What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(112)

Caelum terrified me, but I wanted him all the same.

Pushing inside of me slowly and spreading me open to his assault, he groaned the moment he filled me, his balls resting against my ass and his body leaning over mine. Cradling me in his grip, he slid an arm beneath my shoulders as he set a slow, hard pace.

Each drag of his cock through me echoed in my soul, drawing a pleasured whimper from my chest. “What will it take, Little One?” he asked, his glittering stare intent on mine. He held me captive, the intensity of the expression on his face making my lungs cease to function.

“What will what take?” I asked, wrapping my hands around to his back. My nails dug into his shirt, pleasure spreading through me with his possession.

“What will it take for you to admit that you are just as fucking in love with me as I am with you? For you to admit that your heart beats in tandem with mine?” he asked, touching his hand to the spot where my heart pounded in my chest.

He held me still, sinking his fingers into my skin until I knew they would bruise.

“Caelum,” I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut against his words. I didn’t want to give them, didn’t want to concede this last part of me.

What would happen when he owned it, too?

“Say it, my star,” he ordered, touching a finger to my clit. He circled it carefully, never giving me enough to send me spiraling into an orgasm, but driving me mad as he made deep, slow thrusts with his hips to work himself in and out of me.

Every ridge of his cock dragged through my flesh, every press of him against that elusive spot inside drove me wild. He lifted his other hand off my chest, pressing down on my lower stomach and sending the ache inside of me running rampant. “Gods,” I groaned.

“I’m your God,” he said with a smirk, mischief dancing across his face. “Now tell me you fucking love me.”

“I love you,” I sobbed, the words torn from a place inside me I hadn’t known existed. Like they’d always been meant to hang between us, out in the open for the world to know.

“I know you do, Little One,” he said gently, sympathy filling his gaze as he worked my clit harder and drove into me faster. “Now you come for your God.”

I saw stars, my vision filling with the blackness of night as my body followed his command. He owned it in that moment. My body. My heart.

Me.

He warmed me from the inside as he followed after me, murmuring sweet nothings in my ear as his chest dropped to mine and he covered me with his weight.

Horror filled me immediately, a reminder of everything I hadn’t meant to voice. He was gentle as he pulled free from my battered pussy, staring at the space between my legs where cum slid free and coated my thighs.

He dropped his hand to it, gathering it with two fingers and pressing it back inside of me with a victorious look on his face. I swallowed with a shudder, the monster in his gaze so close to the surface that I thought I might be facing my end.

But he helped me into my pants and boots, guiding me back to where Melian and Beck continued to sleep, as though he hadn’t turned my entire world upside down yet again.

He lay with his back against the tree, nestling me against him so that his breath tickled my neck.

I never fell back asleep, too busy staring into the shadows around us, waiting for the evil I could feel circling to find me.





36





I walked at Caelum’s side with Beck and Melian ahead of us as we approached the river at the top of Calfalls. A quick glance over the edge of the cliff showed the remnants of a prosperous city, with nothing but a pile of rubble in place of what had once been gleaming towers of white and silver. The metal and stone of the buildings were twisted or shattered, giving us a perfect, panoramic view of the destruction below. It was covered in a thin dusting of snow, masking the horrors from centuries ago as the sun reflected off of it.

“What could have done this?” I asked, even though deep down I already knew the answer. I’d heard the legends.

Heard his name whispered as a cautionary tale of the monsters beyond the Veil.

He was the worst of the Fae. The worst of the creatures who could kill without thought and bring entire cities to their knees. Just as he’d done with what had once been a shining city.

“Caldris. The God of the Dead,” Melian answered mockingly. She spat on the ground at her feet as she approached the river feeding the enormous waterfall that flowed through the Ruined City. “God, my ass. There’s nothing holy about a monster who could do something like this.”

“But…how? Why?” I asked, thinking of the rage it must have taken to do something so horrific. Caelum was silent at my side as he stared down at the evidence of the carnage from centuries prior, something like hatred burning in his eyes.

I understood that emotion well.

“This was his city,” Melian explained, approaching a pathway laid out across the river. Boulders jutted up from the current, leaving Beck to take the lead as he jumped to the first one while Melian turned back to face me. “He lived here, letting the people who lived here worship him like the God he claimed to be. When King Bellham revealed the truth about what they were, most of the Fae fled back to Alfheimr until tensions settled down. According to the texts written by our ancestors, Caldris chose to remain in the human realm, in his precious city where the humans cared for him,” she explained, jumping to the first stone as Beck moved forward across the river. “But Calfalls turned on him, and the people who’d once worshiped him attacked him. They stabbed him with iron, hanging him from the gallows above the city to wave their triumph.”