by A. K. Koonce
Good.
I swallow dryly, and his gaze flickers to my lips as he carefully sets the drink down on the table.
“Tell me what my punishment is.” My head dips, and he releases his hold on me as I start trailing hot kisses down his smooth neck, his shoulder, down the curve of his pec. I feel his chest heave for a breath beneath my sliding tongue. “Tell me how I can make my mistakes up to you,” I whisper seductively as I shove him down on a nearby couch that I can only call a sex couch. It’s curved in all the right places for all my right places to align with all his right places.
A glorious sex couch.
But he grips my collar, and once more he jars my head up to look him in his brooding blue eyes. His fist holds my leash tightly in place.
“You’re out of your fuckin’ mind if you think I’m going to let your sharp teeth anywhere near my cock, Crow,” he says with that familiar hint of hate in his tone.
I blink several times to stop myself from giving him the hooded look of left-over lust that’s still lost in my eyes.
We aren’t playing games, it seems. We really are just performing. And I took it too far.
I’m a fucking idiot.
Before I can step back from him and put space between his disgustingly perfect body and mine, he takes me down. He literally kicks my legs out from under me as if he’s fighting me instead of . . . oh, my fuck, he’s grinding his dick against my clit.
Lines carve in his arms as he holds himself above me on the glossy arm of the couch as he looks down to appreciate the surprise still clinging to my features. His hips are perfectly between my thighs. And he takes his time, thrusting against the thin material of my panties.
“You do deserve punishment,” he says, his words kissing my tongue.
There’s a fire in his eyes, and deliberate force in the way he rocks his hardness against my center, and I can’t think of a single thing to say to him right now. This, this right now is real. Maybe it was kindled with pretend touches and fake whispered words, but flames are lashing between us now, and the scorching heat of it is very much real.
Before I can think better of it, I slam my mouth against his. I part his lips and slide my tongue along his in the most urgent, wanting kiss of my entire life.
It’s like fire is consuming my chest. It’s pressing and perfect.
It’s fleeting, though.
His big palm grips my jaw, and he breaks the kiss, holding my throat in his hands while he pulls back to really look at the lust in my eyes that I couldn’t hide if I wanted to. Our heavy breaths clash, and I almost think he’ll kick me back down again with another harsh comment that stings more than I’ll ever admit.
But instead, his grip tightens, and he pulls me back to him with a faint brush of our lips that ignites much deeper inside me. It tingles through every single part of my body until it coils tight between my thighs.
His other palm sneaks beneath my back, and his leg comes up higher between mine as he lifts me. He sits us up with ease. I gasp against his light kiss, but he settles me carefully onto his lap, taking his time to drag me by my hips and slide every part of my wet panties against the hard shaft straining beneath his jeans. Both hands grip my hips, nails biting into my skin as he guides me against his thrusts. His hardness grinds into me just right, sliding up and pounding hard just as he hits my clit. Spirals of tangled energy shiver through me, and I hold his smooth shoulders and let him control my body, control my pleasure, control every fucking thing about me.
When he slaps my ass with a stinging snap of his palm, I gasp and instinctively sink my teeth into his lower lip like the pain should be repaid. His hold on me tightens, and the motion of his hips and mine become more fervent. More demanding. More delicious.
My heart pulls like a string attached to it is being corded too tightly. It’s a familiar feeling that I ignore in search of a release I feel rising high inside myself.
Moans and slapping sounds of rough, consuming sex surround us, and it fuels me as I think about what it’d feel like with Zaviar.
How his thick shaft would fill me, stretch my walls, and make me cum with the perfect angles he seems to know more about than even I do.
His mouth leaves mine, and he kisses down my jaw and over my throat. His teeth drag lightly at the base of my neck, and then he sinks in hard, the straining outline of his cock pounding against my clit at the very same time. I gasp. My spine arches. Energy wracks my body.
He thrusts hard as he bites again.
And again.
And again.
My orgasm shatters over me in trembling waves that leave me curled into his chest as he continues to pound his own release against mine.
Cutting breaths part my lips while my lashes flutter with a hooded look clouding my eyes. His own sated gaze stares back at me, a sexy look I’ve never seen in his pretty irises before.
Fuck, he’s sexy.
We sit quietly, both of us mostly clothed while we caress the hot planes of each other’s bodies.
It’s . . . almost nice.
As long as neither of us speak, we might actually like each other.
Who knew?
That tugging demand on my heart rears up inside me, and I close my eyes against the pain of it. It’s like heartache.
That’s probably what it really is.
When fated mates are close, but not touching, your heart feels it. It’s a sharp pain like a knife dividing your soul inch by inch, but it’ll never fully be severed.
I hate that feeling. Especially right now. While everything is so close to perfect for once in my life. I hate it so fucking much.
Because it means Krave is here.
And he wants to see me.
14
Come 4 Krave
Krave
The noise in my head starts to scatter around the room in the form of chanting smoky illusions. Transparent people circle me; they’re my own thoughts, but it’s easier for me to think when I export them into the open. Making space in my mind is something I have to focus on, and if I want her to remember I exist at all, I’ll need to focus.
Why does she make me chase her like this? It is a fun game, I’ll admit. One she’s put me through for years.
But two years’ worth of glittering blue balls is not a good time. Not at all.
“Aries,” I whisper like a song. Sometimes I try to summon her the way she summons me, but our relationship is very one-sided.
“Aries,” I sing once more, my voice getting lost in the chants of my friends stomping around me in fumes of inky smoke.
“Ari—”
The polished office door flings open so hard, I’m afraid the hinges might burst on impact.
“What! What do you want, Krave?” Her screaming anger sends a sensual shiver down my spine, and I see it the moment she notices my thoughts circling me.
Her anger dissolves into muddled confusion.
Three child-sized demons stride circles around me from where I sit cross-legged on the floor. Each one of them hold signs like a protestor prepared to stand up for what they deserve.
The signs read:
Come
4
Krave
It’s written in the slashing, messy handwriting that I have had for the past six centuries, but I know she can read it perfectly.
And if she can’t, well, my little friends make their position painfully clear to her.
“What do we want?” one of the little smoke demons yells.
“Cum!” the others answer.
“When do we want it?”
“Whenever Aries is willing to give it, at the most opportune time, but whenever suits her needs best, of course,” they all rattle, out of unison like the messy thoughts of my mind that they are.
Her lips part as if she might try to make sense of the demonic protestors, but they start right back up.
“What do we want?”
“Cum!”
“When do we want it?”
“Whenever Aries is w
illing to give it, at the most opportune—”
“Stop! Stop it!” She stomps through the room, and literally crushes my thoughts with the sharp heel of her sexy shoes.
The chanting stops as smoke wafts up around her bare curves, the silk of her panties, the round perfection of her tits. Then I notice the gleaming black horns twirling up from her strange black hair. They’d be beautiful against her natural silver locks.
They are beautiful. She’s beautiful.
Untouchably beautiful.
“Nice to see you, too, love,” I say to her. I don’t dare reach out to her hips that are right in front of me.
“Why—why did you spell come like that?” She distractedly tries to sort through what’s most urgent in her mind.
I, too, try to find the reasoning that I left lying around somewhere in my thoughts.
“It seemed more professional at the time. More I-want-you-to-take-my-mind-minions-seriously. Yes, I want to fuck you in a romantic way, not an erotic way.” I nod to myself.
She glares down on me with the full force of her annoyance.
I shove off from the floor because I can’t take another second of smelling her freshly fucked pussy any longer. I can smell the wetness of her panties and a masculine scent staining her flawless skin.
Did he fuck her? Does she cum for other men the way she cums for me? Did he make her legs shake and her whole-body tremble like good and evil will collide if she doesn’t find her release with me and me alone? Does she . . . does she love him?
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Aries?” I flick my demon-dusted index finger out and twirl a long lock of her black hair around my digit until my magic infects hers, and it chases out the unnatural color.
And then that silver hair is right back where it belongs on her hot-headed skull.
She bats my hand away, but when our fingers tangle just slightly, she shivers on contact. It’s a shiver that I know just coursed right down to her cunt.
My tongue slides slowly across my lips.
“You called me here, and you know it.” Her shoulders square as she folds her arms beneath her breasts and gives me a most delectable salacious sight to look down on.
My lazy posture stays in place, and I’m still several inches taller than her. I love how small she is. I always loved how small she felt beneath me. Not that we’ve had that mutual feeling in a long, long time.
Politics. They fuck everything up.
I know if I continue to lead her around by her pretty little horns, it’ll give me more time with her, even if she’s pissed at me the entire time. But it also means that someday, she’ll grow tired of this bantering. Maybe she’ll even grow tired of my touch, my tone, my torment.
And someday, I’ll never see her again.
“Your brother’s in the central tower of the castle with a guest of high importance,” I say flatly, cutting right to what I know she’s searching for.
“Oh,” she whispers but her eyes are wide and search my face.
She knows it’s the truth. I’d never lie to her. If I could, we would be perfect mates without so much hate tainting our relationship.
She steps back from me one foot after the other, but she never looks away from my smooth features. I have to keep my feelings to myself. Shoving my emotions down her throat isn’t what she wants. If I’m careful, if I’m patient and resilient, she’ll come back to me.
“Thank you, Krave,” she says politely, like a total stranger thanking someone for holding the door.
I fucking hate myself.
But I smile a gleaming, wicked smile that she watches slice up my face. My fingers tick at my side and I release a trail of glittering black smoke as I try to clear my tangled thoughts and endless emotions.
She rushes the small space she put between us, and my heart stops dead in my chest when her warm palms push against the smooth planes of my chest. On the toes of her shoes, she leans into me, and I don’t move a single fucking inch beneath her. Even as her lips graze my jaw. Her scent washes over me bringing a sexy memory of lust and a corrupted form of love. Her bare skin and silk bra brush over the bar piercing my nipple, and I wish like hell she knew what her body felt like against mine.
I wish she’d let me show her.
My palm lifts, and I almost hold her against me to soothe my pounding heartbeat. But she slips away as fast as she came.
My mouth parts as I watch her go. The door closes with a gentle click.
I’m alone again with just my thoughts.
“You’re welcome, Aries,” I whisper to no one. My heart beats against my chest as if it might race after her.
With too many thoughts jumbling my mind, I lean back against her father’s desk and wait for my handler, who will be here in just a few hours.
I may be an incubus, but my handler never captured me to be his sex slave.
He captured me to seduce his daughter in the Bin, to watch her, babysit her, and steal away all her little dark secrets for himself.
And I did.
And I fucked everything up in the process.
15
Secrets in the Dark
Aries
When I reach the dark stairway, I kick off my heels, and my feet pad soundlessly onto the cold stone steps.
A warm palm wraps around my wrist. I peer back at Zaviar, and the way he looks at me now feels different and yet the same.
There’s still that hardness in his gaze, but it’s not anger and frustration. It’s . . . concern, I think.
His lips part as if he might talk me out of all this, but I beat him to it.
“Stay here. I can shadow bend if I need to. If anything goes bad, I’ll fly right back down to you. We can’t smoke out but we’ll have to find a window.” I say it in a way that it’s not open for discussion. Telling someone rather than asking is possibly the one good thing my father ever taught me.
“Okay,” he whispers.
His hold on me reluctantly releases, and I give him a small, tense smile before disappearing into the darkness.
I feel it like a physical thing as I climb higher and higher into the tower. The shadows caress my skin. The darkness slides over me as if it’s a blanket I’m hiding under rather than walking through.
It gives me confidence as well as strength, and my pace quickens over the cold stone. I’m racing over the stairs with blurring speed, but the moment booming voices cut through the silence, my entire body halts.
“I don’t care what your father wants!” A voice like fire grumbles so loudly that it quivers the stones beneath my feet.
Inch by inch, I trail up to the archway that opens onto the highest room of the Kingdom of Roses’ castle. Open windows span around the circular space with moonlight illuminating the two figures inside. Only smooth brick surrounds them, and I don’t dare take a single step inside that room.
Because the central tower, it was made for dangerous but honest meetings.
No magic can exist within these enchanted stones. The sheath of shadows that covers my skin would be ripped away the moment I stepped foot into that room. Fae cannot trick their guests within this room. No contracts, no conniving words, nothing but honest talk can be conducted there.
And that must be why my brother is within, speaking with the Hell Lord himself.
I linger at the doorway and watch with big eyes as the wind blows my brother’s fiery red hair across his pale brooding face.
He looks tiny standing before the enormous hell creature with horns that add at least an extra foot to his already towering height.
“Your kind’s days of enslaving my spawn are over, boy,” Hell Lord growls. The clattering of his hooves against the floor echoes around the room. He glares down on my brother, his scarred chest three times the size of Nathiale’s delicate frame.
The ruler of all of hell or his four princes are not people you should ever mess with.
My brother is stupid enough to do just that though.
Nathiale doesn’t look intimidated at all. He
simply nods as if the devil and he are one and the same.
“I agree. I want you to take them back. Take all of them and your curse back, and never let them step foot on fae soil again unless they are summoned. We have enough of them coming in with dark summoning magic, we don’t need yours as well,” Nathiale says with too much arrogance for a man speaking with the king of the demon land.
“I cannot break the handler bonds that have been made. I can’t break fae magic. Your people must release them,” Hell Lord says.
“If the token of your realm resided in hell, the demons would no longer be a problem for us,” says Nathiale.
“A PROBLEM!” the demon king roars. “The only problem is you. Release your bonds, and free the demons of my empire. They’re not slaves.”
Nathiale’s ridiculous face is too ignorant to show fear. Even I flinched back from the force of Hell Lord’s voice.
“Yes, but you’re asking for thousands of fae to release their demons. Some of them are dead and have gifted their demons to their heirs, making it impossible for those bonds to be broken. However, if you took back your realm token, then the demons would not have a link connecting them to this realm or to their fae handlers. They would be transported to the Torch if you restored the token to its proper place,” Nathiale explains.
My brows lift. I knew he wanted the remains I’d stolen for this reason, but I never realized there was so much to it.
What is Catherine’s proper place?
My grave, you idiot, she says sourly at the back of my mind.
Makes sense.
Why were you ever chosen as the token to begin with? Why were your remains brought here, Catherine?
I wait, peering into thin air as if I might spot her.
But, like the cunt that she is, she doesn’t answer.
I shake my head and focus on the shit show at hand.
“I agree,” Hell Lord says slowly, still suspicious of the boy in front of him. He’s right to be hesitant to agree with anything a fae says. Even in this ancient, enchanted tower. “Bring me the token now, and I’ll restore the precious piece and remove the curse on your lands.”