Текст книги "The wolf and the crown of blood"

Автор книги: Elizabeth May

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

31

EVANDER

I TRACK THE Devaliant’s scent across the night sky.

Caelestis’ spires emerge through the mist ahead, all lit up for the festival. Thousands of lanterns float on the breeze as I approach. The drumbeat of music reaches for miles, a grating, relentless beat of the festival’s fertility rites. I’ve never bothered to attend—I prefer to take my pleasure in private—but the Devaliant is missing, and I know exactly who’s responsible for dragging my human to this floating deathtrap of a city.

Amara. That reckless, insufferable—

Another punishing wave of rut-fever whites out my vision. I grit my teeth, getting my wings back under control. My cock is so damn hard it hurts. The start of Aethertide is always the worst time: everything burns too bright, too much. My skin is hot. The urge to hunt, to claim, to mark pounds through my veins as I swoop down to the largest island in the chain.

I land in a crouch on the cobblestones. My magic flexes, seeking her. Demis surround me, their power signatures grating against my heightened senses. One female across the road eyes me with interest, but I bare my teeth in a snarl.

Not what I want.

Not who I want.

I shut my eyes, breathing hard through my nose. Tasting the air. Sorting through the layers of sensation. I block out the spice of ichor wine, the musk of arousal, the stinging bite of magic.

There it is—a ribbon of sweetness curling through the chaos, unmistakable.

Her.

I let that tempting scent guide me through the throng, past the markets, toward the bonfires. I round the corner into a small courtyard and pull up short.

Every predatory instinct suddenly flares to life.

A demigod has the Devaliant backed against a wall. A red haze fills my vision, and suddenly, I’m picturing exactly how it would sound if I snapped his spine with my bare hands and ripped out his heart.

Then I notice the dagger in the Devaliant’s hand.

Remember her training. Let her handle this.

Jaw clenched, I force myself to lean back against a nearby pillar and observe. A veil covers her face, but there’s a lethal intent in every line of her body. The way she shifts her weight. The calculated stillness before she strikes.

She shoves the blade into the demigod’s side.

“Fuck,” I breathe.

If my cock weren’t already hard, the sight of my Devaliant this dangerous would have done it. The graceful pivot of her body—movements that Amara has spent hours teaching her, honing until they’ve become instinct.

The demi staggers, blood staining between his fingers, but my girl’s not done. She angles low to hamstring the bastard.

That’s it. Make him bleed. I want to see him suffer.

I’m so caught up in watching her that I almost miss it—his hand reaching for her veil. The only thing hiding who she is.

I move in a blink, pinning the fucker to the wall by his throat.

He scrabbles at my forearm. “Wait,” he wheezes. “She’s a human—”

I squeeze harder. Something gives beneath my fingers. “That human,” I say through my teeth, “is mine.”

Behind that veil is her face. Her identity. The family name that would get her killed in this city. The decision makes itself, really.

I pull back and punch my hand through his chest.

The Devaliant gasps behind me. But I’m focused on the wet crunch of bone, the sudden give when I shove into his ribs, the way his beating heart constricts against my palm. A rattling whine leaves him as he fights against me. Pointless.

“You shouldn’t have messed with her,” I whisper.

Power floods from me into him, burning everything it touches—heart, lungs, muscles. The demi’s skin splits with glowing cracks, and embers drift from his gaping mouth as he incinerates beneath the heat of my magic. No screams, no whimpers, just him strangling on my flames.

Someone in the crowd lets out a sharp cry, but no one intervenes or comes to his aid. They know what happens when someone fucks with what the Wolf of Asteria has claimed.

This is a lesson.

When I yank my hand out of the demi’s chest, he collapses to ash at my feet. Not even a body. Just a pile of dust.

I pull back my power, forcing down some of the madness. Breathing hard, I turn. The Devaliant is—

Fuck. Me.

I’d been so distracted by her fighting earlier that I didn’t notice the dress. Sweet merciful fuck. The Devaliant is draped in semi-transparent silk that barely qualifies as clothing, held up with nothing more than ribbons and delicate chains. The slit along her thigh is high enough to show off the curve of her ass and inform every male in the vicinity that she’s not wearing anything underneath. When she lifts a hand to straighten her veil, I see her nipples pebbling through the fabric. She’s every depraved fantasy pulled straight from the filthiest corners of my mind.

My control shatters, and I lunge for her like a feral animal.

Her back hits the wall. She gasps as I bury my face against her neck, dragging in her scent—jasmine, arousal, the sharp tang of fear that shouldn’t excite me but does.

“You.” The word comes out in a growl. “What the fuck are you doing here? Do you know how dangerous—how stupid it was to come here? To Caelestis of all places? I almost—”

Burned down half the city looking for you. Tore apart everyone who got in my way.

I cut myself off before the truth can slip free and try to remember how to form coherent thoughts. Don’t lose it. Not here. Not yet.

My glare drops to her body, and that’s when I notice what’s painted all over her. “Why the fuck are you covered in fertility rite symbols?” I snarl.

I hear her sharp breath through the veil. “What?”

“This”—I rub at the paint on her arm for emphasis—“is an invitation to fuck. To be fucked.”

And I want to kill every male who’s seen them.

She blinks. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

Her chest rises and falls, tits straining against the fabric of her ridiculous dress. “Amara painted them on me to blend in. How was I supposed to know what they meant?”

“I’m going to strangle Amara,” I mutter.

“Why do you even care? I thought you weren’t getting attached.”

I’m not going near that. That way lies madness and stupidity and things I can’t afford to examine too closely. Why is she always like this? Why can’t she just—

“Don’t throw my words back at me. Not when I can barely think straight enough to remember whatever bullshit I said.”

“Then what am I supposed to think?” The Devaliant throws up her arms in frustration. “One day, you’re telling me not to catch feelings. The next, you’re burning someone alive because he touched me and losing your mind over some paint.”

“You don’t get it, do you? That spiral on your hip? That means you want to be taken in public. The circuit on your thigh? Means you want multiple partners. That symbol on your back says you prefer submission. The—”

She slaps my hand away. “Enough, I get it.”

“Every demigod in this city is looking at you like you’re wearing a sign that says ‘breed me.’”

“I said I didn’t know. It’s not like you gave me a lecture in Scillarian fuck symbols when I found out about Aethertide just yesterday.”

“Quiet, Devaliant.”

I ghost my knuckles down the delicate notches of her spine. Lingering in the divots above the lush curve of her ass. She shivers as I follow one of the chains down between her breasts, watching gooseflesh rise in the wake of my touch.

“Devla svaust,” I groan. “You have three little glyphs right between your tits that tell every male in Caelestis that you want someone to dominate you.”

“Then stop looking there. My face is up here.”

“Your face is behind a veil, you’re barely dressed, and you’re covered in symbols that are making me insane. Which part should I be looking at?”

She makes an annoyed sound. “Listen. The word Rhosyn—I remembered it from an old book in my father’s study. It mentioned a connection to Caelestis, and—”

I can’t take it anymore. I shove up the veil just enough to bare her throat and sink my teeth into her pulse point to shut her up. Because I don’t care about the book right now. I don’t care about rational thought. I don’t care about trying to justify this absolute mess of an excursion. Not when every inch of paint on her skin is screaming at me to shove her down, take her, make her mine. Kill anyone who even sees her with these symbols boldly declaring how she wants it.

I told her to stop talking.

She tastes like starlight. Like oblivion. Like everything I’ve ever wanted to corrupt. My sanity crumbles, and all I can think about is spreading her open, and licking into her until she screams my name to the sky—

Sharp nails rake down my nape, digging in as she shudders. Her breaths are fast and shallow. In the space between each one, my control unravels a little more.

“Wolf.” She pants as I nibble another mark into her skin. “You need to focus.”

“Oh, I’m focused.” There’s a laugh somewhere in my voice, but it’s a jagged, mirthless thing. “I’m so very, very fucking focused. So focused I can’t see straight.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. You’re thinking, and it’s by far your worst quality.” I push my thigh between hers, biting back a groan when she rocks against me. “I’m not interested in thinking right now. Not when you smell like this. Not when you feel like this.” My lips brush her ear. “The symbol on your thigh says you want to be taken from behind. Would you like that?”

Her breath catches.

I drag the veil over her lips and crush my mouth to hers, swallowing her surprised gasp. The taste of her obliterates thought, narrowing everything down to the press of her body, the addictive sweep of her tongue.

“Is this just rut?” she whispers against my lips. “Would you care if it were Arcadia painted in these symbols?”

Arcadia? I yank back. “Why the fuck would I care about Arcadia right now?”

“Because you’ve had her every Aethertide. That’s what she said, right?”

I set my hand on the wall beside her head. “Would it get you to stop asking stupid questions if I made you come so hard that you forgot how to speak? Is that what I have to do? Should I tell you what every symbol on your body means and how many ways they’re telling me to defile you?”

Her fingers curl into my shirt in response, and the sweet scent of her arousal blooms. Damn me. I take her mouth again, rougher this time, biting down until she lets out a helpless whimper. Her hips grind into mine, chasing friction.

I wrench away with a shuddering breath.

Control. Control. Just a little longer.

“We’re leaving. Now.” My voice comes out low and rough as I straighten her veil. “Because if we don’t take off in the next few minutes, I’m going to eat that pussy in public, and I need to get you somewhere safe. Don’t leave my side.”

She gives a sharp nod. Smart girl.

The Devaliant presses close as we navigate through the crowd. I clutch her hand tightly, terrified of losing her in the sea of bodies. More than a few demis give her appreciative glances as we pass, and I crush her against me to mask her human scent with mine.

“Eyes front, asshole,” I snarl at a leering male.

His gaze darts between my gore-streaked hand and thunderous expression before he blanches.

More irritated hisses follow us through the plaza, but no one’s stupid enough to get in the Wolf’s business over the woman at his side or the demi he just incinerated. Not when he’s clearly in the grip of Aethertide’s madness.

“Next time, just ask me to paint you instead,” I mutter to the Devaliant. “At least then you’d be wearing my marks instead of the fuck-buffet menu Amara smeared all over you. You’d be covered in touch her and die symbols in every language.”

“But you’re single,” she says, because she lives to irritate me at every turn. “Isn’t that why Aethertide affects you like this? That’s what you said yesterday.”

There was peace in my life before she blundered her way into it. I slept. I functioned. I had just enough sanity to get through the day without murdering everyone who glanced at me wrong. And now look at me. I’m a barely functional wreck with a perpetual hard-on and a craving for the very last pussy in two realms that I should want.

I shoot her a glare. “If you don’t stop moving that bratty mouth, I’ll gag it with my dick.”

Amara finds us at the edge of the square, falling into step as I haul the Devaliant toward a deserted alley. And it’s only centuries of iron discipline that keep me from shaking the ever-loving shit out of her.

“You,” I snap, jabbing a finger in Amara’s direction. “When my higher brain functions crawl out of whatever rut-induced hellscape they’ve fucked off to? Oh, you and I are gonna have words.”

“Listen,” she starts, hands raised. “She said she wanted to help about Rhosyn.”

I bare my teeth, a snarl building in my chest. “You painted what’s mine in sex instructions for other gods to see.”

Her eyebrows shoot up at the words what’s mine, and if I were even slightly more sane, I’d be backtracking. I’d be making denials. I wouldn’t be saying stupid things. But the fever is pounding through my head, insisting those symbols are for me, and everyone who’s seen them needs to have their eyes removed.

“She needed to look like everyone else,” Amara insists, because she clearly has a death wish. “I gave her the most common ones.”

“She could have been discovered. She could have died. So shut up while I’m still letting you breathe.”

Amara’s jaw tightens, but she’s smart enough not to push. She knows exactly how close to feral I am right now.

She turns to the Devaliant instead. “Those demis didn’t know anything useful about your sister, so I’ll go to Hellevig myself and find out what’s happening. I’ll come back the morning after Aethertide passes. I can take you to my place in the meantime until the Wolf’s… situation stabilizes.”

And it’s exactly the wrong thing to say because it trips some primal switch in my brain. I snake an arm around the Devaliant to pull her more firmly against my side. A growl builds in my throat.

Mine. Stays with me.

“Wolf.” The Devaliant’s voice is soft. Breathless. “I’m staying. It’s okay.”

I shudder. Something cracks open in my chest at her words. A mortifying sound, close to a purr, rumbles through me as I nuzzle into her, breathing her in. Setting my mouth right over the symbol at her neck for mine.

“If there is a single mark on her she doesn’t beg for…” Amara lets the threat dangle.

I’m already spreading my wings. “Yeah, I got it.”

Then we’re airborne, the city falling away until it’s nothing but a blur of light far below.

I tug off the Devaliant’s veil to smell her better, to drown in that addictive scent that’s driving me mad. The Devaliant buries her face against my neck, and a shiver goes through her, her fingers tightening on my shoulders. So close to the most sensitive part of my wings—the erogenous covert feathers closest to the skin. No other lover has ever touched me there, and it’s madness that I’m even considering commanding her to.

The night sky splinters around us, stars shattering into ribbons of color that twist and dance through the darkness. It catches in the Devaliant’s silver hair and dusts her skin in shimmering opal. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I should say something. An assurance that she isn’t about to be fucked within an inch of her life by the animal wearing my skin. That somewhere beneath the rut-fever, I’m still capable of sanity.

But that would be a lie, and if nothing else, I’ll give the Devaliant the dignity of honesty.

In no time at all, the tower comes into view. I aim for the garden, touching down on silent feet. Carefully—so carefully—I set the Devaliant on her feet and force myself to step back.

“Get inside.” I’m amazed the words emerge as anything close to intelligible. “Now. Before I forget how to be careful with you.”

She hesitates, and I think, Yes. Fucking please. Just give me an excuse to snap. To push you down and take what I want—

The Devaliant must see something in my face because she’s moving before I can act on the impulse. I follow her through the halls, staying close enough to hear her rapid exhales. It’s only when we reach her chamber that my control finally shatters.

I’ve got her caged between my body and the door before she can so much as gasp. The sound she makes incinerates the last scraps of rational thought. The Devaliant tips her head back, baring her throat—an offering and a surrender.

Here, it says. You can have it. I yield.

“Evander.” A ragged whisper.

Of course she’d use my name right now when I’m out of my mind with want, and that’s all it takes to push me over the edge.

So I take her mouth the way I will take the rest of her—with tongue and teeth. Starving and reverent. I’ll worship every inch of her until my name is etched on her bones. Until there’s nothing left of me but what she chooses to keep.

She makes a sound that’s half prayer, half plea. Begging me to have her. I imagine myself tangled up in her limbs, inside her. Imagine how wet she’d be, how she’d sound when I moved. Would she grasp me like now? Would she want me to take her harder?

“The symbol on your neck?” I whisper. “It’s asking for someone to Claim you tonight.”

She swallows hard. “And would you? If I hadn’t ordered you not to?”

I can’t. You aren’t for me.

So I toe open the door and nudge her gently across the threshold. “I think the marks on your body are making promises you don’t want to keep, and I’m not in my right mind.” I step away. “Lock yourself in. Wash the paint off. Don’t come out until this passes.”

Please. Please just obey me for once in your contrary existence.

She studies my face, and I brace for her refusal. For the inevitable, disastrous moment she throws herself against my discipline to see how far it bends.

But then the Devaliant dips her chin in a nod.

It takes every shred of my control to slam the door shut. Panting, I slump against the surface, tip my head back, and just breathe, and breathe, and breathe. I try to claw back some semblance of sense and sanity.

We want what we want. Even when we know it’ll destroy us.

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32

BRYONY

I CAN’T STAY in this room for another second.

The Wolf told me to lock myself in here—what, a day ago? More? I haven’t eaten since before Amara flew me to Caelestis, and I’ve tried every distraction I can think of. I’ve picked up books and tossed them aside. Tried to sleep. Watched the aetherlight dance across the ceiling.

Nothing works.

Pressing my ear to the door, I listen hard, but there’s only silence on the other side. The sort of eerie quiet that settles over old places at night. For all I know, the rut-fever could have driven the Wolf to the other side of the tower, as far from me as he can get.

My stomach growls, insistent now. If he thinks I’m going to spend three days in here wasting away to nothing, he’s out of his mind.

I unlock the door and ease it open. The hinges let out a groan, and I pause, pulse racing. Nothing. So I hurry down to the kitchen.

The table is a mess of half-prepared food left abandoned. Platters of cheese, bowls of apples and pears, some bread. I make quick work of the cheese and bread first, then I snatch up an oatcake, slather it with berry preserves, and devour two. I lick each finger clean, so distracted that I forget why I shouldn’t be in here.

Until a soft groan shatters the quiet.

Slowly, I turn. And there, filling the doorway, is a very large, very beautiful, very naked, very aroused god.

The Wolf’s black hair is tangled around his face. He clutches the frame, breathing hard. I can’t help but drink in the sight of him—his bare, muscled chest, the lines of his abdomen, the tantalizing cut of muscle framing his hips. Those appealing V-shaped lines that guide my gaze downward.

Oh. Oh my.

“Eyes up, Devaliant.”

Heat floods my cheeks, but I force myself to meet his stare. This isn’t the Wolf I’m used to. Not the cold, calculating male with an assassin’s control. This god is more lethal than the executioner—stripped down to his most base self, with no civility to blunt his edges. He’s staring at me like a feral animal in the woods.

He looks like he wants to eat me alive.

He looks like he might enjoy it.

Somehow, I find my voice. “You’re looking rough, Wolf. Trouble sleeping?”

A muscle in his jaw tics, the only sign that he’s heard me. That he’s even fully present. “What part of stay in your fucking room was unclear?” His fingers flex on the doorframe like he’s fighting the urge to grab me.

“Even prisoners get fed,” I argue. “I was starving.”

I step back as the Wolf moves closer.

“You want to talk about hunger? Starvation?” He cages me against the table, palms flat on either side of my hips. “I’ve been in my room for the last sixteen hours with only my hand, your scent, and the most depraved fantasies for company.”

I suck in a sharp breath. Images flood my mind. The Wolf, naked and glistening with sweat, working that big cock with urgent strokes. Moaning my name as he finds his release.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve imagined fucking you,” he continues mercilessly. His palm skims up my side to the curve of my breast. “Spread out beneath me. Bent over my desk. Shackled to the wall with my cock buried deep inside you. This entire tower is saturated with your scent, and it’s driving me fucking insane. I can’t think about anything else except this clawing desperation to have you. That, Devaliant, is starvation.”

His hand curves around my nape, and some long-buried instinct shrieks at me to go limp. To run. To do anything but stand here and let him put his teeth so close to all my soft parts. Because the Wolf is a weapon, and I’ve seen what those brutal hands can do.

I know with a blinding certainty that he wants to take and take and take until there’s nothing left.

And maybe I want him to.

The Wolf’s head dips, and I feel the drag of his parted lips. He nuzzles into my neck, making a low, hungry sound as he breathes me in. Scents me like the wild thing he is.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says. “You’re going to walk backward. Slowly. Eyes on me, no sudden movements. Don’t run, and don’t ever give me your back, or the instinct to chase will be impossible to ignore.”

I shiver.

“And don’t,” he murmurs, “bare this pretty throat to me again unless you want me to bite.”

In the silence, there is only the rasp of our breathing. And with each shared exhale, a single truth crystallizes.

He wants me. Not in some abstract way, but with the kind of violent need that drives creatures to tear each other apart. It’s written in every line of his body, in the unsteady rise and fall of his chest, the clench of his fists. In Caelestis, he’d called me his.

I’m the one with the power here. Me.

“And what would you do?” I ask as I reach behind me for the vessel of honey. “If I bared my throat and begged for your teeth?”

I dip my fingers into the sticky-sweet syrup. Slowly, so slowly, letting him track the movement. A low growl escapes him as I bring my hand to my lips and drag my tongue over my fingers in a long, slow lick.

Aroused gods, I’ve been warned, are governed entirely by their most primal desires. An inferno that consumes and incinerates anything foolish enough to stand in its path.

But I can’t help but want to destroy.

“What,” he grits out, “are you doing, you reckless creature?”

I savor the last of the honey, holding his gaze. “Move. Countermove. Isn’t that our game? I’m just leaning into my role as your entertainment.”

“Listen to me very carefully,” he says, leaning close. “I’m not a good male. And you need to understand that, before you do something you regret. Keep pushing, and I’ll pin you to the floor and ruin you.”

I’m almost sure he’ll do it. That he’ll spread me out and devour. And I’d let him. I’d let him fuck me, bite me, put his hands all over me, and do whatever he wanted.

The Wolf shuts his eyes with a soft groan. “You’re not wearing anything under that chemise, are you?”

My breath hitches. “How can you—”

“Rut dials everything to eleven. So whatever filthy shit you’re imagining? Stop. Because I can smell exactly how wet you are, and it’s making it real fucking difficult to remember all the reasons I shouldn’t bend you over this table and take what you’re so clearly offering.”

Lift me onto the table, I want to say, and have me.

He steps away and drags a palm down his face. “This is a rare moment of restraint that I’m absolutely going to regret. Get your ass to your room, and I’ll let you keep your skin.”

The Wolf is on the verge of shattering. Barely leashed and vibrating with the need to pounce. To claim and conquer and consume.

I slip past him, careful not to brush his outstretched wing as I head for the archway. I keep my eyes on him, just like he said to, never giving him my back.

But when I reach the door, something in me seizes. Rebels. Because as I stare at this god who’s straining for control, I realize I don’t want careful. I don’t want controlled. I’m tired of being small and silent and tiptoeing through a world that has only ever sought to destroy me.

So I bare my teeth in a smile. The Wolf’s pupils flare, his control fraying another inch.

“Devaliant,” he growls. “Don’t.”

I turn and run.

One heartbeat. Two. Three. Then the thundering chorus of pursuit. The Wolf’s footsteps pound behind me, the sweep of his wings churning the air.

I don’t slow. Not even when his power scorches through the air and strokes along my spine in a blatant caress. No, he won’t get me that easily. I leap up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and something fierce and wild sears through my veins when I hear the Wolf’s growl.

The chase fills some primal need I didn’t know lived inside me, one that sings and claws and spurs me on. Drawing me up through the tower’s higher levels. Making him chase. Because I want him exactly like this—wild and feral and starved for me. His footfalls are closer now, all that power gliding along my skin like he’s readying me. Getting me wet.

An arm snakes around my waist and wrenches me back into a hard body.

The Wolf lowers his face into the crook of my shoulder. “That,” he murmurs, “was unwise.”

“Was it?”

“Mm. You’ll regret this in the morning when you remember what I am.”

“You’ll be the worst mistake of my life,” I agree. “But right now, I don’t care. Make it worth it.”

“In that case—”

With a brutal yank, he rips my chemise away, leaving me naked and panting. He shoves me face down on the hall table.

“Stay. And grip the table.” Every nerve ending sparks to life when he splays his palm over the small of my back to pin me in place. “Should’ve known it would come to this. All that wanting between us was destined to end messy.”

I wrap my fingers around the table’s edge, waiting for those questing fingers to dip lower. To part my thighs. But the Wolf only squeezes my hip, a little chiding.

“Before we play, we need to establish a ground rule. If you had to pick any word that would stop me, no matter what depraved, filthy things I was doing to this body when you said it…” His other hand drags down my thigh, raising gooseflesh in its wake. “What would it be?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, a shudder rolling through me. It takes every scrap of concentration to find my voice again. “Why?”

“Because yesterday you put yourself at risk in Caelestis.” His palm presses more insistently into my hip. “Means I’m in a punishing sort of mood. Give me a word, or I’m picking for you.”

I try to think of something, anything, to ground me. Prevent me from drowning in his scent, his heat, the thrumming energy of his magic skating over my bare skin.

“Ishkah,” I manage. The Lybräian command for cease. Halt.

He leans over me and nips my jaw. “And if that pretty mouth is busy?”

“Two taps. Anywhere.”

“Don’t forget your other orders. Grip the fucking table and be still.”

The smart thing would be to disengage. To flee to my room, throw every lock between us, and establish some much-needed distance. But the wild thing behind my ribs is howling for freedom. It wants to roll in his scent, lick over his sharp edges until it draws blood. I want to poke the beast until it bites. To see what lives on the other side of that ironclad discipline when it shatters.

“My trip to Caelestis seems to be working out for me,” I say. “Maybe I should defy you more often if this is my rewar—”

He bites the join of my shoulder and neck. A hiss escapes me at the sudden flare of pain-pleasure. I imagine the picture I must make like this, bent over and spread out like an offering.

“Earned rewards are sweeter.” His voice is a dark purr against my ear. “Remind me of your word so there’s no confusion.”

“Ishkah,” I breathe.

A pleased hum resonates through his chest, vibrating along all the places we’re pressed together. Then he’s smoothing his palm over the curve of my ass as he flattens me more snugly against the table.

I hold my breath.

The first crack of his palm against my skin is a sweet, stinging shock. It sends me jolting forward, a choked sound tangling in my throat. Then he’s delivering another. Slap. Another. Spanking me hard, setting my nerve endings alight, kindling a wildfire beneath my skin. The sweet-sharp blows wind me tighter and tighter, pushing me toward some precipice.

“Defying a god in the middle of rut is idiocy,” he says. His other hand keeps me ruthlessly pinned, an unspoken demand to submit. Take it and like it. He slaps my ass again. “It deserves a lesson in obedience.”

I’m panting now. “This… Isn’t this my lesson?”

The Wolf leans forward, caging me more tightly between the table and his body. His erection presses against me. “Oh, nemesis,” he murmurs as his fingers push between my thighs. “This is the warm-up. You shouldn’t be this wet when I’m punishing you.”

“Does that… that mean you aren’t going to—”

“I’m going to fuck you. That was never a question.” He punctuates the filthy promise by sinking a finger inside me. I gasp, my fingernails digging into the table. “First, we’re going to play a little game.”

I can barely think. “What kind of game?”

“Simple.” He slides his lips up my jaw and whispers in my ear, “You run, I hunt.”

His thumb flicks over my clit and I arch against him with a rough cry.

“Fuck,” I breathe.

“You’re going to use every trick Amara’s taught you to evade me.” He works me in a lazy slide, as if he has all the time in the world. “All that training? Time to put it to use.”