Page 122

She hums, soft, dreamy. Her nails scratch lightly at my scalp.

“It’s common,” I say, wary of her lilting voice.

"I wanted it to," she whispers, and the words are a kiss against my skin. "Hurting means you’rereal."

I rear back enough to see her face.

Her eyes are wide, glassy, filled with stars and madness. A saint kneeling at an altar, high on holy visions. A doll cracked open.

I’ve been here before and just like last time, I’m drawn like a moth to a flame. Except the spark isn’t bright. It never is, it’s dark and twisted, demented and damaged, and I can’t say no.

Why can’t I say no?

"You took me apart," she says, almost wonderingly. "You made me yours. Now the world can't touch me."

A low growl escapes my throat. Possessive. I cup her jaw roughly, tilting her face up to mine, forcing her to meet my gaze. "You don't belong to the world," I tell her. "You belong to me.”

Arianette shudders, a rapture passing through her thin frame. Her hands fist in my hair, desperate, greedy. "Iwas waiting," she says, voice distant, as if remembering a dream. "All this time. I was waiting for someone to come for me. Toclaimme."

Her head falls back, baring the throat I marked, the throat I own, offering herself again without hesitation. I run my teeth lightly across the tender skin there, feeling the frantic flutter of her pulse. I murmur against her flesh, "My broken little wicked thing.”

Her laugh bubbles up again–sharp, stuttering–but this time it’s a sound of relief. Of recognition. As if being shattered was the only thing she ever truly wanted.

That, I can do.

37

Arianette

I feel him everywhere.

Inside. Outside.

Under my skin, inside my ribs, between my trembling thighs.

The cabin is dark but my body glows–flushed and raw and aching, slick with sweat and his seed. And I know, deep in that shattered little part of me, that something important has happened.

I'm not alone anymore.

I'm his. The Baron King’s wife.

I blink up at the dark wood planks that make the ceiling, dizzy, my legs still spread wide across the ruined bed. The air smells like sex and smoke andbliss.He watches me from behind that mask, his body on the edge of the mattress, breathing hard, his fists clenched like he’s afraid of what he’ll do if I ask for more.

As if he doesn’t already know.

I shift, feeling the sweet throb between my legs, and I whimper–soft and broken –deliberate. His head jerks toward me like a predator catching the scent of blood. I don’t wait.I can’t. Now that I’ve had him I want more. I crawl up over him, my hair wild and damp with sweat, sticking to my flushed cheeks.

Straddling his thighs, I feel the heat of him, the sheersizeof him, and it makes something deep and reckless unfurl inside me.

"Tell me what you thought the first time you saw me," I purr, trailing my fingers lightly over the hard lines of his stomach, the dark trail of hair leading down. There’s also a scattering of gray, reminding me that this isn’t a boy I’m playing with. His body is incredible, masculine, with hard, defined muscles. I touch them, exploring him with my fingertips, stopping only to bend my head and lick his skin.

Marking.

Tasting.

My nails scrape lower, feather-light, just enough to make him suck in a breath.

“You were half-dead,” he says, cradling my face. “With the shine of someone who’d seen the other side.”