Page 68 of A Bond in Flames

I wanted to scream in frustration. “Will that happen to me? Eventually, will I…?”

“No,” he said, voice breaking.

“Why not me? Why am I different?”

“Because it was always you… because it had to be you,” he rasped.

I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand any of this. “Death—”

“I need you,” he choked out. “I need my consort. I need you, Zinnia.”

He’d said all he could. He could tell me no more. I had two choices: I could push for something he couldn’t give me, or I could let it go, at least for tonight. I didn’t know what the future held for me, for us, but however you looked at it, it wasn’t good. In this moment, he needed me, and I could admit that right then, I needed him as well. What I’d seen had shaken me; those females, they’d pulled me down into the depths of their pain. I didn’t know what it meant, and I couldn’t think, not when Death was the only one who could drive the ache from my bones and the loneliness from my soul.

I tossed back the covers. “Then take me,” I said softly into the heavy silence surrounding us.

His chest expanded sharply. “You still want me?”

Grabbing the bottom of the shirt I wore, I pulled it up and off, tossing it aside, leaving me in only my underwear. “Yes.”

He took an abrupt step forward, and then he was striding around the bed. Leaning in, he hooked me around the waist and tugged me down on the mattress before covering me.

He stared at me, looking deeply into my eyes. “You have no idea just how precious you are to me, none,” he rasped. “Trying to protect you, to force you to bend to my will by punishing you, was a greater punishment for me. I have not slept for days, my body aches constantly, my hands itch to touch you, and my heart feels as if it’s being impaled by poisonous spikes whenever I see you. So much of the anger you feel when you’re with me is directed at myself.”

“But even more is directed at me,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“And you won’t tell me why?”

He shook his head. “I can’t, but I need you to know that you’re not to blame. That the anger I feel doesn’t diminish how much I worship you, and that it is born from frustration over a situation that you have no control over. That’s all I can tell you.”

“What if I never work any of this out? What if I never learn the truth on my own?”

His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat. “I have to believe you will.”

For the sake of his own sanity, he was deep in denial, and I felt the pressure of that, of saving him, of saving us both, immensely. I cupped the side of his face. “If you truly love me, Mors, then you need to let me go. Release me… it’s the only way to save me from the same fate as the females that came before me.”

His breathing was erratic, heavy. “Saving you, protecting you, is my greatest desire, but what you ask… I can’t. I can’t do it, love.”

If we kept talking, we’d end up arguing. I didn’t understand any of this, and he couldn’t tell me. So instead of begging him to make me understand—something I knew he couldn’t do—I brushed my thumb along his lower lip. “Then kiss me.”

He slid the tips of his fingers down the side of my face, the roughened skin bringing every one of my nerve endings alive. “I am yours to command, my queen,” he said, and then he covered my mouth with his and kissed me achingly slow and with a reverence that made my heart ache and my head spin.

He slid his hands along my side, over my waist, his fingers digging into flesh and muscle, massaging, worshipping. I wrapped my arms around him, running my hands over the smooth, muscled skin of his back, and tangled my legs with his, holding him close. The kiss deepened, and my world narrowed to him, to this. Fire built inside me, so hot that I was afraid I’d burn to ash and float away if Death didn’t hold me down.

When I couldn’t take it any longer, I wrapped my legs around his hips, desperate to feel him against me. Desperate for the sweet relief only he could give me. “Mors, I need you,” I pleaded against his lips as my hands slid around his waist.

He lifted his hips away from me, giving me room, and I quickly undid his pants, shoving them down. His kiss became more urgent, a fierceness of need that more than matched my own. He wore nothing underneath, and his cock, hot and heavy and impossibly hard, fell into my hand. I squeezed him, stroked him, and he growled against my lips.

Gripping my underwear, he tore them from my body, his hand sliding up until his fingers were gliding through my slick folds, pressing against my opening. “Are you ready for me, love? Because I can’t wait.”

“So ready.” I took his length in my hand and led him to me, pressing the head of his cock to my opening; then I lifted my hips, taking the tip inside me.

He groaned. “You so easily erase all traces of my control,” he said roughly and grabbed my wrists, lifting them over my head. “Infuriating, irresistible, brave little witch.” He pressed sucking kisses along my throat. “You terrify me. You beguile me.” He kissed along my jaw and looked down at me. “You fucking own me.”

Then he slid inside me, a slow, steady glide that had my mouth falling open as a needy, raw sound left me. He kept that pace, sliding out just as slow, then filling me, stretching me to my limits, and the whole time, he watched me, watched the play of my features as he made me feel things I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.

His expression was set, determined, while his big body trembled above me, his muscles jumping, his veins and tendons standing out. I clung to him when he thrust inside me and stayed there, rocking against me, hitting me deep. I whimpered when the first orgasm rushed forward, crying out when I started coming around him so hard, all I could do was hold on.

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