Slaying the Vampire Conqueror(73)

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. His pain surrounded us both, scalding, and I knew it had been burning for years, decades, centuries.

I understood it so painfully well. The desire to believe that something larger than you could save you, even after it struck you down again and again.

“And now here we are,” he ground out, lip curling. “The innocents I was trying to protect, slaughtered. The warriors I was trying to save, now dying at the hand of a human tyrant. All for a goddess who spited us already. All in the name of blind fucking hope.”

Another tear glided down his cheek, the silver damp pooling in all those stone-cut lines of utter fury.

His fingers tightened in my hair.

“Tell me I’m a fool.”

He was shaking with rage, so thick I could taste it in his exhale against my lips.

I shook my head. “No.”

He let out a choked breath, his forehead leaning against mine.

“Tell me to stop.”

Four words that could mean so much. Tell me to stop—stop this war, stop the search for redemption, stop the quest for vengeance, stop this, whatever dangerous thing was about to happen in this moment, inching to inevitability.

I didn’t want him to stop any of it.

I wanted Atrius to destroy the Pythora King. I wanted him to do it slowly, painfully, relishing revenge. I wanted him to let me help. I wanted him to save his people. I wanted him to earn Nyaxia’s respect.

I wanted to burn it all down with him.

I murmured, “No.”

Another wordless sound, a choked groan. “You shouldn’t be here.”

This time he spoke against my mouth—not quite a kiss, but the promise of one.

I whispered, “Why?”

“Because you make me ravenous.”

You make me ravenous.

Those words buried in my soul. I felt the truth of them. Felt, somewhere innately, that he had said them to me once before—in Obitraen, the night he kissed me.

And I understood it. The hunger for revenge, for salvation, for blood, for sex, for death, for life, for all the things we’d been denied.

I felt it all.

“Good,” I whispered.

And the word was swallowed up between us as his mouth crashed against mine.





35





The kiss was a seamless continuation of what we’d ended weeks ago, in his room. This was not the quiet, confusing safety of the nights we spent curled up in each other’s arms. This was not the stoic respect we’d built for each other over these last months.

This was a drawn blade, a battle, a fire. This was deadly.

I loved it.

My mouth opened against his immediately, accepting his breath, his tongue, his lips, and offering him my own. My hand slid from his chest to loop around his neck—his down my side, gripping tight where my waist met my hip.

My body arched against his, helpless with the desire to feel as much of him against me as I could. The threads caught fire the closer we were, the deeper I could fold myself into his presence. The sensations of him intoxicated me—his mouth, tongue sliding against mine in a way that felt like both an offering and a promise, his fingers clutching at me like he wanted to absorb me into himself.

We were warned of this, as young Arachessen. That sensations, physical connection, would be unusually powerful for us given the way we navigated the world. Like most things based in emotion, this was treated as a danger, a weakness to be culled.

My only clear thought in this moment now was, Horseshit.

Yes, it was a danger. But how did I not realize then that was the appeal? I wanted to hurl myself off this cliff.

I was ravenous.

We staggered backwards in a tangle of limbs and wet clothing and frantic kisses and sickening lust. Atrius was leading me—I didn’t know where until my back pressed to a wall of stone. The ocean was cold around our ankles, swelling with the tide. He’d dragged us behind a cluster of large rocks jutting from the sand.

Privacy. Because we were just out here, on the beach. And I didn’t even care.

He broke our kiss, pushing me forcefully back against the rock. But I seized the moment to tear at his shirt, the buttons pulling apart with blissful ease.

And immediately, like a thirst-starved creature to water, my hands were all over his skin.

I hadn’t wanted to admit it then, but I knew the first time I touched him, something had changed forever—a door cracked open in forbidden parts of myself. I could ignore it. For a time.

But never forget it.

Because touching Atrius was like immersing myself in every forbidden pleasure at once. His aura was so unbearably strong, unrestrained lust and hunger and anger and grief and—and—all the things I tried to control in myself.

My fingers trailed down his torso, starting at his chest, then tracing the swell of his pectorals. Down, over the lean, defined muscle of his abdomen, marked with scars that each strummed a different vibration in the threads.

He let out a wordless, low sound against my lips and pushed me hard against the rock. His fingers played at the strap of my nightdress, perilously thin.

“Yes,” I breathed, and he let out a low groan as he ripped the straps at once, letting the cotton fall into the salty water around my ankles.

It wasn’t as if the nightgown was doing much to protect me from the elements, but in its absence, my body reacted immediately to its exposure. Goosebumps rose over my skin. My breasts, already aching with desire, hardened and peaked against the misty air.