Page 52 of The Cruel Heir
I took a slow step forward, standing beside the bed, the scent of her wrapping around me like a vice. Warm, soft, untouched by the chaos I had left in my wake. The hunger twisted inside me, a dark, unrelenting ache. I clenched my jaw, shoving my hands into my pockets, before I did something reckless.
I shouldn’t. Not again, but my cock was rock hard, and I just needed to have her. I removed my clothes as silently as I could, and slipped into bed beside her. She tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable again. All while I lay there, breathing in her luscious scent.
Fifteen agonizing minutes later, where I almost came over her face twice, she finally settled down. I should just go to sleep. Wasn’t it wrong of me to want her while she was sleeping? But if it wasn’t, why was she laid out like a beautiful sinner, waiting to be devoured by her devil? A temptation.
My little hummingbird. Soon she wouldn’t even be that. Soon, she would have the title of my wife.
So, I told myself, I would just take a taste, and then I would go back to bed. I slid my hand up her thigh and pulled her body closer to mine, reveling in the fact she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
I rubbed her nub slowly, until she got wet. Her filthy moans in her sleep drove my cock insane, and the blood had long rushed out of my head.
Before long, I slowly slid her onto my cock until she was impaled, and no longer moving. I kept up the pace of flicking her clit. I had just enough room on my cock to rub it out inside of her.
Her walls contracted, and I was embarrassed to realize how close to coming I was, after all the bloodshed tonight. I moved my hand faster, biting my lip so I wouldn’t make a noise, as I jerked messily inside of her.
Her legs widened as she moaned deeply, pulsating on my cock. I groaned and came right after my seductress, and worked my cock up again.
After all, she couldn’t sleep on it if it was soft, right? I curled my arms around my little hummingbird, who was soon to be my wife, with a small smile. Life wouldn’t be so bad with her by my side.
For once, I wanted that perfect future with Mrs. Zara Kingsley.
ZARA
Five Weeks later
Ache isthe first thing I register, sweet-sting, everywhere he marked me. It’d been like this for weeks. An insatiable need between us. A fire I didn’t want to put out. The only good thing I had going for me.
My hand spread across my belly. The second only good thing I had going for me. I wasn’t sure how my mother would feel if she could see me now.
Pregnant.
No doubt, no maybe. The ultrasounds and tests etched the truth in grayscale, eight millimeters of future, pulsing like a verdict. The technician congratulated us, and Sterling met my gaze over the monitor, smiling the way conquerors smile at new land.
I wasn’t quite sure if I was ready to be a mother. What did someone as young as me know about parenting? Especially since I had one dead, whom I couldn’t remember, and one alive, who was striving to win the worst parent award.
I stared out the windows on my side. Sterling’s breath warmed the notch at my spine, his arm lying heavy across my waist, palm entwined with mine over barely swollen skin, as though he could already feel royalty kicking back.
I stared at the window’s reflection, and let memory storm.
One weekafter the night he cornered me in the laundry room, Sterling found me again.
No chloroform haze, no rough scramble. He came on silent feet, linen whispering as he lifted the sheet. Moonlight carved him in silver. Scars and ink, menace dressed as desire.
“Open for me, hummingbird,” he’d murmured, voice all smoke and hunger. “Let me see you choose it.”
I should have shut, locked, welded. Instead my knees drifted apart, of their own treacherous will. His palm soothed bruises he’d painted earlier, and shame twisted into a heat too bright to bear. He slid inside, slow, deliberate, until burn became fullness, and fullness became need. When release snapped my spine, I hated the gasp that broke from me, almost as much as I hated the way he whispered ‘mine’ like a prayer.
That night seededwhat beats beneath my ribs now, proof that choice can hurt more than force.
Back in the present, Sterling stirred, fingers flexing against my abdomen. Half-sleep fell from him in folds, and he lifted his head, eyes dark and smug.
“Still sore?” he asked, voice gravel-rough with morning.
“Sore isn’t the word.” It’s not quite reproach, not quite confession.
He chuckled into my hair. “That’s because you asked for it.”
“Asked,” I echoed, tasting rust.
