Page 81 of The Deathless One
Elric had little patience for those who wanted to hurt her, and even less patience for situations like this. The man who had knifed her had caused a wrinkle in his very specific plan.
Only weeks ago, he had known exactly what he was going to do. He would seduce the gravesinger, sway her to his cause, get her to raise him out of the ashes so he could destroy this world for what they had done to him. His revenge would be even sweeter knowing that a witch had brought about the ruin of her own people.
But now, his priorities had changed. He still wanted to be resurrected. He still wanted to return to the land of the living, but that was no longer enough.
He wanted her.
He wanted her body, mind, and soul. He wanted to consume her like some monstrous being out of the depths of madness. Every bit of her that he could lick up, he wanted it. Jessamine Harmsworth didn’t realize it yet, but he owned her body and soul.
She turned and slid her hand along his ticking jaw. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t like that you’ve been hurt by anyone other than me,” he murmured, perhaps revealing too much. “I understand why they did what they did. And I know we will find this man who threatened you twice. We will teach him why people feared me then, and still fear me now.”
“You want us to kill him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The flash of approval in her gaze was so quick he almost didn’t see it. But he did. Of course he did.
Jessamine breathed out a long sigh. It fanned across his lips as she drew closer. He didn’t think she noticed that she’d moved. “I don’t know what we’re doing right now.”
“You’re learning how magic works, and how to protect yourself.”
“Is that so?” She leaned a little closer, and he thought maybe she was going to kiss him again before she stopped. Just out of his reach. “I can feel you, Elric. You’re pressed against me from shoulder to thigh, and you think I believe this is entirely about magic?”
“Where did this confidence come from?”
“From days on end of you teasing me until I forget I am a highborn lady and I’m not supposed to feel like this.”
Again, she feathered her lips so close to his that he could feel the heat of her. A hand slipped between them, her palm stroking down his chest. He couldn’t take it. Not like this, not when he was so confused about what she wanted or how she felt.
Growling, he spun her in his arms again, pressing her spine to his front. He couldn’t stop himself from touching her. With a rough hand, he palmed her breast, the weight of it so slight and yet exactly what he had wanted.
“Stop tempting me, witch,” he growled into her ear. “I can hold myself back only so long.”
But he couldn’t resist burying his face in her neck and breathing in her scent so deeply he thought it might be embedded in him. That grave scent was so tantalizing. He wanted to keep her with him forever.
“What if I don’t want you to hold yourself back any longer?”
The words seared through him.
A low growl rumbled through him, and he snarled in her ear, “Then I will lay you out on these gravestones and fuck you until you can’t walk straight for days on end, nightmare.”
Her moan shot right through him. She wanted this. He could taste her desire in the air. The perfume of her need was a call he longed to answer.
Until he felt that awful tug from his realm. From the memories and the darkness and the black abyss that never wanted him to be happy. The claws of gravesingers sank into his sides, promising that he would suffer just as they had suffered in their sacrifice for their people. They had murdered him for his power and it hadn’t worked, but somehow it was still his fault.
Before he could stop himself, he dissolved from the living realm and was summoned back to his own personal hell.
Oh, no. Absolutely not.
One moment she was arching into his touch and the next, he was… gone. Disappeared from this realm, likely off to his other one, which always called him back at the worst points. She refused to let this stand. He was hers, and they were so close to doing what she had wanted to do since the fear had worn off.
That god belonged to no one but her.
Many people had laid claim to the Deathless One over the years. Countless witches had sunk their claws into his hallowed skin. Women who had reveled in his pain, finding pleasure in his gasps of agony. But she was not one of them.
Jessamine would trade years of suffering and pain to sit with him on a throne made out of the skeletons of their enemies, if that was what it took to have him. And perhaps those were thoughts of madness, of the insanity that clung to him and, therefore, now to her. She didn’t know. But did it really matter?
