Page 76 of A Kingdom of Pleasure and Torment

“Hang onto me,” he orders, and I cross my ankles behind his back, wrap my arms around his shoulders.

He unfurls his wings and we rise into the air, up and up, until the top of his head brushes the ceiling of the cavern. My stomach drops and the bottoms of my feet tingle. I shudder in fear and grip him tighter.

“Do you remember what I said?” he whispers in my ear. “How I’m going to fuck you?”

“Deep,” I moan, my body parting around the slow advance of his cock. “And hard.”

“Why?”

“So I never feel anyone but you.” I wriggle, desperate to be filled despite my precarious position. “So that I am yours.”

“You are mine,” he says, releasing my waist to grip my chin and hold his gaze to mine. “And I want to look into your eyes when you feel this.”

Kathras drops us suddenly, and I shriek in terror, until he pulls up short and uses the force of the stop to thrust the whole, enormous length of him into me. The thickness of his shaft stretches my cunt and I wail in relief. He lifts me up, so that just the tip of him rests inside me and does it again. Another short drop, another deep thrust. He grips the hair at the nape of my neck, never takes his eyes from mine as we fall together over and over, until his toes touch the surface of the pool.

We rise again, up and up, all the way to the ceiling once more, and I brace myself for another exhilarating drop.

Instead, he pries my arms from around his neck and lifts me over his head, pressing my shoulders to the rough stone. His wings beat steadily, lifting him closer, and he tilts us back until I am splayed atop him, the ceiling at my back, his knees against the stone, his body the only thing stopping me from plummeting to my death.

A death which only moments before wouldn’t have frightened me quite so much. And that fear, just as Luthian promised, makes the pleasure so much better as Kathras strokes into me, hard and fast, his wide shaft tugging at my clit. It’s terrifying. It’s ecstatic. The fear and pleasure spike higher and higher, and I wonder if, when I come, I will fall, spasm out of Kathras’s grasp and plunge down, a scream of release my last words. I’m so close, I don’t care. I chase my climax, meeting his thrusts, moaning with his own strained shouts. I come screaming, wetness bursting over us both, raining down to the cavern floor.

He grabs me in his arms and we spiral back down to the pool, splashing into the water before the final waves of my orgasm have a chance to subside, while I’m still moaning and gasping.

“I hope you don’t think we’re finished,” he groans against my ear.

Chapter Thirty-One

Kathras takes me, over and over. On a smooth, stone ledge. Against a wall that scrapes my back in the most delicious way. Once, with water falling between us, cascading over where we join and thundering against my clit until I can take no more and faint from the unrelenting pleasure.

There is roughness in his passion, but not cruelty. When we are both spent, he holds me, and we laze in the warmth of the pools. He heals me, not just from the abrasions of the stone in the cavern, but the slashes left by branches on my face and thorns on my ankles. He holds me, cradles my head in the hollow of his shoulder, and asks nothing of me.

But I have questions for him. One, in particular. “Why?”

His chest rises beneath my back, holds, then slowly falls. “I don’t know. I suppose because you looked so lost. I felt your misery call out to me, so I followed.”

“You followed me all the way from the palace?” I sit up slightly in alarm. “What if you had been seen?”

“I wasn’t seen.” He states it so assuredly, it’s difficult to doubt him. “It’s one of my abilities, inherited from my father.”

“Arcus can move around the palace unseen?” My heart beats frantically against my ribs like an animal trying to escape a snare. How often have I had conversations that he’s overheard? Could he have gotten past Luthian’s wards?

“That isn’t what I meant.” He pulls me back to him, to sit on his knees and face him. “I was able to feel your sorrow, and it drew me to you.”

It seems too empathetic a power for someone like Arcus.

“I don’t usually find that kind of sadness here at court,” Kathras goes on. “Envy. Rage. Jealousy. Hatred. Those emotions run high, but rarely true sadness. The courtiers are deliriously happy, most of the time.”

“I can see why they would be.” It would be easy to lose oneself in a life dedicated solely to sensation. Even pain, I’ve learned, can be euphoric. “But why bother to follow me? When you know the risk of the king catching us?”

“The king will be unconscious for days, judging by how much of that enchanted wine he drank.” Kathras’s voice drips with contempt. “I came to you because I know what it’s like to live under my father’s tyrannical rule. Not just as a courtier, but as someone he views as a possession. I’ve seen him break even the strongest fairies. You’re human. You can’t withstand the torment he would inflict upon you.”

“I can withstand far more than you’d think,” I argue, but if he doesn’t believe my words, I can’t blame him. I don’t believe them, myself.

“I’m sure you can,” he placates me. “I felt your pain, and your loneliness. I don’t know what kind of a life you had with...”

His voice dies away, and he swallows as if he would be sick to say the name.

“With Luthian?” I ask.

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