“I’m not, though.” I tugged on the collar of his shirt and skimmed a kiss over his mouth.
“No, but you could be.” He touched the point on my back where the arrow had entered. “An inch lower and you would be. When I woke, I was convinced you were and I realised—I believed… fuck them and their rules. You didn’t enter that contract willingly, so why the hells should I give a shit about it? If it means nothing to you, it means nothing to me. Even if that makes me a villain, an oathbreaker, all the very worst things people say.” He shrugged, bringing me closer with the arm around my waist. “It doesn’t matter. You matter. You matter more to me than I do. And I surrender this last thing to you.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted that level of responsibility. Yet hadn’t I lost my mind and control of my power not because I was in danger, but because he was? The sight of his double dying had broken something in me. Nothing else had mattered. Nothing.
So maybe I was already right there with him.
I gave the slightest nod.
Like that was permission, he walked me back until my shoulders hit the door. He tilted my chin up so there was no escaping his gaze. “I want you, body, heart, and soul. I want to worship you as you deserve to be worshipped. Adore you as you deserve to be adored. Love you as you deserve to be loved.”
Goosebumps flooded my skin. He said that word. The one I’d thought wasn’t possible for people like me—not until Avice had returned with so, so much of it. The one I thought I’d seen a glimmer of and lost. The one I felt for him.
Dangerous. He was always so damn dangerous.
So I retreated, raising an eyebrow like the Wicked Lady would, like I wasn’t afraid. “I thought you said ‘fuck deserve?’”
He scoffed, touch tracing down my throat to the neckline of my gown, forcing a snatched breath through my lips. “At your feet, all rules kneel. I’m no hero, Katherine, but, please, let me be your villain.”
And I understood then the effect of a well-timed please.
It reached every part of me, warming like a glass and a half of brandy, but instead of dulling the edges of the world, it made it all sharper. The angles more crisp, the colours brighter, the hard planes of his body against mine all the more perfect.
I drew a deep breath, pressing my chest into his fingertip, soaking up that point of contact. “I’ve had enough of heroes.” Like my heart wasn’t thundering, I took my time tracing the scar that ran through his lip. “I dreamt of those as a girl. I consumed stories about them and sucked out the marrow. But no hero ever came. No hero took me from my husband or broke a man’s nose because he called me fat. No hero gave me his blood. No hero made me his as you have.”
Because I was.
I was his in every way that mattered, in every sense I knew.
“I want you, whatever that means, whatever you may turn out to be.” I planted a long, slow kiss on his mouth. His stillness hummed into me like he was holding on until I unleashed him. “I want you, Bastian,” I whispered. “Give me everything.”
And he did.
The kiss might’ve killed me, and everything that came next was in the Underworld, because it was deep and consuming like he really had waited a lifetime. He crushed me against the door as he had in the library, and it had my centre throbbing and my legs looping around him.
His body on mine. His hardness pressing between my legs. His hands on my cheek, in my hair, sweeping down my sides and hips, almost ticklish. He was everywhere, everything—all that I needed in this moment.
I was so absorbed in the kiss, I only registered we’d pulled away from the door when he squeezed my thigh. “Feet down, love.”
Dazed and breathless, I obeyed and found myself standing by the bed, its canopy drifting in the breeze from the open window.
With a slow smile, he did nothing but watch me for a moment, then rubbed his thumb across my lower lip. It tingled, swollen from our frantic kissing, and his gaze lingered there like he enjoyed the fact he’d marked me, even if only temporarily.
“Beautiful,” he murmured so softly I wondered if he realised he said it out loud. He fingered the curve of my collarbones next, until he caught the gathered shoulders of my gown.
It ached how slowly he eased them outward. My pulse throbbed, counting the moments until at last the dress fell over my arms and the silk pooled at my feet, leaving me in my underwear.
His chest gave a heavy rise and fall as he took me in. His gaze on my breasts might as well have been touch, teasing my nipples tight. “So beautiful.”
“Please, Bastian.” I clenched my hands into fists. “Just take me. This is torture.”
One side of his mouth rose in the most diabolical smirk I’d ever seen. “I told you—there is no ‘just’ for us. And you asked for everything, so…” He spread his hands as though he had no choice but to obey. It tilted the scales between us, shifting power, or at least my perception of where it lay.
Then his hands were on my waist and I forgot about anything other than the heat of his skin sliding down my hips as he pushed my underwear off.
Utterly naked, I stood before him.
He’d seen me before, of course, but… now my heart was bare too.
For a moment, my arms tensed, ready to shield myself, an old voice telling me this was wrong that I should be ashamed. Knees together—you’re not a whore.
But I met Bastian’s gaze and my arms eased to my sides.
He looked at me like I mattered. Like I was important—as vital as air, as sacred as a bargain. Like there was nothing in me that ever warranted shame.
“There.” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “That—that is my ember.” He nodded to the bed. “On your knees.”
I obeyed, but every ounce of my focus was stolen by him peeling off his shirt, and I found myself staring, biting my lip. Outside, the sun had set and its rays spilled through our windows, edging his muscles and scar with fiery light. It glinted on his piercing, and I reached for his nipple as he approached the bed.
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head as a shadow caught my wrists and lifted them above my head. More curled under my thighs and backside, lifting me into the air. He glanced outside as if checking, then nodded to himself. “Sunset.”
My poison had reset.
His next touch…
My mouth went dry as, with a gesture, he commanded his shadows to spread my legs. They dimpled my thighs, baring me even more thoroughly. If I’d been the old Katherine Ferrers, I might’ve died of shame or embarrassment, but I wasn’t. Not anymore.
This version of me, whoever she was, arched into his hungry gaze, made powerful by it, and bit her lip waiting as he bent closer, closer, closer.
In one long lick, he cut clean through me, through the world, through the entire fucking universe.
I bucked in his shadows’ grip as magic surged between us, from his tongue into me, along every nerve, blazing and beautiful and obliterating.