Page 23

The Raven was intense, someone who could make even the most hardened person watery in the knees.

The King was as intense but in a completely different way. His gaze did not draw the air from my lungs, toy with it, then slide it back into the deprived flesh to shoot electricity through me. His gaze was a fist around my throat, squeezing until the pressure built behind my eyes and the primal side of my brain took over and fought with futile thrashes. The King was the lion toying with the lamb out of boredom, uncaring to how each swipe of his massive paws drew more blood to splatter across snow-white fleece.

His thumb caressed my jaw, his eyes traveling the manufactured planes of my face as if both annoyed by their perfection but also trying to find the seam of expert tailoring. “Do you wish to please your King?”

His breath gusted over me, and that fist moved from my throat to my stomach. I wanted anything but that. I wanted to ram a blade through his heart and make love to the jet of blood.

My eyes darted pleadingly toward The Raven and saw a blank wall erected in the window of his forest gaze as his jaw ticked, and he eased into the wingback chair in quiet repose.

“Answer the King, Cricket.”

The razor of his voice cut through the tension and sliced it into a more deadly thing.

Rage, hot and visceral, pumped through my blood. I imagined a volcano seated in my core erupting through me and burning away all sense of self-preservation. The silent prayer for help I had sent out to The Raven had been thrown back in my face, the reminder of my position within this place branding itself into the fabric of my psyche. The fantasy that he had watched me with interest and desire at the campfire, that he had toyed with me at court in some misplaced flirtation, and that, in the baths was a moment where he cared, went up like cheap tissue paper in a house fire. It had been just that, a fantasy, a lie I told myself trying to get through this. He had never cared. I was just another daoire he had bought who would serve at their feet.

I could take control of this situation, though. I could dictate the way this went. Men were and would always be stupid when the idea of getting their dicks wet came into the equation. The Ard Rí and The Raven might be Fae, but they were both men, and I could and would use that against them.

Sonny Rule #5: Lying is only bad if the person you’re lying to is a good person. A lie for self-preservation? Putting on an act for self-preservation? In the catechism of the lost, was there anything more holy?

I let the wrath that sizzled in the marrow of my bones slide from my face, and that little voice that anyone who had worked more than three seconds in retail had mastered took over. I let it stretch over me, just like pulling on a Halloween costume.

When his grip tightened in my hair, I imagined that it was a vibrator buzzing away at my clit and let my face contort in pleasure. The fingers loosened, and I looked up at him from between his knees with the one look every man knew, the look of a cock-hungry woman on a mission to get fed.

Tentatively, I let my hands dance up his knees as if asking permission to touch him. A stupid grin of victory spread across the King’s fallen angel features, and he let his back fall against the expensive brocade of the chair as he pat his thigh, beckoning me upward.

The Raven shifted behind me. I felt the tip of his boot rest against my shin as I knelt between his friend’s knees. Whether he was asking to participate or looking to be connected to the moment in some way, it didn’t matter. I shifted his toe away from me with a flick of my leg carefully executed to make it look like I was getting more comfortable.

I was not letting the King into my body. It didn’t matter that the tight channel that he would be fucking was one Rictus had crafted for his pleasure. It didn’t matter that I had already been violated by someone else before he even had the opportunity to break that piece off me and grind it into dust. I was in control here. I was going to dictate how this went. And if I was in control of this moment, I could fool myself into not feeling this one thing I had spent my entire life up until Rictus, dodging like I was back in a middle school gym at PE.

My fingers spidered up his leather-covered thighs, walking a distinct path toward the intricate multithreaded length of braid lacing up the front of the breeches. I let my eyes stay locked on his, letting them whisper all the hot things I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to even if I could. I let them do all the talking and all the weaving of the lies I was going to wrap around his throat and pull tight.

Fingers wrapped around the laces and pulled slowly, letting each millimeter drag out. I wanted him aching for me by the time I took hold of him. I wanted him to bust like a schoolboy his first time with a woman. And from the slow panting that was gripping the bare chest, I was accomplishing my goal. He had forgotten all about The Raven brooding across from him, and all he could see was my eyes. The knowledge that the eyes he gazed into were not actually mine, but the crafted eyes forced upon me by Rictus made this easier.

I don’t know if I was expecting his cock to be some sort of monstrous thing, mutated and wholly other, but I was certainly not expecting to reach into his leather breeches and pull out a perfectly normal, perfectly human male cock. There were no ridges, no spines, no strange protuberances or fancy tentacles or anything. It was just a rock-hard, modestly sized, perfectly average human cock. If I wasn’t fully committed to the bit, I would have laughed. Something told me laughter in this situation would probably not be the best idea. It sounded like it was probably the best way to catch a terminal case of the deads.

Bending forward, I let my mouth hover over the head of his cock, teasing him with the heat of my breath. He watched me, stone still, as if hypnotized. When I let the warmth of my mouth slide down over the sensitive tip of his cock, he hissed like I burned him and rose, hips first, from the chair. Salty skin and the taste of pussy flooded my tongue.

I wasn’t unfamiliar with the taste of pussy. I’d only been with two men in my entire life, but most of my partners were women. I was an equal opportunity pervert. I didn’t care what rested between their thighs I cared more about what sat between their ears and in their heart. That was the only thing that caught my attention. Beauty was beauty, and it was always nice to look at a pretty thing come undone for you. But nothing beat the look of someone who had you truly captivated absolutely shatter for you.

I was less offended by the taste but more offended by the fact that I hadn’t put it together. The pink of his lion scratches hadn’t even faded yet from the last daoire he’d bedded, and he was here, in his sitting room, sampling another. This man was a pig in leather pants.

The hot brand of my tongue swirled around the tip of his cock, varying flexing and rolling against the ultra-sensitive glans. The taste of pussy flooded my mouth, and I could at least focus on that, let its rich flavor draw me down into a make-believe world where I wasn’t about to throat fuck myself on this swine’s dick. I could pretend I was back in Detroit, at Sloane’s place, lying in their bed, tracing their chest scars while I cleaned off the toy they had just used on me. It had always been my favorite ritual of theirs. Staring into their rich hazel eyes as I deep throated their favorite piece of silicone.

Inch by inch, I made my way down the King’s cock, my eyes sliding closed to remember that time when I was covered in my lover’s sweat, limp limbed, bathing in sunlight. I imagined the stubbed fingers weaving into the weight of my braid and guiding my head down farther were theirs. In turn, I let a small sound of pleasure rumble in my throat as I pushed the head past my tonsils to dance at the back of my vibrating throat.

I barely felt the toe of The Raven’s boot as it found a spot against my shin again, casting warm heat pooling in my blood to pump up from my leg to infiltrate the rest of my body.

My hands slid back to the King’s ass and gripped it as the image of Sloane unwound in my mind. The sunlight grew more golden, flooding their room with soft orange-and-rose tints as the image twisted, and in my mind, the cock I was sucking was no longer the King’s nor Sloane’s favorite strap. It was the thick cock of The Raven, filling my mouth easily and so warm to the touch. His skin felt warmed by hours bathing in the sunlight, and I could feel the golden rays of it radiating from his skin and filling my taste buds.

My head bobbed and twisted, my tongue undulating, cheeks sucking as I worshipped the sun-drenched cock of The Raven. I hadn’t even seen his cock, yet here I was, giving it a tongue lashing like I was on my knees for a god and loving every last second of it. I wanted more. I needed more. I needed to hear him moan my name. I needed to feel him strain into my mouth and then finally paint my tongue with his divine, salty gift.

I was ripped from the daydream of The Raven, his black breeches spread open wide, his glorious cock buried in my throat as he stretched his long body out in a sun-drenched bed, by the King snatching my hair and pulling me viciously off of him.

“You give throat like a dying salmon,” he spat and threw me from between his thighs.

Shook from the sudden change of attitude, my head spun with small flashes of the image I had conjured to survive that.

The Raven had recoiled into his chair, a brooding thunderstorm threatening to break the sky open and rain damnation on me.