Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 78164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
It was that arousal his strategy relied upon—the distraction of pleasure.
His hands going to the sash holding my robe together, my body was unwrapped. Right there, without my permission.
Right there, as I shook from the injustice of it all.
Velvet was pulled from my shoulders, bare skin left for his hungry gaze. “The fog would have killed you. Even now, as we speak, dangerous humans meet to find ways to steal you from my care. Imagine what they might do to you should they succeed. You wish to be angry that I hold you above all others, that I would keep you safe? Then hate me. Hate me forever, if you must. It will never stop me from loving you.”
Lips fell upon mine, the conversation over as he gave me another avenue to vent my frustrations through.
I clawed, scratched, and fought, grateful he forced me to the bed. Crying out when his cock broke my seal as he mounted me from behind. As if possessed by demons, he rode me hard, a rough beast with no care should I be scandalized. And in the violence that followed, Cyderial showed me just how fun it could be to make a mess of the sheets.
I bore his weight and found myself mewling noises that should have shamed me down to my bones, weeping with the rightness of it when he fisted my hair and whispered dark promises at my ear.
He swore to me he would give me anything I wanted, if only I would let him own me.
Promised me any future I might desire, if only I would surrender.
Roared that I belonged to him—sending chills down my spine and frightening me so deeply I came, clamped tight around his thrashing cock.
A knot swelled huge inside me. There was no question he was going to make me as fat as he could. That he would dress me up, show me off, let the world know just how hard he fucked his young mate.
Distending more with each gush, I found myself arching back so his wriggling cock might drive deeper into my body.
While I was being filled, he pleasured me with his fingers, with his tongue at the shell of my ear. He made threats I was too drunk on pleasure to understand.
Beyond exhausted by the time we both lay panting in the tangle of sheets, my belly was once again fully distended, his knot set deep, his cock unwilling to be moved from its warm home.
His every heartbeat, I could feel within me, as that thing of his pet me from the inside.
He’d frightened me, and he knew it.
By all the satisfied male groans and possessive strokes, he very much enjoyed his victory.
My back held firmly to his chest, his arm possessively wrapped around my middle, he palmed my breast, rolling my nipple between his fingers.
“Stop.” I could not take another moment of pleasure, my nervous system already sparking from his corruption.
A menacing laugh matched his rough bite on my shoulder. “No.”
I dug my talons deep into his forearm, drawing blood and tearing muscle, and I swear—I swear—he climaxed, again, at that very moment.
And then he rubbed his blood into my skin, painting me inside and out, promising to make me love him.
7
“It isn’t a bad thing for you to have a taste of how vicious I can be.” The decadent strokes had not ceased, Cyderial already having plugged me full, having bathing his blood from my flesh, and now he drew a brush through my long hair while I stared at myself in the mirror.
I could not bring myself to meet his gaze in the reflection.
Not after how he so fully submitted me. How he frightened me.
“There will be times you grow anxious from this world that is so new to you. When they come, remember who you are mated to.” It wasn’t pride that shaded his low-spoken words; it was power. “There are reasons humans both fear and adulate what I have accomplished in the arena. The world, this ugly city, should they try to touch you, will have to face me. Know what I’m capable of, and let it be a comfort. I swear to keep you safe from all of it.”
But not safe from him.
A man who could do dark things to me and make me like it.
When it grew painfully obvious he was waiting for me to muster the courage to raise my eyes to his, that he would only tolerate my reticence for so long, I found myself embarrassed to be so bashful.
So I braved the inevitable.
Our eyes met in the mirror, and I found the insane man I’d known in my younger years—one of the many facets of his personality—and I questioned my own sanity for not running straight out the door.
This raw version of him was so different than the gentle mate who comforted me in the street. This unmasked side of Cyderial was the killer humans loved to cheer on in bloody battle.