The first touch of his tongue is so insanely well-placed that tears sting my eyes. He starts with low, careful caresses at my entrance and away from that sweet bundle of nerves that wouldexplodeif he so much as brushed it.
He hums, alternating blunt strokes with softer ones, eating me up and killing me with his tongue. The pressure radiatingoutward from my neglected, greedy core builds and builds, rising higher, pushing me further.
Unmoved by my nonsensical pleading noises, my ghost holds my thighs open without mercy, forcing me to suffer the brunt of his delicate laps until I’m so high, I can’t remember my own name.
There’s something about his confidence that strips me of my usual hesitation, my self-consciousness. I want to please my ghost, and if it pleases him to see me utterly and completely destroyed by his tongue, then that’s what he shall have. My back arches off the mattress.
He rubs, rubs,rubsthat sweet spot, and it hurts so sweet it devours.
“Trust me. Don’t fight it.”
I come hard, fulfilling his fantasies and more, but somehow, I’m not soothed. I want more.
The sound of fabric shuffling causes my walls to clench around emptiness. E spreads me for him, the urgency giving way to a softer, more reverent side of him.
A pang of regret cramps my gut. I wish I could see him, in this moment, looking down at me.
“Penny for your thought?” I whisper.
A dark chuckle grates his throat. “It’s my first time. I want to commit it to memory.”
“Your first time that you remember,” I correct him playfully, tracing the sparse path of hair between his pecs.
He huffs. “Semantics. I can’t remember anyone else, and there won’t be anyone after you. You will be my firstandlast, Max.”
He lines himself up with my entrance, the tip of him rightthere.
“I love you, little fox,” he says, caressing the angle of my jaw.
I curl my fingers over his heart and open my mouth to answer, but he swallows my next breath with a kiss. He kisses me again and again, stealing my thoughts and not giving me an inch to spare as though he’s too scared that I won’t say it back. That I can’t.
But there are no more excuses left in me. I don’t want to explain him away, to hate myself for loving a dead man, because I’m desperately in love with him, and I want to shout it from the treetops.
I’m in love with a ghost, and I don’t care.
I bury my hands in his soft hair and give it a gentle tug, eager for the chance to take a breath and tell him I love him, too, but a strange sensation prickles the skin of my arms. When I open my eyes, he’s there, hovering above me.
Bright light. Long dark lashes. Golden-white hair. Chiseled abs. And a loving smile that borders on obsession.
I blink excess water out of my eyes and hold my breath, but the image never quite comes into focus. His shape refuses to fully materialize, and the room spins around me almost as violently as it did under the venom’s influence.
My mouth hangs open, and he mistakes my surprise for hesitation.
“You don’t have to say it back, yet. Just know I’d break the world for you, little fox. Every fucking piece.”
He enters me in one powerful thrust, and I cry out, my head falling to the mattress.
Tell me to stop, Max. Because I will destroy everything that keeps me from you. I will break the world, little fox. Every fucking piece.
I sink my nails into his scalp, the throaty words so similar to the ones he spoke in the Dreaming. It takes me back to that lonely marital bed.
The horror of what comes next is still imprinted in my memory, of drowning in a wedding night that felt more like a death sentence than happiness… Of the black waters that followed.
My dream-husband. Itishim.
He curls a hand around my thigh, his fingers digging into my arse as he adjusts the angle before penetrating me deeper.
And deeper.
