Page 60 of The Sacrifice

“I have something else,” he alerts me and kisses my knuckles one at a time, those flawless cupid’s bow lips tender as petals.

My heart scales my throat while he fishes for something under his tunic, and once he retrieves the item, he places it in my swollen palm. Awed by the gilded feather, glittering like gold even in the rot of the Waste, I part my lips and stroke one ruined finger along the stem. It’s harder than I believed it would be, more metallic in nature despite its obvious organic energy. It’s otherworldly, a feather of the cosmos as if it was created from the teardrops of a star. “Is this...?” I breathe the silent question.

Kyan nods. “It’s one of the feathers from my old wings...before I was fallen and cursed. Angel feathers hold healing properties. If you accept, all I need do is cut a line in your skin, and it will do the rest.” He nods and leans in to kiss me on my brow.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Do you accept?” He pauses, lowering his forehead onto mine, those eyes burning like blue orbs.

Regardless of the tension, the misplaced reverence of the moment, we don’t have time to waste. Wherever this Hag’s hollow is, I must find it. I must find Drago and somehow, we’ll take down this wizened crone together. With my pulse accelerating into overdrive, I shove all other thoughts down to a bottomless pit, refusing to entertain any possibility that he’s beyond saving. Not my dragon. Not Thiago.

“I accept, just fucking do it, Kyan!” I cry and thrust my palm toward him.

He doesn’t hesitate. Feather in hand, he drags the edge along the inside of my palm, slicing a clean line. I smile at the sting, appreciative of my sense of touch but narrow my brows when I catch a dark splotch on the opposite side of the feather. Before I can raise a question, the feather crumbles into sparkling scintillas—embers that wink and dance while latching onto my blood and sinking into my bloodstream.

Stars burst behind my eyes. A vibrating wave shakes me to my core, and I jolt, shuddering as heat explores every nook and cranny of my body. It all happens within moments. But by the time I glance down, no swelling engulfs my hands. No fractures, my hands are whole again.

I open my mouth to thank Kyan but don’t get the chance. Not when Merikh lunges for him, crashes into the fallen angel, and wraps strong hands around Kyan’s throat while growling, “What the fuck have you done?!”

44

This is the torture I will not survive.

DRAGO

I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. Well...perhaps Kronos.

The Hag’s brand of torture will ultimately be beyond my limits. I grit my teeth and bite the leather she shoves in my mouth.

“Don’t want to break any pretty dragon teeth yet,” she tells me and drags her claw in a precursory taunt along my naked chest. A straight line down my navel, and a growl works itself into my throat as she doesn’t stop. No, those claws toy with the dark nest of curls before they prowl along the thick vein of my flaccid cock. “We will be getting to know each other very well tonight, Drago.”

I’d rather plunge headfirst into the Veil, which she damn well knows, but it doesn’t matter. She will take every drop of blood she can from me. Once she drains me of my essence, once she feasts upon my heart, Kronos will have the power to devour my soul. Still, the fire in my belly howls when she cuts me with her claws. My nostrils flare from the superficial marks she slashes all over my body as if she’s decorating. Nor does she spare my member. This is the simple part.

Everything in me wants to flex my muscles and wrestle with the shackles around my throat, wrists, and ankles. But doing so would also cause the stakes to tear through my feet and hands. Ice-dragon bone spikes—clever crone. Wonder how long she was hoarding them, preparing for this day.

Her next cuts are deeper, but she moves slow enough for me to heal, so she may prolong the torture. The salt of my sweat fuses with the blood, and my breath labors, growing heavier, but I’m not heaving yet. No, instead, I close my eyes and try to sink deep into my mind as Mayce has attempted to teach me. When my physical prowess is far more powerful than my psychological one, it’s more of a challenge. But soon, my breath grows calmer, more even. My body forgets the pain as I imagine a mosaic of scars and ink upon lace-white skin.

I fade.

Into the fantasy of her laughing and escaping through a field of honey flowers from my lost homeland. Dragons soar throughout the sky above our heads, but the flower stalks are high and thick enough to hide her. I follow her scent, that dark floral musk of a winter rose that pushes its thorns through ice—a flawless contrast to the honey flowers.

She giggles the moment I catch her waist, her hair a fall of silver in the sunlight. Already, a sheen of sweat has the shift sticking to her skin and exposing those pretty pink nipples, peaked and yearning for my tongue and teeth. My cock throbs while more scales brawl to the surface of my skin, preparing for my half-dragon form. With my blood sizzling, I haul her back to my chest, thrilling in her squeal right before I hook my hand beneath her jaw, capturing all of it, holding her in place.

“Naughty pet,” I growl in her ear, fire simmering in my belly from the hairs prickling on her skin. She lets out a delicious little whimper when I thrust the ends of her shift up, cup her bottom that pushes against my palm. Sweet girl. At first, I knead the flesh, the fairest color of ghost dragons, and the skin softer than the blossoms around us. I can’t wait to turn it pink as poppies.

She shrieks when my hand strikes the flesh. Moans when I kneel and bend her over my knee, loving how her hair tumbles over her head and onto the honey flowers. Once she has the audacity to wriggle that adorable, ample ass, I strike her again. Harder. With my bulge growing thicker by the second and my desire to show her who controls her, who owns her, and will always protect her, I punish my pet. I love how her mewls grow quieter as the pain hits its mark deeper inside her. Love how her body trembles beneath me while all of her grows warmer.

She’s so fucking sensitive, responsive—our perfect touch-starved, pain-loving pet. And not from some sick sense of self-shame. Despite all her coy blushes and how much she reveres our forms, my little Tessie doesn’t have a shameful cell in her body. As proud of her scars and marks that she earned. She lives for any touch. She loves the pain as much as she adores the pleasure.

I massage the skin that grows pinker. For a few moments, she’s still, but when my next blow comes, she rocks her hips into my hand. She needs me, my domination, my command, my ruling over her. All her life, she’s only ever wanted someone to possess her, to care for her, to love her. And for the first time in my ten thousand years, I may admit to the last one. Something I believed I would only feel with Mayce.

She shivers. My pulse accelerates. My blood grows hotter. Embers surge from my pores. I’m as much a slave to her as she is to me. I crave every impulse, every whimper, every pleading word upon her lips. When at last, her bottom is the color of a deep, rosy poppy, I lean down and set my mouth upon her cheeks. Her head jerks up as she gasps, but I fist her hair and force her back down as I lick at her heated skin and taste the swollen flesh. Cocks throbbing so hard and high, I know they prod her, I sink my tongue between her cheeks until I circle her puckered ring. Tremors rupture in waves through her, and I growl a commending, “Good pet,” because she’s done her very best not to writhe.

I tiptoe my fingers lower, traveling them upon her thighs, already chuckling at the wetness coating her skin. There are her pretty pubic lips, those folds wet and wanton with her slit soaked and creaming itself. Hot as a flame to my touch. A smirk crooks the corner of my mouth when that dirty, wet slit sucks my finger in a drippy kiss.

Not delaying her desire any longer, I prop her up on my lap, feast on the sight of her tears and flushed cheeks, then tear her shift, and peel it off her little body. Preparing herself, she digs her nails into my shoulders as I free my members, grip her hips, and slam her down upon my iron-hard cocks.

Her scream erupts.

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