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Phoenix’s head comes up, and she stares at me before pursing her lips. “We might as well go ahead and get it over with.” She walks toward me and sits down on the edge of the suddenly looming bed, leaning over to unbuckle the strap of her white high heels.
“Um.” I blink a couple times. I will stay calm. I will not be a ravenous beast. “Right.”
I shrug off my suit coat, undo some buttons at the top of my shirt and then tug it off over my head. Except I didn’t undo enough buttons so it gets caught, and I have to wrestle with it a bit before finally managing to yank it all the way off.
Only to find Phoenix staring at me wide-eyed as I hold my shirt and undershirt awkwardly in front of me. Her eyes dance briefly down to my abs before she looks back at my face. “What are you doing?” she whispers.
“I—” I feel my face heat a little, fist clenching in my shirt. “Do you want some more champagne first to get in the mood?” I glance back at a little set-up on a table near the en-suite refrigerator.
She reaches over to slap me on the shoulder, whispering, “Now is not the time for jokes. Come on, we’ve got to make this believable. They’ll be listening.” My shoulder tingles from her touch.
But it’s nothing to the low swoop in my groin when she suddenly lets out a loud moan. At the same time, she grabs the bed poster by the top frame and bangs it against the wall.
“Oh,” she groans loudly. “Layden, yes. Just like that. Oh god, yes. Right there. Touch me right there!”
My brain short-circuits with lust even though I’m quick to catch on. It’s just that her moans are very believable, a little too believable, and I– I shift so that I’m standing firmly against the tall mattress to cover the front of my suddenly tightening pants.
Phoenix waves a hand at me impatiently. Right. Time to pretend I’m not the big bad wolf that I know I am. I don’t devour cities. I’m friendly. Nice. Safe.
“Baby,” I say, and she rolls her eyes. So I deepen my voice, and really, it’s not difficult to make my voice low and lust-filled as I lean in and stare into her eyes. “You like it when I touch you there?”
Now she’s the one blinking a little, but then she seems to get her wits back, nodding along with another little moan. “Yes, just like that. You make me so wet.”
“I can feel it,” I say, giving way to my hunger a little too easily as her breath hitches. “Are you ready for me?”
“I’m ready,” she says. “You’re so big and hard.”
It’s not what I imagined tonight would be like. Because yes, I imagined tonight. Over and over again. I’ve been envisioning how tonight will go ever since her grandfather announced we had to wed and make him an heir.
With all my brothers going off and getting consorts and wives, I thought maybe fate had finally intervened for me. I’ve craved Phoenix since the first time I met her, but craving is nothing new.
I’d thought about getting close to women in the past. I knew I had a handsome enough face, and back before my big white wings were cut off, women were ready to see me as an angelic being or a god, so they wanted to fuck me for a variety of reasons.
But all it took was barely making skin-to-skin contact once and watching the human woman’s cheeks begin to cave in with starvation before I leaped away from her. Turns out you can’t lie down with the Horseman of Famine without dire consequences.
So I never dared to ever again and rarely even let myself be around humans.
Phoenix and I, well, it had never been like that between us. I’d never allowed it to be. At first because I didn’t know who or what she was. Plus, I was such a broken shell of a monster when we met… and then in later years, it seemed too foolhardy to wonder if she was the one woman I might be able to connect with because of her unique heritage.
I never really let myself linger on the possibility, though. For almost two hundred years, I’d had no one in the world, and I’d suppressed any and all cravings. After our first meeting ten years ago, when she helped bring me back to life, I convinced myself she didn’t need me ruining her already complicated existence. So we’d shared knowledge and friendship and parted ways.
Until fate brought us back together. . . or at least a homicidal, angelic AI did. But when her grandfather decreed the blood oath could only be satisfied by us mating, for a few days, I’d felt a wild joy that maybe, just maybe—
I look into her eyes. For once, I tell her—and myself—the truth. “Making love to you is all I’ve been able to dream about,” I say. “Night after night.”
“Louder,” she mouths, gesturing with her hands, and I’m reminded that this is all a farce. She’s not really my wife, not in truth. She doesn’t actually want this—or me. She never did.
“Oh god,” she cries, “You’re so big.”
She bangs the headboard.
I get it; I really do. Phoenix knows me better than anyone. Better than my brothers. Sometimes, I think she knows me better than myself. I like to think I’d give her the world and more. But maybe I’d only fill her with an endless void so big, she’d never feel full. Never happy or content, I’d suck her dry exactly like her grandfather does his victims, and she knows it.
So I climb up on the bed, still angled away from her and bounce so that the bedsprings squeak.
“Phoenix,” I groan loudly, helping her bang the headboard into the wall rhythmically.
“Oh, oh, oh!” she cries, higher pitched with every exclamation. Until finally, she screams out my name, “Laydeeeeeeeeen,” and we both collapse on the bed. Unsatisfied.
