Page 76

Wonder

The blossom flutters from her hand. Like a quill, it floats to the ground.

As Wonder’s unshod toes dig into the soil, she ponders if her feet might grow roots and burrow there, if that’s remotely possible, and how long it might take.

Perhaps she’s becoming a wildflower. Or perhaps she’s going mad like him, because she cannot have heard that voice. Not so clearly, nor so near.

How strong is the imagination? Do illusions ever become real?

A shadow casts over Wonder’s skin, harsh edges blending with her soft ones. The masculine form skates a posy of blossoms along the rim of her earlobe, causing a chain reaction down her spine. “You should pay more attention,” he murmurs. “Or you’ll lose something that matters to you.”

Wonder’s eyes close. “This isn’t real.”

“Hmm. I can list a half dozen legends that weren’t supposed to be real, not to mention a few smut stories and one savvy reincarnation. Why don’t you meditate on that and get back to me?”

“Malice?”

“Wonder?”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Not anymore,” he husks. “As sexy and perverted as that would be. But you can call me a god. Or better yet, call me Hades. I like being called Hades.”

He stands inches from her. Yet she won’t turn, she can’t turn, she’ll never turn. If she does, this moment could vanish.

Oxygen stutters from her lips. “You said I remembered. What did you mean? What did I remember?”

“To come back,” he intones.

In the library, Wonder had kissed his lifeless mouth and swore to return from the meeting with her crewmates. She had vowed to watch him fade, insisting she would be right back.

But his declaration is wrong, because she hadn’t fulfilled that promise, because she ran out of time. Hadn’t she?

“I told you not to go anywhere,” she accuses.

“I didn’t.” A sly grin tilts his voice. “ He did.”

It doesn’t take skill to know whom he’s referring to. She was educated on the nature of awe, musings, and enigmas. She has spent her life meditating and discovering. She has grown up cultivating mysteries and translating secrets.

Fates above. Wonder knows who he means.

But why had she disregarded this possibility? Perhaps she hadn’t dared to hope.

The first time he died, destiny trapped his soul, caging him between a mortal’s demise and an immortal’s hold.

Her hold. Somehow, Wonder’s interference in his life had linked them.

Only when restoring his heart had he restored the past. And only while perishing for the second time had he truly freed himself from it.

Malice hasn’t faded. Quill has.

At last, his former self rests in peace. Finally, he’s just Malice. And very much alive.

“You disappeared,” Wonder whispers, the words splintering on her tongue. “The table was empty. You were gone.”

“Eh. For a little while.” His warm chest grazes her back, a living pulse beating from inside.

“I was dreaming about falling to hell when the echo of your voice caught short the road trip. You left for a while, but then I heard you returning. So yeah, you kept your promise. And just when your footfalls reappeared around the corner, the sound of you dissolved, and I was dreaming again. When I finally blinked awake, the library was empty, and I was still lying on the hard-ass table, alone and groggy as shit. Sort of like a death hangover.”

“Dammit, how can you joke about this?”

“Wildflower. Don’t you know me by now?”

Despite herself, Wonder laughs weakly, tearfully. He was alone because her crew had traveled to Stargazer Hill. Yet in her grief, she fled to this courtyard instead of following them, yearning to stand beneath the pomegranate tree.

Her reply breaks like a latch. “You’re here.”

“If that’s okay with you,” Malice murmurs. “Otherwise, I can’t just—”

On a half-sob, half-growl, she spins around. And there he is, looming in a black leather jacket, bare chest peeking through the open flaps. No archery or boots. Only a crown of mussed waves, that filthy mouth, and his conniving gleam.

Those manic eyes. Transfixed by her, the irises darken with a complex emotion. The most complicated and messiest one of all.

He raises the corsage she left with his body and fixes it around her wrist. Only this bastard can manage a smirk that’s equally bittersweet and devious. “Let’s face it. You wear this better.”

Wonder launches herself at him. Slamming her fists against his chest, she pounds into him, crying and sputtering, then flinging her arms around his neck. “Malice,” she weeps. “You came back to me.”

He crushes her to him, his arms banding around her waist like steel.

“I’ll always come back to you.” He seizes her face, lifts her head, and hisses against her mouth, “I’ll move hell to reach you.

You’re in my head. You’re in my blood, my veins, my ribs, my fingertips, my black heart, and my blacker soul.

You’ve been there from the beginning, before I laid eyes on you.

For you, I’ll always fucking come back.”

Scarcely finishing that sentence, his mouth seizes hers. And it doesn’t matter that he might not be so lucky the next time. It doesn’t matter because they’re not planning on a third time. He’s alive, and she’s alive, and they’re here.

This is real, with its flaws and surprises, with its library underworlds and gardens. That’s all she wants, all she needs.

Under this mortal sky, they start over.

Dragging his palms to the back of her head, Malice locks Wonder in place.

His teeth nip her mouth, then his lips split her open.

They slam into a kiss, their lips shoving together, clamping hard.

His tongue spears into her, the tip thrusting, flexing deeply.

Like this, they hurl themselves into a delirious rhythm. A living, teeming thing.

A moan skitters up Wonder’s throat, and Malice catches it with a groan. The masculine vibration sizzles across her flesh, heat radiating to the core. She feels that sound throb between her thighs, the muscles of her pussy tightening.

As his wet tongue strokes into her mouth with a rough tempo, her fingers climb into his hair, and one of his palms brackets her nape while the other scales down to her ass.

Their bodies weld, her ample form crushing to his sculpted torso, and they lunge into the kiss.

Her lips quiver, and his wicked tongue probes, licking into Wonder until she’s wild.

Growling, Malice pulls back. Those brazen eyes flood her vision as his hands go to work, the back closures of her dress loosening. She reciprocates by stripping off the leather jacket, which conceals too much of him.

Her stomach takes flight, soaring with anticipation, which is odd. They’ve done this multiple times, from countless angles, on numerous surfaces, in endless positions, with a variety of toys.

Has she ever been nervous with him? Yes. But never this nervous, because finally there’s no one else between them.

Wonder rips open the jacket, throwing it somewhere, anywhere, elsewhere.

His whipcord torso lifts into view, pectorals smooth, abs packed with muscle.

The scars from his past are gone, while the ones from his immortal existence remain.

She sucks in a breath at the new tattoo circling one inflated bicep, a thick string of words penned in cursive.

Dearest Wayward Star

Her throat constricts, fingers rushing out to sketch the letters. Regardless of how they got here, he hasn’t denied their history, because the human memories are part of who he’s become. And these words are how they met.

Wonder glances up, her gaze colliding with Malice’s wry features.

He shrugs. “It’s the first thing you ever said to me.”

The letter. At any time in a deity’s existence, The Stars can brand gods and goddesses with markings having to do with traits.

Just as the celestials once tattooed Anger, the celestials must have inked Malice during his transformation.

Similar to a birthmark, they’ve immortalized something meaningful to him.

With a desperate gasp, she smashes her mouth to his.

Malice grits out a noise she’s never heard—feral yet delicate— and hauls her lips against his, lashing his tongue with her own.

While kissing her into a stupor, he hoists Wonder off the ground and lowers her to the grass, the blades caressing her flesh.

Yet she doesn’t wait. Lunging upright, Wonder aims for the throat. She snares the back of his neck, crashes their mouths together, and yanks him down. In a burst of motion, she flips them over, dropping Malice onto his back and splitting her thighs over his lap.

He lays beneath her, all that skin and sinew. Those eyes smolder, not like bonfires but rather candles. Peaceful instead of destructive. At least right now, for this demon hasn’t surrendered his sinful edge. And she wouldn’t have him any other way.

Yet for Wonder, this creature softens. This private spectacle exists only for her.

They rustle with his jeans, ripping through the closures before Wonder sheds them down his body, and Malice kicks the garment aside.

His broad cock springs free, rising high from the ramps of his hip bones, pierced through by three bars.

The crown flares wide, flushing a deep hue, a drop of fluid glistening from the fine line across the tip.

Veins weave up the column, and his sac hangs weighty.

Her mouth waters. Licking her lips in a show of dominance, Wonder clamps onto his wrists and pegs them on either side of his head. “Do not move.”

Fates above, she must look carnivorous. From the way Malice’s pupils bloat and those irises scorch through the darkness, he anticipates mutiny. “I’m not going anywhere, goddess,” he rumbles. “I’ll never leave you.”

Not again. Never again.

His pledge is her undoing. The Stars can fall. Destiny can fade. Even then, they’ll remain standing, holding fast to each other, an impenetrable force that millennia and death failed to sunder. That’s what he means.