I’d heard of the Fae horrors. For Mab to be the worst of them all, she must have been a truly vile creature.
The likeness on the next page stole the breath from my lungs. The God of the Dead’s hair was sketched a mottled light-gray, as if they couldn’t quite achieve the proper color of his rumored ashy silver waves that fell to his shoulders. His eyes were light, glowing from his severe face. His crown matched the same tone, except for the shadows that fell from it onto his head. His pointed ears were hidden beneath his hair, as were the swirling tattoos of white and black, of which only the tips crept up from the collar of his armor and leather tunic. They seemed to glow from the page with a pulse of magic.
My fingers traced the ends of his mark hesitantly, unable to turn my attention away from the drawing and focus in on his history and the atrocities he’d committed.
They were the same color as mine—and Caelum’s.
“I didn’t expect to find you with your head in a forbidden book, my star,” Caelum said, snapping me out of my trance as I stared down at Caldris, the God of the Dead. He glanced down at it as I shifted the cover closed, feeling somewhat guilty for reading about the very God that we’d discussed.
The one I’d seen a likeness of reclining casually with two women kneeling at his feet. I couldn’t look at anything to do with him without remembering that scene. His casual ease and comfort with himself, knowing that the women would have done anything to please him.
“Where’s Melian? She said she would keep an eye on you,” Caelum said, lifting his dark gaze from the book on the table.
I forced myself to smile, shrugging off the blush that had stained my cheeks. “She brought me here when she discovered that I know how to read. She wants me to translate the texts from the Old Tongue.”
“You speak the Old Tongue,” Caelum observed, tilting his head to the side thoughtfully.
“I’m far from fluent, and I don’t think I could hold a conversation, but I can read it if given the chance. I was just looking through the Libnor non Diathar. I never realized just how many Gods there were—”
I was cut off the moment Caelum grasped me around my arms, lifting me out of my chair. He pushed my back against the shelves, his mouth lowering onto mine forcefully. He bruised my lips with his, but as I wound my hands around his neck, I couldn’t make myself care.
His chest rumbled against mine as a low growl sounded in his throat, while he gathered the fabric of my dress with his fingers. He lifted it, hiking it up slowly as he kissed me.
“Caelum,” I gasped, pulling my mouth away from his when his fingers found the bare skin of my thigh. “We should stop. This isn’t the place.” His sudden, greedy assault on my mouth had left my lips stinging, wondering what had possessed him.
“Everywhere is the place that I want to touch you,” he murmured, dropping his mouth to the top of the Mark on my neck. His tongue teased the sensitive skin there, his fingers working closer to the apex of my thighs. “I’ll stop if you really want me to, Little One, but I want to finish what I started this morning. What’s it going to be?”
His thumb brushed against my core, the simple, barely-there touch lighting me on fire as I threw caution to the wind. I turned my head, capturing his lips with mine as he groaned. That wandering hand beneath my dress shifted between my thighs, stroking me while I whimpered into his mouth.
He slid his fingers through me, pressing one to my entrance and guiding it inside, carefully at first. My body wasn’t ready for the invasion, muscles clamping down and protesting it while he stroked my clit with his thumb and tangled his tongue with mine.
Slowly, I welcomed him inside. He growled when he felt me give way to him, adding a second finger to join the first as he pumped them into me with painful slowness. I wanted it faster. Harder.
More.
I was starved for him and the touch I’d denied myself, as if a gate had opened and only his hands could close it. Yet he deprived me of the orgasm that was building within me, keeping me from falling over the edge with expert torture.
“I suppose this would be an inappropriate time to tell you that I intend to kill every man who has felt you like this. Who has had the pleasure of your body wrapped around him?” he growled, leaning forward to sink his teeth into the sensitive skin on the side of my neck where he’d bitten me the night before.
“You can’t kill a man just for having fucked me, Caelum,” I argued, unable to force myself to push him away. Even when he was acting ridiculous, I’d have done anything to pull him closer. To take him inside me and make me burn. “Think how many women I would have to kill.”
He pressed his hard length against my thigh as he worked me with his hand, building my orgasm higher as he pulled back to stare down into my face. Malice lurked in his gaze when he met my eyes. “I would love to see that, my star.”
“That’s not normal,” I argued, my body jolting when he applied more pressure to my clit.
“I assure you, I do not give the first fuck what is normal when it comes to you. If you want to watch the world burn, I’ll set it on fire for you. If you want to slaughter every woman who has ever taken what is yours, then I will gladly sit back and watch you play,” he said, a twisted smile toying about his lips as he dropped his mouth to my lips and sank his teeth into the plump flesh. “Now fucking come for me, Estrella.”
“Caelum,” I gasped, then I shattered beneath his touch as he worked me, my legs feeling like they would have caved beneath me if it hadn’t been for his support holding me up and the knee he shoved between mine.
“These lips were made to moan my name,” he said, leaning down to kiss them gently as he pulled his fingers free from my pussy. He returned my dress to normal, letting it fall flat and cover me from view as he kissed me sweetly.
He made no move to ask me to return the favor, simply imparting a gift upon me for whatever reason. He could give me that gift every day for the rest of my life and I suspected I would never tire of it.
28
Another night passed without Caelum doing anything more than kiss me in the privacy of our shared room. After our moment in the library when he’d touched me, part of me wondered if something had happened to take away his sense of urgency. The other part of me was grateful, because I still hadn’t worked up the courage to bathe with an audience just yet and had to settle for a few awkward sponge baths instead.
That would change today; I knew the activity of the morning would drive me to need a true bath, as I followed Caelum to the training cavern. Even knowing that Melian may not be pleased with the decision to come here, and at the end of the day I would still return to those books and the knowledge they contained, I couldn’t not have some form of activity.
I couldn’t sit on my hands and eat the food Melian had delivered to me as I read, letting my body fall into disuse. I’d been easily exhausted and unable to run when I’d needed to escape Mistfell.