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Anchored upright, Wonder drinks him in. Although they’ve been sleeping here, Malice has been too busy putting every other section of the library to frisky use.

But with her straddling the most insubordinate appendage he possesses, it’s clear he’s underestimated this room.

She’s right, beds aren’t boring. They’re underrated.

For a start, they bounce. And just think of all the ways to wake each other up, including—but not limited to—his mouth suctioning her clit and her lips strapping around the bloated tip of his cock.

A wisteria-strewn headband cinches in Wonder’s hair, the only item she’s wearing. Fucking perfection. She puts the myth of Persephone to shame.

“I’m addicted to you,” Malice flirts, sitting up, grabbing her face, and kissing her temple. “Your mind.” Then the ledge of her shoulder. “Your nerve.” Then the pulp of her wrist scars. “Your resilience.”

As he sketches those marks, Wonder swallows. “Your insolence,” she gusts out when he moves to her breasts. “Your deviance.” Then to her chin and finally her mouth. “Your wit.”

Before he can deepen the kiss, she inches backward to gaze at him. “I wish you could see where I used to live here. My home across the glen and my favorite meditation spot. I wish I could see where you lived here too. All the places that matter to you.”

“You’re the place that matters to me,” he hisses before clamping his mouth onto hers and peeling those lips apart.

His tongue flexes against hers, lapping and stroking. As Wonder yields, he yanks the dress over her head and chucks it aside. Her tits brush his pecs, and hell if she isn’t burning into him, branding him like another tattoo.

Wonder arches her neck for his canines and husks to the ceiling. “I still want to know more. I want every last secret.”

With his dick as hard as cement and the head nocked at her pussy, it’s not a time for Malice to pause. Yet, fuck it all, he does for a second time since the mezzanine. He’s had the same thought multiple times about her, but he hadn’t expected that urge to be mutual.

Leaning back, Malice hooks a lock of hair behind her ear. “You mean that?”

Wonder lowers her gaze and skims the pads of her fingers across his jaw. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Mystified hope sluicing through him. He scans her features, searching for verification. She’s already said he makes her happy, which is as surreal as making her come. So why stop the surprises there?

Impulsiveness gets Malice moving. Pecking her mouth and then sliding out from under the goddess, he quits the room and returns with the quiver dangling off his shoulder.

They resume their position, Wonder climbing onto his lap as he dumps the contents onto the blanket, a collection of envelopes avalanching between them.

Her stunned gaze snaps toward Malice. He nips and kisses the side of her neck, anticipation coiling through him like a vine. “You’ll just read them behind my back anyway.”

As if they’re caught in an echo chamber, her pulse breaches his ears. She hasn’t returned the stolen letter yet. Not that he’s asked for it, much less given a recent fuck.

The same can be said about her corsage. She hasn’t demanded it for a while. At some point, they’d moved onto other things.

But now, Malice pulls away and watches her. After another peek, her shaky fingers pluck the first sepia-stained envelope, marked with the earliest date.

Wonder starts at the beginning, on the day she first haunted him. Fishing out the worn paper, she unfolds it carefully, the sound slicing through the room.

Malice winces. It’s not every day he gets nervous, as if someone has peeled a layer from his flesh and baring something raw underneath. Even so, he hoists Wonder closer, his talons dragging back and forth along her waist.

She takes a deep, achy breath. “Dearest Wayward Star,” she begins. “I’ve been wandering this universe, searching for a destiny to call my own.”

“At last, I suspect that I’ve found it,” Malice recites from memory. “I suspect that I may have found it in you.”

Wonder blushes, probably at the letter’s presumption.

But as the words filter into the room, he imagines her writing this note with the dedication of a scribe, each of her desires leaking onto the page.

The composition is idealistic, but also honest and unapologetic.

Nevertheless, she hesitates as if the emotions are lackluster compared to the cyclone they’ve put each other through as immortals.

She lowers the letter, letting it fall to her lap. Like him, Wonder narrates from memory instead. “You don’t know me, nor do I know you, but I hope that shall change.”

“Let this be a wish fulfilled rather than lost,” Malice says, then takes the missive from her and flings it across the mattress. “I could not bear it otherwise.”

“I fear that I’ve spoken too quickly,” Wonder whispers, their eyes glued together. “But please continue reading, so that I might introduce myself. I’m an invisible dweller, thus you cannot see me as I can see you.”

“Yet a glimpse of your life has brought me to new heights,” Malice rasps.

Like a god, he grabs her hips and lowers her sodden pussy onto his cock. Like a goddess, she sighs and rotates her hips, lodging him deeper.

“I’ve been hiding, watching you,” she pants, bobbing on him, pumping him to the hilt.

“But do not be frightened,” Malice groans, his eyelids hooding as he pivots his heavy cock into the narrow grip of her cunt. “I won’t harm you.”

Wonder grasps his shoulder blades, releasing a pleasured whine as he launches her up and down. “I would never,” she weeps, those eyes sucking him into a vortex. “I would never do that.”

“Believe me,” he growls low and deep, siphoning her cunt, his dick thickening.

“I’m not shy,” she gasps as his crown taps her favorite tapered spot.

“Yet invisibility is tedious, and so I’m reduced to this letter, yearning to express my admiration, to tell you that I’m here, that I share your love of books and reading, even if I’m different, even if I’m a celestial being and you’re a human, even if we come from separate realms.” She drops her hands to his ass, squeezing the muscles, urging him harder, spurring his cock faster.

“You’re magnificent, and I adore the sound of your voice, and I wish to know your favorite book, and I want to tell you mine.

I long to know about your world. I yearn to be your friend. ”

“Your ally,” he pants.

“Your confidante,” she cries out.

“Your star.”

“Your fate.”

Fuck. The sound of those words from her mouth, the secret pieces of her soul that she’d offered him.

The chance she took, even though he could slay her for risking herself like that.

The honesty in those words. Although she wrote them for a different version of himself, hearing them spoken is different, as though Wonder is talking to Malice alone.

Him. Not his ghost.

His thrashing heart slows. It tenderizes into something he’s never felt, an emotion he can’t define. At first, it seizes him by the jugular, scaring the shit out of Malice.

But then it does the opposite. The husk inside his chest cracks, a thousand restraints breaking.

After that, there’s only her. This angel on his lap, who has redefined the meaning of suffering, sacrifice, and softness. This goddess, who he would split the universe for. No conditions. No terms.

His life has always been about him. Until her.

Malice wavers, ambition warring with inadequacy. He’s fucked her good countless times. But he’s never made love to this wildflower.

She would like that. Yet his mind fumbles as though walking through pitch darkness, unable to find his way.

Malice wants to do this to her. Except he doesn’t fucking know how. And something else stops him, something cautious that warns him to pace himself. So he lets go instead and follows her lead into the abyss.

Wonder’s nipples pit into his chest, her body bouncing with every thump of his waist. On a guttural hum, Malice bends and latches one stud into his mouth, sucking, flicking. A fractured noise splits off her tongue, her hips bucking, her slit pooling down to his balls.

Malice hisses around her nipple, biting lightly while his lower frame lashes quicker, deeper.

They groan on the verge of combustion, about to come all over each other, when the pome of his cock hits another narrow crevice.

Then he accelerates, deepening her, wetting her more.

With swift, shallow jolts, his sac hits her ass, and the brunt of his lunging waist shoves her upward.

“Answer this letter,” He pistons at a breakneck pace, spreading her pussy, fucking into her. “And I shall tell you more, and you shall know more, and we shall fuse worlds.”

“Me and you,” Wonder hollers. “Ugh. Malice!”

“Fuck, Wonder,” he seethes, his eyes rolling to back of his scalp. “Fuck me. Come for me. Break with me.”

She snaps like a rubber band. Her body convulses, her pussy spasming around his cock, clenching him like a fist, pulsating down to his base. She comes hard and loud and real, her pleat splashing onto him.

Malice’s lungs detonate. He roars like a monster, like an unhinged creature, skewering her with his cock, his thrusts frantic, riding every last quake of her inner muscles.

Heat ripples up his flesh and swarms the tip.

He flings back his head with a bellow, spots blinding his vision, his dick jerking, spurts of cum spilling into her.

He comes with a long, guttural howl while seizing her face, crushing their mouths together, and swallowing the noises.

Bounding, they scream into one another, over and over. The clamor is sharp and high, because even if he doesn’t know how to make love, Malice does know how to do this. And it hurts so fucking good.

They crash and burn. Collapsing into a wheezing heap, they tangle together, their chests pounding.

Drugged and in over his head, Malice severs the kiss. The final lines shove from his spent mouth. “A wandering star.”

Wonder trembles into him, speaking around a mouthful of air. “And a wayward star.”

Time ceases. That’s when the next tumult happens.

Like a vortex, images cycle in his head. Like a ruptured cage, something unbolts in his mind.

Flashes. Figments. Every hellish vignette that ever infested his brain crystallizes, taking lucid shape as if he’s been yanked out of a coma.

With his cock still primed in the warm clutch of her body, Malice tenses. Suspended beneath her, his body locks in place as though flogged by a whip. The sudden stillness jolts Wonder out of her delirium.

“Malice?” she pants, fixating down at him. “Malice, what is it?”

Fates eternal. His scalp burns like it’s being pricked with needles, his cranium throbs, and his forehead plummets into the tops of her tits.

Then his attention shoots back up. He grabs Wonder’s face, her eyes reflecting his wild expression.

The ashes dash from his eyes, leaving behind a surface cleared of debris.

Wonder freezes. The afterglow of fucking clashes with the lines of dread marring her features. She must see the same thing, the change mirroring back at him.

His aren’t the pupils of a demon god. They’re the eyes of a human.

Malice gazes at this goddess as if seeing her from a different angle, in a different light. “I remember,” he says.