I shouldn’t have provoked him, but I couldn’t help myself. “What are you going to do?”
With his ravaged sinew, he looked so imposing, even when standing half-naked in a field of buttercups. “I’m going to splay you open and see just how much your body squeezes me when I make you scream. Normally, I’m not one for such things. But Eros’ and Vin’s accounts make it sound so appealing.”
For a second, all ability to breathe left me. This male had the potential to end me. Knowing him, he’d make me enjoy every second of it.
Tearing through the garden and past the chapel, I didn’t stop until I hit the abbey’s front gate. Practically slamming into the thick iron bars, I fisted them, rattling the gate on its hinges. It didn’t give. Obviously, it would have…if I really wanted it to.
I turned, and before I could pick a different direction to take the hunt, my predator caught me on the next breath. This time, he really caught me. His hands gripped the bars over my head, hips canting forward to cage me against the gate.
I struggled against his lean physique, seething, biting, and fighting just enough to make him break a sweat. I unleashed the storm that had been building in my blood.
“Let me go!” As the command left my body, firm and menacing, my hips rose to meet my mate’s, sending a different message.
He buried his nose in the tangle of my hair, lips brushing my ear. My breath hitched, and my thighs shook.
“If you didn’t want this, we’d be awake and back in my den,” he said with a grin in his voice. “That or you’d be tearing into my chest cavity as you did with Vincent when he returned from Fairie.”
The mention of Vincent made my throat twist like a wrung rag. “You know about the deal I made with Feral. If he brings me my brother’s heart—”
Sterling pulled away just enough to fix me with a cold, serious stare. “And if he doesn’t? What do you think the odds of your father leaving anything but scraps of your brother are?”
“I–I don’t know. I can’t think about this right now.” My eyes filled with tears. “Don’t make me choose.”
He softened at the sight of my tears. “I’m not. I will never make you choose. None of us can. What I said earlier about we princes having you tamed… It’s not true. You are our wild untamable mate. Only you can decide when the birth control implant comes out. Only you decide who will sire your heir.” He brought his forehead to rest against mine, and he closed his eyes, eyelashes tickling my cheekbones. “No matter what you choose, we will stand by you. You are our queen. You are in control, even if my brothers’ favorite game to play with you is to pretend that you’re not.”
Transferring my wrists to one hand, he slipped his free one down the new gaping neckline he’d made of my clothes until his fingers parted me. “More and more, I’m starting to understand the appeal of such games.”
With the angle of his hand, the top of his palm ground my clit with just enough pressure to reduce my limbs to soup. Even in his monster state, Sterling’s touch remained perfectly calibrated, tender and firm.
“For so long, we had so little power in our own coven. We were made to submit to our king. How cathartic it is to have a beautiful creature with the same chaotic power flowing through her veins, writhing beneath us.” He sunk two fingers inside me at a pace meant to drive me crazy.“Beggingfor more.”
“Fu–uck.”
“If the next thing to come out of that gorgeous mouth is anything but a moan, I’ll stop.” He paused, letting his offer sink in. When I said nothing, he curled his fingers to hit a spot that had me seeing stars. My spine arched off the gate’s bars. I bared down on his fingers to drive them deeper, wiggling my hips. Then it rolled from me.
An enthusiastic moan.
His smug smile filled my vision. “Hmm. That’s what I thought.”
Easing back, his gaze roved down to where my hips rocked, greedy for more of the sweet friction his body offered. He was so tender with the way he stroked my insides, it was almost cruel. His fingers painted long strokes over my juncture, slipping inside and out but never going as deep as I needed him.
I fought against him again but not to get away. I needed more. The rain didn’t let up, plastering his silver hair with thick droplets of water streaking tantalizing paths down his chest and drum-tight abdominal muscles.
The occasional monk walked past, none the wiser to the way their fellow brother had me obscenely splayed against their front gate.
“You’re sopping in front of all these men of God. What a sinful child you are.” With a shake of his head, his guttural chuckle tickled my face. He pulled out of me and held his fingers up for me to see the way they glistened as he rubbed them together. Before the rain could wash my arousal away, he stroked my bottom lip, covering it in my juices. “Taste the mess you’re making of yourself.”
I did as he said, only instead of licking my lips, I caught his finger between my teeth and hollowed my cheeks, sucking him in. His eyes went wide as I slurped and sucked on his digit, pretending it was a different part of him inside my mouth. When I swirled my tongue around him, his brows shot up, and his eyes finally bled that telltale hue of red.
“You’re a wicked thing, aren’t you?”
To answer, I bit him. Hard. He snapped his hand from me, expelling a hissing growl. Fisting my hair, he wrenched my head back and stretched my throat taut. “Need I remind you that you, my dear, are mortal? It’s straight to Hell for you one day unless you absolve yourself of your sins.” The glint in his eyes made my heart dance.
“Hell? Oh goody,” I said with a snide laugh and threw him a bratty wink. “Always wanted to go there. See if it’s worth the hype.”
Pressing in, his darkly intoxicating presence washed over me as visceral as the storm that came down over us. He stroked my jaw, fingers sliding through my drenched hair. “You’re not going anywhere that we can’t follow. So repeat after me, Miss Baxter. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
I cracked a smirk, licking his blood from my lips. I liked the direction this game had taken. “Bless me, Daddy, I’ve been a naughty girl.”