His fingers slide down my abdomen and delve between my swollen lips. “Mine,” he whispers in my ear. “Say it. Say it’s mine.”
“Never.”
His eyes blaze and the edge of his fingertips quirk up, teasing through the swollen mess of my cunt. “You always have to fight me, Zemira.”
A hard slap shocks a cry from me.
Did he just…?
I clench around him, shuddering as I lower my head. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“It’s yours.” The words burst from me. “It’s always been yours. From the second I saw you.”
He reaches between us to guide his cock to my entrance. The first inch makes me sweat. The second inch is torture. It’s the sweetest of aches, leaving my thighs trembling. My eyes go wide, nails digging into the sheets as he feeds it into me so slowly that my muscles melt around him. He’s so thick.
Panting from desperation, I gasp, “I don’t know if I can—”
“You can.” Curling a hand around my throat, he draws me back against his chest, until I’m sinking down upon him, taking him all. Somehow my moan combines with the sharp hiss that exhales between his teeth, and then he’s driving into me that last, final inch.
The dance begins.
Slow. Bone-melting in its intensity. A dangerous grind filled with soft gasps, and the slap of flesh on flesh. This is not merely fucking. He’s working my body until we’re one. Driving us both closer to a single peak, until my thighs shake with the tension of holding myself in place.
“More,” I gasp.
A hand curls around the back of my neck and then he’s pushing me down onto my hands and knees. Long, slow, driving thrusts. Getting faster and faster, until his thighs slam against mine. The wet suck and pull of flesh does things to me. Fingers find me, flickering over that restless ache. I want to scream again. I want to bite into the pillow, beg him for more, simply take it….
Keir pounds into me, and then his fingers find my clit and he pinches.
It sets me off again, until I’m crying his name, shattering upon distant shores.
Tension shivers through him. Clenching around him, I try and force him to come with me.
“Mira.” It’s a breath. A curse. A plea on his lips.
Shuddering with release, he spills inside me with a growl, fingers digging into my hips so fiercely I know they’ll leave bruises that I’ll relish.
Collapsing against me, he gasps and pant, until we’re a mess of arms and legs. Slick seed spills from my body as he withdraws with a gush.
“Oh, gods.” I don’t think my heart is ever going to stop racing. “I can’t move. I think you’re ruined me.”
“Mmm.” Another hot, sloppy kiss captures my mouth as he spills me onto his back. My pulse kicks against his lips. “Did you think we were done?”
And then he laughs as I simply lie there and shake in the aftermath, his tongue tracing the slope of my neck.
14
I wake with a gasp, a scream trapped in my throat.
For a second, I was trapped in the dark, with not even a single candle to light the way, and the roof closing in upon me. It felt so real I could almost taste the stale air of whatever cell I was contained within, and the old scar across my palm—where Soraya and I once bound ourselves together—is throbbing.
“Mira?”
I turn into Keir’s body, my heart racing. Every inch of me is deliciously bruised and sated, but it’s the way his arms curl around me that does so much damage.
“Bad dreams,” I whisper.
He strokes a hand through my hair. “You shouldn’t be having any bad dreams. Not while I’m near.”
I shudder. “I thought…. I thought it was Soraya, reaching for me.”
He rolls onto his side, so we’re face to face. “We’ll find her.”
“I know.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
Long seconds tick out as he strokes small circles over my arm. “You love her,” he whispers. “Even after everything she did to you.”
I can’t possibly explain.
But I want to.
For the first time, I want to.
“I don’t know who my mother was.” The words come from my mouth, but I don’t recall beckoning them. Still, it’s far too late for regret. “I thought perhaps she was from the Court of Whispers, thanks to something my wet nurse once said, but… I’ve been there many a time. She wasn’t of the Whispers.”
He says nothing.
I want to say nothing further.
And yet, the words are rising up within me, choking me with all the pain and sorrow I’ve never been able to hide. “My father forced himself upon her. It’s what he did to all of them. He sent his wraiths to find him fae brides, and when they were brought to him, he forced them to bear his children. He wanted a child that could pass as fae. One that could walk these lands and bring him what he wished. He wanted a child who could break the curse that afflicts us.”
All the horror spills out of me. “There were dozens of us. Hundreds over the years. Whatever curse afflicts our kind, it breeds true. Barely one in twenty resembled their fae kin. And of those few, only a rare handful have the ability to wield their fae magics.” I hold my hands up and let the glamor slip. It washes from my skin like a warm blanket being withdrawn. A chill settles over me. I’m wraithenkind enough for my flesh to feel like marble. A faint glow settles over my skin, as if the moon itself shines within me.
Not all wraithenkind bear such innate power.
Most of them are maggot-pale and coldblooded. But in this my breeding ran true on both sides. I have the power of my wraith father and the magic of my fae mother.
“Soraya is the only one who stood at my back throughout my childhood. And I watched over her. It doesn’t matter how many times she
