Page 24 of Lustling

He ignores me, breathing hard, his words a low, venomous hiss in my ear. “You don’t get to say no now. Not after everything.”

My stomach flips with nausea and rage. My hands scrabble against the bark, splinters biting under my nails as I push back uselessly. He is too heavy, too close. My cheek burns where it’s pinned, my hair twisted tight in his fist, the scent of sweat and cheap cologne choking me.

“Stop!” I scream, twisting against him. My voice echoes in the trees, swallowed whole.

And then he is gone.

One heartbeat he is behind me, and the next he is ripped away as though a storm reached down and plucked him off the ground. I spin around, breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.

The man standing between us is enormous.

Dark hair tied back from a face built for war. Golden eyes glowing in the moonlight. His body is a wall of muscle and fury, his lips peeled back in a snarl. Power radiates from him like heat from a furnace. “I believe she told you no.” His voice is low and terrible, more a growl than speech.

He tosses Shawn aside as if he weighs nothing. Shawn hits the ground hard, scrambles upright, mutters something about me not being worth it, and runs. Cowardice stinks in his wake.

I exhale shakily and stare up at the man who saved me. A beautiful brute. A predator.

And then I feel them.

Two more shapes step out of the shadows. My breath stumbles when I see the one in front. “Deimos,” I whisper.

He grins, violet eyes gleaming with something between hunger and delight. He gestures lazily to the man who had thrown Shawn like a rag doll. “This is my brother, Bastion.”

Bastion’s golden eyes remain on me, intense and unreadable. His presence is heavy, his gaze a weight pressing against my skin. Deimos motions toward the third figure, the one who stays just outside the ring of firelight, watching me with a stillness that feels inhuman.

He is breathtaking. His jaw is sharp, his golden-blond hair falling in loose strands around a face carved too perfectly to be mortal. But it’s his eyes that pin me to the spot—silver-blue, glacial, and assessing, like blades sliding beneath the surface of water. “And that,” Deimos says softly, “is Cassiel.”

My pulse hammers in my ears. The way they look at me—like they alreadyknowme, like they’ve already decided something about what I am—sends heat coiling low in my belly. My thighs press together instinctively, a reflex I don’t even think about. I should be backing away. I should be running now.

But I’m not.

I’m rooted to the spot like prey beneath the eyes of something far older, far more dangerous, than man.

Why am I aroused?

Deimos steps closer, the heat of him pressing into my skin even though he doesn’t touch me. His scent curls around me—smoke and something darker, older, cloyingly sweet like rotted fruit and crushed flowers. He braces a hand against the tree beside my head, boxing me in, and I swear the forest holds its breath.

“I never got your name,” he murmurs.

My breath catches. “Lillien.”

“What was that, Lustling?” His voice is silk soaked in sin, a wicked amusement licking at the edges of every word.

I swallow hard, my throat bone-dry. “My name is Lillien.”

His smile tilts sharp and cruel, as if he already knew. “Well then, Lillien…” he drawls. “It’s time for a game.”

Before I can ask what he means, Deimos steps closer. Closer than he’s been. His violet eyes gleam in the low light, catching the blood on my cheek. He studies me for a heartbeat, nostrils flaring, the corners of his mouth curving in a slow, knowing smile. He doesn’t blink. He justbreathes me in.

Then, deliberately—like he’s been waiting for this—he reaches out. His hand cups my jaw, not gently but firmly, his thumb resting at the hinge of my jaw while his palm presses possessively against my cheek. It’s a grip that says I belong to him already, whether I admit it or not.

And then he leans in.

His tongue drags across my cheekbone, hot and rough and unhurried, right through the thin, wet trail of blood still trickling from the scrape Shawn left. The taste of me on his tongue. The sound of his breath against my skin.

I gasp, every muscle going taut. It’s not gentle. It’s not comforting. It’spossessive.

He laps up the blood like it’s sacred, like it tells him everything he needs to know about me. When he pulls back, his lips are stained a faint red. His violet eyes have gone darker, deeper, burning with something I don’t have a name for.