Nothing but his body held tightly within mine, our souls nearly united as he opened his mouth and swallowed the whimper that escaped as I finally came.
He groaned as he followed, filling me with his essence while the monster inside of me purred in pleasure. She coiled within my stomach as Caldris pulled back from my lips to stare down at me, his face alight with pleasure as he came back from his own orgasm.
She struck against the inside of my chest, making my body jolt with the force of it as she drank down his pleasure. His eyes widened for a moment, staring into my eyes as if he could see the monster lurking within.
But he wasn’t afraid. He leaned forward, touching his mouth to mine as he stared into what I suspected was the stare he described as the night sky. “Take whatever you need, min asteren,” he said, soothing the frayed parts of me that were terrified of that thing inside of me.
She was so hungry, so demanding. She wanted to feed on his body, from his pleasure.
She wanted to take everything he had to give and leave him nothing but a husk, as if in awakening her I’d roused a being who needed more food than I could ever provide. She wanted me to flip Caldris to his back and ride him until his cock was raw, to take his pleasure inside of me until there was nothing left.
I shoved her down, ignoring the way she seemed to pout. She stretched within me, extending her muscles before she settled. There was no form to her, only the vague sense that she existed. She was me, but somehow not, all at once.
“I see my warning was useless in the end. I knew you were a lot of things, but I never pegged you for a fucking whore,” a male voice said, interrupting the moment, and I jolted as I snapped back to reality. Caldris pulled his mouth off of mine, slowly turning to glare at whoever had spoken with a deadly steadiness that I knew meant the male was soon to die.
“Fuck,” my mate grunted, hanging his head forward until it touched mine.
I looked toward the ghostly figure lingering nearby, his arms crossed over his chest. The flesh was torn from his bones, and I might not have even recognized the horror he’d become if I hadn’t seen his corpse hanging from the fortress walls at Tradesholme.
“Jensen?” I asked, trying to focus on what remained of his face. Only a single eye remained, as if the other had been torn from its socket when the claw of whatever had torn him to shreds sliced across the right side of his face. It was settled into a hard, icy glare that he leveled on me, on my position beneath the man that he’d tried to warn me was Fae.
“Did you miss me, pretty?” he asked, what remained of his lips curving up into a cruel smirk.
Fuck.
39
ESTRELLA
What would it take for him to go away?
He lingered alongside us, floating above the ground as he followed us through the woods. “Is there really no way to get rid of him?” Imelda asked, perched atop her own horse.
“You wound me, Imelda. You didn’t seem to be in such a hurry to get rid of me when you welcomed me to your bed,” Jensen said, the insufferable sound of his voice grating against my ears. I was ready to rip out his tongue myself, if it had been at all possible, but every time I tried to wrap my hands around the miserable spirit’s throat, I met empty air. He was nothing but the lingering presence of a soul, traveling alongside the Wild Hunt in the hopes they would lead him to the Void eventually.
I was certain Caldris had never regretted not burying a body so much as he did this day.
“You fucked him?” Holt asked, eying what remained of Jensen with distaste. “I suppose there’s no accounting for standards.” He sneered, turning the cruelty of his gaze to Imelda and letting her know just what he thought about her choice in bed partners.
“There are far better ways to communicate your raging jealousy, Huntsman,” Imelda said, her voice cool and detached as ever. She barely spared a glance for Holt, her lips tipping up in that smug way of hers. I knew the words that came out of her mouth next would be brutal. “My options in the tunnels were rather limited, so I learned to be less discerning with who I took to bed. Please keep in mind, I may have fucked him, but I still would sooner die than fuck the likes of you. So I hardly think you are in any place to speak to me of standards.”
Aramis guided his horse close, his lips tipped up in genuine amusement. I was certain he enjoyed the torment of having Jensen back, enjoyed the way the dead man was determined to torment me for all my choices. Since we’d departed that morning, all he’d done was nag and grate on me. Reminding me I was a traitor to my kind, that I’d turned my back on the humans in favor of the life Caldris could give me.
Gold digger. Whore. Faerie Fucker.
There wasn’t a single thing Caldris or I could do to stop it, and the tension in my mate’s body was all the confirmation I needed that he was just as infuriated as I was.
I yanked the dagger from the sheath strapped to Caldris’s thigh, pulling the blade free and extending my arm as Aramis came up beside us. “No wonder you killed him—” he said, his voice cutting off when I sank the blade into the flesh of his upper thigh.
“What the fuck was that for?” he asked, his voice wheezing in pain as I pulled the blade free and returned it to the sheath it called home.
“You looked at me,” I snarled, the monster feeling closer to the surface than ever before. The complete aggravation that was Jensen would drive me to do far worse before the day was up.
Caldris chuckled at my spine, his amusement washing over me. But my anger made everything feel tight, made even that pleasant feeling bitter. “What’s wrong, my star?” Caldris asked, not daring to touch me, lest I strike.
It felt like the barest of touches would bring that monster surging back to the surface. “I think I need to walk for a while,” I said, the restlessness in my body stirring in response to my words.
“Alright,” Caldris said hesitantly. “Don’t go too far with him lurking about.” He pulled Azra to a halt and I swung my leg over his withers, jumping down to land in the snow as I sought out Fallon. She lingered farther back than normal, walking alone as if she needed the distance from Jensen just as much as I did.
The hairs on my arms stood up, defying logic as I felt something shift in the air as I approached her. My monster reared her ugly head, as if she herself could search through the trees in the distance to find whatever had disturbed her from the slumber before her attack.
The scream tore through the air, cutting through the trees surrounding us and making me snap my head toward the direction it came from. Fenrir’s head snapped toward me, his eyes connecting with mine as I stopped in my tracks.
Holt signaled two of his riders on, staying with the majority of the procession as they stepped forward, but something in Fenrir’s gaze as it held mine drew me forward, beckoning me toward the wolf where he waited, lowering himself to the ground.
I didn’t know why it was me he turned to and not his master, but I stepped forward quickly as if drawn to him like a moth to the flame. Grabbing onto his back and hauling myself up, I sank into the comfort of his white fur, leaning forward to wrap my arms around his neck and lay my chest against his back as he leaped forward.
“Estrella!” Caldris protested, trying unsuccessfully to guide Azra through the group surrounding him before he dropped behind from my sight.