Page 53 of A Game of Queens
Something sharp, deadly, and beautiful.
A soft, pearly glow spills across the stone, illuminating the carvings on the altar. Intricate vines with delicate leaves and petals. So well done they look real.
Theyarereal. The light grows, illuminating golden vines and roots that shoot out of the stone, curling around me. Sprinkled petals gleam like faceted rubies and luminous burning embers.
He thrusts deep again, making my head snap back enough to see golden vines arch overhead into a tree. Petals float gently back and forth like falling leaves. Littering the top of the altar. Carpeting the dais in glowing red petals that smell like honeyed, forbidden fruit. Cups of spiced rum, laced with blood.
The thought ripples through the fuzzy haze in my mind.Blood.I want to taste him on my tongue again. A knife of hunger twists through my stomach, but more, I want to feel his teeth in me. I want to know what it feels like for him to feed on me.
“You think I’m not feeding on you now?” He rasps out. “I’m feasting on your every sensation. Every drop of desire coating my cock. Every cry and moan and plea. But if my queen wishes to feel my teeth…”
Jamming deep, he curls over me, his breath a hot pant on my skin. He licks from my shoulder to my neck in a long, hot swirl. Quivering, I imagine him settling in between my thighs. Licking until I can’t stop coming.
“Come to me again, and I’ll feast until you pass out with pleasure.”
“How?” I wail, my voice breaking. “How do I come back? I didn’t come here on purpose.”
“The power is yours.”
He said it before, but I still have no idea what I did to find the obsidian tunnel in the first place. It’s familiar, yes—but I can’t recall doing anything differently before I fell asleep. If it takes a random dream for me to wander here…
I can’t hold back a sob. I’ll never find him again.
He grips my entire throat in his jaws. I can feel the outline of his teeth, sharp indentions pricking my skin. Not fangs like mine, but the jaws of a nightmare creature. With a simple twist of his head, he could rip out my throat and leave me gasping and flopping like a beached fish on his altar. Too much pressurefrom those wicked teeth… And he’ll bite through my spine. Effortlessly.
Controlled violence shimmers through him at the taste of my blood. He heaves against me, a vicious growl rattling from his chest. His claws shriek against the stone, punishing the altar so he doesn’t hurt me. The threat of imminent danger mixes with the deep, hard thrusts and sends me screaming over the edge of a brutal climax. Blazing light flares in a rolling ring of energy from the dais. The altar.
From me.
I can’t focus enough to make sense of what I’m seeing. Hopefully when I wake up, I’ll remember. It’s all I can do to not thrash so much in his jaws that I tear my own throat open. Everything inside me locks down, my pussy clenching his dick in a vise. Fighting through the fierce grip, he roars with release, grinding against me.
My throat in his jaws. My blood on his tongue. His dick so deep I can’t breathe. The icy shot of cum sluices through me, as cold as his blood. I can feel the droplets melting into me, my body absorbing his semen just like I fed on his blood earlier.
Power. So much power. Light spreads from me in an illuminating wave of energy.
For one glorious moment, I can see for miles and miles, an entire landscape unfolding before me. Only instead of unfurling across a table like a map, the layers go down, dropping level by level through time and space. Cold and silent and dark as soon as my light sweeps past. A gray land with people walking slowly in single file, mumbling something I can’t understand. A glittering obsidian palace sends a pang through my heart. It used to be my home, but now it’s dark and silent. A field with a single tree, its branches sweeping out low to the ground. Bare of leaves. Bare of fruit.
Endless gardens of flowers and trees—that are now only barren ground and shriveled trunks. Nothing is growing. Nothing is alive.
But it’s the silence and emptiness making a lump in my throat as the light begins to dim. Even the golden vines release me, withering back down to disappear into the stone.
He rests his chin against my shoulder, still curled around me. Still buried inside me though not as hard. “I sent everyone above to find you.”
I don’t know who or why but the ache of missing them surprises me. My voice trembles. “Everyone?”
He huffs out a sound midway between a laugh and grunt of disgust. “Even Cerberus demanded to join the search, and you know how he is about shirking his duty.”
I didn’t, honestly. “But you can’t leave this place?”
“I’ve searched for you for centuries, love, across every timeline and dimension that Death can access. There’s been no trace of you, but I refused to stop. I’ve drained every resource, every drop of power that remained after your disappearance, but as you see, not much remains without our queen.”
“Me?” The single word comes out as a squeak that deepens to a moan as he pulls out of me.
He picks me up and turns me around, setting me on the stone before him. Bracing his palms on either side of my hips, he leans down, holding my gaze. Long silver hair flows around his shoulders down to his waist, floating like a mermaid’s hair under water.
There’s enough light around us that I can make out more of his features. He looks perfectly normal. Human, almost, though too large. So tall, his shoulders broad and wide. His eyes are too big and so strange. I could have sworn they were black like the obsidian tunnel before, but now they glow a ghostly white.
He’s perfectly sculpted like the marble statue of a god.
