Page 33 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

“You didn’t.” The lightning is gone in another instant, but my eyes adjust quicker than before and I can still see where Kiera rests with her back against the headboard and her legs drawn up to her chest. The evidence of her claim—that I hadn’t woken her—seems accurate because she’s no longer wearing the dress she went to see the Council in.

I scan the room once more and find it in a heap in the corner, near one of my reading tables. Staring at the dark wash of fabric crumpled there, I try to recall if she’d been naked when I looked at her last—her skin is as pale as her hair, but had she been wearing something else other than her flesh?

A desire that I know I shouldn’t feel beats at me like the winds outside the tower.

Don’t fucking look, I urge myself.

It’s like telling a dying man to keep breathing. Impossible.

I look and my breath catches in my throat, freezing there as I look over the long, white limbs of her arms delicately draped over her knees. She’s not naked. At least, there’s that, but she’s certainly got a lot of skin revealed by the tunic she’s dressed in. My tunic, I realize a moment later when she shifts on the bed and straightens her legs out, dropping her arms. That fact doesn’t seem to help the sharp stabbing pain in my chest.

It’s big on her even with the sleeves pushed and folded up to her elbows. It covers her lap, but the skin of her thighs remains available for my eyes to peruse. They lock onto her legs and picture what they’d look like wrapped around me, hooked at the ankles as I drive my cock between that hot, wet place that’s hidden from view.

I swallow roughly, a low growl threatening to spill out. I turn back to the door. “You can sleep here tonight,” I snap. “I’ll?—”

“Why would I sleep here?” she asks before I can finish. “I have a room below.” Rustling follows that statement. The muscles of my back bunch and tighten with each sound that slithers through my ears like one of Kalix’s serpents.

Then her words catch up with my thoughts and I turn, slowly, to face the woman in my bed. “You’re not going back to your old room.”

Kiera turns and slides her legs away from the rumpled covers and sheets. Long pale legs appear over the side of the mattress and her bare feet touch the floor.

Eyes up, you fucking prick! I tear my gaze away from her flesh and settle on her face.

“Why?” Stormcloud gray eyes stare at me.

Why? I repeat her question in my head, trying to recall what we’d been talking about. I blink at her. “Because you are a Mortal God, and that is a Terra room.”

Kiera stands up and as she does, another flash of lightning breaks through the room. Holy … fucking Gods.

“Why does that matter?” Kiera asks as she moves closer.

If I thought it was a struggle to tear my gaze away from her before, it’s impossible now. Not only had she chosen an old tunic of mine, but this one is so pale and thin that when the flash of light takes over the darkest parts of my bedroom, illuminating everything in its path, it does more than just … shed light on her. It peers through the fabric and casts a glow around her form, outlining every curve beneath the cloth.

What might have been—in the once dark room—a somewhat overly large night dress on her becomes practically nothing in an instant. The image burns into the back of my mind through my eyes and I know that this moment, this memory will be etched into me forever.

Thunder fades over the sound of waves crashing in the near distance—disturbing the cliffside outside of the Academy walls. The light disappears, fading from existence, but not the image of Kiera standing from my bed in little more than transparent fabric. Volcanic heat pours through my veins, directing a pathway straight to my groin.

“Ruen?” Kiera’s voice is curious, not angry as it usually is when directed to me. I’m standing here, beating back my internal beast with each passing second and forcing myself not to rip that damn tunic from her body and she … knows, I realize when I raise my gaze to meet hers.

Even in the dark, my eyes sharpen on her face, my sight far better than mortals as I now know hers is as well. The corner of her lips is curved upward and her brow is lifted. The challenge in her expression sends the growl I’d been holding back up my throat. It unleashes and, in an instant, I spring forward, grabbing her with both hands on her too-skinny waist. No, perhaps, not too skinny. She’s not a delicate woman, her body is built for athleticism. Her muscles are obvious under my palms.

Still, she doesn’t fight as I catapult her back onto the bed and land on top of her. Her back presses into the mattress and I come down hard, my legs encasing her thighs. I’d wonder why were it not for the fact that, a moment after we collide, she’s rearing up to clasp my shoulder and canting her hips into mine. The damn woman uses my momentum to push me onto my back so that she can swing a leg over my hips when we flip and she falls against me in the dominant position.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked, Ruen,” she says. “You were practically begging me to kick your ass with the way you were eyeing me.”

My hands grasp her hips. Instead of lifting her up as I know I should, I grip her tighter and bring her down further into my lap. I know the exact moment she feels my problem because Kiera stiffens all over, her head turning down where my cock is straining against the inside of my trousers, pressing up against the center between her thighs. The taut silence in the room is disturbed only by the sounds of the storm outside and still, that’s not enough to break the spell that has somehow found itself cast over both of us. I have to be the one to do it, I know, but it’s quite possibly the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life just to clear my throat and speak.

“I want to see it,” I tell her.

Gray eyes widen. “What?”

I sit up, and to my surprise, Kiera doesn’t lean away from me as I expect her to. Instead, she remains right where she is until my chest is a hair’s breadth away from hers. “I want to see where the brimstone was in your neck.”

She blinks and then, slowly—as if she’s not sure I’m telling the truth—rises up off my lap. I know only a moment of peace as she gets off the bed and allows me to move forward. She turns away from me and just as I’m about to stand, she’s back again. The round globes of her ass settle over my lap. My heart stutters to a stop in my chest.

“Go ahead,” she murmurs.

Is this a dream? It must be. Or is she … perhaps, teasing me?

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