Page 42 of City of Snakes (Legends of Henosis #2)

Chapter 41

Sybilla

T he air in Umber House was sticky and humid against my hot, flushed skin. Running up the riverbank had left me out of breath, with a hammering heart. My knees felt weak, and my head spun. Egressing home to Luz had tempted me, but I didn’t want to worry Asterie and Fen by showing up at this hour.

I needed a private place to think—not the bedchamber, which smelled of sultry smoke and spice. Not the bell tower, where Freya would stare down at me in judgment.

Refuge would only be found among old leather-bound books and cool air. I whispered, “In the Shadows we trust.”

The door to Krait’s hole unlocked for me. Sconces lit the stairs and guided me into the belly of the house. The library, where a surly King had read me stories, legends and prophecies, hummed with silence.

I’d been so stupid. I’d let my desires out in the open; all of my vulnerabilities had been laid on the table for him to dismiss or reject.

I kicked off my mud-covered leather slippers; they made a wet, sopping thud on the ground where they landed. Finding a wool blanket slung across the chaise, I used it to dry my face and then wrung my hair into it.

The silk of the dress clung to my stomach and thighs, but I wouldn’t dare try to remove it here without a change of clothes. With so many ties, and how many times Elsedora had wound it around me, there was no way I’d ever get it back on the same way again alone.

Blowing out a raspberry, I leaned against the library ladder and let the blanket fall in a damp heap at my side.

“Fuck. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck,” I whispered to myself.

“Charming.” Krait’s voice echoed from the shadows before I saw him. He appeared from the darkest corner. It was his private library—suddenly, it felt foolish to be there. He looked flustered, like he’d been running, his breathing elevated.

With an exasperated sigh, I asked, “Don’t you have some candles to light?” Maybe if I poked his deepest wound, he’d leave me alone.

One corner of his mouth inched up. “Don’t deflect.” His voice lowered as he crossed the room toward me. “It doesn’t suit you to pretend you didn’t want to see me.”

“I’m not deflecting—there’s a brass statue upstairs that will make far better company than me tonight,” I shot back, but he took a step closer.

“She did make amazing company. The best, really; she never dressed me down or slung curses at me.”

“Fuck you,” I spat. I didn’t doubt that any woman who could capture the heart of this man had been excellent company. I didn’t resent her—I resented the fact that she’d had his love before she met her end. Whose love would I have before meeting mine?

“Does that bother you?” he challenged, drawing a step nearer. All the perfectly sculpted edges of him were accented by rain-soaked silk, and his dark brows knitted together as he stared me down. He looked so damned delectable even when being a prick.

“It doesn’t bother me a bit, so I’m telling you to go.”

He smirked as droplets of rain fell from his wind-whipped, dark hair onto his forehead. His tongue ran across his lower lip, as though contemplating me, and it sent heat down my chest. “You want me to walk up those stairs? Leave you here wanting?” Another step, and I was backed against the ladder.

“Wanting what? You?” I scoffed. But my heart fluttered, and I hadn’t had enough wine to blame it on that.

He reached down and took my chin between his fingers. When he tilted my head up to meet his iron-gray stare, I held my breath. His lips parted, and at first, I thought he might kiss me. A glint of realization shone in his eyes.

I did want him. All of him. And he couldn’t be stupid enough not to know it.

“Climb up,” he commanded and nodded to the ladder.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I shot back. My traitorous bare feet were already on the first rung. Goosebumps formed on the flesh of my arms as he steadied me.

He hummed his approval. “It seems what I consider good company has changed over the years.”

“I can’t imagine a soul ever finding you good company,” I snapped back. Though my blood boiled, my body could have melted through the rungs of that ladder. Verbal daggers made the best shield against bad decisions.

“You know…I’ve grown fond of you running that pretty mouth at me.”

“Sadistic prick.” My words were cutting, but the momentum of my anger began to dissolve into lust.

He leaned forward and whispered into my ear, “You’re just making me harder.”

I bit my lower lip, reveling in his nearness. He had to be able to hear my heart racing as he braced himself with one arm on the ladder over my head.

“You drive me to the brink of insanity. You make me want to be selfish. You make me want to abandon reason,” he continued to whisper into our mingled breath.

My chest touched his with every inhale. “Then go ahead—I dare you. Abandon reason,” I challenged.

He searched my gaze as if looking for evidence that he should stop. I gave him none—desire had overrun my ability to have one clear thought. No matter how hard I tried to think of another insult, none came.

Then, his mouth met mine, and his weight pressed me against the ladder. It felt part kiss, part reckoning. Our bodies took over for us. I wrapped both hands around his neck; my thumbs found his pulse point, and I squeezed.

“There would be no going back.” He’d let his guard down, let me slip into his thoughts. “ Why does she have to be so fucking beautiful?”

When we broke for air, he looked mussed and delicious as he slid his tongue over his lower lip again. This time I leaned toward him, craving more. He tasted of sweet red wine and warm spice. He leaned out of my neck’s reach as though to scold me, and I huffed.

“Up another,” he said as his expression shifted to a smoldering one that should be downright illegal. As I fumbled up the ladder, one of his fingers found a loose end of a silk tie at my waist. “May I?”

Elsie’s words came back to me about the Sahlms’ fashions—about it being fun to be unwrapped like a present. “Yes,” I breathed out.

“If you don’t keep climbing that ladder, I’ll tie you to it and leave you here without ever getting to the good part.”

Then he tugged the knot loose and exposed my torso.

My feet found the next rung, and my hands returned to the rail for balance. This was unwise—I’d set all the right conditions. I’d given him the perfect, uncomplicated arrangement.

The room sizzled with humidity. The air was charged by both the storm outside and the aching sense of need that buzzed across my skin.

It took a moment before I realized that the sensation was coming from him. The barricades of his mind were down completely. I could feel his desire mixed with mine—the anticipation, the wanting.

Three ties held the remaining rain-soaked silk to my body—two at my hips and one at my breasts.

I’d climbed high enough now that Krait’s eyeline was at my chest. He surprised me by leaning down and taking my pebbled nipple into his mouth through the sheer silk. The warmth of his tongue against the cool fabric caused a moan to build in my throat. Letting my head fall against a ladder rung, I tried my hardest to think of why we shouldn’t do this.

No reason or sensibility was within grasp.

I wanted to object when he drew back his head. Then he picked up the silk tie at my breast.

Seeing him pissed off was one sort of attractive, seeing him both pissed off and drunk off his own lust was fucking irresistible. He watched me, waiting, with a quirked eyebrow.

“Take it off,” I demanded, and he rumbled with a satisfied groan.

When he pulled the tie to unravel the bodice of that awful contraption called a dress, my Luz-blue ribbon that I’d stowed there fell to his feet.

On his way down to pick it up, he sucked my other bare nipple into his mouth for a fleeting, torturous moment, and my toes curled against the bar. When he righted himself, he held the blue ribbon in one hand and said, “Up another.”

Swallowing hard, I stepped up again, hands white-knuckling the railings.

I was afraid of what he’d do next—not of him, but of how intensely he was taking in my body, exposed to him from the waist up. The way his gaze lazily drifted over me, taking his time to catalog every detail of me, was intoxicating.

“Now,” he said with a tone of fiery challenge. “Keep things professional and stop me.”

Before I could think, breathe, or question what he meant, his Shadows descended on me. They wrapped around my torso, between my breasts. Cool vines slipped between my legs and made me gasp against their cold touch.

Krait climbed the ladder, pushing a knee between my thighs to replace the sensation of the Shadows. “I said, stop me,” he repeated as he reached down to grab my wrists and pin them. “Come on, Sybilla...”

“I don’t want to stop you,” I admitted. Heat built in my core—and the friction of his leg had me grinding against him as he pushed my arms up over my head. No, I wasn’t going to stop this.

“What am I going to do with you?” he whispered into my mouth before kissing me again. It was an all-consuming kiss—a kiss where the world spun around us.

Between our next kiss, I retorted, “Tying me to the ladder is still an option.”

He pressed his knee up against my core again and lifted me onto my tiptoes. Meeting my gaze, he said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I wanted so badly to deny it, just to be contrary. Instead, I nodded. He knew as well as I did—I could stop him anytime. Something about giving myself over to whatever he had planned appealed to the worst of my instincts.

Krait wrapped my blue ribbon around my wrists and tied them with a deft knot to a rung above our heads. I pulled down to test the knot’s strength. He’d truly tied me there. Up on tiptoes, dangling. My lips curled into a smirk.

Despite being bound, I felt like the most empowered woman on the planet to witness this feral, wanting side of him. My wrists would hate me for this tomorrow. My body hummed in anticipation despite the pain where the silk pinched, and it felt indulgent that he was not coddling me.

When he stepped back, his Shadows retreated. He tilted his head, assessing me and swiping his thumb over his lower lip in thought. Then, he began walking toward the stairs with casual ease and said, “Well, this has been entertaining—”

“Don’t you dare fucking leave me here!” I screeched. “You get back here. Right now, Darvanda.”

He glanced over his shoulder with amusement. “Make me.”

The bastard was going to make me use my power on him.

My mind opened up to him and pushed past every barbed barrier he set in front of it. The sole of his boot squeaked against the terrazzo floor as he came to an abrupt stop and stiffly turned toward me.

Dealing pleasure was the opposite of dealing pain. Instead of draining, it was rejuvenating. Krait’s head fell back a moment with a groan as I let my thoughts caress him.

“You’re going to need to stop whatever that is, or we’ll never get started,” he said, sucking in air between his teeth.

“Then strip and come here.”

“Yes, my Queen.” His words were his own, but the frantic movement of his fingers on his shirt buttons was all me. He kicked off his boots before unbuttoning his trousers. A deviously handsome smirk graced his lips—seeing him wear anything but a scowl was jarring in the most alluring way.

“Are we in a hurry?” he asked, throwing his belt aside.

“Don’t tempt me to make you leave. Everything off, ” I demanded.

Once his tunic was tossed to the floor, he thumbed the waistband of his trousers and pushed them to the ground. With him standing bare in front of me, my mouth dried. I drank in my fill of his exquisite form, letting no detail go unobserved.

After mentally egging him on to cross the room back to me, I finally dropped control of him. He placed his palms against the ladder on either side of my head and stepped up a rung to catch my lips with his.

Not close enough.

Wriggling against my restraints, I breathed out, “Please, stop teasing. If you still want this—”

“Shut up, Sybilla.” He shook his head. “This is all I’ve wanted for months.”

That couldn’t be true. The longing that stretched between us had turned desperate, and I was not above pretending in the moment that he could want more.

He knelt against the ladder before drawing my knees up over his shoulders, which eased the strain on my wrists. With his teeth, he bit down on the tie that held the dress at my left hip and yanked until it was undone.

When he ducked his head toward my core, my mouth fell open. His hot breath against my thigh left gooseflesh in its wake. I could only watch in wonder as he did the same on the other side, baring me to him completely. Watching this man unwrap me like a present with his teeth was going to live on forever in my mind.

Shadows snaked up my stomach and braced me against the ladder before he parted my core with his fingers, and his mouth followed, tongue delving into my now exposed center.

“Fuck,” I cried out as my hips ground against him and my thighs scrapped against his stubble. I wanted to reach down and pull his hair, push him down off the ladder, and take him there on the floor. He brought me toward a desperate peak, and every muscle in my body tensed.

Then he abruptly pulled away and left me whimpering without any relief. My core clenched as he trailed kisses up my navel.

“Keep going,” I demanded.

“No,” he growled into my stomach. He continued to trail kisses up between my breasts. “Better idea—this time I want to feel you tighten around me when I watch you come undone.” He stepped up between my legs, positioning his length right where I needed him. He lingered there a few moments, dragging himself through the evidence of my yearning.

“Do you need a map?” I gasped out impatiently.

“No—I need to take my time.”

After sliding into me an inch, he stopped and drew my chin up to meet his gaze again. My hips sought more of him, but his Shadows braced me like vines, binding me to the ladder.

My body turned to putty—hanging by that Luz-blue ribbon, hanging by a thread of my own desire.

I craved the fullness of him and gasped as he pushed in another inch. My vision was spotting white with adrenaline-fueled pleasure. “Krait, all of you. Now.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do while I’m inside of you,” he said, in between biting at my earlobe. As if I got to tell him what to do when he wasn’t inside of me.

Just when I thought he might make me wait forever, he thrust himself into me to the hilt with a satisfied groan.

Pulling my wrists against the restraint, I longed to dig my nails into something other than my own palms. He stayed there, completely still, his forehead pressed against mine for a moment too long. I grew impatient, overtaken by the heat that filled my veins.

“ Move now, or we are done,” I commanded. A terrible bluff.

A gruff, dark laugh escaped his lips, just inches from mine, before he said, “We will never be done, Sybilla.”

The blue ribbon gave way above me as though his Shadows had untied it. I fell into him, wrapping my legs around his waist. My fingers dug into his silken, wet hair as they’d so desired. The rungs of the ladder might leave bruises, but I felt no pain.

The sounds our bodies made against one another were a vulgar symphony that I’d gladly listen to until the end of time. He’d lied—he did bite. The skin of my shoulder held proof of it.

“Fuck,” I gasped.

“Such a foul mouth,” he answered before he grabbed my lower lip between his teeth. “I’m learning to love it.”

With my head thrown against the ladder, I crested over the edge of my desire with the intensity of cannon fire. Screaming out, I clenched down around him.

“Yes, Sybilla,” he breathed out before a guttural sound escaped him, too. He slammed into me to the hilt once more. Then, just as I thought he’d spill into me, he abruptly pulled away. Warmth hit my inner thigh and ran down my leg.

Surfacing from my desire-infused fog, I reeled back out of his arms and found my own footing on the ladder. “What are you doing?” I demanded.

With his lips swollen and hair mussed, he looked boyishly confused.

“Why would you do that? Why pull away?” I asked.

“It...it is a habit. And I didn’t know if you were ready to—”

“Oh. So then you do know how heirs are made—well, that’s a relief,” I snapped. “Why would you not take the opportunity? What did you think we were doing here?”

The harshness of the words felt wrong, but they’d already been said and they eased the hurt of his admission.

I didn’t know if you were ready.

This was still about an heir, about a prophecy, to him, wasn’t it? His doubt in me made my blood boil.

To my surprise, he looked dumbstruck and bashful, but my anger didn’t allow for recognition of humility. “You were adamant about keeping things ‘professional.’ Were you not?” he justified. “You’ve put up so many conflicting smoke signals it’s hard to tell what in the realms you want.”

“Since when does it matter what I want? You are the one who told me I’d never have what I want from you.” That statement shocked him enough that his mouth hung open a moment.

Climbing down the ladder, I pushed past him to pick up the blanket I’d discarded earlier. After wiping off my inner thigh, I slung the too-complicated dress over my shoulders and tried to tie its impossible fabric around myself.

Out. I needed out of this library before I admitted more to him.

All the pleasure he’d dealt me crashed away with the realization that I’d just done something so incredibly stupid. He may be able to separate desire from caring, but I couldn’t do the same. Entangling myself with him more than necessary served neither of us any purpose.

“Wait, please,” he said and held my wrist, drawing closer to me. His scent nearly broke my resolve to be angry—his sweat mixed with spice, smoke, and desert rain.

He carried on, “ Stop , Sybilla. Just slow down.” He released my wrist to push a stray curl behind my ear.

Fighting had been my go-to defense for years. Vulnerability wouldn’t rear its ugly head now even when he offered me that soft expression.

“It matters what you want—greatly,” he continued. “When I saw you dancing with Ryn and realized what it meant, it excited me more than it should have. I expected it to be the North King, expected to be in a piss-poor mood the rest of the night because of that.”

I crossed my arms over my chest since the dress did nothing to cover me after my frantic attempt at assembling it myself. “So, you came after me to treat me like some illicit tryst?”

“Did I?” he snapped back.

There was the bite I needed.

“Yes!” I huffed out. “I know what you have to offer me.”

His voice grew rasped and his expression pained as he retorted, “Oh, I see. So, you were just filling your time with another rollick with a prospective husband. How many notches are on that list again? Am I simply another one? Because I don’t want to be.”

My mouth hung open. “Oh, fuck you, you arrogant bastard. That’s especially rich coming from a man who still hasn’t gotten over his late wife. Who is too guilt-stricken to consider any other. What in the Sources were we thinking? We’re not fit to be anything more than—”

“Stop that!” he barked.

His outburst caused me to take an outraged breath.

He growled, running his hands through his hair. “Stop shooting daggers at me. Sleep on this, Sybilla. A good friend once advised me not to make rash decisions without sleeping on them. I’ve lost enough by not listening to him.”

My arms fell to my sides as he backed away. Disappointment settled in my stomach that he would not keep sparring with me. He dressed without another word before he ascended the steps. My cheeks were hot, and my mind battled itself.

It occurred to me I wasn’t even sure what I’d been mad about or what we were fighting for.

I didn’t know if you were ready. His concern echoed in my mind. My anger stemmed from the truth in his fear.

I’d always considered an heir a necessity—always imagined children. Without any good model to act as a benchmark, it seemed impossible to know if I’d fail at the role. My throat constricted at the thought.

Even if the realm depended on it, I didn’t know how to prepare. Krait’s doubt left me reeling.

The ground seemed to shift beneath my feet, changing the paths I’d once seen myself traveling. Yet it had been unfair to throw the weight of those expectations onto him in the form of snide comments and insults.

I’d just properly squandered my fourth betrothal.