.
I reach up and feel where he bit me. It’s healed, of course, but the feeling is still there, this overwhelming sense of claiming. Sure, in the end, he’d rolled us over so I was on top, but not for one second was Atlas not in control. It should make me angry. Instead, it makes me want to do it again.
I swallow thickly. This is dangerous, so dangerous, but I can’t seem to stop myself. And Atlas doesn’t seem keen on letting me make the decision for him. What happens if the next time he can’t stop the bloodlust? What happens if I shred him? I know he’s immortal like me, but how immortal is he? Can he regrow a head? A heart? Those are the two things I go for usually in bloodlust. What if I kill him permanently and come to sitting in the middle of his pieces?
I don’t think I could live with myself.
“I can hear you thinking too hard,” Atlas grumbles, lifting his arm to peek at me from beneath it. He raises his brow, and even though he’s languid from the aftereffects of our coupling, he’s far from soft. I know if danger suddenly came from nowhere, he’ll spring into action without a hint of weakness.
“Can you blame me?” I whisper, turning to curl myself around his body. His arm automatically comes around me to hold me closer. We lay like that, naked and covered in grim in the middle of the forest. We’re probably in danger here but I pity the creature that stumbles upon us right now. “I know we’re both harder to kill, but I still worry for you.” I frown at him. “That was a risky thing to do, chasing after me.”
He grins. “It worked, didn’t it?” His fingers begin to stroke up and down my spine, between my wings, and I try desperately to focus on his face rather than what his hand is doing.
“This time, it did. But what if next time, it doesn’t? What if the bloodlust is too strong and I rip you to pieces?”
He shrugs before reaching up to brush my hair from my face. “Then I’ll heal.”
“But what if you don’t?”
“But what if I do?” he sighs. “What if, in all this worry, you actually realize I’m not going anywhere, that I’m not worried about your claws, that I’m perfectly happy learning ways to break you from bloodlust?” He leans over and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Next time, instead of a kiss, I can just impale you on my—”
“Atlas,” I scoff. “This is serious. I could kill you on accident.”
Snorting, he shakes his head and stares deeply into my eyes. “You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
Carefully, he sits up and drags me into his lap, careful of my wings. “When the bloodlust slammed into you, you turned away from all of us. There were eleven of us standing with you, perfect for slaughter, and yet you turned away. Why is that?”
I swallow thickly. “Because I didn’t want to hurt anyone I cared for.”
“And you were already in bloodlust when you made the decision.” His rough fingers cup my chin. “You’re not as monstrous as you think you are, Pixie.”
I choke. “That’s even more terrifying.”
“And why is that?”
“Because that means in previous bloodlusts, I made the decision to slaughter innocent creatures.” I sigh. “I’m a mess. I don’t know how to handle the way you’re looking at me. I don’t know how to handle the knowledge that I’m able to make decisions in bloodlust. I don’t know how to handle you.”
His hand travels from my chin to my throat, resting there gently. His eyes crinkle. “Who says you have to handle me, Pixie?” His large fingers squeeze gently. “Who says we can’t spend the next thousand years of our lives fighting for dominance?”
I press my lips together, but I can’t stop the tiny curl at the corner of them, and Atlas’ eyes flash in triumph. “I wasn’t prepared for you, Berserker.”
His fingers move to trail along the black lines covering my skin. There aren’t many places not clear of the lines, the tattoos threading their way into intricate designs. “Good, I prefer you off balance,” he teases, but when his fingers find the filigree design of wings on my collarbone, almost so blended in, they’re hard to pick out, his eyes flick up to mine. “You didn’t have this many tattoos when I first saw you.”
“I believe it’s a side effect of the heart dying,” I murmur. “The more it dies, the more shows up on my skin.”
“What do they mean?” Some of the symbols aren’t things Atlas would recognize, a language so ancient, I’m not sure anyone but Tiger and I can read it now that Peter is gone.
“It’s the history of Neverland, imprinted on my skin so if this world dies and we live on, we remember how we fell.”
For a moment, Atlas doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if he doesn’t like the way they look. Suddenly self-conscious when I’d never been before, I mo
ve to wrap my arms around my middle. When strong hands capture my wrists, I flush.
“Don’t do that,” he chides. “I’m simply remembering the time I tried to get a tattoo back home.” He turns his shoulder towards me to show a single black line. I reach up a finger and touch it, the skin as smooth as it’s meant to be.
“What happened?”
“The artist did the first line, saw how fast it healed, and lost his shit. You’d have thought he saw a ghost. This was supposed to be a pretty cool design matching the designs on my battle axe, but the asshole chickened out. So now I have a single black line on my damn back.”
I laugh and stroke the line again. “You should talk to Hook once we’re not in so much danger. He’s covered in tattoos and many of them were done after he was Chosen. The bird on his chest, he got for Wendy.”
“Would you have me mark my skin for you?” he purrs, leaning close to lick a line down the column of my throat. “I could get a tiny set of wings etched into my skin for you.”
“We don’t even know if this is a thing between us.”
He snorts against my skin and leans back, his brow raised. “Really? You’re still questioning it?”
Sighing, I cup his cheek. “Listen to me, Berserker. There’s a chance we may not find the door, and if we find it, there’s a chance Wendy can’t get it open. If it comes to that, your door still works—”
“Don’t talk like that. We’re going to get everyone out of here.”
“But there’s a chance we won’t, Atlas. There’s a chance this world is my grave, and if it comes time, I’ve lived a long life, and I know what it’s like to want for something or someone that can’t ever be there. If I die, I don’t want you mourning me forever.”
“I’m not mourning you,” he growls, “because you’re not dying. And if I want to put pixie wings on my skin, I will.”
Wicked as a Pixie (Daughters of Neverland Book 3) Page 13