Page 62 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

Kiera has awakened a monster within this Divine blood of mine that even I didn’t know existed and it’s her responsibility to feed him.

Chapter 27

Kiera

Ruen’s body is a mass of jumping muscles and barely restrained violence. He clutches me like I’m a life line and I let him. I have the strangest sensation that if the two of us were set adrift in a stormy sea—if we were drowning—his hold alone would be enough to keep me tied to this plane of existence. As if I can’t die unless he gives me permission.

When next his mouth lands on mine, it’s even harder than before. It’s raw and powerful and crushing. I part my lips, letting him take what he needs and feeding that beast I sense within him.

He’s different from Theos and Kalix. As well as they move together as a unit, each of them is an individual creature with different needs. Kalix is a hungry beast, devouring everything in its path to sate some unknown desire and he won’t stop until he’s drawn the blood of his prey. Theos is a healer, a seeker of love and compassion and affection.

Ruen is neither and he is both. He is the perfect mix of animal and man.

His hips bump against my stomach and I feel the hard press of his erection straining beneath his trousers. My insides turn to liquid in the most molten sense and I reach for the man currently devouring my mouth and every small sound that escapes it.

My nails rake down his back and his hips jerk in pleasure at the sharp sensation, pressing harder against me. The side of the mattress bumps against my calves, but I don’t lie on it. Not yet. Pulling my lips from Ruen’s, I use the mattress as an aid as I climb up his body, hooking my legs around his waist as I grip his head between my hands.

“Show me what you want, Ruen,” I demand. “Show me what you’re so terrified of showing everyone else.”

Blue-red eyes glitter back at me dangerously, the soft fall of his long dark lashes casting shadows over the sharp angles of his cheekbones. He is a barely restrained man, teetering on the knife’s edge of civilized. He doesn’t need civilized. He needs wild and untamed and so do I.

As if he senses that, too, Ruen’s eyes shift from half midnight and half red to fully crimson in an instant. My back slams down against the mattress. He drives me up the cushioned bed reaching for my hands and stealing them away from his flesh. I blink and he pins them above me. Solid metal locks onto my skin and my eyes jerk up, seeking the manacles that now encircle my wrists. Something wicked uncurls within my lower belly. I test the chains that now lock through the heavy wrought iron of the headboard before flicking my attention to the man that prowls over me with more intensity than any animal I ever saw in the Hinterlands.

“These weren’t here before,” I say. Not a question, but then again, I don’t mean it as one. I know what brought them forth, I just never expected Ruen to lose control so completely that he’d use his powers on me during sex.

Ruby colored irises track over my face with dilated pupils blowing out nearly all of the color, leaving behind very little but a small ring of fire. “My illusions are as real as you or I,” Ruen whispers, lowering his lips to my throat. “For as long as I control them, they exist.”

The beast licks over my pulse and then moves down, his fabric covered legs sliding against mine until his mouth touches my collarbone. My nipples pebble harder and I bite down on my lower lip, forcing my need back as it threatens to make my hips buck against him.

It’s when his words enter my ears that I realize Ruen hasn’t lost control at all. No. He’s nothing like Kalix or Theos. He is discipline and dominance, a creature with far more patience than I ever gave him credit for. To lead two other Mortal Gods with such volatile powers and abilities, he’s had to maintain this precision of his and I fell for the false display of instability like a fool.

Sweat beads pop up along my skin as he licks the taste of it from my flesh with a hungry moan. “You taste like salt and sin,” he says.

My stomach muscles contract and I suck in a breath, hollowing out the area as I tug at my restraints. I don’t know how it’s possible, but he’s right about his illusions. It feels more real than the bed itself, more tangible than the illusion I’d felt the day I’d been whipped before the entire Academy.

“Ruen—”

“Shhh,” he hushes me as his mouth descends over one nipple and sucks it between his lips. His teeth sink down against the pale pink flesh and I grit my teeth as my back arches at the pleasure-pain that pours through me.

Little pinpricks of light flash behind my closed eyelids as he tortures my nipple before switching to the other breast and performing the same action. Breathing heavily, I don’t reopen my eyes until he finally, blessedly, lifts his lips, tongue, and teeth away from me—freeing my wet nipple to the now cool air.

“Look at me.” I can’t help but answer that command with a sharp look. There’s no denying it. Ruen’s crimson gaze locks onto my face, searing into my eyes like he’s trying to burn me with just a look.

There’s too much clothing still between us. “Ruen.” His name is a groan in my throat. “If you don’t get rid of both of our pants in the next ten seconds, I’m going to?—”

Whatever threat I’d been about to make is swallowed by the sudden rending of fabric. I gape down as Ruen shreds the sides of my trousers before he peels them far too slowly down my long legs. Then his body leaves me as he moves down the mattress until he’s at the end of the bed and he’s able to untie his laces and drop his pants to the floor.

My eyes lock onto the hard shaft that juts out from the ring of dark hair at his crotch. It’s long and thick, with a pulsating vein that arches up the underside. That’s not the only thing that makes me stare open-mouthed though. It’s the series of metal bars that run the length of that veiny underside of male flesh.

“H-how…” The question doesn’t make it past that one word in my throat as Ruen takes himself in hand and strokes the length of his cock once—up and down from root to tip.

“Pain means nothing,” he says by way of an answer, even though I never finished the curiosity. “I had to prove that to myself.”

Rage blossoms in my breast. Another form of self-harm then. I want to chastise him, but the words aren’t there as he slowly climbs back onto the mattress and moves forward like a stalking Hinterland panthera. I can just imagine the hulking cat-like beast inside him. Hungry feline ready for its prey to fall under fang and claw.

Ruen releases his cock and touches my legs. “Open for me, Kiera. Spread your legs and let me into the most Divine of realms.”

If anyone had told me that Ruen Darkhaven would rival both of his brothers in terms of sexual deviancy months ago, I might have laughed at the idea of the cool and indifferent Mortal God being a creature of pure fire and sensuality. Now, I have no other recourse but to follow that command of his, spreading my thighs at the soft touch of his sword-roughened fingers.

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