Page 120 of Alien God

“Marry me!”

We stared at each other, him perfectly still, me shuddering with shaking breaths. Ours had never been a happy story, but now it was turning into a tragedy, right before my eyes. Marrying me, choosing me instead of his real mate, would doom him. I swallowed, tears flowing freely, realizing I’d just offered him everything. I’d offered to annihilate our deal. I’d give up my friends, give up my own freedom, to save him. So that he could live happily with someone else long after I was gone.

And what was that if not an act of selfless, stupid, downright fucking idiotic, love?

No!

I wasn’t sure what I was saying no to. What Wylfrael had told me about his future, or the idea that beyond all sanity, all hope, all sense of self-preservation, some part of me had gone beyond just merely caring for him.

Barely able to get the words out through the tears, I begged him. Begged him to end this. To find his real mate, no matter how long it took. To save himself an eternity of madness and pain and exile. Forget appearances, forget the deal, forget Skalla and the council and me.

All he said in reply was a softly-spoken, “I cannot.”

“Why not? Why won’t you tell me why you’re doing this?” I didn’t buy his claims about how finding his real mate would take too long. Not anymore, not now that I knew the stakes. Why would joining the council and finding Skalla sooner rather than later take precedence over saving his own sanity?

“Why won’t you find her? Why won’t you wait for her?”

But Wylfrael just repeated his phrase from before, the softness in his voice disappearing, hardening, warning me not to press further. “I cannot.”

I pulled myself out of his hold, wiping the fur of my cloak furiously along my cheeks.

“Can we stop? I want to get out,” I said. I was talking about stopping the sleigh ride and getting out from where we’d been sitting, but obviously, Wylfrael interpreted what I’d said differently.

“You cannot leave,” he snapped. “Our wedding is tomorrow. After that, we will attend the gathering of the gods as husband and wife, and then I will join the council. You are mine, Torrance.”

But you’re not mine.

I couldn’t say the words, because Wylfrael crashed his mouth to me. I thought about stopping him again, but I didn’t. Pain twined with pleasure, and I opened my mouth with a stifled moan, wanting to feel him, feel how real and solid and safe he was with me. I didn’t stop him, didn’t fight him, when he hauled me into his lap, my legs spread over his tense thighs. His mouth devoured mine, tongue claiming, groans rising up in his throat as his hands dug beneath my long wool skirt and tore away my new silk undergarments. I couldn’t even be angry that he’d ruined Aiko’s sewing, my need for him was so great. The need for him to touch me.

Despite the cold, Wylfrael never wore gloves. His hands were desperate and bare against my trembling thighs, stroking upward, breaking off the kiss with a vicious growl when he found me already slick for him. He sucked my neck, his tongue hot as he tasted my pulse and he slid a thick finger inside.

My arousal was so instantaneous and overwhelming it almost scared me. It was like a huge wave inside me, a tsunami in the dead of night, pure black, without the reflection of stars, rising and ready to crash. Ready to wipe out everything. I arched and whimpered and begged. Begged for more, and Wylfrael nudged another finger inside.

The stretch was a perfect burn. But I wanted more. In some terrible, clawing way, I wanted him to hurt me.

But I’d already learned by now that he wouldn’t. He kissed along my throat, letting me adjust to the breadth of his two fingers before he started moving them. I bucked helplessly and threw my head back when he added a third finger after a few moments.

Wylfrael’s other hand ripped away from my hip, rising to undo the cloak’s tie at the base of my throat. He eased it open, not enough for it to slide off my shoulders but enough to allow him rough, greedy access to my breasts. He touched me through my dress until my nipples ached and I was close to coming, until I couldn’t stop myself from tearing open the laces, exposing myself to his heat and the biting air. His mouth was ardent fire on my sensitized peaks, a shocking contrast to the winter all around us.

The sleigh hit a slight bump, sending me falling forward, my breasts crushing against his face. Wylfrael kept me there, burying his face in my chest, one hand still pumping inside me, the other splayed across my upper back. His lips and breath were harsh and needy, biting over to my right breast as I fumbled clumsily with the ties at the front of his trousers. Snarling, he pulled his hands away from me to do it himself, and I cried out at the shocking emptiness he left behind.

His shaft arched forward, thick and hard and already glistening blue at the tip, stars running down, illuminating swelling and veins. Wylfrael didn’t touch himself, instead reaching for me, but I moved too quickly for him to get his fingers inside again. Hiking up my skirts, my shattered heart on fire in my chest and in my throat, I pressed my heated core to his tip.

“Torrance.” My name was gruff with both need and warning. A reminder of terms and stipulations and everything I’d used to distance myself from him. But I didn’t want distance anymore. Not now, not when it felt like I was losing him, like I was the reason he’d be lost in the first place.

Wylfrael’s hands slammed down onto the curving crystal bench beneath us. Tendons and arteries jumped in his forearms, and cracks appeared like webbing under the silver surface.

He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t break my rule.

So, I broke it myself. What did it matter, now? After I’d already broken my heart?

I didn’t nod. I didn’t speak. I just sank lower and lower, sliding hot and wet until his tip was completely inside. Even after the preparation of his fingers, the stretch was agonizing, but it didn’t hurt enough for me to stop. I rocked, taking more and more of him inside until pleasure began to bite at the heels of pain. I chased the feeling, gritting my teeth and holding my breath as I drove myself downward, filling myself with him.

A vicious cracking sound filled the air, and I opened my eyes. A huge chunk of crystal had come away from the bench under Wylfrael’s grip. He swore and hurled it out of the moving sleigh before turning his burning attention back to me.

“Torrance,” he choked out, sounding like I’d never heard him sound before, sounding fucking broken, “if you want to stop, it has to be now.”

He wasn’t the only one who could use kisses to shut someone up. Legs trembling, pussy pulsing around him, already ready to come, I shoved my mouth onto his. It wasn’t an elegant kiss. It was messy and hungry and inevitable. As inevitable as Wylfrael’s hands rising to my hips, holding me in place as he unleashed himself upon me, slamming upward with incredible force that stole my breath from my lungs.

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