Page 28 of King of Flesh and Bone

“If it’s so bad, how about you take me outside for a walk?”

“No.” A kiss against my temple. “But… I’m ever so tempted to send Orlaigh for fresh flowers whenever you please me.”

My skin heated beneath my collar, driving out his soothing chill until it itched again. “I don’t want damn flowers.”

Fuck the violets on John’s grave, too! I wanted to get out of here, drag three millstones onto my husband’s grave, then run from Enosh until my skin wrinkled and my hair grayed.

But the god only sighed, as if my mortal moods bored him. “Careful with that mouth of yours or I’ll find something to stuff it.”

As if to make a point, I watched my hand lift to knead over the significant bulge behind his leather breeches.Only trickery.“If the idea of my escape vexes you so, then why won’t you rot my husband’s bones like I asked?”

“You want me to leave my court—after two hundred years, no less—to rot the body of a wife-beating man?”

I’d rather be beaten than collared and raped. “I won’t expect a god who abandoned his purpose to understand the meaning of duty.”

“Duty?”

“Of a wife.”

“Something you seem to take very seriously.” His gaze intensified, eyes slipping to my lips for a second. “How come?”

“I gave my vows.”

“Vows,” he repeated slowly, as if tasting the word. “No mortal will find rest within my court, little one.”

“I’m not asking you to rest his bones at the Pale Court. You’ll just turn him into a cup and make me drink from it.”

“There’s an idea that makes this worthwhile.” Of course, he chuckled, ever so amused. “Now, lift your skirts and show me how wet you are.”

Only trickery.

Regardless of how Enosh stirred my flesh, I didn’t truly lust for the god. As long as I remembered it, recited it like a prayer, then my body wouldn’t betray me again.

I shook my head, ignoring the heat climbing my inner thighs. “I won’t.”

“Very well. Touch me, then.”

That… was unexpected.

He leaned back and stared at me, amusement sitting in the depths of his turbulent gray eyes. One corner of his lips carried a slight uptick. It hiked into a lopsided smirk as I reached my damned hands for his chest.

Leisurely, I palmed the vast plains of hard muscle before I let my fingertips curve down along the dips and valleys of his abdomen. A bastard like him shouldn’t be this perfectly built. I balled the hem of his shirt in my fists and pulled it over his head, his scent wafting off him like flames licking the wet chill of a winter night.

His chest rose and fell easily with each breath, the shoulders above wide, with strong muscles tying into the trunk of a broad neck. He was so beautifully sculpted, every inch shaped to divine perfection that hid the depravity in his heart. Enosh was so terribly cold, so terribly cruel, just… so terrible with how he folded his arms behind his head.

“Yes, just like that,” he praised, striking a long-neglected chord deep within me until it hummed. “Touch me, my little one.”

The soft lilt coming from his lips only deepened my utter humiliation, and how I cupped his cheeks with a lover’s touch. I stroked the sharp line of his jaw, dug my fingers into his long, black strands, and thumbed his bottom lip in nothing short of worship.

Only trickery.

My folds didn’t truly grow wet when I reached his breeches, frantically undoing the laces to release his hard flesh.

My insides didn’t truly heat when I brushed my skirts aside and mounted him, knees braced against the bone of his throne.

And my body didn’t truly tremble when I reached between us, lining his crown up with my sex before I impaled myself on his thick—

“Oh my god!”

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