Page 82 of Eldritch (The Eating Woods #2)

I cleared my throat, raising the bodice of my dress up to cover my breasts and crossed the room, carefully stepping around the shards of glass on the floor.

At the window, I reached through a gap, braving the cold to pat Raivox on the beak.

“It’s okay. You can go back to your roost.” I yanked the heavy drapes closed, the thick velvet closing out the wintry breeze.

Peeking through a small gap showed he hadn’t moved, his gaze still fixed on the window.

I sighed and turned around to find Zevander standing beside the fireplace. After another glance over my shoulder, I cautiously tiptoed back to him.

A troubling uncertainty claimed his expression, as he slowly unfastened his trousers, pushing them down his muscled thighs, until they hit the floor.

My pulse thudding in my ear was the only sound as I stared back at his naked body. The sight of his piercings stirred my doubts, but swallowing a gulp, I shoved my dress to the floor, kicked it away, and removed the cammyck beneath.

His eyes gleamed with fascination as they drank me in, his chest rising and falling with his hastening breaths.

He closed the space between us, hand cuffing his flesh at the same time he bent over me, pressing his lips to mine.

His kiss was gentle that time, lazy and soft as he swept his tongue across my lips.

Palms gripped my bottom, lifting me up into the air again, his mouth never breaking the seal over mine.

For a moment, he held me there, kissing me.

“I need to prepare you for this, Lunamiszka,” he said between kisses. “You need to be wet.”

I glanced over at the bed and back. “Should I be lying down?”

“I will not take you on your tormentor’s bed.”

Nodding, I nibbled on my lower lip, my heart drumming frantically.

“You’re certain of this?”

“What is it that troubles you?”

“Aside from the inevitable pain? That I’ll lose myself.” He winced as though he’d already imagined such a thing. “That I’ll lose track of your voice and fail to stop if you command it.”

Command . The word struck me odd and out of balance, like a single wave commanding the tides. A spark commanding flame. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll keep the dagger within reach.”

The glint of intrigue that lit his eyes turned my stomach, but when he lowered me to my feet, I scampered back to where I’d dropped it and laid it on the floor beside the fireplace.

He stepped closer, the size of him more apparent to me as I trailed my gaze up his chiseled abdomen to his broad shoulders that I couldn’t see past. Palm to my back, he pressed me tight against his body and urged me onto the floor, his arm cradling me on the way down to the blanket still crumpled there.

A quivering tension hummed through me as I lay staring up at him and his handsome, ruined face.

“My every instinct is wrapped around you, Lunamiszka.” His fingertips ghosted across my cheek. “Should another man so much as breathe across your skin, I’ll drag him screaming into oblivion.”

Perhaps all men spoke those words before intimacy, but I knew all too well—his weren’t hollow promises. “I don’t want another. I want you.”

He stroked a hand down my temple, his eyes gentle but concerned. Knuckles skimming across flesh, he parted my thighs, his eyes always watching me. A long, maddening stroke of his finger, and he eased it into me, slow and searching.

My lips parted on a breathy moan, and he kissed the edge of my jaw as he plunged his finger in and out of me.

Another finger joined the first, my arousal slickening his every stroke. He inserted a third, each new violation swelling inside of me, forcing past my stubborn flesh.

I clutched at his back as he stretched my insides in a way I’d never attempted myself. In and out, his fingers plundered, until he removed them and buried his face in the crook of my neck. “By the gods, you better tell me if it’s too much.”

“I will,” I whispered.

His lips slanted over mine, and at the first prod against my entrance, my breath hitched against his mouth. “I’ll go slow , A’miszhla ,” he whispered across my lips.

“ A’miszhla ,” I echoed, my accent nowhere near as smooth as his. “What does it mean?”

“It’s Primyrian. It means my love .” The words slipped between us, a promise sealed by his kiss, and my stomach fluttered at the endearment.

I gripped his shoulders, his tense muscles too big for my palms. Heart hammering, I mentally braced myself for agony, but he pushed into me slowly.

So maddeningly slowly, I could hardly stand the anticipation.

A sharp sting announced his entry, and I sank my teeth into the iron curve of his shoulder, breathing my way through the intrusion.

He inched further, and in spite of the pain, my body welcomed him with a slick, wet glide.

His body shuddered around me, taut and flexed, as if he were restraining an army that longed to ravage me. “Gods be damned,” he rasped. “I don’t know if I can do this. I want you too much.”

“My heart is racing right now,” I whispered, kissing his cheek. “But I trust you.”

The tension in his muscles slackened just enough that they no longer twitched against my palms. His hips rolled forward with a razor-thin control.

Hot, stuttering breaths fell across my throat where he kept his face buried in my neck, and strong fingers locked with mine, pinning my arm to the floor as he inched deeper.

The ceiling blurred into a mental image of the two of us—strong arms bracing a body that could easily crush me and powerful thighs flexing over mine in measured thrusts. His careful restraint and focus.

Warmth vibrated across my walls when the curved edges of his piercing breached my entrance.

Back bowed, mouth agape, I let out a grunt. My thighs shook as the piercing quivered up inside of me, tugging at an ache I couldn’t describe. A ravenous, hungry beast that clawed at my stomach. I raised my hips, desperate for something I couldn’t name.

“Are you alright?” His deep, rich voice in my ear sent a bubbling heat to my core.

“What’s…happening?”

“The enchantment. It’s designed to give you pleasure.” He squeezed my hand, inching in a small bit more.

I wrapped my legs around his back, desperate to ground myself against something, as tiny, prickling jolts tingled in my thighs. A long, droning moan unfurled in my throat, like that of a wild animal whose fight had withered.

Teeth found my neck. His muscles tensed in my grasp.

“The sounds you make.” Voice low and husky, he surged forward, stoking the flames for more. “It stirs something violent inside of me, moon witch.”

“You won’t hurt me.”

“I won’t.” The words broke from him like a promise he clung to—a desperate vow of control.

Tiny thrusts inched him deeper and deeper. The second bar breached, and I dug my fingers into his back as his flesh swelled inside of me, stretching me. Each delicious thrust dragged those metal prongs across my tight walls, the vibration surging, amplified by the second.

“I won’t go any further,” he said, his voice setting me at ease as he held himself still inside of me. “Are you okay with this?”

“Yes,” I breathed. “It’s two piercings?”

“Barely. I’ve suffered cruel torment, but nothing more vicious than imagining the day you take all of them at once.”

“How many…piercings are there?”

“Ten. The enchantment intensifies with each one.”

“Oh, god.” I couldn’t fathom the day when, or even if , I would accommodate all ten. It didn’t seem physically possible. Every cell in my body had clenched the moment he’d introduced the second, the pressure so intense I wondered if it would split me down the middle.

“I’m okay with this,” I assured him.

Despite the uncertainty sketched on his face, he nodded, and once again, his hips rolled into me.

He kept his face turned from mine, but I could see the veins popping out of his neck, the sweat beading across his skin.

Like the gentle ebb and flow of a violent sea, he rocked into me only so far as that sacred boundary—the restraint of a vast ocean against a fragile keel.

The world around me slowed in one long heartbeat.

I pressed my gloved hand to his chest, watching the strange root-like veins pulse and flicker, the heat crawling up my arm and settling in my chest.

Zevander tipped his head back, the cords of tension bursting across his throat.

Desperate to feel that restraint burning inside of me, I lifted my head, ran my tongue across his veins,

A tortured groan vibrated in his neck, across my tongue, his body rigid and shaking .

I understand now.

The joining of bodies. Nothing between us but shallow breaths and the restless beat of our hearts.

And the love. So much love, it brought tears to my eyes.

The world could’ve burned and kingdoms fallen to ruins, but somehow this felt eternal and everlasting.

A fusion of souls that transcended all else.

A clang of metal shattered my musings.

I turned to see the blade lying beside my head. Blood trickled down Zevander’s wrist, his arm trembling as he turned his palm up to reveal a deep gash across the surface.

I snapped my attention back to him, and my eyes must’ve reflected the distress pounding through me, the way he lowered his head, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“You couldn’t …” It was in that moment I realized how silly a notion it’d been, to imagine that I was capable of distracting him from decades of abuse and torment. How ridiculous to think that a man who’d suffered unfathomable pain could be healed in one intimate moment.

I loathed my ignorance. My naivete.

Brows tight, he pulled out of me on a wet glide and pushed himself away, as if to leave, but I swiped out for his arm.

“I told you. If it’s pain you require, I’ll give it to you.”

“No.”

“Yes, Zevander. And you will look at me. You will look at me, and you will know that it’s me. Us.”

“I can’t do this to you again.”