Chapter
Nineteen
Galantia Present day, Deepmarsh Castle, Galantia’s chamber
want you so badly.
The resonance of those words continued to carry me into restless sleep for several nights,I always reshaping into forest-green eyes. I followed their line of sight and stared down at myself.
Watched how I ran my fist down the thick length of Sebian’s cock.
“Good girl.” His purred praise returned my gaze to those green eyes that narrowed. Turned gray- brown, glinting with disdain. “I want you to hurt.”
I woke with a start.
Not again!
My pulse thudded loudly enough between my ears, it overwhelmed the morning symphony of the songbirds that roosted in the rushes and reeds outside my window. But it had nothing, nothing, on that violent throbbing between my legs. Gods, I was aching!
I blinked around my empty chamber, hand slipping underneath the quilt and between my legs.
When my fingertips dipped into the slickness the dream had left there, I stroked around my heated
flesh. Dipped, prodded, and stirred until pleasant tingles spread from my center, chasing relief but…
It didn’t come.
I clenched my eyes shut.
Gave it all my focus.
Sebian appeared against the black backdrop of my imagination, muscles on his stomach shifting as he drove his cock into me to the rhythm of my fingers dipping slightly into my channel. He lowered his smirk to my mouth in a slow, languid kiss that made heat crest around my sex.
Close. I was so close.
Until Malyr appeared once more. He suckled my bottom lip between his teeth before he bit down, letting it throb with an intensity that matched the wild pulsing between my legs as blood ran— No!
I quickly pulled my drenched fingers from underneath the quilt and clamped my arms down by my sides. Gods be damned, how could I be so wicked? It was bad enough that I fantasized about Sebian,
but Malyr…?
That was sick.
Deranged.
Rising in defeat, I slipped out of my shift, skin pebbling under the chill of the morning. The sleeping embers in the hearth barely offered any warmth as I walked over to the wash table. At the bottom of it, a streak of blue against the gray stone caught my attention. What was it?
I clasped the little shiny thing and held it against the light of the window. A blue silk ribbon, some parts slightly faded, others a bit stained, but beautiful! How had this gotten here?
And then the memory of that stormy night struck me. Was this what the raven had dropped from its beak? Maybe.
Using nails and teeth, I tied it around my wrist, then turned to get ready. I quickly washed myself, including the unholy mess between my legs, and dressed. How much longer until I could finally leave this place behind?
After a moment’s consideration, I turned toward my door. Perhaps Sebian had news of Tidestone?
If he was even in his chamber. The morning after the storm, I’d woken alone. I hadn’t seen him since, and— “Gods…” A start sent such a spasm through my muscles, I jumped and stumbled backward against the wooden partition that secluded my sleeping area. “What do you want?”
Malyr sat on the blue velvet couch beside the door, the black vest he wore over his white shirt finer than any other before. How long had the prince been sitting here?
My stomach dropped. How much had he seen through the intricate carvings of the partition?
“Do you often moan in your sleep?” he asked, answering that question and weaving strands of shame through me all at once. “A pleasant dream, perhaps?”
“A nightmare.”
“Ah, does fear arouse you, then?” he asked. “Presume it explains why humans dread my shadows with an intensity they piss themselves, whereas they make my little dove drip something entirely different down her thighs.”
Fighting the heat that pricked along my neck, I held his stare, pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about. His shadows didn’t rouse anything contemptible in me—no pleasant tingles, no floods of heat.
But the longer I gazed into his two-colored eyes, the higher his lips curled into a smirk that would look cheeky on Sebian, but on Malyr? It stripped me down. Exposed my unspoken lies, my body’s
crooked reactions.
I couldn’t stand it, which made my gaze drift to the door. If only I could escape into Sebian’s cham — “He isn’t there. Given the state I found him in behind the tavern earlier, I assume he is still dragging himself back through the great hall as we speak.” Malyr rubbed his thumb over his bottom lip as if in thought, his gaze going empty before he shook his head. “The Tidestone delegation ought to
reach the castle within the hour.”
Within the hour.
I waited for my spine to straighten, for my chest to lift or my feet to tingle with the urge to sprint out the gate and toward them right now. In all the five hells, I would have done with a sigh of relief.
None of it came.
“So I will finally go home.”
Leaving one cruel prince for another. How ironic was that?
Malyr rose, beckoning me to him until I stood close enough that the buttons of his vest nearly snatched on the frills of my dress. He cupped my face, pawing my cheek like I was his helpless prey.
“Home. Such a comforting word if one has a home, isn’t it?” His whisper against my temple barely distracted from the rush of blood in my head. “Nurturing a false sense of safety that makes one do foolish things. Like leaving a window open for my ravens to glide into your chambers one night, finding you with nothing left to bargain, your life and innocence worthless to me.”
My throat turned dry. “You’re getting what you want. Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“Because you’re mine. Mine to hurt. Mine to agonize. Mine to break.” His cool, minty breath broke against my skin, sending a shudder across my heated body. “I will come for you, Galantia. May it take a year or a lifetime, I will come for you.”
“And then?”
“Then I will shatter you into a million pretty pieces.” His lips brushed over my temple, shifting my thin wisps of hair. “But instead of leaving you wrecked and ruined, I’ve decided that I will put you back together in my grotesque image. Will take your pain and pleasure, your tears and blood, your moans and screams, so I may put you back together… all… wrong.”
I shivered in the throes of his threat, for I knew it wasn’t idle. “You’re sick.”
“So are you, Galantia.” A whisper against my earlobe, “Because we both know that you will like it.”
A gasp escaped me as I turned my head toward his face, only for my next inhale to lodge in my chest. He’d remained perfectly still, bringing our mouths so close, I felt our breaths mingle in the fragment of space between them. Each of my wobbling inhales brought my lips closer to his. Each of his soft exhales kissed mine.
I blamed my dream for the sudden weakness in my muscles, the way his words of perversion resurrected that throbbing between my legs. Nothing else could justify how I stood enraptured, doing nothing to turn away.
Malyr’s gaze slipped to my lips, head tipping sideways in that strange way of his. “You… long to
be kissed.”
He wasn’t wrong. “Not by you.”
“No?” One silent second passed. Two. Three. “On your knees, then.”
I wasn’t prepared for how his hand bore down on my shoulder, forcing me to the ground. Didn’t understand what he wanted of me when he sat back on the couch and undid the strings on his black breeches. He took his hard cock out, giving the thick, heavily-veined shaft two slow strokes. Only
when he pointed the swollen, jutting tip at my mouth did realization dawn.
“Open your mouth,” he said, raking his fingers along my scalp before he fisted my hair. With one harsh tug, he pulled me forward against him and my head back until my throat strained. “Look at me. I want to see your eyes when I fuck your mouth. Want to watch them when you swallow down my cum… or choke on it. Either one is acceptable.”
My teeth clamped together on instinct. He would find no such shameless satisfaction with me.
“Can you imagine the damage to your reputation if people learned how wet you were for the Raven prince, hmm?” He hooked a finger under my chin, forcing his thumb into my mouth, prying apart my jaws. “Or how you spent your nights in Sebian’s chamber? What a wet, needy slut you were for him, sucking his cock, begging him to empty his seed all over your face like a—”
I reared my head back. “None of that happened!”
The shadows in the valleys beneath his harsh cheekbones lightened some as he glided the smooth tip of his cock over my bottom lip and gave three taps. “Not if you open your mouth."
I didn’t know what disgusted me more, his demand or how I considered it. I knew better than to place my trust in his words, but was it worth to heighten the risk of him spreading rumors that might reach Ammarett? To fight him? Less than an hour away from finally escaping his clutches?
No.
I parted my lips. Clasped them around his crown, tongue awkwardly curling around it as I waited.
“Mmm, now I know for certain that he never broke in that mouth of yours. Reminds me why I do not care for virgins.” Malyr gave a faint chuckle. “Licks knives so prettily but doesn’t know how to suck a cock.”
My stupid cheeks heated as though his words had slapped them, and I clenched my eyes shut. This shouldn’t hurt me the way it did… “I said eyes on me.” With a harsh pull on my hair, Malyr returned my gaze to his cold stare before he pressed my mouth down on his cock, making me sputter around the stretching demand of his thick flesh. “Open…”
My head was yanked up and pushed down until it adopted a bobbing motion. My mouth glided down his shaft, sensing every raised vein against my lips, every rush of blood that hardened him against my gums.
“That’s it, little dove.” Malyr breathed heavily through his parted lips, letting a deep, masculine groan vibrate the air. “Show me how much you enjoy having my cock fuck your pretty lips. You like this, don’t you?”
I glared up at him, opening my mouth wider, taking him deeper. Whatever it took to finish this and leave.
“Mmm, are you telling yourself right now that you hate this?” He leaned back and shifted sideways, palming my rear and diving his hand under my skirts. His fingers skimmed around my buttocks and between my legs, finding my sex as drenched as I had earlier. “Lie to yourself all you want, Galantia, but your body cannot hide how it wants to be my whore. How you secretly long for the burn of a cut, the sting of a bite, the tingle of a slap.”
The way he orbited my wet entrance made me moan. The worst thing about this? How my hips circled with his motion, seeking it. What if he was right? What if I longed for all those things?
“Yes, you do,” Malyr crooned as if he’d read my thoughts, which was humiliating in itself, but not nearly as much as how he retrieved his fingers and held the glistening proof of my depravity to my face. “Which took me by surprise, I can admit that. Lick my fingers. Have a taste of your lust.”
I choked around his girth. “No…”
Slap.
His palm hit my cheek just before he pulled my mouth off his cock, but it wasn’t the pain of it that made heat prick behind my ears for it hadn’t truly hurt. No, it was the way he stroked those fingers inside my mouth, rubbing the tang of my arousal on my gums, around my tongue, onto my molars.
Destroying any and all denial.
Malyr pulled my head back down on his cock until his crown hit the back of my throat. There he kept me, trapped between his crotch and the force of his hold, making me splutter, choke… moan.
When I gagged, he allowed me just enough retreat for a gasp of air. Then he thrust his hips upward, keeping my head in place by my strands, no matter how I writhed, struggled, tried to rear back. Only when my face tingled, my eyes burned, and my surroundings blurred did he sink deeper into the couch again and stared deep into my eyes.
And I knew then what he’d come for.
He thumbed the outer corner of my eye as though he could somehow dislodge my tears, but none came. “You truly won’t cry, will you?”
Malyr once more glided his fingers beneath my skirts. He ran them up and down along my drenched slit while I sucked his cock until—slap. His fingers struck my cunt, sending ripples of pleasure into my clit and heat deep into my belly.
“Do you want to know what is worse than being forced to endure the most… depraved acts?”
Slap. Another swat at my cunt, followed by wonderful pressure that built, crested. “Liking them.
Give me your come, little dove.”
His demand stoked the anger at my core into blistering fury, heating those tears I could not shed.
There was no more pride in it, no more provocation. Only the sobering truth that something was
wrong with me.
And he knew.
Because he spanked and thrust my sex into a swollen, throbbing thing, until, at his final swat, my orgasm hit me like a lightning strike. It ached like none before, spreading from my center along my entire body and into every nerve ending, destroying me.
“Such a good little whore,” he crooned. “Maybe you are not the precious diamond I first judged you to be, polished to a shine that not even a crown would ever return to me.” Harsh, labored breaths accompanied his words as his cock throbbed against my gums. “Maybe you are already a little bit cracked, a little bit broken. Look at me.”
His words fractured something inside me, splintering away on my dignity, my sanity, my sense of value as I looked at him. He must have seen the damage somewhere in my eyes, that cracking of my soul, because a guttural groan ripped from the chest that held his black heart. By the time salty ropes coated my gums, I had no strength left to keep his seed from running warm and thick down my throat.
He released my hair, retreated from my mouth, then sat up straight.
“Open your mouth.” He cupped my face between his hands and leaned forward until his forehead nearly touched mine. “Show me how you swallowed all of me down.”
My lips parted on their own accord.
Something dark and terrifying glistened at the depth of Malyr’s irises. His lips parted, and his grip tightened on my face before he spit into my mouth, letting warm saliva run down my tongue.
“That is the closest my lips will ever come to yours.” He rose around me and walked off. Helped himself to my pitcher, washing all traces of me off him over the bowl before he put himself away and tied the front of his breeches. “I suggest you fix your hair and clean whatever you allowed to drool down your chin. I cannot let you walk into this exchange looking like a whore. We have to keep up the
pretense.”
I tried to bite back the raw anger gnawing at my clenched jaws.
Tried and failed.
“I want you to know that I hate you,” I bit out as I rose and turned to face him, each muscle in my body trembling under the biting strain of rage. “I regret that the rock that day wasn’t sharp enough to kill you. Regret even more that I didn’t slam a larger one down on your head until I made certain you would never get up again. The only thing that offers a sliver of reprieve from all this regret is the hope that the way I stopped your escape that day added months to your time in the dungeons.”
His entire body stiffened, lips parting and closing, eyes narrowing and widening, his entire face a grimace of ever-changing emotions. Confusion. Shock. Agony. It all flitted across his features for seconds. Minutes. Eternities.
A strange gasp made his shoulders bob as though he’d only now remembered to breathe, and a tremble settled on his lips. “What did you just say?”
My breath caught on a rib over the glisten in his eyes, the color that faded from his face. “I… I said that—”
His hand collared my throat before he spun me around and slammed me against the partition.
“What did you just say!?”
My mouth fell open, but not a single sound made it past the suffocating clasp of his fury. Blackness darkened the edges of my vision. Hinges creaked. Something shifted to my right.
“What are you doing?” Sebian stepped up beside us, quickly gripping Malyr’s wrist. “Let go of her.”
A single tear snaked down Malyr’s face, clinging to his jaws where it trembled at his roar. “You
killed my brother!”
My blood froze over.
His… brother?
“Shit…” Sebian wrapped one arm around Malyr’s neck, pulling him back while his other hand tried to pry his fingers from my throat. “Let her go, Malyr. You’re not thinking clearly. Killing her isn’t going to bring Harlen back, and it won’t restore your family. Come on now, let her go.” When Malyr’s fingers slowly released me, Sebian looked at me and jutted his chin toward the door. “Get out and wait for me there! Now!”
I hurried outside, sucking air through my aching throat and down into my stuttering lungs. I’d killed his brother. And if I didn’t make it out of here now…? I knew Malyr’d shatter me into so many pieces, there would be no putting me back together.
