“There aren’t, but I assure you, I’ll be fine,” he said. “Even if I were susceptible to infections, I would be extremely unlikely to catch one here.”
As I removed the needle from its vial, his cock throbbed again, visibly thickening.
“How am I supposed to pierce you if you’re hard?” I scolded. He was grinning like a cat with a canary in its mouth.
“Maybe you’ll have to be rough,” he said. “Or, you may have to force me to — Ahh,shit.”
Grasping his balls in my hand, I gave them enough of a squeeze that he bared his teeth. He snapped them as his arms flexed, his body coiling as his muscles went rigid.
“You’re fucking cruel, my lady. Absolutely goddamn merciless,” he growled, gritting his teeth as I sweetly smiled.
“It’s for your own good,” I said. It certainly didn’t calm his erection as much as it should have, but it did soften him slightly. The moment I took his length in my hand, it twitched again, no less eager to rise to the occasion than before.
With a heavy, mockingly exasperated sigh, I said, “I suppose I’ll have to be rough with you then.”
He groaned, hips thrusting sporadically into my hand. Smacking his thigh again, I told him to keep still as I carefully lined up where to push the needle through. Needles didn’t frighten me, but the thought of shoving this one through such a sensitive spot made me slightly queasy.
But Callum was desperate for it. He was so tense he was shaking, his entire body locked with unbearable excitement.
As I lined up the needle, I lifted my gaze to meet his eyes. “Are you sure, Callum?”
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life, Everly.”
The needle went in, but it wasn’t pain that contorted his face. It was pure bliss, melting over him as his eyes fluttered closed and his chest expanded with a massive breath. My hands were shaking as I fit the jewelry, a little blood marring the wound. But he didn’t bleed for long, and opened his eyes to stare as I secured the jewelry in place.
“God, Callum,really?” I laughed as he throbbed in my hand again, having gone from semi-soft to rigidly hard in a matter of seconds.
“How can I help it with your hands all over me?”
Lowering my head, I kissed the tip of his cock, lingering with my lips against him for just a moment. “It looks so sexy on you,” I said, and his eyes blazed with a fire that threatened to consume me. “I can’t wait to feel it inside me.”
He moved rapidly, faster than my eyes could see. One moment, he was lounging against the stone, devouring me with his eyes — the next moment, he’d seized me, taken me into the water, and held me tight as he claimed my mouth with his.
“If it were up to me, we would never leave this place.” He left the words in kisses across my skin, trailing up my neck. “I would keep you here forever. A treasure all to myself. My holy, captive goddess. I would let humanity die, I would watch the world burn, if only to keep you safe. If only to shelter you. Guard you. But who am I to stand in your way?” The words were so full of pain my heart nearly broke. “Who am I to stifle your power? I am your eternal servant. I would deny you nothing. Not even danger. Not even…”
“Not even death,” I whispered. My hands clasped his face, tracing the contours of his ears and the hard line of his jaw before I kissed him. For a moment, I had no idea how our mouths could part. I needed him to breathe, tolive.
And for a moment, just the briefest moment, I wanted to beg him to do it. Keep me here forever. Hold me captive, give me no choice but to hide myself away and never return to the human world again. We could stay here, where it was safe, sheltered within our own little world.
But for how long would this world remain our own? If a God rose to power, what was to stop It from pursuing more and more? One world would never be enough. When the balance of our entire dimension was at risk, there was nowhere we could hide.
We could only face It. We could only fight.
It ached to pull away from him, even a little, but I forced myself to do it so I could look into those black eyes. The void stared back, and it was full of longing, full of love. But there was fear too, lurking in the depths of that endless abyss. Fear that wanted to drag me in and drown me, if only it meant he could keep me.
I wanted to let him. I wanted to drown in his darkness forever.
But I couldn’t. God, I couldn’t.
“Mark me,” I said. He searched my eyes, lips parted slightly in disbelief. “I mean it. I want you to. I want to wear your metal, just like you’re wearing mine.”
His fingers traced over my stomach, over the scars he’d carved there. In blood and pain, we’d been bound together; in necessity, in fear. But I wanted a mark from him given purely in love, in devotion, in joy.
“Where do you want it?”
My stomach flipped over, tangled up like a writhing snake. I had no doubt of what I wanted. Drawing myself closer to him again, I spread my legs around his hips, straddling him in the water.
“Exactly where I marked you,” I said. The smile that spread over his face was delightfully sadistic, giddy with disbelief.