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“Unexpected, I admit.” I nipped at her other breast and rocked my hips against her center. “It’s as though I’ve starved myself by avoiding touch, but yours—gods, I will never get enough of it.”

I kissed her again, kissed her for all the time spent avoiding this moment out of fear. To think I would have gone on without this woman’s taste on my tongue, her skin under my hands. What a wretched life it might’ve been.

Mira ran her hands across the firm ridges of my arms, my shoulders. Every divot, every mark, she kissed.

I swirled my tongue around the peak of her breast again while flicking and pinching the other.

“Tait.” Mira held the back of my head. “Gods, keep going.”

I took two fingers and slid over the slope of her middle, down over the edges of her hips, to the drenched heat of her core. Mira sagged against my touch with a sigh, then bucked her hips. I slid my fingers inside, curling them against her walls.

“Tait…please…” Mira’s head fell back, throat bared. A shudder racked her body and she gritted out my name through her teeth. When her release faded, her eyes fluttered open.

“I need you.” Mira hooked one leg around my waist. She gripped my cock and aligned it with her center. We both watched as I entered her slowly. One hand threaded with hers, I kissed the slope of her neck, taking a bit of delight in the way her pulse raced for my touch, for me.

No caress would match the embrace of Mira Sekundär. Each gasp, each kiss, each squeeze of my hand left me invigorated. Like I’d started living at long last.

Mira bowed off the bed when I filled her again in a rough, deep thrust. I pulled out, then did the same twice, three times. She grasped the roots of my hair, yanking tightly, breath heavy. I rocked faster, losing myself in the way her body shifted with each thrust, the way her eyes rolled back, and a smile split over her swollen lips with each movement.

Pleasure boiled low in my gut.

“I see you, Vicious,” I whispered against her lips. “All of you. I will always want you. Do you hear me? Always.”

Mira’s chin trembled, but she kissed me. Hard. Desperate. There was passion, need, a sort of sense that we’d found something neither of us ever knew was missing.

“You. Me. A surly ass with a revel princess,” she said, soft and almost delirious.

I grinned and pressed my brow to hers. “The only way I wish to live, scowling from the corner of every revel you force me to attend.”

“Except”—Mira moaned when I reached between us and pressed my thumb to her sensitive core and added more friction—“except when you…dance with me.”

“All smiles then.”

The bed groaned. I hardly cared if these strangers heard. I wanted to dissolve into this damn woman’s flesh and remain there until the Otherworld swallowed us whole. Sweat dripped off my cheek onto her chest. I breathed all of it in, the sweet hint of the sea and mist on her skin, the woodsy musk of my body around hers.

Mira brought her hands around my waist, using her grip, my angle, and her legs to force me to go deeper. The roll of our bodies grew jerky, unsteady, until the tension snapped. Against my neck, she let out a sob through another wave of release. My cock pulsed and curses slid off my tongue while I spilled inside her.

For a long pause, we didn’t move, simply held each other, breathing heavily. Mira threaded her fingers through the strands of my hair.

“Do you mean all those sweet words, Hearttalker? Or were they spoken in the heat of the moment?”

“Depends.” I pressed a kiss between her breasts. “Going to tell me why you don’t say my given name?”

Mira waggled her brows. “I think it’ll take a great deal more worshipping.”

I traced her bottom lip with my thumb. “As you wish, Vicious.”

I held her close to me until her breathing grew heavy and my endless thoughts drifted off into dark oblivion.

Gods, I wanted nothing more than to survive. I wanted to return home, be with me folk. Fears of the unknown be maddening. How much longer would I be kept like this, strung up, in the dark? I wanted to return home and see my sweet one at the Tower, to kiss his flesh, to hold him in me arms. Damn the hells, I won’t be seeing his smile again…

I snapped upright. Sweat drenched my chest, my neck, causing my hair to stick to my brow. One palm pressed to my heart; I winced against the bite of my fading voice. Had I been singing in my sleep, or had it been a dream?

No, a desire had been there, one that was not my own.

When desires were desperate enough, oftentimes they ached and throbbed through my insides when my voice caught hold of them. Fear, anger, terror—they bled through me like I took them upon myself.

This feeling, this desire for escape, was sharp and harsh, a blade carving beneath my ribs as the song wrapped around my own heart.