Page 23 of Forgotten Monsters
Cole holds me to him, one hand braced behind my neck. I struggle in his grip, my arms still tied above my head. The chains whine at the stretch, and my muscles scream in pain.
“Cole, I’m going to faint. Can you untie me?”
He doesn’t respond, so stoic and immobile in the embrace that I’m not so much beinghuggedby my husband as I’m beingcrushedby a shredded, defined, and perfectly rock-solid statue of the Fae King.
I’m not sure he heard me at all. “Untie me, maybe? Cole?”
He snaps out of whatever hell his mind was buried in and doubles back toward the tent’s slitted entrance. His arm shoots out, and he half-chokes an underling to death as he pulls him inside the tent. “Dig Trent Darkwood out of the oubliettes and bring him to me.”
9
FRACTURED KING
“Untie me,” I plead. The throb in my arms blurs my vision.
My bound powers still burn my insides, and I’m both hot and cold, suffocating under the thrall of the Fae King—and his stubbornness. An aftertaste of blood and sweat sticks to the air. The light boxes illuminating the tent flicker to an unnatural wind.
“I need a minute.” Cole steals a glance at me and immediately looks away like I’m the sun and he forgot his fucking sunglasses.
“My arms hurt.” I realign myself with the beam, my muscles shaking from the struggle. My toes scramble to find footing, and darkness creeps at the edge of my vision.
He stares at the ceiling. “You’re dead.”
“I’m obviously not.”
The Fae King smudges his thumb in the half-dried blood on my cheek and gazes down at it in wonder.
“What the fuck is an oubliette?” I choke, ready to succumb to the shadows.
“A cold, forgotten dungeon.” Cole’s voice melts into a breathless, intimate drawl. With a trembling hand, he traces the deeper wound he carved on my neck. By the itch, I figure it’s almost completely healed.
I lick my lips. “Why is Trent in a dungeon?”
He slides one hand around my throat, his palm hot and rough. The touch packs an ambivalent punch, and I can see he’s still torn between crushing meto himor straight-up crushingme. “Because you’re dead.”
My gaze flicks to his lips. “I’m obviously not,” I repeat quietly. “I will pass out, though.”
He holds up my weight, his free arm braced below my ass, and relief washes through me. Fae magic presses around us, its pulse palpable inside the tent. The pain wanes to a dull, languid ache, and my body throbs under the King’s call. I long to kneel in front of him more than I need to breathe.
His lids flutter. “Your voice…” He drags his nose along the slope of my neck. “Your scent.” His tongue darts out to sample the trickle of blood. “Your taste…”
“It’s me.”
“It can’t be.” He keeps his eyes screwed shut like he’s afraid to look again and find a flaw in thiscopyof me and plants a bittersweet kiss on my ear.
My stomach flip-flops, my heart drowned by a wave of hurt and anguish. Cole simply looks…fractured. Hollow. Desperate.
“Look at me,” I whisper.
He shakes his head in denial.
A loud exhale rocks my lungs. “I’m still pissed that you made me immortal without my consent. But I missed you, more.”
One hand tangled in my curls, Cole crushes his mouth to mine.
The kiss is savage and vicious. The bitter, earthy taste of mud fills my senses.
For me, it’s meant to erase the time spent apart, the forsaken weeks down under that should have had no consequence, but that will clearly re-write our future. For every fresh scar I can see, a thousand more lurk beneath.
