Page 25 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Without Mercy

Warrick

Mine . I pump my finger inside her, and when her moan echoes through the tunnel, my heart fucking stops.

I drop my forehead to her shoulder. Always . I thrust again and again.

My snake , she called me. My snake my snake my snake . Two simple words and yet my entire undoing.

“My angel,” I whisper and circle her clit with my thumb. “My beauty.”

Her wet warmth slides along my cock.

I close my eyes. “My ending,” I curse.

“Faster,” she demands and grinds against me, driving me mad. I’m desperate to rip my palm away, to thrust into her tight heat and make her scream, but I’m wary. Even in the dark, I can feel the stiffness in her shoulders, the hesitation in the way she leans into me.

Sweat beads at my temple as her pussy flutters around my fingers. So perfect and wet and aching . Gods, the way she clenches. The way I know she’ll feel when she’s wrapped around my cock.

“I want to know you,” I breathe.

I must know her. Every thought. Every smile. If she bleeds, I bleed. If she kills, I kill. Fuck me, I’m chained to her, and I’ve no plans for escape.

“Let me know more of you. Every fucking piece,” I whisper.

“Maybe,” she whispers back.

Gods, I’ll beg. Anything to keep her.

I slide my fingers from her center and grip her hips. With a flex of my biceps, I lift her and turn her to face me. I hate that I can’t see her, but I won’t have her back turned to me any longer.

She straddles me with ease.

“Getting comfortable?” I murmur.

“This position is easier to strangle you.”

There it is. She still wants me dead. The thing is, I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to get it out of her.

I follow the curves of her body with my fingers, stopping when I find the edges of her face. I grasp it with both hands and pull her toward me, remembering how kissing her in the stables brought to the surface pieces of a woman I would love to get to know.

But she yanks back.

I grit my teeth. “Give me answers, and my cock is yours. I swear it.”

Her hips roll, her palms splaying across my chest.

I bite down on my tongue against a groan and grab her waist to make her stop.

She stills with a huff. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“You get one question and one answer, Ivor.”

I lift a hand and find her hair. I twist a finger in it, my grin widening when I feel the tilt of her head toward my palm. I give the strand a small pull and her fingers dig into my chest.

“Fine.” She grasps my shoulders. “Two questions.”

“Three.”

“ Two .”

“Very well.” I let her hair go and catch her hand as it moves to my cock. I grasp her fingers with a click of my tongue. “I get my answers, and you can touch.”

She pinches my bicep.

I smile. “I’m desperate, angel. I’m going to take advantage of every second I have.”

“That’s fair,” she admits. “Since I’ve no plans to see you again.”

My smile wavers, but I clear my throat and tuck her hair behind her ear. “You said my father uprooted your life when you were fourteen. What then?”

“I was taken in.”

Damn it . “That’s an answer,” I mumble.

I know she smiles.

I shift beneath her, and she grinds her hips. “You’re impossible.”

She laughs, and everything in me needs to hear it again.

So many questions sit on my tongue. I need to understand her anger toward me, but I know if I ask, I’ll get another vague, blunt answer. I run my thumb over her cheek, wetting my lips as I decide on a new tactic, and she stiffens against me.

I inhale. “You didn’t ask, but you should know this. At least this part.”

Rayze leans closer.

Even in the dark, somehow I know she studies me. With her hands, with the feel of my cock lodged between her legs. Then she slides a palm over my heartbeat. She keeps reaching for that, studying my pulse. It betrays me time and time again, and I know she can feel it.

“I’m my father’s Heir,” I admit, “and I’ll inherit the Skin Trade when he Yields.”

She grasps my shoulder as if to steady herself.

“But I would trade a thousand empires, Rayze,” I say with a hard swallow, “to understand this. Whatever this is.”

“There’s only hell down this road,” she whispers, and her voice shakes.

“Then it’s a good thing I want an angel at my side, isn’t it?” I comb my fingers through her hair.

“Is that your question?”

I drop my forehead to her breasts, and they heave unsteady against me. “No. I just needed you to know I don’t plan to follow in Russell’s footsteps. I meant what I told you in the stables. I don’t want to be that man, and it’s killing me that you think that’s who I am.”

“Ask your question, Heir,” she bites out.

My shoulders sink in defeat. I slide my palms down her body and memorize the shape of her, knowing in the next moment she may be gone.

“Tonight isn’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough, but I want a start.

Time with you beyond our deal or the Bond.

” I suck in a breath. “Will you have a drink with me?”

Her chest falls eerily still.

Then she laughs. She fucking laughs. Her entire body shakes with it. “That’s your question? Your oh-so-serious question? To ask me on a date?”

Heat burns over my face. I mean, no, it wasn’t my question. Not really. Thank fuck we’re in the dark. “That’s a no, then.”

She laughs harder.

I let go of her and lean back on my palms. “Going out with me is laughable to you?”

She sputters. “A date, Warrick? A fucking date? Are you serious?”

“Never more so in my life.”

Rayze’s laughter dies off. She sniffles, and my brow furrows.

“Are you crying?” I ask and sit up.

“No,” but her voice wobbles.

“No, you’re not crying, or no, you don’t accept the date?”

A frustrated growl leaves her and she shoves off of me. “I hate what you do to me.”

“Say yes to the date, Rayze.” I zip my pants and crawl after her at the sound of her wrestling back into her trench coat. “Let me see you again.”

“Why? So this can hurt more?” she asks, her voice sharp. “We go any further, snake, and whatever connection is between us will strengthen.”

“Maybe it needs to,” I push. “You think it’s a coincidence you’ve spent your life with a vendetta against my legacy, and now there’s a Bond between us?”

“Stop,” she hisses, and I ram into the bottoms of her boots with my fingers.

I tug back with a grimace and shake out my hands. “Magic has been lost for centuries, but we’re Bonded. That’s a miracle—” My words are cut short at the feel of a blade against my throat. “ Rayze ,” I growl. “We have to talk about this.”

“We don’t,” she says, and the blade nicks my neck with a soft sting. “We never will.”

I wrap my hand over hers along a leather hilt, the feel of it smooth where my fingers overlap hers. “Deny the Bond, but you won’t deny me.”

“Watch me.” Her blade disappears and rocks scrunch as she moves away.

I curse under my breath and follow. “Fuck me, fine. Give me your ass. Forget what I said.”

“Fuck off,” her voice barks from ahead, echoing through the stone like a warning shot.

“Rayze, wait.” I crawl faster, gravel biting into my palms. “The tunnel ends.”

A sharp scrape of metal hits stone, and my heart squeezes.

I blink hard, adjusting to the faint slice of light curving around a bend. “Angel?” Dread hooks sharp through my ribs.

I yank my Serpent blade from the sheath at my waist and crawl one-handed to the corner. I freeze at the edge and peer around.

One of the hatches to a Serpent nest is open, its steel cover shoved to the side. Rayze is gone, and it’s quiet.

Too quiet.

I blow out a steadying breath and scoot toward the hatch. It’s carved into the ceiling, the chandelier beside it dangling at a strange angle. I know this entrance well.

I also know this nest is never empty.

I brace myself, grip tightening on my blade. I pull my hood up, secure my mask, and wrench a dagger from my belt into my other hand.

Then I drop.