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He isn’t touching himself. He just looks down and stares at my hand as it moves in long, languid strokes over my shaft. Rolling his tongue around his mouth, he spits on it and hums as the lubrication allows me to go faster.

I groan loudly and rub my thumb over my pierced tip, trying to fight the rising surge of electricity in my core. “Are you going to fuck me?” I ask, meeting his eyes. “Or are you just a spectator?”

“I’m not going to fuck you, Luther,” Kole growls. “Not until Nova returns.” He moves his hand to the back of my neck, then presses his forehead to mine. “When she does, you’re going to fuck me and she’s going to watch.”

My eyes widen. I’m fisting myself furiously now, desperate for release.

“You’re going to show me what those chunks of metal feel like in my ass.”

With my free hand, I reach for Kole’s dick, but he swats it away. Instead, I press my palm on his chest.

“You’re going to fuck me while I fuck her. You’re going to fuck me while I’m inside her.” Kole tightens his grip on my neck. I make a fist and thump him hard. I’m so close it’s almost painful. “Or perhaps you’d rather fuck Nova’s ass while I’m inside her? Show her what it’s like to be completely full. Feel her tight little hole squeezing you while you come. Do you think she could take it? Your metal? Would it make her—”

“Fuck…” With a shudder, an orgasm rocks through me like a tidal wave. It peaks quickly and subsides just as fast, leaving me unsteady on my feet and gasping for breath.

Still hard, Kole pulls his pants back up and fastens his belt.

“Torturing yourself?” I ask, reaching back to grip the sink and stop myself from falling. “I can—”

“When she’s back.” Kole meets my eyes. “I’m saving it for when she’s back.” He turns and pulls on his shirt as he opens the door. “When she is, you can take charge.”

Despite just having come all over myself, the filthy words coming from Kole’s mouth make my dick twitch. “I’ll hold you to that promise,” I tell him.

Kole stops in the doorway and looks over his shoulder at me. “I hope so.”

13

EVE

She’s a strange, willowy thing. Elena. The photograph Ragnor carries in his wallet shows her in a very different light. In a wedding gown with cherry-red lips and dark flowing hair, smiling up at him; she looks radiant and strong.

I wonder which version is the illusion; the woman who has been floating like a phantom through the mansion since she returned—too nervous and skittish to speak to anyone but Ragnor—or the one with the bright red lips.

I suppose it was naïve of us to think she would be anything other than alarmed by her return. Who knows what her poor little mind is like after coming all this way?

I stare at her often, but I can’t decipher what she’s thinking or whether she understands where she is. She doesn’t seem to have noticed that Ragnor is twenty-five years older than when she last saw him. And wolves don’t age like vamps; they look their years.

She trails around after Ragnor as if she’s a child. Occasionally, she remembers she had a baby, and asks him for it. Every time, Ragnor gives her the same answer; it is being taken care of. You can see it when you’re well.

This seems to quiet her. She presses her pale lips together and wrings her hands in her lap. But after a few hours, she asks the same question again. And again. And again, until the mewing sounds coming from her delicate throat make me want to rip out her insides and dance with them.

I’ve been studying Ragnor too. At first, he was enamored. Overwhelmed with joy. As the days wear on, however, he looks at her differently. He pities her and he’s frustrated by her. She’s too fixated on the child, and not interested enough in him. She’s so fragile he daren’t touch her for fear she’ll break. He thought they would have a romantic reunion. He thought there would be gushing declarations of love and lust-filled fucking out on the lawn under the stars.

She has given him neither.

Kayla was a better choice for him. A better fit. I never liked the woman, but she was strong, and fierce, and loyal. She had fire in her belly and in her eyes, and she smelled of stars and charcoal.

Elena smells of mist and squashed river reeds, and that’s not what Ragnor needs. He needs more.

He also needs to remember where his own loyalty lies. Elena has distracted him. She has pulled a thin white veil over his eyes and wrapped it around his head, and she’s suffocating him with it.

His love for her is pulling the breath from his lungs and the fight from his soul. He is allowing himself to be dampened by a human, and it is making me very, very sad to watch it. Especially because I know The King will not be pleased.

When he returns, he will smell it on Ragnor, and then Ragnor will be no more. Which is a shame because I did so want us to be a happy little family. Even if she had to be in it, too.

But she is not the woman he said she was. She is no different to the rest of them. In fact, she might be the most pathetic example of a human I’ve ever encountered. Even more pathetic than that sniveling boyfriend the Fire Bird dispatched.

Thinking of the Fire Bird, my heart begins to sing. It flutters in my ribcage as if it has wings.