There’s a brief look he gives me.
A warning.
A flare of caution.
A chance for me to run, to hide, to leave without consequence. Because he’s about to rip me apart.
Dessin’s hands fly up to my throat, curling his fingers with a firm yet gentle touch. He brings my face closer to his, breathing heavily against my mouth.
“What the fuck are you doing to me?” he growls into my ear. His lips part, an opening for his tongue to glide against that sensitive spot. Hot. Wet. I’m writhing in his lap, losing my mind, and panting like a dog left outside in the heat.
The room fades from existence. The moans, the aroma of sweat and saliva, all gone. Now there’s only the faint whiff of cedar and sandalwood. The forest during a thunderstorm.
I want him. And it’s in his grip tightening around my throat. He wants me, too, and he would kill to have me.
“Dessin,” I beg, my arms hugging his neck to me. But he doesn’t stop. He’s licking my neck, flicking his hot tongue against the lobe of my ear. “I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you!”
He pauses, moving his face away from my neck. “Is that right?”
I nod.
“I know you remember when I told you that I can’t have your lips yet,” he says.
The lagoon. I can’t have your mouth yet, but you can have mine.
“You want to taste me, Skylenna? Is that what you need?”
“Please.” My voice is the wisp of a whimper. A shred of dignity.
He smiles like a madman. Possessed. Starved. Dessin brings two fingers to his mouth, watching for my reaction as he dips them past his lips. When they exit, his index and middle finger are shiny.
“Open,” he commands.
His fingertips hover over my lips. “Taste me, Skylenna.” And he’s in my mouth. Two large fingers spread my lips until I taste him, salty and sweet. I stare in a haze of ecstasy, stunned by a storm of fire between my legs. He’s studying me. Examining my reaction.
So, I begin to suck. Drawing Dessin’s fingers deeper into my mouth to savor every moment. To enjoy the little bit of him that I can have.
My eyes flick back to him, locking with his wicked gaze. He laughs darkly until I move my mouth up and down the length to meet his knuckles.
He looks angry. As if the amusement he once felt has slipped away, down to the base of his spine to relax. Now, he’s roaring with another sensation. Violence. The locking of his jaw. The furrowed brow. The rigid arms flexed around me.
“You keep doing that, and I’ll make you regret it.” A voice of fire and brimstone. “I’ll rip this pathetic excuse for clothing from your body and fuck you until your eyes water.”
“Oooh, can I join?”
Runa.
I freeze in his lap. Dessin doesn’t seem fazed. He couldn’t care less who is watching.
“Need something?” he asks her without taking his eyes off me.
“A great many things,” she answers. “But they’ll have to wait. The elders would like to meet you.”
~
Another cave opens into a cathedral of stone and darkness.
Dessin and I are stewing in a web of uncomfortable silence as we follow Runa. Was it all for show? Was he touching and moving to put on a performance? Or was the evidence in his pants all the proof I need?
I glance at his tan, stoic features as we descend into the shadows and dim lighting. Unreadable. Not a hint of insecurity or questioning what we did back there.
Fine.
I mimic his expression of indifference. Another game? Let’s do it. He won’t see how that affected me. I’ll share his mask and let him wonder if his actions touched my heart at all.
I examine the musty scented cave of iron light fixtures, jagged stone pillars, and rows of seating like a church. As we continue following Runa down a never-ending aisle, I see the shape of a long table on a pedestal sitting horizontal to us. Two old men and one old woman are watching us approach. Tall black candles are perched in front of them, casting a honey-and-metallic-gold glow over their withered faces.
It’s a struggle fighting the urge to look at Dessin for reassurance that we aren’t in danger. He’s a blanket of security. A shelter that I run to when I’m afraid.
We stop walking in front of their heightened table. The elders are at least two feet above us.
The old woman sits in the middle, no cloak, only a black lace turtleneck. Her wizened hair matches her colorless skin, and her eyes aren’t beady and black; they’re the color of smoke that has polluted the air, bleeding into the whites of her eyes.
The two old men look like brothers. The same sleepy expression, hooked noses, and bald heads. The right one drums his fingers on the table to hurry this along before it’s even begun.
“Here they are,” Runa announces nervously out of respect for her superiors. “I found them in—”
The old woman holds up her crepe hand. “I’d like to hear their ages again.” Her voice is hardly that of an elderly woman. It’s melted chocolate. It’s low and shiny with newness.
“Twenty-three and nineteen,” Dessin answers.
The woman eyes him suspiciously. “You came from the inner city.” Not a question, a fact.
Dessin nods.
“From the asylum.” The old man to the right stops drumming his fingers.
Dessin’s cruel eyes shoot to him like a poisonous arrow. “I hardly think that’s any of your business,” he grits.
The elders chuckle softly as if they expected that response.
“And are you in love?” the old woman asks.
Dessin and I stiffen.
“No,” I answer quickly. Dessin doesn’t move.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” I regret how unsure I sound when I answer. My voice trembles like a brittle leaf in the wind.
Why would she ask that? We aren’t holding hands. We aren’t gazing lovingly into the other’s eyes.
The woman rests her chin on her fist, concentrating on the two of us. Committing our faces to memory. “I have one question. Your answer will determine if you are who we think you might be. It will confirm that our prophecy from ages ago is that of truth.”
We wait, tension thickening the air like being underwater.
“Aside from the death of Scarlett, what are the memories that pain you the most?” Her question is a volcano erupting within me. An earth-shattering statement. Chills ripple over my arms like a colony of fire ants.
Dessin’s head whips to look down at me, frozen in shock.
“I—” My breath hitches in my throat. I want to ask how they know about Scarlett. But the old woman isn’t blinking. She needs my answer, and she needs it now.
My hands clench and unclench repeatedly.
I know the answer without giving any additional thought.
“The memories that I have forgotten are the ones that hurt the most,” I say with pain like barbed wire tightening around my words.
The three elders straighten in their seats, glancing between each other in surprise and understanding. The old woman rises from her seat, looking down on us as if seeing us for the first time.
It’s only after I slide my confused gaze to Dessin that I notice he’s watching me too. Eyes shadowed with agony as he releases a slow breath.
“I know you will not trust us for some time. But our people have waited for the two of you for several generations. It’s been so long, in fact, that most of our youth believe you to be fictional characters in a bedtime story.”
What? This doesn’t make any sense. I’m a nobody born in the Bear Traps. I weaseled my way into the city, slithered into the asylum, and now I’m here. Am I just involved in these stories because of my association with Dessin?
“This is a lovely fantasy,” Dessin mocks. “But Skylenna and I aren’t exactly big believers of magic. But you are correct about one thing. I do not trust easily, if ever.”
The woman nods. “We know. But there are things we’d like to give you for your journey. Things we’ve saved in our artifacts for a very long time, locked away until the day you would arrive.”
“Stay the night or as long as you require. We’ll visit you in the morning with what you’ll need for your travels.” The old man to the left sounds like he hasn’t spoken in years. His voice is hoarse, like a buggy sputtering as it has run out of fuel.
Runa shows us out, nodding her head at the cave opening to guide us to our rooms.
~
Not rooms.
Room.
One bed. No changing curtains. No spare cot.
“I should remind you that you are to keep up the ruse you displayed in the tavern when you leave this room. The elders believe the prophecy, but my generation won’t be convinced. They’ll see the two of you as outsiders. Dangerous.” Runa lights a few gaslit globes, revealing the sooty cave walls, a small fireplace with wolf statues, and scattered framed paintings of dark warrior elves.
Dessin and I pretend not to notice the small bed as we take in the details of the room.
“Want me to stay for a nightcap? A lickety-split roll in the hay?” Runa asks, voice feminine and seductive.
I glare at her until she breaks into a mischievous smile and closes the door as she leaves.
“I’d like to nominate Runa for your hit list,” I blurt out.
Dessin’s head lowers as he chuckles. He’s turned his back to me, so I watch his shoulders shake with reluctant laughter.
“Jealous, are we?”
“No,” I scoff. “I just don’t like how crude she is.”
He glances back at me with a raised brow. “You don’t like how crude she is toward me.”
True, but don’t call me on it!
“I don’t care at all.” I shrug, running my fingers along the cave wall. “If you’re into her, help yourself.”
He’s chuckling again. Delight flutters in my chest. I wish that sound didn’t cause such an unwanted response from my body.
“Oh, well, if you don’t care…” Dessin takes three slow steps toward the door.
“Take another step, and you’re sleeping on the cold, hard floor tonight,” I snap.
His head tips back as he barks out another laugh. I turn my head so he doesn’t see my smile. God, what I’d do to hear his laughter more often. Dessin faces me, smirking, devilish and handsome. I can’t blame Runa for looking at him and wanting what she wants.
He’s a masterpiece.
But his stare, although appearing innocent, lingers on me a moment too long. My heart slips from its shelf, falling the way it would when your foot misses a step.
“I should get dressed for bed,” I tell him.
He turns away from me, facing the wall. I throw off my cloak, unlace my boots, and shimmy my way out of the straps and wires I’m dressed in. Runa left a black nightgown that is thinner than tissue paper and shorter than anything I’ve worn.
But it’s all I have.
Before I can slip under the blankets on the small bed, Dessin twists to look at me, his eyes of dynamite and steel tracing over every inch of my skin. His jaw clenches.
“I won’t make you sleep on the floor.” I smile.
After removing his boots, he’s climbing into bed with me. The goose-feather mattress creaks as his weight settles in, leg touching my leg, arm pressed against my arm. Nothing to see except the soft glow of the lamps, flickering across the ceiling.
Will he touch me again now that we’re away from the wandering eyes of the tavern?
Dessin shifts to get comfortable and brushes my leg with his own. He stills.
“Not a lot of room,” he justifies. I can hear his breath, his heartbeat, his mind racing. The hairs on his leg tickle my knee as I shift it to rest over his thigh.
He doesn’t move an inch.
“It’s more room than your creaky bed at the asylum.”
“You’ve been thinking about lying in my bed?” There’s that unmistakable mischief in his tone. I’m glad he can’t see my smile in the dark.
“I haven’t even thought of it until this moment.”
A closed-mouth laugh rumbles under his chest. “Liar.”
It’s chilly in this cave room, but luckily the feathered blanket is trapping Dessin’s radiant body heat around us like a cocoon. Yet I still want him to hold me. I want his arms to pull me against his chest.
“That was quite the convincing performance you put on today,” I muse.
“Oh?” His voice is low and gravelly.
“I thought you were only pretending until I felt it.”
“Felt what?”
I huff. “You know… your excitement.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” he says, a smile creeping in like a slow leak from a faucet.
“Really? It wasn’t exactly subtle.”
Dessin’s quiet for a moment.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to show me with your hands.”
I bark out a laugh. “Well played.”
We lie there for several minutes. And it’s long enough that I think he’s sleeping with long peaceful breaths and complete stillness. I close my eyes; briefly, that is until his hand caresses over mine. The tips of his fingers graze my knuckles. And he’s gentle. I ache inside, a slow throb in my heart and between my legs. Please just hold me.
He doesn’t hear my silent plea because he lifts his hand away, slow and hesitant. But I’m not done yet. That can’t be all after everything that’s happened today. I snatch it back, slipping my hand around his, folding my fingers around his palm. I wonder if he can feel my heartbeat through this touch.
Adrenaline runs hot through my veins.
It still isn’t enough. The need to feel his lips on my neck again fills me with wanton urgency. It’s a feral itch in my lower belly. A beastly need to be touched. And I don’t know where it’s coming from. My back arches. My breath quickens.
“If you move your body that way again, we’re going to have a problem,” Dessin growls, sounding strained and almost fearful.
It’s right here in this moment I know how I affect him. Every muscle in his body is stiff and rigid, while mine is floppy and languid. My movements control him, and it’s wildly addicting. To the man who controls all, knows all—I am his downfall.
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Skylenna,” he warns. If it weren’t for the known fact that he won’t hurt me, I might actually take his warning to heart.
“Show me what happens.” It’s indecent and wrong. He’s my friend. He was my patient first. But that time has come and gone, and I desperately need to know what he feels like. The tavern was a taste. It was exhilarating and nothing like our lives back in the city.
His body softens like a sigh of breath. And he doesn’t move.
I turn my head to see his eyes are open, but something isn’t right. They’re glassy and unfocused. Like a daydream. Like death, but with breath in his lungs.
“Dessin?”
He blinks once, twice, eyes giving me a sidelong glance. A look that is cold and makes me shudder. His lips curl into a smirk as he rolls onto his side.
I know it immediately. Dessin is no longer beside me. He’s gone.
I can only pray I have already met this alter.
“He’s certainly no fun in these situations, is he?” That accent is delicious and silky.
Greystone.
I stop moving. Stare at him.
“Is he not giving you what you want?” He uses his arm to prop up his head, gazing down at me like I’m to be pitied for wanting what I want.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I tell him. “It’s not safe.”
Greystone looks around, examining the cave room with fake curiosity. “I don’t see any danger. And the vindictive brute has certainly relaxed enough to let me through.”
I huff out a loud sigh.
“Oh, don’t sound so disappointed,” he purrs.
“I’m not. You just surprised me.”
He tilts his chin closer to my face, hovering as if to taunt me with what he might do. “Are you well? You look flustered.”
I swallow, remembering what he told me when we first met. He keeps track of the arousal of this body and who causes it.
Me.
He surfaced for me. Because Dessin was aroused.
“Grey—”
“May I touch you?” he asks.
“I—well, I don’t know.” I want him to. My insides are coiling up, and heat flares in my gut. “I’m not sure how this works.”
“You’re afraid of hurting the avenging alter.”
I nod.
“You won’t. It isn’t just him that you can have. It’s the entire system. The other alters are all fond of you in their own way.”
I blink. A spike of pleasure twisting through me at the notion that each alter is fond of me. Do they watch us? Do they each want to meet me? I exhale, slowly, nodding my head. “Okay. You may touch me.”
He waits a few seconds, and I can almost hear him grin on the inside.
“Is this what you wanted from him?” He drags a finger across my collarbone, drawing a shiver from me. He smiles confidently. “It is, isn’t it?”
His fingers pass over the skin just above my breasts. My nipples harden into aching points that Greystone can see through my nightgown.
“You wanted him to touch you. You wanted to satisfy that agonizing need to pleasure yourself.” His voice is still masculine and deep; only now it has a seductive tone with soft, soothing edges.
His other hand slides over my thigh, holding the soft inner side closest to my panties. A white-hot blaze of electricity burns across my stomach, sending goose bumps to rise over my arms. I whimper, trying to clasp my mouth shut in hopes he doesn’t hear it.
“Is that where it aches, pretty one?” He squeezes my inner thigh. “Use your words.”
I’m delirious. Drunk, even. I nod because words are too much.
One daring finger skims over my panties. I let out a gasp that fades into a moan. “There’s a good girl. Would you like me to teach you how to get what you want?” My insides purr at his approval.
I’m panting. Unsure how to do this without overthinking everything.
“Your words, please.”
“Yes.” My lungs deflate. “But why do you want to?”
He pauses. “I like the control of it. Teaching you how to erupt from our touch excites me.”
He watches me with cunning calculation as if waiting for me to take my words back. But it is written across the desire coating his eyes. He can read me without half a thought. He can recognize every tremble, every sigh, every expression and know how to touch me. It’s the way this alter is designed to understand the arts of pleasure.
“Do exactly as I say,” he coaxes, dragging my hands down to my panties. “We’ll go slow.”
I’m no longer spineless and melting. Now, I’m as rigid as Dessin once was. His hand is resting over mine, which is resting between my legs.
“Move your fingers with mine,” he says. He begins to curl them, stretch them, move them until I’m hooking my opening through the fabric of my panties. It hits a bundle of nerves that ignites my senses. I groan at his guidance. The base of my stomach twisting in a tight knot, burning with pleasure.
“Do you feel that?”
I pause.
“You’re soaking,” he hums, pleased with this outcome. “You have no idea how bad that makes me want to taste you.”
“Oh,” I sigh, my center contracting around our fingers, kneading and working on me.
Greystone leans down into my ear, breathing against me.
“When my breath grazes your ear, your skin, it’ll make it so much easier to chase that fire in your tight, pretty cunt.” His words douse me in a ferocious need to move my fingers faster, arch my back into his dirty mouth. What is happening to me? It’s a fever of sorts. A virus that turns a woman into a dainty monster.
The pressure in my clit swells, throbbing against our fingers, and the tingling sensation builds throughout my entire body.
“Faster, pretty one.”
I breathe in and out like I’m about to faint. Our fingers are digging into me, massaging my hot, wet center.
“You’re so beautiful with that mouth wide open for me.”
I freeze before I burst. An explosion of euphoric magic that coats every cell, every vein, every organ. I’m gasping like a dying fish under Greystone’s grip, howling until I fall limp to the bed, pouring over the sheets like warm, drizzling honey.
Oh my god. What was that?!
I’m a mess of trembling goo. Greystone kisses me on the cheek, smiling as he pulls away.
“Sleep,” he urges. “I have more to teach you soon.”
