Page 53 of Cursed Shadows 1

He can’t stand the look of her this phase. He avoided the tower at all costs. It was effort enough to leave her in the corridor with another male’s stink all over her.

The dress he stole for this moment, it was the only worn dress he found in her bedchamber that didn’t stink of someone else. Only Nari.

So Daxeel savours the alluring scent as he shadows Willow to the bed, his movements that of a predator stalking prey. Once she’s flat on her front, resting her temple on the pillow, he moves over her. His knee jerks between her legs, spreading them, and he settles between them.

For a beat, he sits there. His gaze scans the plump curve of her ass, barely covered by those little skirts she runs around in. His inked hand presses against the flimsy fabric of the skirt. He adds pressure, then pushes the satin over the swell of her ass, until it’s bunched up at her waist.

He takes some moments for this. Lets his limited time pass by as he just caresses his palm over her plump bottom almost lazily, the pad of his thumb brushing over the stocking straps. Like he’s inspecting the elastic material, he hooks a finger under the strap and tugs it—it snaps against her ample cheek and shudders the flesh there, flesh he aches to bite into.

Because she’s a halfbreed, there’s more to her shape than other litalf females. Her ass is plumper, fuller, and her hipboneswider. But her muscles are still toned and firm, not like a warrior’s, but like a casual dancer’s. He feels the whisper of them beneath his palm, how hard she must work to maintain this strength in her body, just to keep up with the fullbloods in dance.

He saw it that night, the first time he ever laid his eyes upon her.

He saw the effort she put into the dance. All around her, fullbloods danced, but they moved with the call of the song, they moved like it came naturally to them. The others didn’t need to force as much power into their legs for the jumps, the high kicks, any of it. She did.

He recognized it then. How hard she must fight for her space in that land. It told him so much more than that she was a mere halfbreed dancer. If she was so far out of place amongst the others, so desperate to belong to them, to fit in, then she must be lowborn and perhaps bargain-born. He was right in both assumptions.

Daxeel feels the strain of time pass him. He could sit like this for the whole Quiet, and never tire of it. But he doesn’t have the whole Quiet, so with a gentle tap to her inner thigh, he makes the gesture she knows by now.

Willow pushes up onto her knees and spreads her legs. Her cheek presses into the pillow, the arch of her back sticking out that perfect ass—and ready for him.

His eyes catch on the exposed cunt, and he thinks of those faint pink cherry blossoms in the light lands. Only it glistens, as though freshly rained on, and Daxeel ignores the scent as best as he can. It’s not hers. He wants it—needs it—to be hers.

It’s because of Nari he’s so practiced at this. Fighting every instinct around a female’s arousal, pretending he can’t smell it at all, ignoring as best as he can.

It was practice he had in his own lands. But the true challenge was Nari, all those times she rolled around on the hill of the lessons, sucking on a nectar quill, oblivious to what she was doing to him; or whenever she snuck out her bedchamber window to sneak off with him, and he knew that if he touched her too soon, he would ruin it all between them. So he would sit there, hidden in the shade of willow trees, feeling the slick honey of her scent cascade over him, like it was calling to him.

That’s the difference in a female’s arousal. The call. It beckons to the one it is for—and no other male. But they all smell it.

He would taste it if it were hers.

But the taste of Willow would disappoint, so as he moves for her and unbuttons his trousers, he lets his eyes close for a moment, the moment he needs to conjure up memories of the true Nari, of her taste and the sweet sounds of her moans—and harsher grunts.

The effect is instant, and with a snarl, he’s pushing inside of her.

Sculpted from marble, then painted honey, he curves over her like every bit the predator he is. Each cut of his muscles is a shadow against the golden glisten of sweat.

His hand smacks onto the metal headboard, the other hand, inked, presses down onto her back—and he pounds into her sweet haven.

It’s not often he’s this rough.

Some visits, he’ll take her hard or be uncaring and unresponsive or even fuck her mouth in punishment. But this visit, his hand is clutched so tight onto the black metal bedhead that it cracks and splinters under the strength of his grip, and the imposter female has her hands spread firmly against the bedframe to keep herself in place.

He half expects her to utter the safe word she has. But not once does she say it. Not even as his punishing pace picks up, not when he serves only his own pleasure, shows no care for hers.

Fuck, he needs this. More, he needs this to be her. To be the real Narcissa he holds down and fucks like a whore.

But he can’t.

He has plans for her. Plans that dance around the edge of Eamon’s bargain of protection.

Can’t hurt her in Comlar. His plans don’t break the bargain his cousin made to protect the halfbreed he’s so fond of—that Daxeel himself was once fond of, enamoured with, enchanted by, in love with.

He understands his cousin for it. But he has his own revenge to take.

Right now, he can only fuck it out into an imitation of her. The one that moans wantonly beneath him, her moans twisting his face into a grimace, a mixture of his fast-building pleasure and disgust at those moans. Not Nari’s moans.

He remembers the sounds she made back then, those breathy rasps, the petulant whines when he’d toy with her too long, her sometimes guttural moans right before she came for him.

---