“How noble. Do they know how you will manage this? Losing your soul to the Abyss, or whatever it is you believe in. Becoming no better than those you defeat as you are stripped of your humanity. Tell me, will you steal a girl child someday, raising her to be terrified of everything? Shaping her to be the vessel of your perverted desires and greed?”
“I will do whatever it takes to keep my people safe.”
“That is not a denial,” Aida said with a shaky laugh dripping with venom. Hugging herself tight around the empty ache there, she shook her head, lip curling as if she tasted something foul. Blinking hard through a bleary haze, she struggled to keep him in focus.
“Ask me what else I want.”
“Tell me, oh noble king. What else will you snatch away?”
“You,kou’va,” Er’it murmured, long legs bringing him to Aida before she could focus through the smeared colors. The iron bands of his arms coming around her, he lifted her to wrap Aida’s limbs tight around his body, ignoring her vicious cries and the claws she made of her hands while he pushed her back into a thick tree. “You called for me from those dungeons. Led me there and made it impossible for me to deny you. Snow and spring, the scent of beginnings. I cannot refuse it, and I do not want to.”
Aida screamed as the hollow pain in her stomach became a savage agony that doubled her over.
Chapter 8
Er’it
Er’it groaned as Aida cried out again, her back bowing in a painful arch to thrust her breasts against his chest. The rush of slick stained her trousers, soaking them as the surge of wetness overcame the snug fabric. It intoxicated him.
Her power had diminished as they spoke. By the time he rushed her, it had softened to a bare brightening of her skin. Now it snapped from her fingers, tunneling into his flesh as she clawed at his back though not to hurt him. No longer fighting against him, she tore at his shirt, whining low in her throat as her hips rocked with jerky thrusts.
The blackness of her gaze was alight with glittering starlight, shimmering arcs of it soaring across the inky depths as she turned her face up to his. Lush lips parted, straining toward him. Er’it found a growl resonating through his chest, the vicious call causing Aida to jostle and keen. The forest, the night, even the lingering pain in his thigh fell away as he buried his face against her neck. Sucking in deep draughts of her scent as he shoved her flat against the tree, he pinned her there with his hips grinding between her luscious thighs.
There were far too many things separating their flesh, and he tore at them the same as she did. Desperate to feel her against him, frenzied noises slipped over his curled lips. Ripping apart the tattered bits of her tunic, flinging them away so he could feast upon more of her, he snarled at the sight of her shivering breasts marred by red welts where others had touched what was his.
She was his, always was and always would be. From the moment of his birth, from hers, the goddesses had aligned their paths.
The thought surged through him, a glittering path of frozen starshine that stiffened his cock to the point of pain. Roaring as he wrenched the borrowed trousers from her legs, Er’it tumbled them to the ground. He had not aimed for it, but winding up in the mossy bed of fragile blossoms seemed divine intervention, the perfect place to spread his Omega open. Gripping her wrists to keep her still, he shouldered her thighs wide. He had to taste her, to drink from the fount of her until he drowned in the utter perfection of it. Groaning as he lapped at her folds, he made his little Omega squeal and writhe, dragging an agonized moan from between her lips as he latched onto her clit and sucked hard.
Er’it licked up all that she offered, keeping her open well beyond the point where her thighs shivered with the strain of her pleasure, her stomach taut as she screamed into the night. He offered her praising hums and shaky purrs until he began again. Then she whined, bucking and jostling to get away and press closer at the same time. Thrusting his tongue deep inside her to draw out more of her slick, he rumbled against her just to hear her feathery moan turn into a squeal. He continued until she was dazed and unable to do more than twitch beneath his hungry lips.
Tearing at the front of his trousers, Er’it freed his cock as he climbed up her body. Driving in to the hilt with a single thrust had them both grasping at the other, moaning at the delicious ache of it. So tight it almost pained him, her body gripped his shaft, rippling around the throbbing length of it as he forced himself to pull back. As glorious as it was to be inside her, the pleasure doubled when he shoved home again. Letting her nails rake down his back, Er’it wrapped her shoulders in a tight grip, pulling her into every vicious thrust as he quickened his pace.
Lost in the thick, wet sounds and the slapping of their hips, he struggled not to fall over the brink. He ravaged her mouth with teeth and tongue as she brought her legs higher on his hips to meet every forward lunge, pulling him tighter as she keened against his lips. Er’it snarled a curse, pleasure working down his spine with cruel fingers as she fluttered around him. Hooking an elbow at her nape, he held her still to shove a hand between them, grinding his thumb against the pert nub of her clit.
Her eyes were wide and vibrant as she found her release. Screaming into his mouth, she let him take in her savage sounds before the wringing twist of her sheath pulled him along after her. As the thickness of his knot forced through the tight ring of her flesh, he drove it in deep until he struck the very end of her. Locked tight behind her pubic bone, he roared as his body quaked with release.
Each body-shuddering spasm sheeting his vision to white, he held tight to her, crushing her between his body and the lush earth transformed by her power. Energy continuing to sizzle through the cool night air, a storm of vivid blues and reds scattered with sparks of violet, turning ever more violent as she became restless. Hips twitching, she snarled up at him despite the dreamy haze of pleasure still clouding her eyes.
“Be still,kou’va,” Er’it said through a warning growl that did little to still the writhing female beneath him. Rocking the swollen knot within the tight clench of her to give Aida a taste of what she desired frustrated them both. Spine twisting with the indescribable sensation of being inside her, Er’it claimed her mouth once more.
With his hand still caught between them, he ground his thumb against the taut bundle of nerves at her apex, sending Aida’s eyes rolling back under fluttering lashes as he forced more exquisite bliss upon her. Amidst a raging storm of light and shadows, she gave up her screams and whines while Er’it drove her toward another release. He reveled in the savage explosion of power and ecstasy as her body renewed its stranglehold on his thick length, did it again just to see the glittering starshine blazing through midnight eyes when she turned her wondering gaze up to his.
Feeding on her whimpers and moans, he couldn’t get enough of her taste, the feel of her, even the seeping warmth leaking out around their joined bodies as his knot diminished by slow degrees. It enchanted him, the obsession that had lured him toward her from the start increasing tenfold as he swiped his fingers through the thick river of fluids. Pushing them between her lips, he watched on in awestruck need as she sucked and licked at the digits, lapping at the whorls of his fingertips to get every last taste.
“What are you doing to me?” Er’it asked on a rumbling whisper, giving her more of their combined essence on his fingers. Brow furrowed as her eyes remained lost in the lusty haze, Er’it struggled to make sense beyond the overwhelming need to have her again. And again, and again. He wanted to live between these thighs trembling around his hips, to feel her nails scraping at the long muscles of his back until the end of time.
As soon as the knot released him, he began pounding into her, giving no mercy, refusing to even consider slowing as Aida arched and shrieked at the sky. Rising to his knees, he grabbed her hips and held them hard enough to dimple the soft flesh. Pulling her into every vicious thrust until only her shoulders crushed the dewy moss, the bright scent of living green things was ripe around them as Aida tumbled over the edge of her pleasure again.
Er’it lost track of how many times he buried his knot inside her, having to pin her to the earth until he could rut her again. Her desire did not abate, a whirling frenzy of need refusing to remain sated for more than a palmful of breaths. Drunk on her and that same need, he gave her what she needed—his knot, his come. The sounds of his pleasure ratcheted hers to impossible heights as he filled her to overflowing over and again, each becoming more frantic as the stars watched from on high and from the depths of her endless gaze.
At the height of it, when only the brightest stars remained above them, their violence knew no bounds. Er’it’s savage growls were matched in turn by her fierce snarls. There was nothing meek and quiet about her now as she drew blood on his back with raking fingers, pulling at his hips to urge him harder. Faster. Giving her the brutality she craved, bruising her delicate body with his need, he gave it to her.
When she trembled at the edge of her release, neck bared in a long line as her head thrashed against delicate blooms that caught in her ragged curls, Er’it lunged forward. Shoving his full knot inside her depths wrenched a shattered scream from between her lips, driving her over the cliff as a sudden moment of calm enveloped him.
He knew what to do, even if he did not know why.
“Mine. Always.”
