Page 100 of These Vile Hearts

Then his mouth is on mine again, and even though I can’t take a proper breath, I feel like I can finally breathe.

Whenever I was intimate with someone in the mortal world,Iwas always the one who took control. It was the way I felt safest, the only way I could function without locking down in the middle of it all. But now, Castor picks me up, hiking my legs around his middle, ascending the stairs two steps at a time. I’m too busy memorizing his lips with my own to object, his face cradled in my hands like something precious and breakable.

How he manages to navigate the stairs while carrying me, while kissing me, I’ve no clue, but somehow, he does. Reaching his platform of a bed, he gently sets me on the edge, his mouth descending on my neck. His tongue draws circles on the delicate skin, and a moan escapes my lips.

Clumsy as the mortal I am, my fingers fumble with the clasps on my cloak and the ties on my blouse. How very un-fae I must seem. My trembling fingers aren’t long and thin and delicate. Their tips are polka-dotted with needle pricks. My body isn’t flawless or lithe or smooth all over. My thighs are more than a little thick, and I have cellulite on my ass, ugly bruises on my stomach where I’ve delivered insulin in the same place one too many times.

Is this what being self-conscious feels like?

Castor’s hands slide up my waist, the edge of my blouse moving with them until it’s been tugged off and discarded. His fingers cascade down my bare chest, eyes taking me in like I’m not a mortal but a goddess, and he’s thinking of how best to worship me.

It doesn’t take him long to discover how.

All the nerve endings in my body dull except for the ones beneath Castor’s touch. Heat courses down my skin, trickling across my breasts, down my stomach, and spreading through the space between my slick thighs.

My cloak and blouse slide off the silk sheets to the floor, and Castor’s lips dance from my neck to my collarbone. Hands reaching up and around, I claw into the feverish skin of his back. His fingers rake gently back down my sides, eliciting a full-body tremor, the heat between my legs pulsing.Fuck.We should have done this a long time ago. He stops when he reaches the edge of my pants, brown eyes casting up to me, holding a question.Is this okay?

Reaching down, I tug the leather string that’s tying my pants closed. The corner of his mouth lifts in that disarming half grin, the dark, twisted curve of his horns casting a wicked shadow along the planes of his gentle face.

He slides my pants off, fingertips brushing slowly down my legs, turning clawlike and grasping me by the knees, pulling them apart.

“You’re so—fucking—beautiful.” He says each word between kisses trailing back up my thighs. “I’ve been wanting to taste you from the second you stuffed that entire tart in your mouth.”

His words send an electric zing through my lower belly, the need to have his mouth on me overriding every thought. Biting my lip, I gaze down at him, head and horns between my legs, a wicked smirk on his face. “And I’ve been wanting to do this.” I slide my hands down until I reach his horns, taking one in each and guiding him to me.

Slow, maddening strokes of Castor’s tongue send me into a thigh-shaking haze. I don’t even need to use his horns as a guide. Heknows exactly where to go, teasing and devouring, filling me with a finger, then two.

“Fuck,” I gasp out. He grins, eyes flicking up to mine. “I need you.”

“You have me.”

“All of you.”

I should feel vulnerable, stripped down and exposed before him. But I don’t even care.

Fuck locking up this metaphorical house of mine. How has it protected me? It never saved me from my mother’s obsessive control, never brought my high blood sugar down, never helped me break this curse of a disease. Maybe the bad things aren’t on the outside. Maybe they’re on the inside, lurking in the attic and hiding in the basement, writing cruel words in blood on the walls. Maybe they’ve always been there, and that’s the reason bad things keep happening.

Damn this haunted house.

I let go of his horns, relinquishing control. Castor’s tongue runs a clever trail down my thigh, and I tremble, throwing open the window. His experienced hands grasp my hips, and I arch my back, kicking open the front door, inviting him in. Dropping his breeches to the floor, he accepts my invitation. Castor pushes inside and turns the walls of my house to glass.

Then he shatters them.

And I shatter and shatter and shatter until there’s nothing left to break.

32

Castor

Everything about being with Maddox is different.

Different because she fills every part of me. Different because my mind hasn’t wandered away from this bed. Different because the sensations in my body aren’t just below my navel but everywhere. My fingertips, my spine, my lips, my neck, the length of my horns.

Mostly, she’s in my chest, holding my heart in her hands and controlling its beats.

I press my sweat-soaked forehead to hers. The curves of my horns sink into the soft material of the bed. My lips find hers, one more time, wet and laced with salt. Slowly and indulgently, I kiss her again. Forgetting for a moment about the pact. We could just stay here. Right here, quiet and cut off from the world outside.

Abruptly, Maddox tears her lips from mine, sliding out from under me and moving to the edge of the bed. She wraps her arms around her legs, pressing her face into the nook between the peaks of her knees. Then every inch of her begins to tremble.