Page 34 of Brimstone

Where Fisher’s shadows touched, the cotton disintegrated and vanished, leaving no trace of its existence behind. My skin was exposed, little by little, until I was naked beneath him. A fire crackled happily in the grate; I was far from cold, but I broke out in goose bumps all the same. My nipples stood proud, my chest rising and falling rapidly as Kingfisher took a long moment to look over my body.

“You are the single most stunning thing I have ever seen, Saeris.”

“This . . . is hardly . . . fair,” I panted. “You’re fully clothed and I’m naked as the day I was born.”

His smile turned a little lopsided. “You possess the kind of magic that could undressme, I’m sure of it. Care to give it a shot?”

“No! Gods, no. What if—what if I set you on fire or something? Or—or, I don’t know, accidentally dismember you?”

He laughed wickedly. His eyes didn’t leave mine as he lowered himself and slowly took my right nipple into his mouth.You won’t.

He sucked, pulling gently on the bud of flesh, and my back arched away from the bed.Gods, that felt good. He was driving me fucking crazy. I was going to scream if he kept that up . . .

“Magic is all about intention, Little Osha. You would have to want me dead to set me ablaze. Likewise, you would need to hate me pretty badly to conjure the kind of energy that would sever flesh and bone.”

There had been a time when I’d hated him that badly. But now . . .

The tips of his canines were visible. I stared at them, transfixed. His lips brushed my nipple as he spoke, and shivers cascaded up and down my body.

Now there wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do for this male; he slowly began to move down my body, peppering light kisses over my skin as he went. The underside of my breast. Rib cage. Stomach. Hip bone . . .

“Where do you think you’re going?” I sounded so breathless.

Kingfisher huffed, smiling as he ran the tip of his nose along the skin that led south of my belly button. “Come now, Osha. Where else would an acolyte kneel to worship but at the altar of his god?”

Sinners. The heat of his tongue parted my flesh, and I lost the ability to think. It . . . it turned out that Fisher’s altar was the sensitive flesh between my thighs, and I was . . .Iwas his god. “Holy shit. That . . . that feels incredible!”

For over a hundred years, Fisher hadn’t eaten a single thing inside that maze. Malcolm had suspended him in a perpetual state of hunger, never dying of that hunger but also never satisfied. He’d always seemed half-starved whenever he’d eaten back at the Winter Palace, and I could never understand why. The way he atemenow was just like that—like he was still starving and could not be sated.

He growled into my pussy. “Fuck! You taste incredible.”

His hair was so thick; I wound my fingers through it, pulling his head down onto me. Groaning low and deep, Fisher laved the flat of his tongue between my wet folds, and I started to unravel.

It was a disconcerting feeling, coming apart for someone. I could count on one hand the number of people I’d lowered my walls around during sex, but I didn’t have a choice with Fisher. He demanded all of me. No half measure would do.

His pace quickened. Sucking gently against my clit, he slowly slid a finger inside me, and I gave in. It was too much. A wave of pleasure rolled lazily up my body. By the time the wave reached my chest, I was arching away from the bed and gasping out loud. “Fuck! Oh my gods!”

“Mm. I like that . . .” Fisher purred. “No, don’t stop. You can grind yourself against my mouth all you want.”

Fuuuuuuuck, I was going toscream. Fisher hooked an arm around my leg, leveraging his shoulder to pin me down by the hip. He continued to slide his fingers inside me with his other hand, moving faster as he licked and sucked at my core. I rocked against him, feeling my release hovering just out of reach. It was right there. Any second now, I was going to hurtle face-first over the edge—

—and then he did the unthinkable: He stopped.

“Fisher! Wha—why?”

He chuckled darkly, the edge of his laughter rough as sin. “Hold on, Little Osha. I’m afraid it’s time for a little payback.”

“What? What does that m—OhhhhholyfffUCK!” I bounded up from the bed so fast that my spine cracked.

White light filled my head.

A high-pitched hum roared in my ears.

The bright stab of pain at the inside of my thigh electrified my nerve endings. In an instant, the pain became something else.

In Zilvaren, the desert winds blew so hard sometimes that they had been known to strip flesh from bone. This felt a lot like that—ripping apart, one fragment at a time—but in the most addicting, breathtaking way.

Fisher had bitten me and had started to drink. The gods only knew how much of his venom he’d injected into me at once, but I came. On. The.Spot.