Page 13

Kiss

VEYRION

Inviting her to kiss me was a mistake. I realize this the moment her lips touch mine.

She is so much smaller than me, so much weaker...

Yet her kiss breaks me in a cruel instant.

My inner fire has always been strong. But this … this is an inferno. One I pull closer, yanking her body into mine as my aching tail finally gives in to its long-held-back desire to slither around her breasts.

I use both arms to crush her into me even tighter. I am burning alive beneath her lips, and I still cannot get close enough.

Plaintive mews fall from her mouth as she undulates her hips. I am fully awake—not in the stone sleep—but my staff has turned to granite. The drag of her slit over it is both the best and worst thing I have ever felt.

I do not wish for her to stop. And yet... it is the most painful torture. I do not merely want the slide of her crevice over me. I want inside of her.

I wish to fuck her. In this bathtub. Upon my throne. Against the sleeping glass.

Everywhere. Anywhere. That is where I wish to take her, with her soft thighs around my waist and her lips pressed to mine?—

A pounding at the door shatters our kiss.

“Sovereign,” my First-in-Command says on the other side. “The horde has finished First Meal and awaits your words before our raid.”

Sovereign ...

I’d nearly forgotten our scheduled reckoning. A band of seafarers crashed upon our shores on their way to the Convergence Games in Pridehaven. Then they dared to attempt the wasteland crossing by foot, despite being warned—and offered rides at triple the price—by our Mountain Goat ferry service.

Of course, they must be dealt with. Swiftly, lest other travelers grow bold enough to evade our fees.

Shame dampens the fire this Eryx Oblation has sparked inside me.

“I am not weak,” I inform her.

“I didn’t say you were.” She blinks at me with such guileless innocence, I wonder if she practices it in the mirror.

“If you wish to serve as a vessel of my release before my flight, you may.” I meet her faux-innocent, weak-eyed gaze with my much stronger one. “But no matter your sexual cunning, it will not sway my hand when it is time to sacrifice you to Eryx for the good of my people.”

Her soft body was wrapped so tightly around mine, then, suddenly, it is gone.

Using my chest to push off, she launches herself to the other side of the tub with a dramatic double-stroke of her arms.

“Go, then. Have a nice flight, terrorizing people born unlucky enough to be unable to afford your absurd travel fees.”

“If they are too poor to pay and too slow to outrun our wrath during the day, they should not travel. For they are too weak.”

I rise from the tub, water sluicing down my body. I hate that my staff remains fully extended, despite the shame I feel for this overlong dalliance.

The Eryx Oblation quickly averts her eyes from the length she was grinding against moments ago. Yet somehow still manages to shoot back, “Whatever helps you sleep at night—oh wait, I mean during the day.”

She’s being obstinate again in that sarcastic way I do not like. And never should have indulged.

Dark thoughts swirl in my mind as I pull on my flight leathers. “It was unwise to end your punishment before the ascribed time,” I growl. “Once again, you prove why our rituals must be followed to the letter. Mercy is for the weak.”

“Or, you know, the kind of people who actually have a conscience. But potato, potahto.”

I stop in the middle of putting back on my dagger bandolier to demand, “What is potato?”

“No idea!” she bites back. “It’s just something humans say to point out we’re saying the same thing.... I think it’s a food, maybe? And I’m not even sure I’m using it right—hey, weren’t you saying something about needing to leave?”

I do need to leave. Forthwith. I should have already reported to the front gates to lead our launch.

I have no time for further argument with someone who will be dead by my hand in two more nights.

But as I exit my chamber, I despise the feeling she has given me—one of being dismissed.

She is fast asleep when I return to my sleeping quarters several ticks of the moons later—even though I did not order her food drugged tonight.

I frown when I see that the Door Gravel has apparently brought in a pile of taarhorn fleeces for her to both lie upon and sleep under.

It is not a terrible idea, I suppose, for a weak species without any kind of internal heating mechanism.

She looks… comfortable. Adorable, even, in that soft, vulnerable way I did not know I appreciated until she crashed into my life—tempting me in ways I have not previously had to contend with.

Is she naked underneath those fleeces?

An image of me claiming her in this odd horizontal position that humans take for their sleep enters my brain and refuses to leave.

Even when I lower to my knees before her and use my shadow magic to install a second wall mount with another obsidian manacle attached.

Now it is time to touch her again. I refuse to acknowledge the way the staff behind my leather pants instantly springs to life when I lift the fur and discover that yes… by Eryx, she is sleeping naked.

Her lush dark curves, in such contrast to the cream-white taarhorn fleece, beckon like a spoken invitation.

One I do not dare accept.

Instead, I make quick work of pulling her arms up from beneath the blanket, securing both wrists in one hand while using the other to cover her back up with the fleece.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” she mumbles as I fasten the original cuff around her top wrist.

“Securing you to the wall so you do not leave my sleeping quarters upon the morn,” I answer.

“Meanie,” she mumbles as I shackle her other wrist. Her voice is still full of sleep as she watches me fasten the new cuff through half-open eyes. “You’re a total weed worm. Do you know that? The biggest I’ve ever met.”

By Eryx, does she even dare to defy me in her sleep? Her audacity disgusts me.

Or at least it should.

When I lay her cuffed wrist down on top of her fleece cover it slips down, once again revealing her soft, ample breasts as she sighs and settles back into her makeshift bed, closing her eyes.

“Wish you weren’t so freaking sexy,” she mumbles, eyes closed again. “It’d make hating you so much easier.”

I still. What did she just say?

“Have fun on your senseless killing spree tonight?” she asks, not opening her eyes.

I did not.

And I blame her for that.

Out loud, I answer, “Those who crossed us were meted punishment.” In the form of a severe warning , I silently add.

“Oh, my moons, you’re the worst,” she sighs, snuggling deeper into the fleece like some manner of burrowing mammal. To my great relief, the motion covers her unnecessarily alluring breasts.

“Please keep talking like that,” she murmurs. “I don’t want to die a virgin, but I can’t let myself give in to you. ’Cuz you’re basically a pile of compost underneath a really hard-not-to-touch body.”

She shakes her sleepy head. “I need all the reminders of my excellent reasons not to ever kiss you again. Even if that was the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.”

She was fighting off the temptation, too?

Something tightens in my chest, something… dangerous. I should walk away. Leave her cuffed and protected and forget every word she just spilled like a drunken confession.

But instead, I lean closer.

“And what if I kiss you?”

I ask the question. Hate myself for doing so.

And then wait with a truly reprehensible held breath for her answer.

But it never comes.

She has fallen fully back asleep.

The cuffs are fastened. There is no reason to linger.

Yet I do. Watching her lips. Replaying her mumblings. Letting her unguarded words calcify inside my chest.

And a new idea occurs to me. One that gives me the excuse I need to prolong our end-of-night interaction.

I go to the chest beside my throne to grab the parchment I use to issue orders best not spoken aloud—also some ink and a shadewing feather to write with—before quickly returning to her side to use the stone floor as my writing surface.

Perhaps I should feel weak for indulging this strange instinct to gaze upon her longer than I should.

But the note I pen makes up for all indulgence:

If you wish no further punishment, you will still be here in my sleeping quarters when I wake.

I set the note beside her and rise to my feet, just as the incoming sunsrise renders the world outside my sleeping glass a rosy pink.

After removing my leathers, I let the suns cast me into stone sleep with the certainty that if she somehow manages to undo her cuffs again, that clear threat will keep her in her place.

My clear threat does not keep her in her place.

When I uncast at suns’ set, I find her furs empty, without even a trace of body heat.

“Princess…” I intone, pressure building behind my temples like a forming quake.

For the second time in as many morns, I rip open my door to go find the audacious little Eryx Oblation who has dared to defy me.