Page 99 of Veil of Blood and Bone

And I’m not wearing underwear.

His palm drags over my mound to cup me, his index finger over my throbbing clit.

An uneven breath rocks through me and my pulse races, my blood on fire. How easily he could crush me right now.

I don’t know this man. I don’t know if he’s a killer with a sweet smile and the ability to undo me with his words. Or not.

“I love the way you shake for me, pretty monster.”

He towers over me and his fingers rub tight little circles against my overly sensitive core. Sensation builds again, this time with a hint of pain to darken it. The pressure is light, but the attention is too much after so many years of doing it myself.

His cock presses to me and his gaze takes in whatever he sees on my face. His grin darkens.

Full of promises I know he’ll make good on with the chance.

“It’s too much,” I whisper. “I can’t...it’s⁠—”

Yet my hips arch up toward him, and my pussy throbs. Traitor. I refuse to sink into the couch and disappear, to let him dominate me.

Not even when his mouth grazes across my chin, and I shiver. Not when his shadows rise again to torment me, ghosting over my nipples, over my lips, and down my spine.

His touch, magic and otherwise, shows me I’m alive.

Wren’s fingers haven’t penetrated me. I’m greedy. I want it all. I want the pressure on my clit to cease as my legs shake and my lungs shrink another size. He increases the speed of his circles but not the tension, my clit throbbing in time with the movement.

Stop this. Stop before you go too far.

It’s not something I can take back.

It’s also a bit late for that, dummy.

Rather than grab his shirt and kiss him stupid, I push him back, some shred of self-preservation doing the heavy lifting.

“Good girl.” He whispers in my ear as his fingers ramp me up to the next orgasm, whether I wanted it or not. “I love how you never give in easily. You always fight me.”

I’m coming apart. I’m splintering into a thousand pieces, and even his weight on top of me can’t keep me whole.

“But you will give in. Sooner or later.”

Wren releases my throat, and I come, the second orgasm harder than the first. My pussy clenches. I throw my head back, squeezing my eyes shut through wave on wave of sensation. My identity, my responsibilities, my fight⁠—

Gone. All gone.

The force of the ecstatic peak splinters my vision and stars and shadows shoot. They grip tight to my breasts, my hips, holding me down.

When I manage to open my eyes. Wren is still there with our gazes fused together. He’s unsmiling now, a finger tracing patterns between my boobs.

And in the space among emotions, there’s clarity, if not sanity.

He pulls his hand free and lifts his fingers to his lips, cleaning them with his tongue.

Blood rushes to my cheeks and heats them.

“Mm. You taste as good as I remember.”

Those kinds of statements should embarrass me, right? Because normal people don’t talk like that. They don’t wake up in the morning like hmm, I’m hungry, what do I want to eat today. Oh yeah, pussy.

Or maybe they do. But no one I’ve ever met.