Page 157 of The Stars are Dying

His movements were so gentle as he cleaned the blood from my leg. My breathing occasionally stuttered at the slow strokes when they reached the hem. My hand over his made him pause.

“Why were you trapped down there?” I asked quietly.

His golden gaze flashed up, so vulnerable I didn’t think he’d ever exposed this side of himself. “I stopped being what he wanted me to be.”

“The king?”

He flinched. “Yes.”

Nyte retrieved a needle and thread. My stomach turned at what he was about to do.

“Don’t look,” he said.

My breathing became labored. “It’s hard not to when I know there’s a needle through my skin.”

“I didn’t think you’d be so…weak-stomached.” He held my thigh in both hands, and I panicked, sitting up and bracing my hands on his shoulders.

“Wait.”

He did. Instead of the sensation of the needle, his lips pressed down. My mouth parted, eyes fluttering closed, and I tipped my head back. His hand squeezed, massaging as his lips pressed higher. Both became a maddening distraction I moaned softly at, the space between my legs heating up. I wove Nyte’s midnight locks through my fingers, and he chuckled darkly, reading where my lust-hazed subconscious mind wanted him to reach.

His teeth dragged along my flesh, sharper than I expected, and before my breath of pleasurable surprise could leave my mouth it was replaced by soft lips. Higher, and the material began to bunch around my hips. I became weak to his hands and mouth exploring me.

Then he stopped.

As I straightened, Nyte’s teeth snapped the thread. I stared at my leg in bewilderment. He’d managed to stitch the wound so precisely while distracting me.

“How did you do that?”

“It wasn’t hard to divert your attention. Do you want me to continue?” He wrapped a strip of bandage several times around my thigh, catching my gaze as he tied it tightly. “One word. I wouldn’t just oblige, not when I’ve been thinking of tasting you for so fucking long that the scent of you is straining the last tether to my already pitiful willpower.”

I could admit the sight of him on his knees, so close to the building ache between my thighs, was clouding my mind with powerful need. I’d imagined this too, and it had been nothing compared to the real thing.

“Your bath is ready,” I said, nerves gripping my confidence.

“There are more enticing ways to get my clothes off, Starlight.”

The nickname settled in me with a new tug toward something.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, tipping my chin up to seize my attention.

I wondered what he’d say to it. If he could help me to discover the truth in it. But I didn’t want to lay that burden on him just yet. One night. I wanted one night to bask in the peace I felt at being in this secluded tower with him.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Can we talk about it tomorrow?”

He smiled—a smile of such genuinehappinessit showed something in him I’d never seen before. Nyte rose, reaching behind him to fold himself out of his torn shirt with no warning. I tried to avert my eyes, but it seemed my willpower was just as damned as his.

The sight of his scars would never fail to rile something heartbreaking and vengeful in me, but what consumed me with a foreign rage was seeing the fresh dark bruises peppering his ribs. He masked his pain so well, but when he turned toward the bath…

I stood, my hand covering my mouth.

“They did that to you?”

His back was raw with wounds. Whipping wounds. My body tremored at the sight of it. An anger so pulsing and hot overcame me, and I didn’t know what to do with it. The king had ordered that because of me…or had it been Drystan? He knew I’d found out about his secret, and this confirmed I’d begun to fall for hismonsterenough to care about the harm he inflicted.

“It’s not the first time,” Nyte said as casually as if he were speaking of verbal discipline. “Not even nearly the worst,” he added, reaching for the buttons of his pants, and only then did I turn away. “There are a few skeletons on my side of the veil from when they couldn’t let go fast enough before I caught the strike and pulled them through.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Fuck, did I want him to be? When part of me relished in but also felt sickened by the grim notion he could talk about killing so easily. Then again, hadn’t I believed I’d killed Hektor? And even now, all that twisted in me was disappointment that I hadn’t.

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