The Lion & the Deathless Dark — Chapter 52

C HA P T E R F I F T Y-T WO

e crashed together violently, as if in battle. My arms wound around his neck. My lips parted for him, his tongue slidingW against mine, warring for dominance. He tasted like blood and smoke. Foreign and familiar in so many incomprehensible ways.

His hands slid down my body, resting at my backside, as if he’d been waiting to retread the paths that he’d started to the night he drank from me.

And that touch, even through my clothing, lit me like a struck match. I was all too eager to burn up with him.

I was familiar with this. All these uncomfortable hungers and indulgences. My favorite kind of self-punishment. And perhaps that’s what a part of me thought this was—a way to ease our own sadness, our own emptiness—in the moments before Septimus’s mouth met mine. And yet, in that kiss, there it was: an uncomfortable shard of something tender, like the shame I’d just presented to him.

Still, the want rose to the surface of my skin immediately, burning up the insides of my thighs, at my core. I could feel his hunger, his desperation, in every searching kiss. He lifted my backside to place me on the desk, parting my thighs around him, and I drew in a sharp breath at the recreation of our position the night I offered him my blood. Like he needed to feel it again to make sure it was real.

I did, too. I wanted it desperately, right now, fast and hard. One of my hands tangled in his hair, and the other ran down his body, sliding into his trousers.

He buried his face against my throat and let out a low groan. I nearly let out one of my own. His cock was already hard and straining, and gods, how was it possible that it could even feel beautiful? It jerked against my touch, and my thumb swirled around the moisture at his silken tip.

He kissed my neck, teeth slowly brushing against my skin, and a little thrill rolled in my stomach at the danger of this—knowing how close Septimus already was to the edge. But danger was another one of my favorite hobbies, and I was all too ready now, in these hours before the end of everything, to turn myself over to it.

Already, this was too much thinking. My core ached, begging for more friction. Begging to be filled, hard, hard enough that we couldn’t think about anything else. I withdrew my hand from Septimus’s trousers and covered his hand with mine, moving to the button of my own—inviting him to pull them down. I slipped from the desk and began to turn around.

But Septimus roughly pushed me to the desk. One hand came to my shoulder, holding me against the wood, papers scattering to the floor behind me. The sight of him leaning over me, those red, starving eyes stripping me bare, made my heartbeat quicken.

“No,” he breathed. “I have thought about this too much for too long. I

am going to see you before I fuck you.”

Not, I want to see you.

I am going to see you.

My lower abdomen tightened. He yanked my shirt up, and I lifted my hands, helping him remove it. The rush of cool air against my breasts was shockingly stark, and as soon as my shirt was discarded, Septimus’s hands were back on my shoulders, pinning me.

He let out a long, low breath. His eyes raked over me, and I felt my skin heating—at my hardened nipples, at my throbbing core—as if his gaze was stirring the blood to the surface of my skin.

He lowered to me, still holding me still, pressing his mouth to the scabbed-over bite marks he had left on my throat, on my shoulder. When he moved to the one below my collarbone, his tongue traced the outline of his teeth, and my skin puckered.

“I don’t even remember biting you here,” he murmured. “I’ll remember this time.”

I tried to sit up, tried to regain control, but he pushed me firmly back to the desk, and before I could protest, his lips closed around my nipple.

I drew in a gasp. His tongue coaxed the peak, and then his teeth gazed the sensitive flesh, making me let out an involuntary moan.

“All I could think about when I washed your hair was licking the water off of these.” His tongue flattened against it, sending a shiver up my inner thighs, my walls clenching around agonizing emptiness. “I’d never been so thirsty. Except, maybe, now.”

My head was spinning. My want maddening. I ground out, “Doing a shit job of showing it.”

He let out a sound against my skin that was something between a laugh and a growl.

“You are incessant,” he hissed. “Always have something to say. What will it take, I wonder, to shut that mouth?”

“I don’t know. Seems like you’ve tried nothing and you’re all out of—”

He yanked my trousers off—undergarments and all—in one smooth movement. And then kneeled before me, forced my thighs open, and pressed his mouth to my slit.

A gasp ripped through me. I began to sit up, but one hand pushed me back down. The other gripped my thigh, holding me open. Septimus was hungry, and I could feel his anger, his starvation, in the way he descended upon me. There were no teasing touches or gentle kisses. His tongue pushed into me with a force that sent pleasure shooting up my spine. My words dissolved into a garbled moan.

“Better,” he said, with a satisfied hum. His tongue withdrew, teasing at my bud, teeth skimming skin with just a hint of pain. “You can say please.

Or thank you. Or my name.”

The pleasure was euphoric, building beneath my skin. I could feel the heat in my body shifting, my blood reacting to him. At the next demanding stroke of his tongue, teasing my entrance before dragging up to circle my clit, I couldn’t hold back the “Fuck” that hissed between my teeth.

“I’ll accept it.” He let out a victorious chuckle against my skin, the sound vibrating through sensitive flesh. His tongue slowed, dragging tantalizingly over my entrance. Still painfully empty.

“Mm,” he hummed. “Tastes like desperation, Vindica Ultis.”

I let out a whimper. Gods, he was right, and I was almost ashamed of it.

That I was desperate for him. That I had been for weeks, and now, with all my worst impulses at the surface, I couldn’t even deny it to myself.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

I didn’t know why I obeyed. I propped myself up on my elbows. The sight of him between my thighs, bloody eyes drinking me in with more feral hunger that I saw in him the night he fed from me, sent a flush of desire over my skin.

His eyes sparkled. “For once, you follow orders.”

But with my pleasure came, in equal measure, vulnerability.

Because Septimus, I knew, could see my want—could taste it. And in this moment, I knew he treasured it. He was looking at me like he wanted to sear the memory into his skin.

This wasn’t what this was supposed to be. It was supposed to be hard and angry. And seeing this much, feeling this much, was not the familiar dangerous safety I chased in dark corners with strangers.

I sat up abruptly and slid from the desk.

“Stand,” I said.

And he had only partially obeyed—getting ready, I knew, to argue with me—when I dropped to my knees, pulled down his trousers, and took his straining, glistening cock into my mouth.

Like him, I was not gentle. I took him until I felt him in the back of my throat, relaxing it to push a little deeper still. He let out a choked groan, his hand tangling in my hair with a satisfying shock of pain. My hand circled what I couldn’t fit in my mouth, and my tongue worked at the rest, cheeks hollowing with each stroke. He was satisfyingly responsive, cock twitching with every swirl of my tongue.

And just as our pace grew more frantic, as his grip on my hair grew tighter, I paused, just as he had. I slid him slowly from my mouth, lips resting at the tip. And the whole way, inch by inch, I looked up at him.

His eyes were gleaming sharp, his hair messy, a sheen of sweat over those perfect cheekbones. He was trembling, literally trembling—with desire, maybe, or the strength it was taking to hold it back. It brought me a wave of satisfaction.

My tongue teased against a fresh bead of salty moisture.

“Mm,” I moaned. “Tastes like desperation.”

His hips jerked so abruptly that I almost gagged on him. His eyes glazed over, fingers yanking tight in my hair, forcing my head up to look at him.

“Behave,” he snarled. “I’m going to come in your cunt. Not in your mouth.”

I said, sweetly, lips still brushing his tip, “I thought you had all this

impeccable self-control.”

Such a targeted, deliberate taunt.

A shadow passed over his face. An inhuman sound ground from between his teeth.

“If you want to be fucked so badly,” he growled, “all you had to do was ask nicely. But you can never do anything the easy way, can you?”

And then, before I could react, he gripped my upper arms, spun me around, pushed me to the desk, and then he was spreading my legs, and then, before my wet, aching entrance had time to clench in anticipation, his cock plunged into me.

“Holy fucking gods, Septimus.” The words choked from my lips, more genuine than any prayer I’d ever uttered. I was so ready for him—despite his size, he slid into me easily. But gods, I had never felt so satisfyingly full.

Like I had been crafted for him. Like he was reaching into something no one else had ever touched.

The explosion of pleasure smeared my senses, reducing me to base instinct. He gripped my hips, pushing deep, deep, deep, and I arched my back to offer him just the right angle, desperate for more contact. I only realized that I was letting out panting, ragged moans when he murmured, “I like that sound.”

I had thought, from his quick, hard entrance, that he would fuck the same way. But he stayed there, agonizingly deep and agonizingly still, the faintest shifts of his hips sending shocks up my spine.

My palms pressed to the dark wood of the desk, parchment crinkling beneath them. I felt Septimus’s hand flatten at the small of my back, and then run slowly, slowly up, tracing the lines of my muscles.

“You have the most exquisite back. I’m glad I get to see it this way once.”

The next words remained unspoken: before the end.

Then he reached my hair, fingers tangling in it, grabbing a fistful, tilting my head back. “And this hair,” he growled. “Perfect.”

I moaned through my teeth at the way the bend in my spine sent my hips grinding against him. His breath hitched in response.

I liked that. That just a flex of muscle could do that to him.

“Eager,” he said. “But you haven’t asked.”

Fucking prick. Everything was a game. But then, from the first night I met him, I’d always been such a willing playmate.

I did not speak. But I clenched my pussy again, contracting around his cock. A challenge, because I did not give him the words he wanted. And a concession, because he’d be able to feel the wet slick of my desire dripping over our skin, more desperate than any plea could be.

He let out a fractured groan. With that broken exhale, I knew I had him.

He withdrew from me and then pushed in, so deep it verged on exquisite pain. His thrusts were hard, unrelenting, and my body responded to each one in kind, my hips lifting, my thighs opening, offering him more and

more access.

All logical thought disappeared.

Our bodies acted out every pain, every frustration, every anger. Every fantasy I had nursed alone in my bed when we traveled together. Every dream and hunger. Every hope and disappointment.

And the truth was, I was at his mercy.

Because when his hand ran around my hip, gripping it, grinding me against him with each powerful thrust— Because when those elegant fingers slid over my slit, my blood following his touch, and circled my bud— Because when he leaned over me, chest pressing to my back, his mouth nipping my ear, and said, “Now, Kyrene, you will come for me”— I had once thought I would never take a command from a vampire. But I was already burning, the blaze uncontrollable, and at that one final touch, it exploded.

My climax crashed through me with the force of a falling star. I rocked back against him, chasing every shudder of pleasure while also issuing a demand of my own: If I fall, you go with me.

And through the blinding depths of my orgasm, it satisfied me that he was in no more control than I was.

Because with one more powerful thrust, he clutched my hips, dragging me closer. I felt his muscles tense against me. Felt his cock shudder as I convulsed around him. And his teeth found my shoulder, not quite biting, as he collapsed over me when we came together, bodies trembling, breaths heaving, utterly connected in our pleasure.

I realized, as the haze faded, that I had been screaming. I realized that he was whispering my name. The world came back into focus. My cheek

lay against the desk. The parchment was hopelessly crumpled. Hopefully nothing important.

I felt suddenly exhausted. And . . . exposed. I was grateful, for some reason I couldn’t quite articulate, that Septimus could not see my face under the tangled mess of long copper hair. One hand was still intertwined in it.

I thought I knew what would happen next. It would be, I was certain, the same as every other tryst. He would buckle his trousers, and I would put my clothes back on, and we would go about our business with our energy burned and our minds cleared and our mortal impulses satisfied. I would act as if nothing was different, because it never was.

I wasn’t sure why this time, I felt as if I was bracing to hide something deeper away.

But Septimus did not withdraw. His forehead remained pressed against my bare back. He was collapsed over me the way one might prostrate at an altar. His other hand was still between my legs, where we were still connected, lazily tracing the folds as if admiring the petals of a flower.

And I was grateful.

Grateful that he was still here. Grateful that he hadn’t pulled from me.

His fingers stroked me, and a fresh spark of pleasure stirred at that touch.

His hips shifted ever so slightly, pushing against mine. Such a slow, languid movement, hardly a thrust. And yet, the sensation of his cock hardening again made the spark catch.

Maybe I understood the appeal of vampires after all.

My hips lifted, trying to chase friction, but Septimus pinned me to the table, the pressure so unforgiving that I couldn’t move. Every slight shift of movement, he seized to push himself deeper and then hold there. My muscles tensed as his cock hardened, deepening. And still, no movement.

His breath skittered across my shoulder as he chuckled. “You have so

little patience.”

“I never claimed to,” I ground out.

I clenched around him, and he drew in a sharp breath that brought me a dizzying wave of pleasure. His fingertip lightly brushed my bud again. I jerked against that touch. But the movement only gave him room to slide his other hand around my stomach, holding my torso to his.

“Let me torture you a little,” he murmured against my ear, “for all that you have done it to me.”

Another slow, light circle. I hissed a moan that came out something like

a, “Fuck you.”

“Again? Only if you behave.”

I huffed a scoff. “Oh, clever. You’ll stroke yourself to that one later.”

I was a little ashamed of how difficult it was to get those words out.

He laughed softly. “There will be no later. So I won’t apologize for making the most of now, Kyrene.”

My smile faded. A spike of something sharp and painful, something that was not pleasure, rose in my chest.

And then after one more agonizing stroke, his weight was gone. His cock withdrew, and the emptiness inside me was torturous. I let out an involuntarily moan of protest, but Septimus flipped me over.

“Oh hush,” he said. “So much complaining from you.”

Whatever snarky retort was halfway up my throat died on my lips as I rolled over. I was entirely naked, lying on the desk, propped up on my elbows. Septimus stood before me, his hands on my knees. And yet, though he was still mostly dressed, I was struck by the marks I had left all over him. By the hunger in him, deeper and more dangerous even than the way he’d looked when he had fed upon me. His white, bloodstained shirt was wrinkled and partially unbuttoned, his hair mussed, his beautiful cock hard and glistening with our combined slick in a way that made my core tighten and mouth water.

But it was his eyes that betrayed him the most. Unguarded and raw.

Even now, when they were so red that all but the final threads of silver had disappeared.

I wondered if anyone in my entire life had ever looked at me like this.

Not with the reverence of a divine warrior. Not with the disgust of a shameless bounty hunter. But honest, genuine affection for exactly who I was.

The realization hit me all at once, stark and terrifying: This had been a mistake.

The idea that what we had just done was ever going to be some meaningless distraction, or a way to work out our anger with each other, or a bid to drown our pain in pleasure now seemed so foolish.

We had just changed something, forever.

Yet, most frightening of all, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.

He knelt at the apex of my thighs. I let out a choked moan as he slowly, deliberately licked my slit. “You taste good, full of me,” he murmured against my inner thigh, and then he straightened, his fingers dancing up my body in featherlight touches. There was a line of concentration between his brows, like he was committing every inch to memory.

He paused at a scar on my shoulder, snaking down toward my left breast. It wasn’t even the worst scar I had, or the most visible one. Yet I knew why he was stopping here. Because it was the one I had gotten that night.

The night I had gotten Zefiah. The night I had lost my child. The night I had murdered the real Vindica Ultis, and damned us all.

He said softly, “As selfish as I may be for it, I’m still glad you killed her.”

My chest pulled tight. A warmth shivered through me that had nothing to do with arousal, so intense it bordered on painful. I suddenly felt newly naked, in a way that had nothing to do with my bare skin.

I sat up, yanking Septimus closer, bracing my knees on either side of his hips. We were almost close enough that his cock could rest against my core, and my walls tightened, sensing his proximity and begging to close the distance.

But instead, I placed my hands on the strong lines of his shoulders. I examined his eyes, his face. His eyes closed, fair, thick lashes lying against his cheeks. It occurred to me with an immovable certainty that I had never seen any being so beautiful. Not even gods.

My face hardened as I lifted my fingertips to trace the wounds left behind by Nyaxia’s caress. More of them than I remembered.

“Nyaxia’s idea of poetic punishment,” Septimus said bitterly. “She wanted to leave a mark.”

“Bitch,” I muttered. Not very poetic. But it was the only word that came to mind.

One lazy eye slitted open, sparkling with amusement. “I like you possessive, lyri.”

My touch strayed lower, to the triangle of skin at the base of his throat, leading to his chest. Pale flesh, the hint of red veins, and . . .

My brow furrowed. Something else. Just a sliver of it, poking up from beneath the fabric. Something white—

I began to unbutton his shirt, but he caught my hand. “You are about to see something that I have never let anyone else witness.”

I chuckled. “Full of yourself, aren’t you?”

But he was utterly serious. “It isn’t a joke, Kyrene.”

I searched his face, and felt a pang of sympathy for what I saw in it: Fear.

It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps Septimus felt just as vulnerable in my presence as I did in his. I’d seen his greatest desires. I’d seen him in the deepest clutches of his curse. And perhaps I had seen his

greatest weaknesses, too.

I placed my hand over his. Squeezed.

And then unbuttoned.

The shirt fell open. He shrugged it off his shoulders, letting it pile on the ground alongside mine.

I let out a long, low breath between my teeth.

His body was exquisite. Like the work of a great artist. Lean lines of muscle over a torso that deserved to be immortalized in marble. An elegant form that could only be the work of a living master. It was enough to make one believe in the gods all over again.

But when I let out a wordless sound of shock, it wasn’t because of his beauty. It was because of what covered it.

Lines of white ink that gleamed like silver covered his chest, swirling over his pectorals and then running down the ridges of his abdomen. The mark was raised slightly, inflammation along each stroke, like scar tissue.

And indeed, I wondered if perhaps that was exactly what it was. The strokes formed large swirls that arced across his muscles, all running together as they reached his stomach, like branches to a tree trunk. And at the end of each swirl, something was embedded into his flesh—each a different color, though all very, very tiny, perhaps a quarter of the size of my little fingernail.

I ran my fingers over one—ivory, perhaps? Another was a spot of dark red, smooth and cleanly shaped, delicate as a flower petal. My touch trailed over his chest, to the next branch, his skin twitching with each stroke. This one was ink, in a teardrop shape, which glimmered a rainbow of colors like embedded opal.

It made the hairs rise at the back of my neck, a shiver over my flesh.

Like when I had touched Zefiah for the first time, as if confronting

something beyond the mortal realm.

“What is this?” I whispered.

“I’ve spent a long time collecting weapons against the gods,” he said. “I never intended to wield them myself. But over time, I realized I needed a contingency plan.”

A shiver ran up my spine. I had heard stories of what had happened to people who attempted to wield divine power beyond their capabilities. It stripped away their mortality, and usually, their minds.

“How?” I managed.

“Carefully. Over a very long period of time. We handed others the rope they needed to hang themselves, and I learned from their mistakes; recorded every instance, to make sure I never gave myself enough to loop around my throat.” His hand covered mine, moving my fingers across his chest. First, to the ivory. “A fragment of Alarus’s teeth.”

My brows lurched. “Teeth?”

“Morbid, isn’t it?”

Then he pointed to the spot of red-black. “A piece of a petal once gifted from Alarus to Nyaxia.”

To the drop of rainbow shimmer. “A drop of the blood of Alarus.”

To the little shard of gold. “A piece of the arrow used to kill Atroxus.”

I choked a laugh. “Gods above, Septimus. Is this what passes for a hobby in the House of Blood?”

But my voice was hollow. I didn’t even know it was possible for a person to do this—to embed pieces of the gods into their very body, even at such a minute level. The cost must have been extreme.

“I’ve only had one hobby for the last couple of decades,” Septimus said wryly. “Makes me very dull at parties.”

“I can imagine. Just sidling up to beautiful ladies, describing your techniques for embedding god teeth into your skin.”

“To be fair, Bloodborn women love teeth.”

But Septimus’s smile faded as my eyes traveled back to his. He stroked my cheek.

“I told you I’ve been preparing for this for a very long time,” he said. “I will never be a chosen hero. I’ll never wield a sword capable of killing Nyaxia. But I thought to myself, ten years ago—if I’m going to become a mindless weapon anyway, I’d ensure that I became the most effective one I possibly could.”

So many things now made sense. The way he’d managed to hold the spear and the harp and the bow.

He’d managed to stall Nyaxia, however briefly.

At that thought, I paled. Nyaxia. She wouldn’t take kindly to this, to her husband’s remains being used to betray her.

“Does she know?” I said.

Septimus paused before answering—as if he’d asked himself the question before. “I don’t think so. If she did, she would have made it known by now. I have seen firsthand the consequences of wielding these items, and I was careful to use only trace amounts. The stench of my curse is likely all any god, even Nyaxia, smells when they look at me. And then, there’s the smoke. Another shield.”

Not only blessed medicine, but also a way of hiding the effects of the tiny pieces of divinity he’d used to enhance himself. Clever.

“But I suspect,” he said, “that won’t help me anymore. I’m very fortunate that she was so distracted when we made our attempt. And in the days since, too busy exacting her punishment to smell the traces of her husband on me. I suspect we won’t be so lucky, in our next attempt.”

My heart clenched.

I understood with fresh clarity Septimus’s certainty that he would not survive this battle. And instead of pulling away from his ugly truth, I stared it right in the face. Let myself feel all of it.

“They’re quite ugly,” Septimus said. “I know.”

I shook my head. My fingers traced the whorls of metallic white.

“I don’t know,” I said casually. “Looks like the kind of marks a hero might have, to me.”

He let out a soft laugh. With a gentle hand, he tilted my head up.

“Monsters recognize monsters, I suppose,” he murmured, his other hand tracing the scar the real Vindica Ultis had left on my shoulder, and then he lowered his mouth to mine.

This kiss was slower, more patient. I ran my hands over his bare skin, relishing each expanse of bone, skin, muscle. He did the same to me—the two of us memorizing each other, in an unspoken understanding. In our desperation, we sank to the ground together, both of us uninterested in moving to the bed. And as Septimus laid me down on the fur rug, I let him see all of me, and I wasn’t even afraid. His mouth tasted each of my scars,

and he kissed the mark left on my worst night, the night I damned him, as he gently coaxed my thighs open and pushed home.

Home.

As he filled me, as my limbs wound around him and I moaned his name against his skin, that word lingered in my head. A completeness, a fullness, that I had never felt before in my life—not during sex, and not ever.

We took our time with each other, sharing breath as we coaxed each other through each stroke. First with his weight atop me, and then rolling, our stride never breaking, so I was on top of him. And I kissed him, and kissed him, not holding back any gasp of pleasure or moan or plea. As he held me and ground against each thrust, urging me with his groans of my name, drinking down every one of my moans of pleasure. Begging, desperately, “More, Kyrene.” More of my pleasure. More of my gasps.

More of the garbled whimpers I poured into his kisses, his bare flesh.

And in the final moments, when my gasps were so serrated I could barely breathe at all, when I could no longer form my cries of yes, gods, Septimus, yes, when together we stood at the precipice of the end, he held my face and pulled away just enough to look at me, crimson eyes dismantling me piece by piece.

“You’ve won, lyri,” he ground out. “If I’m your mark, you’ve taken me long ago.”

And then he pulled me tight against him, and drove into me one final time, and our climax drowned us in each other.

I held him as we wrung out each shuddering aftershock—seemingly endless, over and over, like waves crashing upon the beach.

I fell against his chest. I became aware of his hand rubbing my back, up and down, up and down. My heart was still beating fast. When the pleasure faded away, I was not prepared for what was left behind. Parts of me that had never been exposed to anyone, ever.

Septimus withdrew from me, repositioning so that I was nestled against his chest. When his eyes slipped to me, his face shifted. A thumb stroked

my cheek, capturing a streak of salt.

He didn’t ask me, Why are you crying?

Perhaps he understood that I wouldn’t have been able to answer.

Perhaps he didn’t have to ask at all to know.

Maybe they were tears of anger, because of what we were forced to do.

Maybe they were tears of fear, because of tomorrow’s terrible possibilities.

Maybe they were tears of regret, because I had finally found truth, vulnerability, but I had found it too late to offer it to those who had deserved it from me.

And maybe they were tears of bittersweet grief, because I had never felt this way in my entire life, and I likely never would again.

Maybe all of it at once.

Septimus’s face softened. His lips brushed my cheek.

“I know,” he murmured. “I know.”