Page 429 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

“As I said, Princess, you are precious.”

The words knocked the air from my lungs. A tear slid down my cheek, falling onto his.

He just held my stare.

I blinked away the shock.

The anger.

Because earth-shattering sincerity gazed up at me.

Sincerity and something so close to grief that confusion blazed across my conviction, leaving me shaking, mouth agape. His chest rose and fell just as raggedly as mine.

I didn’t have time to process the words, because in the next breath, he shoved my hips away from him and yanked my wrist forward. The blade just nicked his jaw before it slipped away.

The room spun. A gasp rushed from my lips as he loomed over me, my back stinging against the mattress, my free hand finding his lean waist. His bare hip.

His grip was still firm on my wrist as he brought the blade back to his bloodied neck.

Those dark eyes flicked between mine. Frantic. Urgent. Undeniably hungry.

Lip wobbling, I held his stare, desperate to understand, to know the truth, to⁠—

My arm buckled, his full lips crashing onto mine, his palm cradling my hand as he held the blade to his own throat. Heat ignited in my chest, my core, blazing across all sense as my thighs squeezed his hips.

And then he invaded me wholly, lips urging mine open so he could taste and plunder. As his presence had always been, Adrastos was all-consuming. Every inch of my being attuned itself to the hard lines of his. On the tail end of a ragged gasp, I wriggled beneath him, capturing his bottom lip and pulling hard. My nails scraped over his back, dug into the subtle give of the chiseled muscles, the scars he hid beneath all that ink, earning another hiss.

Adrastos’ breath came hot and fast as his hand slipped beneath the hem of his shirt to find my bare skin. A groan rumbled in his chest as rough, delicious fingers scraped over my hip, my ribs. If hands could hunger, his were ravenous as they slid up my desperate torso. My spine arched as he roughly scraped over my curves.

Licking into his mouth, a whimper escaped at the smoky, exquisite taste of him. Sweet and earthy, like fire and life.

More. I needed more. To touch. To feel. To be wanted. Needed.

Sensing my desire, or reading it in my skin, he gently curled his fingers into my palm. In a practiced motion, Adrastos flipped my hand and disarmed me, tossing the blade aside. He softly closed my fingers into a fist, encompassing it entirely with his own, cradling the very hand I’d just used to threaten him against his heart.

He ground into me in the next desperate breath. Rock hard where he pressed against my seam through the cotton of his sweats. Forehead to mine, he pulled his lips away, panting, unwittingly letting me taste him on a cellular level, that thing in my chest reaching, stretching, vibrating from within, as though it would punch through my ribcage and wrap around him like a noose. Pull him inside where Moros couldn’t find him. Couldn’t hurt him again.

He leaned back just enough to study my face, but my eyes were pulled up—to where a wall, no, an orb of shadows ensconced us entirely. Within that globe, all his threads, his countless tethers glimmered like starlight, nearly motionless. Where once there was a writhing mess, Adrastos’ ropes of fate had all but stilled, floating in stasis, as though we’d turned off gravity. As if, for a breath, he wasn’t pulled every which way.

The smallest twist of his mouth softened his expression into the most endearing one I’d ever seen—as though he was entranced. “What do you see?” he asked against my lips.

“Galaxies,” I breathed as my eyes welled with tears.

That thing thrummed, almost… singing. I looked down between us to see the tether glowing silver. Beautiful. Whatever fucked-up forces in the universe had ensured our lives collided, the mark left behind was beautiful.

Fear clawed at my mind, one word a metronome in my head—it was the only thing that made sense. The only thing I hated more than the man above me. Apparently, the terror colliding with desire made it into my voice, because the moment I panted, “What is—” he cut me off with a crushing kiss. His powerful body rocked above mine, his knee slipping between my thighs as his lips turned almost bruising.

The last thing I saw before my eyes slipped closed was the way his threads glimmered… danced.

With a whimper, my legs butterflied open, a guttural sound rumbling from him as he repeated the motion. His arousal was so hard he strained against his pants, and I ground against him as he brought my now-empty hand to his neck, setting my palm in the warm, sticky blood I’d freed.

Adrastos gave an appreciative hum as my magic funneled into the shallow slice, erasing the evidence faster than I’d clumsily inflicted it.

He rocked against me, into the apex of my thighs, that bundle of nerves aching to be touched, demanding more friction.

Alone.

I’d been so fucking lonely for so fucking long, and now my body was entirely engulfed.