The heavy lock clicks open. I push the iron door inward, its groan a cry of protest. I step over the threshold, the dagger held tight in my hand, the point aimed at his heart.
He does not flinch. He simply watches me, his eyes darkening, the inferno I saw once before beginning to smolder in their depths.
I am shaking, my entire body trembling with the psychic overload and the sheer, terrifying insanity of what I am doing. I stalk toward him, stopping just out of his reach.
“Show me,” I challenge, my voice a ragged whisper that is barely my own. “Show me the monster again. Or are you a coward, Vrakken?”
The tension snaps.
His movement is a blur of impossible speed. The chain on his right wrist explodes from the wall, stone and iron screaming in protest. Before I can even react, his hand is on me, fingersof steel wrapping around my throat, not choking, but holding, claiming. He yanks me forward, my body crashing into the solid wall of his chest. The dagger clatters from my nerveless fingers.
“You wanted the monster,” he growls, his formal monotone gone, replaced by a guttural, possessive sound that vibrates through my entire body. His mouth crashes down on mine.
It is not a kiss. It is a war. A brutal, punishing collision of teeth and tongues, a battle for dominance that I immediately lose. He tastes of cold stone and a clean, unique scent that is all him, a scent that is imprinted on my soul. He plunders my mouth, and I fight back, my hands tangling in his silver hair, pulling, my nails scraping his scalp.
His free hand roams my body, a rough, impatient exploration. He rips my tunic from shoulder to waist, the sound of tearing fabric loud in the small cell. Cool air hits my skin, followed by the searing heat of his hand as he covers my breast, his thumb scraping mercilessly over my nipple. A sharp, unwilling gasp escapes me, and a jolt of pure, traitorous pleasure shoots straight to my core.
“Tell me you want this,” he commands, his voice becoming a raw rasp against my ear.
“I hate you,” I sob, the words a lie my body refuses to accept.
My hands leave his hair, sliding down the impossible breadth of his back, mapping the cords of muscle, the strange, smooth texture of the folded wings. They are bigger than I remembered, a cage of leather and bone even when pressed tight against his body. My fingers graze the sensitive membrane, and a deep, shuddering groan is torn from his chest. His control, already a fraying thread, shatters.
He breaks the kiss, his breathing harsh. He pushes me back, turning me and slamming me against the cold, damp stone of the cell wall. “Bend over,” he orders, his voice raw with a need that echoes the psychic storm in my head.
My mind screams no, but my body, a traitor to its core, obeys. I brace my hands against the rough stone, my cheek pressed to the wall. The cold is a shock against my heated skin. I feel him behind me, the immense heat and power of his body a terrifying promise. His hand slides down my stomach, his fingers dipping between my legs, finding me wet and ready.
“You were always ready for me,” he snarls, the words both a condemnation and a claim. I hear the rustle of his trousers, and I risk a glance back over my shoulder.
Gods. He is magnificent. Utterly inhuman. Impossibly thick and long, with a faint, silvery sheen to the pale skin, the head of his staff a deep, angry purple. It is a weapon, a ram, and it is made for me. My breath catches, half in terror, half in a desperate, soul-deep craving.
He presses the blunt tip against my entrance, not entering, just pushing, stretching me. “Ask for it,” he commands in a guttural rasp.
I should stop him, say no. I should scream for help. Attack him. But as he rubs the tip of his cock onto my wet heat, my mind goes blank.
The last of my resistance crumbles. The hate, the fear, the loneliness, the need—it all collapses into four broken words. “Please. Take me. Now.”
He does not enter gently. He slams into me with a single, brutal thrust, burying himself to the hilt. A scream is torn from my throat comes a sound of pure, overwhelming sensation—pain and pleasure so intertwined I cannot tell them apart. He fills me, stretches me, owns me in a way I thought I would never allow again. My body is his sheath, my hands braced against the cold, unforgiving stone of his cell.
The rhythm he sets is a punishing, desperate battle. His hips slam against me, the wet, primal sound of our bodies slapping together echoing in the silent dungeon. His broken chain whipsagainst the wall with each powerful thrust, a chaotic percussion to our frantic dance. My toes curl, my nails scraping uselessly against the stone. He groans, a deep, continuous sound of a creature in agony and ecstasy, his wings fluttering uselessly in the confined space, the tips brushing against the rock. The air is ripe with the scent of sex and sweat and the faint, metallic smell of his magic.
It is not enough for him. I can feel it through the link, a roaring, insatiable need formore.
“Look at me,” he growls, his voice a raw command. I twist my head, looking back at him over my shoulder. His face is a raw mask of torment and savage pleasure, his silver hair sticking to his sweat-sheened brow. His abyss-black eyes are burning with a fire that consumes everything.
He pulls back slightly, and before I can protest the loss, his hand clamps down on my thigh. With an almost contemptuous strength, he lifts my leg, hooking it high over his forearm, forcing my body to bend, to open for him in a way that feels impossibly vulnerable. The new angle is devastating. He drives back in, and the head of his huge cock slides past my cervix, striking a bundle of nerves deep inside me that I never knew existed.
My body convulses. A sharp, keening gasp rips from my lungs, my back arching violently. My hips, which had been enduring his assault, now move with a will of their own, trying to meet his every thrust, chasing the blinding pleasure.
A guttural roar of triumph is torn from his chest. He has found it. He has found the very core of me.
He pulls out almost completely, the sensation a tearing loss, and then slams back in, targeting that spot again and again. Each thrust is a lightning strike, a complete sensory overload. “Yes,” he snarls, feeling my body’s frantic response. “Take all of me, Elza.”
He reaches around, his hand finding my breast again, his fingers pinching my nipple in a punishing rhythm that matches the brutal slam of his hips. “Who is inside you?” he roars, his control gone, the ancient being lost to the primal monster.
“You,” I sob, my head falling forward to rest against the wall, my mind fracturing into a million points of light. “It has always been you.”
“My name,” he commands, his voice breaking. “Say my name. Eion.”
