Page 41 of The Princess and Her Grand King

Lord Vladya stared at her mouth. "I want you too, Aekeira, so much," he growled, pulling away. "But, unfortunately, we can’t. It’s not good for me."

"What… what do you mean?" Aekeira struggled to clear the stars from her mind, still lost from his brain-melting kisses.

"It will reactivate my sexlust." There was hunger in his eyes, but also restraint.

She sat up, confused. "Your sexlust went dormant…?"

"After your departure, the first few months were… unbearable. Trying to resist the sexlust alone nearly drove me over the edge. My beast and I didn’t want anything to do with the females Daemonikai brought to me. No matter how much blood I drank, the hunger wouldn’t abate." Pain flickered in his eyes. "It was horrible."

Aekeira could imagine.

"I thought I could handle it,” Lord Vladya said, his expression faraway. “After two months of resisting, I went on my first killing rampage.”

Something inside Aekeira shriveled up and died. The lust plaguing her vanished as if it had never been there, a chilling cold replacing it.

"How many?" she asked hoarsely. Dreadfully.

"Six."

Aekeira gasped.

He pulled back completely, sitting at the bed's edge. "I took six lives." His tone was neutral, but the pain was right there in his gray eyes. "Three humans, three Urekai. They had families. They weren't meant to die that way."

No wonder he exiled himself to this place.Aekeira wet her patched throat. "What happened, after…?"

"I woke up, snarling, half-mad, chained to my bed. Daemonikai had found and subdued me. I remember the driving urge to kill him. To killeveryone,"he recalled, face pinched. "But Daemonikai looked me dead in the eyes and said, 'I’m doing this for your own good.' Then he left me there for the rest of the day."

Aekeira's heart, as treacherous as ever, reached out to him. Pulling closer to where he sat, she took his hand—paw—in hers, uncaring of the long, sharp claws.

"By the time he returned the next day, my demons had quieted. Only then did he send the females in. They forced me and my savage beast to satisfy the lust that'd pushed me over the edge." His spacey eye blinked, then glanced at her. "He saved my life. For the first time in months, I could breathe again. But…"

"But?" she urged.

“That was the last time I felt that overpowering hunger for sex. The instinct that drives our kind to need sex as a necessity went to sleep. Dormant.”

Aekeira's mouth gaped open. "Is that bad? It sounds bad. Did something damage in you?"

He hadn’t been with another female intwo years?

There was something different in his eyes now. In the way he looked at her. Like he was seeing her for the first time.

Intense. More focused.

Her heart started to race and she squirmed under that penetrating stare. “My Lord…?”

"It's not bad, just… impossible," Lord Vladya said in a low voice. "I didn't want to believe it. If I hold on to hope only to be disappointed again, I fear it will be my breaking point. So, I do not expect. I do not hope."

She struggled to keep up with him. "I… I don’t understand.”

"Our kind has two compulsory urges that must be satisfied every once in a while, or we cannot function—"

"Yes, I know. To drink blood and to have s-sex," Aekeira supplied.

Lord Vladya nodded. "Correct. Bloodlust and sexlust. We must indulge occasionally to keep the mind clear and the beast satisfied. Bloodlust never goes dormant, but sexlust can. Do you know when our sexlust instincts go dormant, Aekeira?"

She shook her head.

"When two bonded mates are separated by distance, they don’t feel sexlust until they are reunited." Lord Vladya’s eyes never left hers. "Yes, they still get aroused, they still feel lust, but not in its overpowering state—the kind that drives our beasts restless and insane when one abstains for weeks."

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