Page 58 of The Crown of a Fallen Queen
Faint silvery scars fill my vision. She’s covered in them. Even her breasts… Her round, heavy breasts, with the most artful peaks, deep brown and aroused, better than the most sinful of fantasies.
Peppered in freckles.
Layered with agony.
Most of the scars are faint, but a mangled, horrific mess stands right over her heart. As though some evil creature has tried to dig it out of her chest. I graze the battered flesh with trembling fingers. The ridges are sharp, the skin twisted and uneven like a wound torn open again and again.
There’s no poetry in it. No glory. Just violence.
“Who did this to you?” I choke.
“Who do you think?”
The edge of reproach in her voice is unmistakable, and I shake all over.
The thought that my mother is somehow responsible for this carnage breaks my fucking heart. I’ve always known she wasn’t perfect. I’ve seen how she rules. Her carelessness, her cunning, always chasing power no matter the cost—but this? What she did to Devi… I can’t fathom how that beautiful woman survived, her body torn to shreds a few times over.
I wasn’t born yet when Devi fell. Only heard the twisted stories whispered behind closed doors that painted her as the villain. I know better now. My mother might’ve succeeded inrising to power, but not without breaking something sacred along the way.
Devi’s eyes widen, and she holds me down to the bed, her palms flat against my chest. I’m sure she sees it all on my face. The anguish. The hurt. The fuckingshameof sharing blood and occasional pleasantries with the monster who did this to her. For one quiet second, we just look at each other. No words. Just that raw, unbearable truth.
“Sara told me about your proclivity for beautiful women.” She tugs on my lyranthium pendant, hard, forcing me to lift my head and holding me there, inches from her lips. “Everyone expects you to chase me, then move on to greener pastures, but there are no greener pastures where I’m concerned. Are you sure you want to risk it?”
Her nails gauge the flesh over my heart, leaving scratches in their wake.
“I’m a bastard belonging to two kingdoms and yet none, stuck with a name that belongs to neither my mother nor my father. I only became what everyone thought I would be—nothing more than a distraction. I’m not the kind of man women bring home to their parents. I’m the lover they whisper about, the one they take for a night of sin before returning to their safe little worlds. A fleeting indulgence. But I wantmore. I want to matter. To the world. Toyou.”
Her mouth parts on a silent gasp. She hooks her small finger around the chain, pulling my pendant into view. “What is this for?”
“It keeps me grounded. My storm magic is stronger without it, but you might get burned.”
With a naughty grin, she breaks the chain and throws the pendant to the ground. “Let’s test that theory.”
Without warning, she bends down and kisses away the anguish, the guilt, the pain gushing out of me—erasing it,replacing it with hunger. There’s a wild glint in her eyes, like sex is her way of shattering that moment. Like this is the only kind of closeness she knows how to survive.
My body betrays me, the weight of my thoughts vanishing, consumed by a fiery, unrelenting need. The grief fades into something far more urgent, far more primal. Every inch of meachesfor her.
I’d theorized that, as our engagement became public, we might share a bed. That I’d have to brush against her body or nudge her cold feet.
But I never anticipated the sight of her moving above me, rubbing herself against my very sensitive, extremely aroused cock. A full-bodied shiver quakes her body, our sex now pressed flushed, separated only by our clothes.
“Have you already forgotten about the rules?” she scolds with a wicked roll of her hips, making me hiss.
I stroke the path between her breasts up and down. “We said no sex. Not no erection. I can’t help that part. And not touching you right now wouldn’t be very believable.” I squeeze her left breast, the glorious feel of it sending a white-hot jolt through my cock. “Why did you insist on this stupid no-sex rule, again?”
She leans down to stare into my eyes. “We both agreed.”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t swear to that.”
“Mm— Still no.”
I grip her hips, holding her still for a moment. “Then marry me tonight.”
She snags my wrists and pulls them above my head. “Shut up, pretty boy, and don’t move.”
I’m used to women chasingme, hungry for an unforgettable night.
Devi has perfect control. She’s holding me by my literal balls, and I can’t do anything but pray she’s feelingsomething, because I sure as hell won’t be the one to turn her down. Shecaresses my cock over my clothes with lethal accuracy, dragging her nails from root to tip, then rubbing down the length of it.
