Page 74 of Shai

room, one by one, the door clicking shut behind them. Keeping one eye on Shai, I climbed to my feet.

He walked over to the mamba’s tank and ran a finger along its surface.

“She’s really dead?”

“Yes! I did it for you. You never have to worry about her again. She can’t belittle you. She can’t spout nonsense about you being a reincarnated God. She can’t remind you of things you’d rather forget.”

He turned with a smile, my heart giving a happy skip as he approached. I finally had the reaction I’d expected. His gaze dropped to my neck, to where I presumed Grayson’s overly amorous hold had left a mark. Shai traced his thumb over it, the action sending a shiver of arousal through me. Warm, brown eyes held mine. “Thank you, Elijah. You don’t understand what a huge gift you’ve given me.”

I did. That’s precisely why I’d done it. But all I’d ever wanted was this, his gratitude, his thanks, his approval.

He leaned in close, his breath hot in my ear as he plucked my shirt tails from my waistband so that he could slide his hands over bare skin. “Tell me how it happened. Don’t leave anything out.”

His arms slid around me as I started to speak. “I was going to cut her throat… that’s why I took the knife, but I don’t know… it didn’t seem right. I wanted her to know that it was me. Is that weird?”

Fingers delved into my waistband, the lack of underwear leaving no barrier to Shai palming the twin globes of flesh as he dragged me closer, our bodies fitting together like two interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “No, it’s not weird.”

I pushed my rapidly swelling cock against his thigh as I continued the story. “So… I abandoned the knife. I climbed on top of her instead and strangled her.”

Shai’s tongue darted into my ear to deliver a hot, wet caress that made me shudder. “Details.”

“I wrapped my fingers around her neck and she woke up. She looked confused at first, like she couldn’t work out what I was doing, and then once she’d worked it out, she was just scared. Her neck was so brittle. It felt like I could have snapped it in two with very little effort.”

“So why didn’t you?”

I began to rock my groin against Shai’s, his fingers tightening on my ass to aid the movement. “I don’t know. I guess it was for the same reason as I didn’t want to use the knife. I wanted it to last longer. I wanted to savor it.” Was it really me saying those words? But then, this was the new Elijah, the one who was much stronger, the one that knew how to please a king among men like Shai. “I was careful not to break her neck, to squeeze just hard enough that I was cutting off her oxygen supply.”

Shai’s mouth moved from my ear to trail heated kisses along the length

of my neck, leaving tingling sensations in its wake. He unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it aside to press a kiss to my collarbone. “You’ve told me what you did. Now, tell me how you felt when you were doing it.”

I closed my eyes to better recall the moment, Shai’s mouth on my nipple

almost too much of a distraction. “I felt powerful. I felt like I could take on anybody and anything and win, which I know is stupid because she was just an old woman, but yeah, it felt good.”

Shai switched his attention to my other nipple and I ran my fingers

through his hair, tracing the contours of his skull as he turned the bud into a tingling riot of sensation bordering on pain without ever pushing me too far over the edge. Finally abandoning it, he forged a heated line down over my abdomen until he met the obstacle of my waistband. I squirmed helplessly, the fabric a prison that I needed an urgent escape from. Luckily, Shai seemed to agree, his deft fingers making short work in unfastening them and pushing them down to my knees.

The hungry expression as he stared at my cock was everything. It

strained forward, as if convinced it could get closer to Shai’s mouth through sheer force of will alone.

Shai tipped his head back to meet my gaze, his tongue moistening his

bottom lip in a way that made my cock throb all the more. “Did she say anything?”

Who? What were we talking about? Right, Shai’s mother, and how I’d

killed her. “I never touched him.” Those had been her last words. I’d been so caught up in getting the deed done before Shai’s men reached me, that I hadn’t really registered them. Now, they scratched away at my brain. Were they simply the last-gasp efforts of a desperate woman to elicit mercy, or had there been some truth in them? What if Shai had wildly exaggerated the facts of his relationship with his mother? What if none of it had been true?

“Elijah?”

I stared at him, taking in the way his tanned skin gleamed in the light,

the generous lips I was desperate to have stretched around my cock, and those impressive cheekbones. I’d gone too far down the rabbit hole to let doubt creep in. Doubt meant I’d murdered an innocent woman without even being asked to. That path could only lead to trouble and unhappiness. Therefore, I needed to stay away from it. I needed to eradicate those words from my memory and never think of them again. “No, she didn’t say anything.”

A slow smile spread across Shai’s face. It stayed there as he slid his hands up my thighs until they came to rest at my hips, his fingers curling around them. Tugging me forward, he swallowed me down in one smooth stroke, the sensitive glans of my cock finding a home at the back of his throat. He held me there for so long that I began to worry he might choke. Finally, he pulled off, one hand circling the base of my cock to hold it tantalizingly close to his lips. I strained forward in a bid to be back in the warmth of his mouth. “You deserve a reward, Elijah, for what you did for me.”