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“Why wouldn’t I want you to see me when I see you?” he asks.

What’s there to see?I’m no one. “You locked me up.”

He bites one nipple, then the other, and follows with kisses, his lips a soft tease. Taking his time, he looks into my eyes. “I’ve lived enough lifetimes to know you’re worth keeping.”

His words cripple me, much more than those lips of his. But I don’t let up. “You chained me to a fucking tree.”

His brows bounce up, a smile breaking. “Foreplay.”

“You made me bathe in a bucket.”

He rests his head over the stripe of red on my chest, wet black curls spilling over my skin, and in a voice so low that I doubt hewants the words to come out, he says, “Maybe because all I have at the castle is a shower, and giving you a bucket instead meant I didn’t have to see the terror on your face like that day in the shower room…even if it meant not seeing everything else.”

A smile works its way onto my face. I lift his head up and turn it to face me. “What makes you think you’d be watching?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” He sucks my breast into his mouth, taking in all that will fit. I wrap my hands around his head and pull him closer, cradling him in my arms. I stroke those unruly curls and pull them into my fists. His tongue rolls and kneads into me, his head moving with the deep gulps. I watch him suck me so thoroughly, his brown eyes wide and locked on mine, unblinking. Fuck. He’ll take me apart like this. Piece by piece.

“I see you, I do,” I choke.

“Maybe, but if all you want is darkness…” He switches to my other breast, and I smash his face against me until he pushes up for air.

“No, that’s not it.” I grab his ears and pull his gaze back to mine, only smoky, jasmine air between us. And all those clothes he still has on. I tug on his suspenders, but he slips away, down.

He speaks into my skin. “But you think you’re dark. And I don’t. So unless you’re cursed like me, I need to know how I could be so wrong.”

Wet kisses leave cool patches across my chest and down past my belly button.

“No.” I can’t let him see.

He sucks my hip bone and marches his lips across to the other with small smacks. My hips fly up beyond my control, wild for his touch between my legs. With his cheek resting low on my belly, he presses me back down.

“Tell me, and you won’t regret it.” He bites the round top of my mound, right over my underwear, then moves lower. “Why are you dark?” His rough chin spreads my thighs apart. Hot airteases my slit. I whimper through heavy breaths. My leg muscles tremble, and I squeeze his head tight.

“Open up.” He turns his head and bites down hard on my inner thigh. I cry out at the sweet pain and spread my legs wide for him. “Keep fighting, but every bit of you is mine, and I told you I take care of my things. So you’re going to let me fuck your precious little pussy with my tongue until I decide we’re done. Now tell me,” he says into my lips, brushing against my underwear with a low moan.

I try to push up into him, his lips, his tongue, his teeth—any part of him—but he digs his arms into my thighs and holds me down, depriving me of everything I need.

“Okay, okay!” I yell. “Just do it already.”

“Good girl,” he coos, then licks my core and nuzzles his face into the fabric.

I groan. Desire overtakes my mind and body, wrapping me up tight in burning ribbons of pleasure. “I see death!”

Chapter

Forty-Nine

It all comes gushing out. “Visions of death. Like my soul can’t live without it. My death, Kelter’s, yours—anyone’s. Every damn day, over and over.”

I sink into the moss. It’s so trivial compared to his real deaths.

But he doesn’t judge me. No. He takes my underwear in his pearly teeth and pulls it to the side like the opening curtain of a grand show.

“The blood, the bones, the terror, the loss. All of it,” I cry, winding up tighter.

He pushes my thighs, rolling me until my back is off the mossy ground and my neck is bent, my hips and ass rising to his waiting mouth. My legs hang over my head, my wet boots in the air. He gets up on his knees, slides them under my raised body andpalms my ass cheeks in his hands before sending a chilled breeze over my scorched opening, torturing me with the lack of contact.

“And it’s my fault the babies went over the falls, and that all of Caldera will be under the Centress’ control. And I killed Cam. I sent her right over the waterfall.” He tightens his grip, a sharp breath over my entrance. “And I burned down a house. With a family inside. On purpose. And I fucking liked it. And I steal things when I want them, just for the rush.”