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My vision speckled.
“Little one,” he whispered, “you’re holding your breath again. Your lungs are burning. Breathe. Breathe! There… that’s my good mortal.”
Air rushed into my lungs, and I blamed it for how my nipples hardened. A sense of emptiness filled me where his fingers had been only moments ago, aching to be filled after years of abstention. It hurt, letting moisture gather on my forehead—and more between my legs in maddening waves of aching need.
“Shh, I know where you need me.” Two fingers trailed down between the valley of my breasts, along my belly, and through my curls until they thrust inside me. “Mmm, I left you wanting once, but never again, my precious woman.” A scoff. “How the blood buzzes around your heart whenever I say that word.Precious.”My chest turned weightless for a breath, and another as his lips brushed along the shell of my ear where he whispered, “Precious.”
The word crawled into my veins, spreading right through me with torturous heat. My body fevered, pelvis shifting toward the hypnotic rhythm of his fingers stroking me, the large palm that rested against my nymph, indulging it with constant pressure.
At the first cautioning tingle around my nymph, I sucked in a sharp breath. “I hate you.”
“Shh, do not disguise your lust as loathing,” he crooned inches from my ear, curling his fingers inside me, promising wicked pleasure with how he palmed my tender nub. “Give in to me. You know you want to. Want me to drown you in pleasure until you resurface and bloom. Ah, you are so close, my little one.” His breathing came faster, harsher, panting against my neck with each thrust of his fingers. “Mmm, such heat around your pulsing gem. Release it. Let go.”
I cried out at the torrential wave of pleasure as a riptide surged through me, lifting me to the highest high before it dropped me into the shameful gorge of defeat. Something fractured inside me with my next inhale—perhaps my sanity, though likelier, my self-respect.
“Good girl.” Enosh’s purr broke against my forehead, where he nuzzled the fine wisps along my hairline. “Mmm, do you believe it now, little one? That you long for my touch?”
My ragged breathing soon hiccupped into a pathetic sob. How many times had I succumbed to this man and how easily he weaved pleasure through me? Had I truly been so deprived of touch, of attention, of the feeling to bewantedthat I enjoyed this depravity?
His finger stroked through the middle of my forehead and down to the tip of my nose. “Why would you want to escape such pleasure?”
Reality crept back into me one strained inhale at a time. Perhaps I was mad, or lonely, or debauched—God’s bones, maybe I was all three at once. Nothing but a mere mortal with a beating heart, pitted against the devastating whims of a virile god.
He could have my body.
But never my soul.
Never its surrender.
Braving his sly grin, I shifted away from his touch. “No pleasure in this world could make me want to stay around your corrupted character.”
Something cracked in the abyss of his gray eyes. For a grin-dropping second, it appeared as though his mask broke in too many places all at once. Unable to sustain his air of superiority, the age-old face behind the decaying veneer contorted in… yes, anger.
It screamed around a god enraged, barely contained by his mortal form. The room shook in much the same way the ground had earlier, and the glass in the window clattered. Did he do this? Because he was mad? Mercy god, what angered him so? Escape was but a dream already faded.
His hand went to my throat, right above my collar, not choking me but clasping hard enough as if to let me know that he could. “I hold you for hours after we coupled, feeding you from one hand while the other strokes your hair until all tension leaves your muscles. The little skin I have left at my disposal, I weave into the finest dresses, and the softest pelts line your bed.” His forehead lowered against mine, and his eyes closed as he shifted his mouth against my lips. “Kiss me.” He slammed his mouth to mine, kissing, suckling, and when my lips remained stiff and still, he nipped me. “Kiss me!”
His roar stilled my breathing, but I found a sliver of confidence in how his hand slipped off my throat to the sound of dust raining from the crossbeams. “Make me.”
A breath barreled out of him.
A second passed.
Two. Three.
At his next inhale, the room stilled, and his cold mask repaired itself with a new layer of ice that chilled the blood in my veins. “My little mortal is still disquieted over the girl I refused to rot, even though she’s begged and pleaded so nicely.”
No matter the disdain dripping from his voice, his eyes and the slight frown between them somehow didn’t match it. I didn’t know what to do with that—or how his lips curved into a new smile promising nothing good.
Carefully, so very carefully, I parted my lips. “Sometimes I told myself it was a good thing I never had a baby, especially when I heard of the ones still in their cradles the morning after a full moon. I don’t know. Maybe… maybe gods just don’t understand the agony of losing a child.”
“You don’t know the extent of my agony,” he said as a tremble hushed across his lips, but it was gone with my next blink, his mask solidly frozen in place. “If I rot this child for you, what will you give me in exchange?”
Internally, I scoffed. What a ridiculous question. What did I have left to give? What else did he want that he couldn’t simply take?
“What do you want?”
He cupped my cheek. “Become my wife. Give your vow before a priest and god—anyfucking god—and take me as your husband.”
