Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (77)

“Put me inside you.” After fumbling for only a moment, I did, and he whispered to my jaw, “Kiss me.”

Delighted to finally be granted permission, I explored his mouth. I kissed each corner of his lips, licked the full shape of each, and bit him when he tried to kiss me back. He laughed, quiet and soft, and I ate as much of the delicious sound as I could.

My mouth traveled over his jaw, my tongue rubbing the sharp edge and the bristle. I ventured to his neck, found his pulse, and flattened my tongue to drag over it. He chuckled when I did the same to his Adam’s apple, and I admitted a touch breathlessly, “I’ve been wanting to do that.”

He stared, time dripping away and unaccounted for, as I luxuriated in the absence of his typically stoic features. He stared at me as if both in deep thought and lost to the way my breaths came faster through my kiss-swollen lips.

Then he kissed me, urgent and rough, before tilting my head back with his hand in my hair to torment my breasts.

I rolled my hips to make his cock press exactly where I needed it. It didn’t matter that I’d already climaxed numerous times. The heat wasn’t done. I was far from done with enjoying this king I should loathe and reject with every corner of my soul.

Though I knew with a certainty that should have shamed that even if I weren’t drowning in the need to mate until this heat ended, my body still wouldn’t care a thing for right and wrong and logic.

It would still refuse to obey me whenever he was near.

Release arrived swiftly, and on the cusp of welcoming it, Florian clasped my face. His mouth grazed mine. “Watching you come is a fucking addiction.”

This unfeeling yet passionate king was an addiction. One I knew I would never crawl free from.

And as I was delivered in a sleepy haze back to his bed, I realized it wasn’t the end of the heat that I feared.

I feared what it would cement between us long before it did.

I woke aching in strong arms.

Florian slept soundly, holding my thigh over his hip and my head at his throat. I didn’t have the heart to wake him. I’d already done so twice since we’d left the bathing pool a mere few hours ago. So I tried to sleep some more.

Florian must have scented it, or perhaps he’d sensed I’d woken up.

He ordered thickly, “Roll over.” His fingers squeezed my thigh. “You’re to tell me when you need me, butterfly.”

“You need to rest.” Yet I was desperate enough that I rolled away from his chest to face the balcony doors, which were still sealed in frost.

He lifted my leg, his admission a throaty groan as he slowly pushed himself inside me. “My people believe it is an honor to see a female through the heat, and sweetest creature...” He licked the arch of my ear. “I’ve never felt so fucking honored in my entire life.”

In an effort not to let those words burrow deep within my chest, I didn’t respond. To let them in would be a mistake when this king hadn’t a heart of his own.





Florian set a tray of food on the drawers, the doors clicking closed and resealing with ice.

I wasn’t hungry. Not for food.

Two days had passed since he’d trapped me in his chambers. He seldom left them, and he certainly wouldn’t let me leave. He’d forced me to hydrate, and he’d even withheld more orgasms until I’d eaten.

I studied his bare back, wishing he’d remove those pants and come back to bed. A bed that would need some serious tending to after this heat had left. I traced a smear of blood upon the bedding while he prepared dishes, his back still to me as he said, “Time to eat.”

“You?”

He stilled, then eyed me over his shoulder. “Careful, butterfly.”

But I’d meant it.

The hunger I now felt might have been foreign, but I was aware of what it was. The desire had grown with every hour spent together. I wanted to drink from him as he had me. It was a want so harrowing that my own blood pulsed in my ears with each step he took toward the bed.

He crooked his finger.

I crawled across the bedding to him without a shred of thought or shame, and gripped his pants.

He tutted. “Not yet.” I glared up at him. He smirked, then ordered softly, “Open those lovely lips.”

I did, and he bit into the strawberry before placing it between my teeth. With hooding eyes, he watched them sink into the fruit. “You make me want to kill anyone who’s ever looked at you.”

It hurt to swallow, both the small bite of fruit and his words.

He swiped juice from my lower lip, then sucked it from his thumb before offering me another strawberry. I chewed as he returned to the tray of food, unsure how I was supposed to move forward after this. After all of the feeding and fucking and feeling.

I’d walked the finest of lines for weeks. Now, after the heat had forced my surrender, that line had disappeared.

The loathing, hurt, and fear twined in a protective barrier around my heart refused to stay. He’d unraveled it so thoroughly and expertly that there was not enough left to return to when this ended.

If it would ever truly end.

He’d bathed me, fed me, held me, taught and learned me. He’d tended to the overwhelming evolvement of my body with a stamina few males would possess.

I should hate him. A part of me still did, though it was now mostly due to the shame he made me feel for my growing obsession with him.