Page 406 of Flirting with Darkness

Weightless.

I cling to him tight, my hips meeting each thrust, my nails biting like teeth into the leather that remains on his torso.

Like the leather I used to keep between mine.

Why did I resist this for so long?

“Is this what you feared so many years, Liesl?” he asks, continuing to punish my sex. One hard collision after another and another until that ravenous desire turns into something more. Something with purpose, a destination.

My head falls back against the tree, eyes falling shut.

“No,” he commands and fire singes my wrists and ankles as the king pulls my limbs outward with ropes made of invisible flames. Farther and farther until I’m spread-eagle against the tree, his hips and magic the only things holding me in place.

Another band of flames wraps around my neck, lifting my head away from the tree. “Open your eyes, little bird. Watch me defile you like the demon you think I am. Watch me take my pleasure from your body.”

With effort, I open my eyes and stare at the glorious king fucking me.

Dark hair falls across his face as his pace quickens, and as I’m burning alive, he wraps his hand around my throat.

I moan. The fire lapping at my body, his cock pounding within me, and the pressure around my throat is too much for anything less.

And that steady, faster rhythm quickens my heart.

The tides of our act retreat from the shore, pulling so far back that when they come crashing in, I’m certain we’ll both drown.

The fae king calls down the biggest plume of flames yet, dousing me in heat and lust and pain, and fucks me until I’m screaming into the night.

Sluaghandbánánachbe damned.

* * *

My mind is quiet, grounded in only the present. I’m curled on the soft thick moss of the forest floor in the crook of a fae king’s shoulder. The scent of masculine sweat and leather wafts to me on the cool breeze.

Both of us lie nude, basking as the night seems to dance before our eyes.

Silver and purple clouds roll in the sky, firebugs glimmer, and even the darkness seems more vibrant as I stare at it from the cover of the nameless king’s ward.

He traces a pattern on my shoulder, and I wish for this moment to last forever. To stay here caught in whatever magic or spell this is.

If this is Hell, if a demon has deceived me, then so be it.

Hand on his chest, I catalog every movement that makes his heart quicken. The slightest rub of my leg against his, a contented sigh, even the act of propping on my elbow to look him in the eye stirs his heart.

I stare at him openly, and he lets me, keeping his eyes on the stars above.

The smooth ageless skin, the carved hollows beneath his cheekbones. The broadness of his chest.

All of it is perfectly suited to my taste. My definition of male beauty.

A small smile plays at the corners of his lips.

“As much as I’d like to lie in the Kingswood with you in perpetuity, little bird, we must keep going,” he whispers.

His quiet threat slashes the spell clean through, as if it had never been.

I stiffen on his shoulder, and though I hoped it wouldn’t, I knew this was coming.

A single hateful rut wouldn’t be enough to change his mind. He still intends to march me to my death. A death I deserve. I cannot deny that now.

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