Page 55

“You read my mind. I’ll need the energy to make you scream again.” Malice gives her neck a series of love bites until she’s chuckling. “And again. And again. And again.”

Hefting her into his chest, Malice flashes a deviant grin.

He carries Wonder from the aisle, her clit brushing his pelvis, his cock still primed in that achy little pussy.

Based on her reaction, it’s an outrageous and disreputable move to traipse naked, wet, and erect through The Archives.

Wonder’s tattered nightgown hangs from her shoulders, and his pants slump beneath his ass.

They’re a hot mess, which is more action than this library has probably seen in centuries.

“Malice,” Wonder admonishes. “I can walk.”

“Is that so?” His eyes widen, feigning shock. “What a coincidence. So can I.”

“The weapons—”

“I’ll get them later.”

“You cannot possibly make it to the tower while your cock is still—”

“Oh, you better believe I can. If you don’t mind, I’ll stay like this for the rest of the night. It’s so cozy with my dick snug inside your pretty cunt. I might relax and do some light reading like this.”

Her mouth plummets. Then she barks with laughter, the sound hardening him to the point of fantastic pain.

He stalks across walkways and climbs the stairs. Meanwhile, Wonder mashes her face into his chest, caught between mortification and delight, her body shaking with scandalized humor.

The trip causes her to jostle against him, the friction producing a groan from Malice and a whine from Wonder.

They make it as far as a velvet settee tucked inside a recess framed in tasseled curtains, with overhead bookshelves built into the abutting three walls.

It’s an indulgent niche, one that brings excitement to Wonder’s features.

They drop into a tangled heap, the goddess collapsing onto his chest, their limbs hanging every-fucking-where.

Ever the deity, Malice would take her for another several victory laps, replete with book bondage and copious amounts of buckles, until she’s bellowing his name—and only his name—and his dick is twitching, releasing into that sweet dark place.

He’d fuck her good, redefining sex in the process, as well as reshaping this female’s anatomy and her conception of a real orgasm.

All in good time. Deities can rut for days on end when they’re sufficiently keyed up.

But after coming only three times, in only two positions, and in only one location, she’s already hanging by the thread.

Mmm, he must have been more ferocious than he’d been aware, exhaustion weighing her down like a stone.

Malice hates the feeling of pulling out of Wonder, but he does enjoy her protesting whine as he reels his cock from her drenched grip. After helping her out of the torn nightgown and flicking it to the floor, Wonder sprawls on top of his frame and bundles her face into his throat.

A soft noise flutters off her tongue, a sound he’s never inspired in another being. Something like safety. Maybe joy. Or both.

Malice wavers, then relaxes into the thought.

With his mouth shielded from view, he presses his lips into the crown of her head.

Compliments and endearments sit on his unpracticed tongue.

He never has trouble saying things, never censors himself, because the consequences can go fuck themselves.

But for some reason, he can’t express what this moment feels like with her. It’s too deep.

So it looks like they both have their limits about what they can handle tonight. Besides, he’d rather find out what she thinks about herself.

His raspy tenor stirs her hair. “What do you want more than anything?”

Wonder exhales. “To forgive myself.” After another beat, she mumbles, “You?”

He ghosts his talons along the side of her hip. “To know myself.”

“And what are you most afraid of?”

Malice’s chest rises and falls, his muscles contracting against the tips of her breasts. “Same thing.”

She nods. “Yes.”

The very same thing. Their breath in sync, letting the answers just exist, just hover between them. Her reply is the last word Malice registers before the world goes dark.

***

He watches her eyelids flutter open like a pair of wings. Still riddled with sleep, Wonder pats the cushion, searching the velvet surface for him. At length, her eyelids flip open. Naked, she props herself on both elbows and scans the area.

Midday spills lapis blue through the windows. Her longbow and quiver are balanced against a bookshelf, where Malice had set them after collecting their weapons while she slept.

Stretching out like a feline, Wonder winces in a fantastic way, indicating she still feels his cock inside her, the brunt of his fucking.

Splayed naked across the bed, her languid eyes swerve and land on Malice.

He reclines across from her, his back resting on the opposite ledge.

One leg lounges against hers, extending across the settee, while the other pitches like a roof, his foot planted flat.

He rivets on Wonder while an open book rests in his free palm. When recognition clears the haze from her eyes, a smile wreathes across her face. At the sight, pride and something else grabs a hold of his ribs.

Jesus. He’s acting like a besotted juvenile, someone barely three-hundred years old instead of nearing three thousand.

Wonder’s eyes rake over his abs and face, her inflection husky with sleep. “Hi.”

“Morning, Wildflower,” Malice murmurs, his timbre impish as he soaks in the view.

She cranes her neck toward the title. “What’s that?”

In answer, he reads aloud. “History says that an innocent star once wandered through the galaxy, searching for its devious match. At last when they met, their collision awakened a shit ton of drowsy, hungover constellations, and then—”

“That is not what the book says.”

“Semantics and details.”

“Let me guess. The genesis of destiny and deities?”

“Something along those lines,” he verifies. “I like to remind myself how it all started. Now let me guess.” Malice licks his thumb and turns the pages. “Your favorite part is page one thousand and one.”

Wonder chuckles as he clears his voice. “Some attribute the dawning of the Dark Gods to a meteor shower.

When it smashed into the dormant constellations, they shook from their eternal slumber and broke open like rifts in the darkness.

Their radiance flooded the galaxy, the effect brighter than any planet.

“And it was their unparalleled light that gave them agency. And it was their agency that gave them authority. So marked the beginning of an era. The Stars’ evolution, granting them with the propensity for thought and intention. They pondered, was this planned? And so began the concept of destiny.”

Wonder flops onto her side, curls into the throw pillows, and listens to the rest. It would be eons before deities came into physical being, once The Stars anticipated a turning of the celestial tides: the impending rise of humanity.

Done reading, Malice twists. He might be showing off, the muscles of his abdomen are contracting as he plucks a chronicle from a stack on the floor. The reward is worth this display, Wonder’s voracious gaze palpable.

When he veers back around, her eyes dart away, cheeks reddening. Ah, he knows other ways to stain that complexion.

Wonder appraises the selection he’s gathered. “That one,” she points out, selecting a circular book.

With a grin, Malice snatches the title and pitches it her way. Catching it, Wonder sprawls nude and cracks open the spine, creating the perfect picture to get his blood stirring.

Hours pass, calm and unhurried. Malice reads while Wonder folds and unfolds a particular page of her own book.

Mindful of the spine and limited by the vellum binding, she tests whether some variation of origami might alter the content and yield a mystery.

Then she tries holding the book to the window light, observing it from various angles in case words are hidden in the paper.

Her wrist gets a cramp. Without looking away from his book, Malice massages the offensive spot for her. Lowering the tome, she peeks over the rim and studies him, falsely assuming he isn’t aware.

His lips twitch. “Getting frustrated? I’d bet in more than one way. But how inconvenient when vellum-bound books play tricks on you.”

Wonder blushes, then sighs. “I’ve exposed the page to light, a gust of breath, and even this.” She indicates the folded lines from her origami failure. “Yet there’s nothing.”

“Then move on.”

“The stardust ink changes tint halfway down the page.”

“That doesn’t guarantee anything,” he invalidates. “It could be a fluke.”

“Ink would not change like that unless there’s a chink in the paper,” she theorizes. “Which could imply a secret.”

“Or it’s a basic slant of light. In other words, it could be nothing.”

Wonder’s expression grows remote, something in his words jogging a memory. “A slant of light,” she repeats, then shakes herself. “What are you reading?”

“The oral history of fucking,” Malice answers.

Aghast—and intrigued—she leaps forward and snatches his book, pouring over diagrams of genitalia, in addition to the sort of erotic positions that would intimidate a contortionist. “Where did you find this? In the Primitive Celestial Psychology branch?”

Malice snares her knees and hauls Wonder onto his lap, her thighs scissoring around his waist. He belts out a grating buzzer sound, as though she’s lost a game point. “Tsk, tsk. It wasn’t with the ‘head case’ books.”

Gazing down at him, she narrows her eyes. “Astrological Social Behaviors.”

“Warmer.”

“Eternal Anatomy and Physiology.”

“Very warm. Impressively warm.”

“Mythic Anthropology.”

“Hot.” He nudges his cock against her pussy. “Hades hot.”