Page 10 of The Night Is Defying (Nytefall Trilogy #2)

10

A straea

Nyte was my enemy.

It had never been clearer than right now, locked in a stance of a battle I couldn’t remember starting. The conflict between us tore through me with heartbreak and anguish so powerful I thought it could kill me. Both of us held the key, the glow between us hummed otherworldly energy that we shared.

We were two hearts, one soul.

This is what fire on fire felt like and we could break the world in half. His eyes glowed bright with the amber diffusing from them while my vision saw the world through a white film. While we seemed to pause in our war, the pain in his stare mirrored everything breaking me apart, that I couldn’t fathom how we got here.

His face bled. A crimson trail from his temple over his right cheek.

I’d inflicted it moments before.

This attack was mine.

My body moved of its own accord, pushing off his hold on my weapon, only answering a scorching drive that coursed through my veins like betrayal. Only I couldn’t remember why I wanted him dead. And though he defended himself, my rage didn’t make sense to me, considering the agony and confusion painted across his beautiful, battle worn face.

How long had we fought?

My chest heaved with exertion. Striking him down wasn’t a want. No—everything in my heart cried against it. But in my mind, it was a need.

To make him bleed like I was hurting and so I lunged for him—

“Astraea.”

His lips didn’t move and my vision doubled. The scene turned to blurs of darkness and it wasn’t him who fell, it was me. Plummeting faster and faster until I crashed into reality.

My breath drew sharp, then began to stab my chest when I couldn’t gather it fast enough. I blinked hard against the darkness and in my panic, with a weight pressing over me, I latched onto the only thing of color to grapple what was happening.

A few locks of black hair curled over golden eyes that held me, flooding me with both dread and relief when I knew we weren’t on any battlefield. The ground registered hard against my back. We were on the floor, Nyte pinning my hands by my head and the horror of my nightmare flooding back slowly.

“Welcome back,” Nyte said, sounding almost panicked.

He released me gently, easing off the straddled position he’d held me in.

“Did I attack you?” I choked, pushing myself up and almost collapsing to the wobble of my elbows.

“Unless you were dreaming of me with affection.”

Nyte ran a hand through his messy dark locks, sitting back against a tall bed, and only then did I realize he only wore sleep pants. No shirt. No shoes. And I became too aware of the dainty piece of silk I wore.

Scanning the room, I realized I was in his when I hadn’t fallen asleep here. I got to my feet on weak knees, the air breezed to chill over my sweat-slicked skin.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, staring off with my drifting thoughts.

Recalling the dream, it began to settle in my mind as much more. My hand vacantly rubbed my chest with the ache growing even in my awareness.

“It wasn’t a dream,” I whispered. I was sure of it.

Standing in the same room as someone I’d clearly wanted dead at some point in our history, I couldn’t be sure if I wanted to flee or confront it fully.

“The battle again?” he asked carefully.

A loud rattle jolted me. It was merely the winter wind battering the balcony doors, and the coldness of the room started to wrap around me now that my adrenaline was dwindling.

The second thing to startle me a second later was a weight over my shoulders. I eased into the warmth and scent of mint and sandalwood far too easily. Nyte’s hands lingered at my arms after placing the black blanket over me.

“Why is it always that I’m ready to move on from the obvious?”

Nyte only passed a few seconds of silence with the knives of the past come to open their wounds.

“I have a theory,” he admitted.

Nyte steered me around the bed, which I noticed with a twinge of guilt was disturbed. I’d pulled him from rest.

“It can wait—”

“No, it can’t.”

I watched him bend by the fire, and something so mundane as lighting it had felt like witnessing some precious part of him. Nothing powerful. Just Nyte.

When amber licked across the dark space I gravitated toward it. Kneeling where he crouched, my palms splayed toward the flames with a soft sigh when the warmth rippled over me. To his silence, my head turned a fraction, knowing he was watching me. What I didn’t expect was how soft he would appear. In times like this it was easy to imagine that anything beyond our sphere didn’t exist, but our reality was that we were destined to destroy each other, or the world, if I didn’t resist this pull to him.

“Your theory?” I prompted.

Nyte sat back, getting comfortable with one knee bent, so close to touch.

“I should have realized sooner. I think your parents are trying to give back the worst of your memories involving me before you might remember anything… good. ”

It was a certain type of anger to be resentful toward gods when no confronting them would help.

“They’re not fond of me,” Nyte mused.

I couldn’t help my short laugh. “I can’t imagine why.”

“There were many times you wanted to hurt me. We were enemies, Astraea. Born to be. For a while, I think both of us acted true to that, until we tempted that fate. Crossed a line that was never meant to be.”

“Were we… Bonded? Like fully.”

His eyes met mine and though he didn’t speak, they gave me the answer, which erupted within me.

“The battle you keep seeing… it was the repercussions of it.”

That stole any excitement from the prospect. “Was it against my will?”

He didn’t answer right away, leaving seconds for dread to pool—

“You chose me,” he said. Distantly, as if he wished it wasn’t true. “But the Bond… it only happened because I had no choice. You were dying, and I didn’t know how else to save you than to bind you to me. I think it was the first attempt against your life. To this day, it is my greatest failure and torment never to have discovered who finally succeeded, but I haven’t stopped looking and when I find them, I plan to kill them a thousand times. Even then it won’t be enough for the thousand more I died from losing you.”

I tried to process, but all I became was cold. So cold. I didn’t want to hear what was going to shake me further but I needed to know.

The impression of Nyte tucking in behind me slipped my eyes closed. I shouldn’t want it. Yet even if these moments of accepting his comfort would bleed out of me later, part of me thought it was worth it.

“Why did I attack you back then?” I whispered.

“Before I tell you, I need you to reserve your judgment. As much as I want to kill him, but for far more selfish reasons, he protected you for a long time. You trusted him.”

I didn’t want to accept this next truth, but I couldn’t run from it.

“Auster?”

Nyte’s hand slipped over my thigh like the name triggered something in him. As though it could make me leave to go in search of it when I didn’t have to. He’d found me.

“He made you believe I only Bonded you to merge with your power. That it was a vampire who attacked you with the key by my order and that it killed him to do so. Your key is highly protective of you, as the only thing that can kill you. Unless you give your blessing to it willingly, anyone who tried to wield it without will face punishment. I guess the severity depends on what power or resilience to it they might have.”

If there was even a possibility it was true, I could be sitting in the embrace of my killer. Not by his hand but his orchestration.

“How can I be certain you didn’t order it?”

He pressed closer, and I became hyperaware of his hand trailing higher on my leg while I still kneeled.

“Do you believe answers can be found in the heart?”

“You think I’d believe you because of heated touches and romantic notions? It’s a manipulation of the highest form.”

Somehow I could feel his smile. It always shifted a playful energy that shivered my skin and I was daunted by how in tune to him I was becoming.

“I don’t mean in your feelings for me. You’ve always had a very acute intuition. Listen to yourself.”

It wasn’t that easy, not when I couldn’t be sure my feelings wouldn’t betray me just as easily.

Nyte’s hands hooked the blanket at my shoulders. He moved so slowly, ready to stop at the slightest rejection if not from my voice then from my body. Yet I remained utterly relaxed, wanting him to slip it from me and replace the heat of it with his skin instead. My lips parted at the feel of him. It was a craving I didn’t think I would ever be able to fight.

“I must have believed Auster came after you back then,” I said.

“I can’t blame you. He’s one of your people, someone you were close to for far longer than you knew me. You grew up together.”

“Why didn’t I Bond with him?”

Nyte’s lips hovered between my shoulder blades. “I can’t answer that for you.”

“Please.”

“I can’t answer because it’s not fair to expect you to take my word for it. All I have is what you expressed to me in the past but you might feel differently in this life. I can’t plant words that could influence you as you figure out your wants.”

“Is that why you wanted me to go to the veil… before the Libertatem?”

“Yes.”

“It would have condemned you.”

“But it might have given you a chance to find the feelings for him that you couldn’t before.”

“You would wish that?”

“No, of course not. I would have gone mad in jealousy. But he is safer for you.”

I couldn’t believe that. Not when, despite all he was, never had I felt safer than when Nyte was near. Not even as much as when I was with Zath. It wasn’t just his power either.

“Would you let me go to him?” I asked quietly.

Nyte’s breath blew across my skin, then he pulled away.

“I would lose the vampire trust if they knew you’d gone to Althenia and I allowed it.”

Part of me anticipated that answer, but I hated that it felt like he was denying me a right. I pushed up on my knees, turning to pin my heated stare down on him.

“So I’m your prisoner.”

Nyte’s golden gaze stared up at me but he didn’t react to my anger. Instead, he wore awe in those beautiful eyes.

“You’re my eternal torture,” he said with a low gravel.

My breath drew sharp when he reached for my sides and pulled me to him. I had no choice but to brace myself on his shoulders for balance but my hand slipped into the back of his hair, gripping tightly enough to angle his head back in warning. The bastard grinned up at me, so slow and devious. It ignited a challenge of passion infused with anguish.

“This isn’t because I’ve forgiven you for everything.”

“Of course not.”

“In fact, this is because I hate you.”

Nyte squeezed under the curves of my ass and I bit back my whimper.

“Then hate me. Lower those hips and feel what it does to me.”

It was tempting, but I wasn’t ready to give him what he wanted. My thumb reached around, tracing his facial scar carefully. Then my fingers dropped, finding the one among many on his chest.

“Do any more of them belong to me?” I asked.

“No.”

I began to chart the map of cruelty on his skin. Pausing on the next.

“My father,” he answered. Nyte became so still that I hesitated moving again, but all he did was watch me, and I couldn’t explain the permission in those amber irises. How they tried to tell me what he couldn’t voice.

I paused over the next one, a serrated longer scar along his bicep.

“Battle.”

The next.

“Father.”

Over his chest again.

“Father.”

I took in a few more until I couldn’t stand to hear that word again with what was boiling inside me.

“Where is he?” I said, in a dark tone that was new to me with the need for vengeance crawling inside me.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want your revenge for what he did?”

“Yes. Eventually. But right now, all I want is you. They’re very old wounds, Starlight. I feel nothing for them anymore.”

“The act doesn’t erase,” I said sharply, surprised by my own anger. “You killed Hektor for me. For a while I wanted to hate you for it but… I don’t think I could have done it. Not again. But I want to kill the king for you.”

Nyte tucked my hair behind my ear. The pinch of his brow a mix of heartache and pride.

“I don’t wish that. In fact, I’d do whatever it takes to make sure you never cross his path again.”

“You can’t be me shield from everything.”

“No, not everything, but whatever I can. I will be your shield, your shadow, your weapon. I will be whatever you ask of me. There’s no denying I’m the villain they whisper me to be, but since you, I’m at peace with what I am. Because now I do it all for you. To see you rise to everything you were created to be.”

“Anything I asked?”

“Yes.”

“If I asked you to stay? Stay in this realm with me?”

My heart thundered at the fear of rejection.

“I’d only ask one thing back… would you be willing to condemn your world for it? Because I would. I would lie with you and watch every star plummet to land,” he said in a gravelly whisper, leaning in until his breath teased my throat. “This world would fall to darkness and I would spend everyday content never to see the daylight, because I have this. You. My brightest star.”

It wasn’t fair. To have this choice that balanced my heart and a duty the world depended on at opposite ends of a scale.

“I don’t think I want to choose,” I said.

“Astraea—”

“Don’t tell me it’s impossible. Not after all we’ve been through.”

No one could be certain of the future to come, but right now I broke for him.

My lips met his with an urge to release all that had been building between us since he’d betrayed me for Tarran on the rooftops. I understood why he’d done it, and maybe I wasn’t truly angry at him for it. I was furious that it was necessary. So beyond frustrated to be a pawn in this war when somewhere within was the locked potential to be the game master.

I took it out on Nyte—let out the fire of our ages-long war with feelings and blood that was so far from over.

He groaned into my mouth as I pulled his hair tighter, then pushed him back to straddle him.

“There’s a perfectly good bed right there,” he muttered huskily.

As I traced up the contours of his abdomen to his chest, the bed was the last thing on my damned mind.

“Why did I choose you back then?” I asked. Even though the responses of my body over him thought it to be the most ridiculous question.

“I can’t answer that either,” he murmured, trailing hands up the backs of my bare thighs, and it was like I melded into him with that touch, sinking myself lower.

Frustration angled my nails to drag over his chest. His teeth clenched against a hiss but those molten eyes swam with desire.

“Then show me,” I pleaded. “I need more of us.”

“Say you trust me. Because I can also plant lies and manipulations. I’m very good at it and you would never know the difference. It was my father’s second favorite thing to use me for.”

“I trust you.” It was the truth. And I was becoming desperate when my parents were determined to meddle and give me only the worst of him against me.

Nyte’s eyes flexed, as if he warred with himself over that response.

I said, “Why do you try to push me away yet you won’t let me go?”

His palm slipped around my nape, pulling our heads closer until I could feel the warmth of his breath across my lips.

“Because I am incapable of it. Because I selfishly want you to choose me despite the stars we collapse and the war we incite.”

“And if I don’t choose you?”

“Don’t provoke me, Starlight,” he muttered huskily. “Don’t make me show you why you can’t stop this anymore than I could.”

My legs wanted to close with the heat gathering between them, pooling a slickness he was bound to feel if he—

With a palm to my lower back, Nyte erased the few fractions of space I left hovering in his lap. A small gasp escaped me, then all reason scattered far to the rush of desire meeting his hard cock beneath me.

“Or do you want to run…?” he said, the vibrations of it shallow against my lips. “So we can both meet after the thrill of the chase? Because there is no where you can go that I won’t find you.”

“Is that a threat?” I breathed.

“It’s a damned promise bound until the end of time.”

His lips crashed to mine and I answered in a moan he took as an opening to deepen the kiss. Hungrily. We clashed lips and teeth and tongues in a raw passion that beat in my chest like a war drum.

Nyte broke from my lips to trail down my throat, and in the haze of my pleasure I barely registered movement until my ass touched cold wood and the last licks of starry shadow dissipated when my eyes opened. He kicked the legs of a chair out his way, with his lips never leaving my body. I sighed his name, tightening hands in his midnight locks while it seemed he planned to feast on me right on this solid black dining table adjoining his bedroom.

“May I?” He asked thickly.

I didn’t realize he’d paused with fingers hooking my nightgown. For some reason, his tender care even in the heat of passion warmed in my chest.

“Yes,” I said through a labored breath.

As Nyte slid the silk material over my head, his golden eyes began a slow trail of my body. He’d seen it before but it was like he savored every inch for the first time in that short pause. I had never been shy of my naked body but never before had I felt like the skin I wore was made of shining armor. The admiration in Nyte’s expression made me feel powerful .

“There is no star in the sky that shines as bright as you.”

I combed fingers through the locks tipping over his eyes.

“There is no darkness that defies the night like you.”

His eyes flickered with awed surprise. Then he met my lips again with a new ferocity that exploded through me. A large palm cupped my breast and I moaned into his mouth, close to begging for something, anything, at my core that had me hooking legs around his hips to draw him closer.

“Greedy,” he murmured wickedly.

“I need you,” I said, shamelessly trying to chase my pleasure against him.

“How do you want me?”

The answer came in such a scatter of urges that I couldn’t form a coherent sequence of words. His hands, his mouth, his cock—I couldn’t decide what I wanted where because I was greedy to have it all at once.

“Here—?” he muttered in a low growl. My hands planted behind me, tipping my head back with a moan when his fingers ran down my center. Only once. My eyes locked on his just as he brought his thumb to my lips, pressing down gently. “Or here?”

My tongue flicked out on instinct, and I delighted in the wildness it evoked in his eyes as he watched.

Feeling bold, my fingers hooked into the material slung low on his hips. My gaze trailed over the deep contours of his pelvic bones dipping under it. My hand followed, earning a hiss from him when I palmed the length of his cock, which raced a thrill in my blood. I squeezed on my next pass, keeping my eyes locked on his face to consume every flex of muscle from what I was doing to him.

There was something empowering and triumphant in owning Nyte’s pleasure. Knowing the torment I could cause if I stopped, and the utter bliss I could give if I wanted. To have Nightsdeath at my mercy.

“Take them off,” I ordered with a seductive edge that was new to me. “And sit on the chair.”

The flare in his eyes spoke of feral thrill. He obeyed.

Slipping off the table, I fed on the lust clouding his irises as he leaned back, trying to anticipate my movements as I approached.

“You don’t have to—”

Dropping to my knees I took hold of his cock, earning a white knuckled grip on the arm of the chair.

“Astraea,” he groaned my name, which sparked my confidence.

He was big. Intimidatingly so, which I hadn’t fully conceived of the last time. I didn’t know what I was doing but tried not to let the seed of uncertainty cause my focus to waver. I drove his pleasure with slow strokes at first, adding pressure until I discovered the right amount that had him refraining from thrusting into my hand.

Then I took the head of him into my mouth. Tasting him slipped a moan up my throat and Nyte’s hand slipped through my hair, tightening.

“Fuck—Astraea,” he groaned, like anything else but my name eluded him, and that brought me satisfaction.

My cheeks hollowed, sucking in harder when I wanted him to come undone for me. My hand worked his base in tandem and I tried to take him deeper into my throat but panic rose when the tip hit the back and I realized how much my palm still covered.

“That’s it,” he said in a strained voice. “That pretty little throat is as perfect for me as the rest of you.”

I hummed, and that seemed to heighten his pleasure. His hips moved with me, hand in my hair guiding me, and I wondered if he was holding back.

“Stop,” he rasped sharply.

My lips unwrapped from him to peer up. Nyte was a breathtaking sight to behold. Chest heaving with his scarred, golden tattooed skin beginning to sheen against the dull light.

“Bend over that table for me, love.”

My core ached at those words. I did as he asked, leaning until my breasts met the cool bite of the wood. My palms splayed by my head, and the anticipation tightening in my stomach pooled between my legs and down my thighs.

I expected his cock at my entrance, so when glorious heat lapped over my core instead, I cried out shamelessly.

“Spread your legs wider,” he instructed. I shuffled, nearly boneless already. “Good girl.”

His tongue alternating between dipping inside me and curving over my apex elicited unchecked sounds from me that I was far too consumed in the pleasure to feel shameful about. My hips wriggled, desperate and greedy for more but not knowing what to beg for. Nyte groaned against me, then his hand curled around my knee, lifting my leg sideward gently until I understood what he wanted me to do. My flexibility eased the extension of my leg until it was across the table and my body angled. It splayed me completely to him, pressed tighter to the table.

Nyte devoured without mercy. Though I clenched around emptiness as a warmth pooled in my lower belly, beginning to tingle over my trembling thighs.

“Give it to me,” Nyte ordered. He sucked hard, spreading me for his tongue to dip inside deeper than I thought possible.

“Oh gods,” I rasped. So close and unexpected. “Yes.”

“I could spend my fucking life on my knees behind you,” he growled. “So long as you call out for me, Astraea. Let me hear it.” His teeth dragged sharply over my ass.

“Nyte!”

My nails scratched into the table with the force of a climax when his mouth returned to my core. The quick shift from pain to pleasure detonated every internal piece of me. I shook with the instinct to slip my leg off the table and make him stop but he held me still, continuing his assault that stretched my climax on and on until my vision began to pepper around the edges.

Nyte finally pulled away and I panted hard against the table, willing my consciousness to hold on after the most shattering bliss of my life.

“You are incredible,” he murmured, leaning over to press a kiss to my shoulder.

I whimpered at the gentle press of him at my entrance. “Are you okay to take me?”

Stars, yes. I was boneless and still blinking back my vision but I needed him.

“Please,” I said.

“You never have to beg for what is already yours.”

Nyte eased into me slowly. My nails clawed into the wood, lips parted on a silent cry.

“I am yours, Starlight. Do you believe that?”

I could hardly hear him through the pleasure roaring in my ears, so the response came and went in such a blur that I didn’t think it left my lips.

“Astraea,” he growled, sinking deeper.

“Yes!” I cried out.

“I want to hear you say it.”

Another inch stretched me so full. Shit , I didn’t remember him being this much.

“You’re mine,” I said, claiming him with my body and my soul.

No matter what was to come, I didn’t think that would ever change. I could attempt to live on without him, but the lies it would take would be like applying balm to my chest when it could never touch the wound that carved deep under my skin.

“And?” he prompted, giving my hips a squeeze but not moving again.

He was wicked in his torture.

“I’m yours,” I said, bringing my head back to lock with his eyes.

“Eternally mine,” he growled, then thrust forward suddenly.

Finally seated fully, he stilled for a few seconds to let my body adjust. Then he let go, driving into me over and over, and there was nothing tender left in the way he claimed me back.

The friction of the table against my apex heightened my pleasure with his hard thrusts while causing a whimpering frustration that it wasn’t enough. My breasts crushed into the wood so I could hardly grapple for stability.

Nyte groaned with his next punishing plunge into me and he stopped, leaning over my back, and I shivered with the radiating warmth of him over my sweat-slicked skin.

“You have to see what I do,” he said, voice thick as he pressed his lips over my shoulder blades.

I couldn’t ask what he meant. Only let him guide my leg down from the table and take most of my weight as he carried me through shadows.

Then I stared at my naked body in the washroom mirror, which stretched the length of the entire wall. There was a counter before me.

“Hold onto it,” he said thickly. “Tight.”

My hands reached to brace against the wood. His hands guided my hips out and my legs farther apart.

“I hope you know I’ll never get enough of you,” he said, running his large hand over my ribs to cup my breast. “Not even when I have you every day of our eternity.”

“Presumptuous of you.”

“No, Starlight. There’s only one way we end and that’s if the world ends with us. Even then, I’ll find you in the next and happily collapse that too if that’s to be our never-ending fate. I’d choose destruction every time if it meant having you.”

Nyte entered me again and my face pinched with the shot of pleasure. His skin glowed, the gold markings flaring to life and only then did I realize we matched. Our magick awakened as if it reached to bind too.

“I’m so close, but I need to you to come with me,” he rasped against my neck. His thrusts were slow and deep. Savoring.

I wanted to shake my head, I didn’t think I could handle another climax as intense as what he’d given me but that control was slipping further away from my exhausted mind. His hand curved around, circling my apex, and I cried in utter bliss and torture combined.

“There you go,” he growled when I tightened around him, so fearing the eruption of what was about to unleash that I couldn’t even muster sound anymore.

When it hit me, the sound that came from me was between a scream and a cry. My eyes clapped shut and my back curved up against Nyte, whose hand slipped around my neck. He kept fucking me though my orgasm, which felt endless. Waves and waves of pleasure rocked through every piece of me.

Nyte picked up the pace before he slammed into me one last time with a powerful groan, burying his forehead into my neck while his body jerked against mine with his end, gripping me so tight it was claiming. The only thing keeping me upright was him.

We remained like that for a stretch of silence to collect ourselves, our sweat-slicked skin against each other and our breaths fighting to steady.

Nyte pulled out of me, and I whimpered, bracing against the counter again.

I couldn’t move. I focused on collecting breath and staying standing, listening to Nyte run water and then return. I couldn’t say anything to the warm cloth he ran up my thighs and between my legs.

“I’ve made a mess of you,” he said with quiet admiration. “So beautiful.”

Letting Nyte guide me around, he took my legs from under me, carrying me into the bedroom.

He lay me down in his bed, and I nestled into his scent that wrapped me. Nyte slipped in and I tucked into him comfortably.

It was always when I felt most content with him that my fear of losing him crept in.

“What if we’re always destined to end up there… on opposite sides of a battlefield?” I asked quietly.

Nyte’s lips pressed to the top of my head. “Then my vow is to never give up trying to rewrite the stars.”