Page 190 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
His mouth found her ear first, teeth grazing the delicate curve before moving to her jaw, then lower to her neck where his breath warmed her skin.
And then, so slowly she almost cried out in frustration, he withdrew.
He repeated the movement again.
And again.
Each time he entered her with the same agonising slowness,stretching the moment until it became almost unbearable, until her breath hitched and her body strained against the restraint of his pace. And each time, just as the pleasure crested, he pulled away once more.
He slid his thumb into her mouth, and when she closed her lips around it, he changed his pace.
This time he moved faster.
Mal’s breath caught as the rhythm shifted. She wrapped her legs tightly around his back, arching beneath him, urging him deeper, closer, needing more of him.
Thanatos abandoned the careful gentleness he had held until then. The restraint fell away, replaced by something fiercer, more urgent. His movements quickened, driving into her again and again, the rhythm building until Mal cried out his name.
‘Do you want me to fuck you in my true form?’ he whispered against her ear as he continued to move against her, the slow rhythm still enough to draw breathless gasps from her.
Mal nodded, biting down on her lower lip to keep from crying out again.
At once, Thanatos’ eyes ignited with a strange inner darkness. The shadows within them deepened and spread until the world around them seemed to dissolve entirely.
Mal gasped.
Her arms tightened around him as she realised they were no longer lying upon a bed. Instead, they floated within a vast, endless darkness—a silent void that held them suspended in its weightless embrace.
When she looked up at him again, her eyes widened.
Black runes now covered his face, intricate markings that flowed across every inch of his pale skin. They trailed down his neck and along the sculpted lines of his body, except for his left arm, which had become entirely skeletal.
From his back, two immense black wings had unfurled.
‘You’re…’ Mal reached up slowly, her fingers brushing over the glowing runes that mirrored the same symbols that had spread across her own body when she had become the God-Killer. ‘You’re beautiful.’
Thanatos’ wings curved inward around them, folding slowly until they wrapped the two of them in darkness like a cocoon, shutting out the rest of the world.
‘I’m—’ she gasped, her words dissolving into a breathless cry as pleasure coursed through her, making her entire body tremble.
Thanatos drew her closer, his body tightening around hers as his lips brushed the curve of her ear. ‘Let me feel how you come for me, Melinoe,’ he murmured.
And she did.
The pleasure broke over her suddenly and fiercely, her body arching as the wave of it took hold. Her legs locked tighter around him, holding him there as though she feared he might slip away into the endless dark surrounding them. She felt his hands move over her bare skin, tracing her with slow heat that warmed her even within the cold emptiness of that strange void.
When her trembling finally began to ease, she felt Thanatos lose his own control.
It was as if he had been waiting for her.
Mal lifted her gaze and held his eyes, refusing to look away as his body shuddered with his own release, the force of it echoing through him as he buried himself fully within her.
‘That was…’ Mal’s voice faltered as she looked up into those black, endless eyes, a shiver running through her. ‘What is this place?’
‘My own realm, in a way.’
‘Have I been here before?’
‘You have.’ He brushed a loose strand of her dark hair from her face with surprising tenderness. ‘Many times. I would always bring you here. Sometimes we would spend days just fucking… and sometimes we would simply sit in silence.’
