Page 84 of Ballad of Nightmares

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

EVERYTHING SAM DID was aggressive, as if he’d been starved of affection and reality. Ana wondered if she was the same. If every move she made and every kiss she placed on him felt as desperate as his.

She loved it. She loved how he made her feel like he needed her to breathe. And when he would finally slow down, he savored her. Touching every inch of her body like he meant to worship it. She memorized the moments when nothing in the world existed except her and him, lying against one another and sharing the ecstasy of a few moments of peace they’d been deprived of in the past.

Even when they weren’t together, she could feel him on her skin. His touch was a branding iron to her flesh; burning and searing and blistering on her existence, leaving behind a mark that she would hold to as a reminder that she had finally felt what it was like to be loved.

As short-lived as it might be.

Every time he left in the middle of the night, the bed grew cold. It took her a long time to fall back asleep, and sometimes she would go down into the gallery instead or take a walk.

Sometimes she walked down to the cemetery and stared through the iron gates. Battling with herself on whether what she had with him was worth giving up what she’d worked her entire life for.

“Love makes you weak,” her father always said. “You are a Queen. Love has no place in your future. You will bring these tyrants to their knees, Deianira. Seduce them. Get in their heads. Win over their people. The oppressed will bow and worship you. There will be no more dividing lines between these kingdoms. The Myers and Moors will become one under your rule.”

“And Death?” she asked.

“You’ll conquer him too.”

Ana cried out, her hips rolling against Sam’s face between her thighs as her orgasm toppled. They were on the couch, watching a horror movie. He sucked her clit into his mouth and held her thighs tighter. “Sam…” Her head threw back with the release, and she cursed to the sky, the sound of the woman’s scream in the movie shrieking as Ana’s orgasm caught her. Her knees twisted, and she squirmed with her release.

Sam licked her juices slowly then, letting her come down from the high with panting breaths, and when she met his eyes, he laid his cheek on her thigh and smiled up at her. Just when she thought he might say something, he pushed over her and kissed her softly. Heart-achingly enough that it made her forget everything she’d just been thinking, and she wrapped her hands on his cheeks as he pulled away. His lips brushed her nose and her forehead, and then Sam stood to go to the bathroom.

She would never get over watching him walk, marveling at those tattoos, at his body, at his presence… He was art himself, and she sometimes had to pinch herself to make sure this was real.

He’d shown up that morning with breakfast, as promised, along with a list of Shadowmyer indie horror films that he insisted she needed to see. It had rained all morning, and he’d taken his time pleasuring her as she’d enjoyed the thrill of the chase on the screen.

She really did like the movies he’d suggested. The other realms she’d lived in were not nearly as into their theatrics and art as this one, and she wondered if perhaps the king himself enjoyed such things. The thought made her look out the window to the castle in the distance, to the grey illuminated manor and all the headstones and trees in front of it.

She wished her father had been with her to see this place. To see what she’d done. She wondered if he would have been proud of what she’d accomplished, or if he’d have told her she’d deviated too far from the plan by leaving so quickly after she’d killed the other kings.

And what he would have said if he’d seen her so cozy with a demon.

Ana turned her attention back to the movie, just as the killer murdered the main character’s best friend. Sam sat down at the opposite end and pulled her legs into his lap, massaging her calves.

“What’s it like?” she asked, watching that character die on screen.

“What?” Sam asked.

“To die,” she replied.

Sam slowed his movements on her legs and glanced at her sidelong. “So macabre, wicked girl,” he teased.

Ana chuckled despite herself. “We’re watching horror movies. What do you expect me to ask?”

“Perhaps comment on how idiotic they make these characters,” Sam said. “Really. This girl thought she could fit through a cat door. The first guy thought he could beat off a murderer with a stick.”

“He had to fight back somehow,” Ana argued.

“There was a shovel by the barn—“

“The barn was across the driveway.”

“He literally stopped in a ditch to grab the stick when he could have made it across the street,” Sam said, and Ana wondered if he was only arguing to tease her.

“It’s a movie!” Ana laughed. “They have to be dramatic.”

“How would you do it?” he asked.