Page 97 of Veil of Night & Flames

He holds his hands out in a gesture of futility. “How else could it work? He is me.”

It’s a strange answer, because I know it’s technically true, and yet these are two very different men. Honestly, my head has a hard time picturing the whole We were one being thing. And since they aren’t anymore, I figure I can safely pop that out of my mind.

There’s just this one thing…

“Adric?”

He’s on his back now, his hands clasped behind his head, but he rolls over to face me.

“Yes, Beloved.”

“I love you. I just, you know—I thought you should know.”

His face goes entirely expressionless—a king’s got to be good at hiding his emotions—and in that moment, my gut twists, and I want desperately to call the words back and go hide under the covers.

Then the mask falls and sweet relief sweeps over his face. He’s no longer a king. Instead, he looks like a guy who’s been knocked flat, but in a good way.

“Beloved,” he says, but what I hear is I love you, too.

He takes my hand. “And Chase?”

I meet his eyes. “You already know the answer to that.”

He nods but says nothing.

Something cold slides through me. “Please, Adric,” I say. “Don’t make me choose. I can’t. I love you both.”

He leans forward and kisses me so gently it feels like butterfly wings. Then he sits up and takes my hands in his.

“I have loved you since before you knew my name. I watched you in the scrying pool when you were nothing to me but a face and a prophecy, and somewhere in the watching, you became Cora, and you became mine, and I loved you with no right to you and no way to reach you. I loved you on the night I gave my brother back his life. I claimed your hand in exchange because I loved you then, and I thought it was the only way to have you.”

His thumb brushes my cheekbone, then he turns his hand over, and I watch as a white daisy unfurls between his fingers out of nothing at all, and I melt a little because he knows me so well.

“So no,” he says. “I will not make you choose.” He meets my eyes. “At least not now.”

Not now.

For a beat, I let the words hang there, then take the daisy. After all, not now can be a very long way off.

“Beloved,” he says, then draws me in and kisses me, slow and tender. But tender isn’t what I need right now, so I push up over him, the sheet sliding down, and my hair falling around both our faces. Then I look down at the King of the Nightmare Realm in my boyfriend’s bed with his cock already hard against my thigh, and I want him so much it’s hard to breathe.

I reach down and take him in my hand, and his head goes back against the pillow, as I lower myself onto him, going slow to tease him, to draw it out, and to punish us both in the best possible way. And then—when he’s deep inside me, my body stretched gloriously around him—I rock my hips, feeling the pressure of him and hearing the low, desperate noises he’s making.

Then his hands settle on my hips, and his eyes meet mine, and in that moment, I’m done with slow, and I rock hard against him, his cock inside me, his fingers teasing my clit, and his eyes so full of heat and lust, it’s a wonder that I don’t come right then merely from the heat I see in his eyes.

And then it crests over me—that wild rising that has me craving more—everything—and I can’t go slow anymore. I rock down on him hard, and his eyes never leave my face and when I come, it’s with my hands flat on his chest and his name in my throat and his cock buried inside me.

He comes with me, his whole body going taut under mine as he releases a ragged cry that is pure, undiluted pleasure in the same moment that the door clicks open.

Chase is back.

For a moment, I go tense—then I remember I don’t have to. “Hi,” I say, as Chase stands there, looking at me naked with his brother still inside me. He says nothing, and ice courses through me as a horrible fear builds inside—the fear that last night was a fluke, and that Chase can’t handle it.

Then he steps closer, his gaze raking over me. “I’ve been enjoying the show,” he says, his mouth curving into the tiniest of smiles—but that’s all I need to send relief coursing through me.

“So much,” he continues, “that Griffin probably thinks I’m a bit psychotic.”

I glance down and meet Adric’s eyes, and I can’t help it. I start laughing. I roll off Adric, leave him the sheet, then cross naked to Chase and put my arms around him. Then I kiss him, and for one cold, hard, terrifying moment, it’s just my lips against flesh. Then it’s Chase, pulling me close and kissing me hard, as if to mark his claim upon me, too.