Page 43

Wonder

Wonder blinks. He’d spoken with humility. It’s a departure from seconds ago, his eyes tripping all over her, void of a guise. Like a metamorphosis, gone is the diabolical arrogance, every trace of it decomposing before her eyes.

This prick is long overdue for an attitude adjustment.

Even so, Wonder gnaws on her lower lip, a thrill shimmying up her calves as his gaze traces the motion like a glamoured creature.

The uncensored response mollifies her fury, a different impulse overtaking her like a gale of wind. A sudden shift in the air.

Inspired, Wonder hooks a strand of hair behind his ear, the tentative ministration causing him to flinch like someone unpracticed in anything remotely gentle or kind.

That accounts for the tawdry insults, as well as every other disagreeable altercation between them.

The demon god wields hostility, manipulation, and vulgarity like arrows.

Or perhaps like shields. Because in truth, Malice has no idea how to be vulnerable.

Yet those eyelids hood, his pupils swallowing the ash-littered irises. And that makes all the difference.

Disregarding antagonism in favor of discovery, Wonder leans in, their hectic respirations brushing like steam. “Now where were we?”

Astonishment splashes across his face. It’s the only warning Wonder supplies as her head veers beneath his jaw, her mouth dragging across the underside.

Malice goes rigid. “Shit,” he hisses.

His response ends on a guttural exhale, the reflex provoking a euphoric clench between Wonder’s thighs. A pulse builds in her cunt, the percussion throbbing. As she imposes herself on him, the scents of leather, vellum, and rainwater permeating her lungs.

When she skims his Adam’s apple, Malice shudders.

His fingers grasp her hips, either to shove her away or cling for balance.

Haggard breaths pump from this devil as her lips pass over his jaw, sketching the contours.

His damp flesh yields to her mouth, a delicious bead of salt leaking onto her palate.

With each taste, undomesticated sounds grind out of him. His heavy cock broadens, rising high between their hips, the solid ledge aligning with her clit to produce the most illicit sensations.

Desire saturates the flanks of Wonder’s pussy. Stars have pity. Nothing has ever sounded like this, tasted like this, felt like this.

I can’t take it anymore. Make it stop.

She wants more of the friction, more of his gravelly voice. She’s going to take it all, take everything she’s been denying herself. She’ll consume him like a selfish goddess, and she doesn’t care, and she won’t regret it.

The flat of her tongue rolls out. With languid strokes, she laps at his smooth mandible, then drags her lips down his neck, gathering droplets of rain like keepsakes.

His body shakes, muscles inflating, straining in her arms like a pressure cooker about to burst. Despite the tension pulling on him, Malice’s head falls against the wall, granting her uninhibited access, his eyes flipping to the back of his head in the loveliest display of submission.

Pride and power courses through Wonder’s veins. This demon is all or nothing. Yet she marvels at the phenomenon, how he struggles to hold back, all the while unconsciously capitulating to her.

This god, whom every outcast in existence follows and fears. This violent being, who intimidates and terrifies all living souls. This unhinged male, who surrenders to no one.

Except her.

She’s doing this to him. She’s the one breaking him down.

Ambition motivates Wonder. Eager to chip away at his resolve, yearning to finally take liberties, Wonder skates the point of her tongue across his throat.

“Christ,” Malice utters in a strangled groan.

“Is that all?” she purrs, her mouth sinking to the crook of his neck and shoulder, her lips speaking against his flesh. “That isn’t like you, Demon. You say so much, merely to say one thing.”

“You say so little, just to say a hundred things,” he grits out, his head arching farther. “It drives me crazy. You drive me batshit crazy.”

“You were already crazy before we met. And it’s the ones who know the least that exercise their tongues the most.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

The word fuck thrusts from his lungs and streaks between her thighs. That harsh response pumps blood through Wonder, the flux rushing to her pussy, wetting her, afflicting her.

They heave against each other, panting through their confessions. Wonder cranks her head upward, kissing the space beneath his lower lip. Then she swabs his chin and murmurs against the hard ledge, “I’ll do nothing of the sort. I cannot stand you.”

“Yes, you can,” he husks to the ceiling. “You’ve withstood me plenty, so don’t fucking play the victim.”

“If you insist.”

Aim for the throat.

Target in sight, Wonder twists. Her restless mouth latches onto the corner of his neck and gives a deep suck.

A livid noise cleaves out of Malice, the sound carving through the library.

He digs talons into Wonder, nipping her ribcage.

The pleasurable sting urges a gasp from her lips, the respiration shoving into his throat.

She works him between her teeth, then laves the spot and ends with an open-mouthed kiss.

And another. And another.

She plies his flesh, draping kisses across the contours. At length, her tongue unspools, licking the tempo of his pulse. Next, she migrates lower, sketching a clavicle with her canines.

Malice snarls. He likes the twinge of pain, so she pays similar homage to the other slender collarbone, biting sharply as if to peel back a layer of skin.

By the Fates, she can’t think straight when there’s so much to ravage, so many serrated groans to reap from him, the glorious tremors wracking them both.

As she dabs between his collarbones with the honed tip of her tongue, the demon’s hoarse growl infatuates Wonder, encouraging her to smother that receding spot. Mouth parting, she kisses that trench like it’s his mouth, rowing her lips open and closed, swaying her tongue in and out.

Malice seethes through his molars. His palms vault to her ass, grabbing and hauling her against his bloated cock, the ridge chafing her clit, the slit of her pussy leaking through the nightgown.

A long-suffering moan uncurls from her tongue. Newfound understanding grips her senses. Every primal response, every ragged noise, and every visceral gesture unfolds like the pages of a book containing dangerous secrets. And just like that, Wonder knows.

“You’ve never done this,” she gusts out.

The demon god falls still. His fingernails pit into her ass, priming her against his cock, while his eyes flip open.

In rapid succession, his head drops from its arch, a free hand cleaves into her hair, and he fists the roots.

Not roughly, but not gently either, the grip forces Wonder to meet his inflammatory gaze.

That expression is scarcely a denial, his visage a broken seal, exposing the truth.

There’s no shame in his status, yet he detests losing this leverage, detests admitting it to her, detests that it’s a visible fact.

Malice has fucked many deities, many times, and in many ways. Over thousands of years, nothing else can be expected.

But he has never been kissed.

Like a beast newly liberated from confinement, he looks ready to pounce on Wonder’s reaction. His black pupils warn her not to pity him, nor to consider this an advantage. Yet behind the expression is a sliver of insecurity.

He doesn’t know the last thing about intimacy. And well, neither does Wonder. Not in the way of her crewmates or humans.

Her heart bleeds. The sight of him putting up a front while at her mercy is too much. What shall happen next is inevitable, and she might fall apart from the impact, but she’ll take that chance.

Wonder cups his face and brushes her words over his lips. “Malice, I want your mouth.”

A sharp intake cuts past his teeth. Again, he’s stupefied. Not by the request, but by its raw, passionate, empathetic inflection.

He stares, those shrewd eyes hunting for a deception. In reply, Wonder levels her features on him. Real and unvarnished.

Something new flashes through his countenance. Guarded vulnerability. Mesmerized ambivalence. Then Malice’s possessive fingers loosen her hair.

The moment transcends, luring them out of their comfort zones.

Releasing her locks, his thumb loops under the nightgown straps, those saber nails sneaking into the garment and grazing her breast, stopping just shy of a budding nipple.

The sensation is a tad sharp, like the titillating point of a knife.

Wonder’s head mists. Dizzy, she presses against him, etching his lips with hers. It’s madness, and it’s rapture.

“I want your mouth,” she implores again. “Give it to me. Take it from me.”

The disorganization of that request is not lost on her, but it’s the best her hazy stream of consciousness can manage. Because Malice doesn’t protest, she shows him what a fine guide she is, and what a fast learner he can be.

She pecks the crook of his mouth, once and then twice, planting two caresses at the edges of the world. “Now you,” she breathes.

The devil incarnate returns. His mouth quirks, commas digging into his face. Of course, he fancies being told what to do.

Malice follows her lead. He scrapes his mouth over the corners of her own, the skin smoother than she had anticipated.

All the while, he grips one swell of her ass, clamping her pussy to his feverish cock. And his unhampered finger treads a line across her breast, teasing the margins of her studded nipple.

A whine skitters from her lungs. “Yes, dearest,” Wonder entreats. “Like that.”

She parts her lips wider, imploring him to do the same. Once Malice complies, she sketches the bow of that upper lip, then nibbles on it. He groans from the pit of his throat, the noise husky. His waist bucks, his cock shoving against her erect clit, melting her pussy like candle wax.