Page 13 of Trial of Three
Something infinitesimal shifts in his face, all the warning I have before Coal jerks free of my hold. Gripping my hips with steel hands, he launches me backward.
My breath catches as my feet leave the ground, my body flying through the air. A moment later, the backs of my thighs strike Coal’s bed, my upper body falling atop the mattress. I struggle to push myself upright, but Coal pounces before I can move.
My heart gallops, my mouth drying as Coal’s powerful legs wrap around mine like grapevines. Forearms braced against the mattress, the warrior looms over me, the thick muscles along his arms coiled with tension, the air between us hot from fury and sweat. “You don’t want the true me,” he growls, his canines flashing in the starlight. “You’d little like it. If you even survived it.”
Panic bubbles inside me even as... as a jolt of absurd need flashes through my core. I draw a shuddering breath, anchoring myself to reality.
“I suggest you stop prying, mortal.” Coal’s voice is a soft rumble, his body, his essence, filling the entire chamber. Taking all of the room’s air for itself. As if the male I thought I knew was but a mask concealing a power too grand to contend with. “You know nothing of what lurks in my thoughts. Of what my instincts will do to you if I let them loose.” Coal pauses, arching his hips such that the grapevine hold his legs have on mine extends me painfully. His hardness presses down into my mound. “Believe me when I say it will be nothing like your games with Shade.”
I shudder, my terror slamming against an equal force of sudden, erratic desire, the resulting explosion leaving me dazed. Wrong. Everything about this is wrong. Especially the flames consuming my body, the wetness all but streaming down my thighs.
This isn’t what I came here for. Isn’t something I should like. Isn’tright.
“I will count to three.” Coal swallows, his arms now trembling with the effort of holding rock-still above me. “And by the time I’m done, you are going to be out of this room. If you are not... then I imagine you will be a great deal more sore in the morning. Because I am a breath away from showing you exactly what happens when my control falters. And we both know that is not what you want.”
Stars. WhatdoI want? I can’t think. Can barely breathe. I should get out of this room, run as fast as I can. Never look back. My body pulses, the throbbing in my chest sliding lower with each dizzying breath. My thighs quiver. My body defying my mind, as I defy Coal’s words.
“One,” Coal says.
I draw a breath, my gaze skittering across him. Large and powerful and dark. Raw.
“In case you’ve not worked it out, my room is warded to contain sound. No one will hear your screams.” Coal’s words are cold and hard.
My sex aches. My mind searches for escape. I brace my hands on the bed—the path to the door is wide open to me. Not for long, but for now.
Coal follows my gaze, nodding approvingly.Yes,his flashing eyes tell me.Yes, go. Leave. RUN.“Two.”
9
Coal
“Two,” Coal said, his body trembling. Keeping himself up on his forearms, he glared at the mortal trapped beneath him. The part of him that could still think begged her to run. The rest of him stared in breath-halting disbelief at the female he’d wanted since they first shared a saddle, now lying splayed open upon his bed.
Lera was on her back, the thin blue silk of her nightgown clinging to her round breasts, smooth abdomen, and tight, perfectly curved hips. Worse still, with Coal’s legs pinning hers in a grapevine vice, the fabric of Lera’s shift had ridden up her thighs. Up her hips. Wisps of the female’s hair—coiled tufts the same fiery brown color as their counterparts on her head—peeked from beneath the dislodged hem. Between the lantern, the stars, and his own immortal sight, Coal could see beads of moisture hanging on those tufts, like droplets on the side of a sweating glass of wine.
Stars.
Coal shuddered, the scent of Lera’s arousal waking his senses. A fanciful, misguided arousal that somehow failed to understand the monster only inches away from it. Coal’s pulse thumped against his ribs, an echo to the one stretching his balls.
Lera squirmed beneath him. Too small, too mortal, too damn breakable for what Coal’s cock screamed to do.
He needed for Lera to leave. No, not just leave.Run. To never, ever return to his bedchamber, especially not alone and clad in little more than feisty darkness. Coal smelled it on her, the spice of fight and grit that spiked her lilac scent and made his head swim with need. Made his cock harden so fiercely that pain shot from it through his thighs.
Lera’s liquid brown gaze darted toward the door as she finally,finallyunderstood the need for escape. It’d certainly taken her long enough. Stars, one would think that after what he’d done to the female that morning, she’d be giving him a wide berth for a year.
Plainly, Lera was no normal being.
Coal nodded, the final count harsh on his lips. “Three.”
Lera shoved Coal away. His body screamed its protest as he yielded, his muscles hating to release their prey but—thank the stars—obeying. For a moment, all Coal could do was kneel on the bed and focus on his breath, on keeping himself from grabbing Lera’s hair and dragging her right back to him. He wanted to yell that she move faster, that his restraint was thinning to nothing, but even that would take too much concentration.
Breathe. He needed to breathe. He—
Lera pounced on him. Shoved Coal onto his back and straddled his chest with her wickedly moist thighs. She pinned his shoulders with her hands, her nails digging into his naked flesh, sending a bolt of pain and desire through him. Igniting his magic like a match thrown into a pile of dry hay.
Coal’s body quivered with panting breaths, his hands digging into the covers as Lera loomed over him, her auburn hair brushing his shoulders. Her eyes aflame.
“Is this the part where I was supposed to run?” she whispered into his ear. “Just so I know.”
