Kier
My arms yank her lithe frame up and her legs wrap around my waist, fingers shredding the arm of my shirt as she nips on my lower lip. I taste blood, anger and lust on her lips. Her tongue lashes against mine, stroking softly one second, and violently the next second, and it is my undoing.
I hardly notice her legs unwrapping me, until I am shoved into the wall with shocking strength. The tiny witch pulls back, growling as she fumbles my tunic, trying to get it over my head, but she’s too short to reach. A snarl rips from her lips as she grips two ends of the collar and rips it in half. It hits the floor, somewhere on the left…or right. I don’t know. I can’t take my eyes off her.
Her gaze rises to mine in that moment and her eyes—they’re fucking silver with a violet ring around them. Zephyr roars, lurching forward, and my lips slam into the skin of her neck, kissing, nipping, and I sniff deeply. She’s mine. She’s fucking mine.
I grip her waist, pushing her onto the desk and things crash to the ground as she pulls me into her. The energy thrumming in the air around us is nothing compared to the power that floods my veins. Or Jessamine’s. I rock my hips into hers and she rocks back, her hands rising to my hair.
She grips tightly, her lips leaving mine as they travel down my skin, charring it. Pain slams into me when her teeth sinks into my neck and I groan, my hands digging into her waist through her gown. And then it comes. Scalding hot lust. I can’t see, feel or breathe in anything that isn’t Jessamine. I exist only for this woman. I need…I need…ah, fuck it.
I fumble for the lacing of her dress, but it’s much too complicated. I slice through, cutting the bodice, and it slides over her shoulder, exposing her smooth shoulder. A light shove and her breasts pop out of the bodice. Lands, I’m really fucked.
Snatching her hands from my hair, I hold them behind her back, kissing her neck, knowing every inch of skin on it. She moans and the sound of it cuts me loose. Covering my lips over one hard, perfect nipple, and running my teeth over it, I let go of her hands and raise the skirts of her gown, hardening with every inch of smooth, warm skin that I touch. She grips the table as I ram my hips into hers and she arches. There’s another crack, and I lift her off the broken table before she can fall off it.
I mean to take her to my room—it’s just a door away, but it’s too far. I need to be inside her right now. There was no way I’d have let her leave.
I shove her into the wall, cradling her back and head, taking the brunt of the hit on my hand. But it’s nothing. Not even the crack in the wall could stop me from reaching my fingers between the sleek wetness of her thighs and feeling how wet she is for me.
Goddess, she wants me too.
Those strange, beautiful eyes stare up at me as I bring my fingers to my lips and taste her. Her nostrils flare and she pulls my head down to kiss me again. Fiercely, with a depthless hunger that mirrors mine, she devours me, even as I work the rest of her clothes off her. There’s something wild about the way she holds me, carnal, primal, and I swear I feel claws on my skin where she touches me.
When her clothes are a puddle around her feet, I step away from her, watching her naked body.
She hugs herself, this woman who’s always been bold, absolutely shameless. She hugs herself in front of me and I smell fear. Fear that she isn’t good enough. It is incomprehensible to me. That Jessamine doesn’t know she is utter perfection, her body carved by the Goddess herself, each inch possibly taking centuries of careful, precise strokes to create.
How can she want me, this ethereal being standing before me with flushed cheeks and eyes that shouldn’t even exist?
“Jessamine,” I breath, leaning my forehead against her, my breaths harsh against her cheeks. “I need you.”
She shivers each time I breathe out, and her fingers curl against my chest. “I’m…right…here.”
“You’re a virgin. I don’t want to…take you like this the first time.”
She jerks, hugging her chest tightly and when I pull back to look at her again, her eyes are a very glaring violet that look so stunned, my stomach drops. She pulls herself out from under me and stares at her ripped dress like she’s seeing it for the first time. Her eyebrows knit together and she bites her bottom lip, panic darkening her eyes. “I—” A slight pause, then more panic. “I should go.”
“Stay here,” I plead, and swallow. “Please.”
But she’s not looking at me. She’s breathing so fast, I think she might be hyperventilating. Lips quivering, she turns and heads to the door of my bedroom, pushing it open. I follow her, but halt by the door, staring at the brutal scars on her back, old and new, as she sorts through my armoire, pulling down my longest tunic. In swift movements, she brings it over head, shimmying into it, and she snatches a cloak and all but runs out of my room, disturbed and I spy a tear running down her cheek.
It sets in then. The ache in my shoulder. I touch it and it comes away wet and sticky.
I frown, walking over to the mirror, and I grip the wall to keep myself up as I stare at the wound, healing to form a moon-shaped scar.
Fuck. She’s marked me.
******
Jessamine
I got mad and lost my mind. It was a mistake. One I don’t even remember making. One moment, I’m by the door, Kier slams into me and his lips are hot against mine, and the next second, I’m naked. I lost time, and I don’t know how or why.
There’s blood in my mouth, and I know it isn’t mine.
I brush over and over again, until I rip my tongue and bleed. What in the world happened? I toss the brush away and it lands on the mirror, shattering it. I stare at my hands, horrified at the wreckage. What is going on with me?
Sure enough, I stare in the mirror and there’s silver in my eyes. I blink and it’s gone.
I splash water on my face as if it’ll help me. I feel like I’ve lost my mind.
A sound outside my bathroom catches my attention and I run outside, looking around my room. Empty, but the window is opened, cold wind rushing in. Instinctively, my gaze whips to my night stand, and sure enough, there’s another note.
It smells like burnt amber as I take it off the stand. One question is poised on it, and my heart slams painfully into my chest as I read:
What if Madeline was never ill?