“Is it romance you want right now?” he asked, trailing gentle fingers over my wrist. They teased me slowly as he released it, raising his hand toward my throat and touching it gently. “Or do you want me to be the monster you’ve already made me out to be?” His palm clasped around the front of my throat, fingers wrapping around it as he leaned forward and touched his forehead to mine.
All traces of gentleness were gone, only the bright-eyed stare of the monstrous Fae I knew him to be.
“I think we both know the answer to that question,” he said, trailing his nose against the side of mine.
“Shut up already,” I snapped, and my gaze strayed from his intense stare, dropping to his mouth and toward the sinful curve of his lips set into a harsh line.
“Gladly,” he growled. He closed the distance between us finally, crashing his mouth down upon mine. It was the opposite of a smooth seduction, the antithesis of the careful way he normally touched me. This was the monster of Faerie, the beast under his skin unleashed as his teeth bit my bottom lip and he tore a gasp from my lungs.
He surged inside the moment I opened for him, his tongue sweeping against mine as he angled his head and took from me. I pushed back against him, shoving at his chest in an attempt to pry his mouth from mine as the taste of him claimed me, spreading across my senses in a primal way that made me want to mark him with a claim of my own.
He pulled back, his lungs heaving and cheeks flushed as he stared at me. His knees rested upon the ground as he stumbled back awkwardly on them, giving me the distance I’d demanded as I fought to regain my breath.
I stared at him across the yawning chasm between us that seemed to widen with every moment we looked at one another. His lips tipped up into a smirk that said everything I didn’t want to hear, a condescending reminder that I would willingly give in to the monster I wanted nothing to do with. But the ember of a flame burned inside of me in the darkness, watching for the moment it could burn his world to ash. Waiting for my moment to rise, to remind the world why it should never underestimate a woman wronged.
My eyes dropped to his mouth, to his lips swollen from the brutality of his kiss. “If you want me to keep my hands off of you, then I highly suggest you stop looking at me like that, my star.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” I said, swallowing around the lump forming in my throat.
“There’s a fine line between love and hate, Little One, and you are looking at me like you can’t quite decide if you should kiss me or kill me.” His lips spread into an alarmingly arrogant smile.
“You’re the bane of my existence,” I said, shaking my head with a bitter smile as I tore my eyes off his lips and tried to shake off the desire I had to feel his mouth on mine and have his arms around me, surrounding me with warmth once more.
“And you are everything I have always wanted and more,” he said, and the words might have been sweet if it weren’t for the bitterness of them. His expression filled with malice, as if he couldn’t help but blame me for not wanting him the same way he wanted me. “Keep lying to yourself, min asteren. I promise you I am not foolish enough to believe the lies that twist your tongue or the way they contradict the pounding of your heart in time with mine. I know all your secrets.”
I grimaced, my gaze connecting with his for a moment that hung suspended between us. My lungs heaved with exertion as if I’d just run through the ruined city, my body taut with the restraint that kept me sitting on the stone. All the while, he just pinned me with that agonizing glare that sank deep inside of me, feeling wrong on an instinctive level.
Fuck.
I moved before my brain processed it, lunging forward off my rock and moving toward him. He caught me in his grasp, his hands going to the backs of my thighs as he guided my legs around his waist. My mouth crashed down on his again; I plunged my fingers into his hair as I devoured his mouth with mine. He shifted as I grasped the crown on his head, tearing it from the top of his silver locks and tossing it to the side. It bounced off the stone beside us, shimmering in the light of the setting sun as we separated for a brief moment to watch it.
Caldris smirked and raised his eyebrow, his gaze coming back to mine in a playful challenge. “Should I put it back on? Perhaps my mate would like to fuck a King?”
“You’re no King,” I said, dropping furious fingers to the laces of his tunic. I tore them open, lowering my grip to the place where the part of him I needed was tucked into his pants and yanking it out.
“Yet,” he said, the words hanging between us. I didn’t want to think of the implications of that statement as I pulled his tunic off over his head, dropping it to the rocks beside us. I leaned forward, capturing his mouth with mine once more. I wanted nothing more than to forget who he was for a time, to allow myself to feel something that wasn’t the agonizing grief that threatened to consume me.
Grief for Melian. Grief for the man I’d loved who had never existed at all.
His chest rumbled as he drove his tongue inside my mouth, a growl coming from the depths of his soul as he lowered me to my back upon the ground. The earth pressed into my spine as he followed, laying the weight of his lower body atop mine and tearing at the laces of my tunic. He yanked them free, sliding a hand inside to cup my breast beneath the fabric.
I lowered my hands to his trousers, frantically unknotting them with panicked fingers that couldn’t seem to function with the way his tongue plunged into my mouth over and over, or the feeling of him pinching my nipple and adding pain to the sensations washing over me.
As soon as his laces were untied, I reached inside and wrapped my hand around his length, pumping him from root to tip and taking immense satisfaction in the groan that came in response. He shoved his trousers down below his ass and reached between us to untie mine.
He deprived me of his mouth as he kissed his way down my body, his face trailing over the fabric over my stomach as he peeled the pants down my thighs. Pulling off my boots and the pants along with them, he tossed both to the side before he covered me with his weight once again.
The ground was cold beneath my ass, the dirt pressing into my skin like ice in contrast to the warmth of his body as he settled between my open thighs. Laying his body over mine, he claimed my mouth with his as I reached around to grab him by the ass. Without fabric separating us, the heat of his shaft was like a brand searing into me.
He groaned, pulling back from my mouth to stare down into my face as I looked down the narrow space between our bodies. Everything about him seemed more intimidating in this form; his body, larger and more defined, swallowing mine whole beneath him. Despite his nickname for me, he’d only made me feel little a few times in the weeks I’d known him.
I understood the nickname far more now that I had seen his true form. Any human would be small compared to him.
“Say the word and it all stops,” he said, even as his face twisted. There was no doubt that stopping would come at a cost for him, and the petty part of me wanted to make him pay it. Instead, I reached between our bodies and guided him to my entrance, pinching my lips together.
“I don’t want you to pretend to be sweet right now,” I said, the breath hissing out of me when he stared down at the space where his cock pressed against my pussy. One drive forward and he’d be inside of me, spearing me alive with the very thing I should hate more than anything. “You’re a God. So fuck me like one.”