What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(63)

“There’s that tingle.” He laughed when I glowered at him.

“You do realize you aren’t supposed to enjoy being punched, don’t you?”

“I can think of worse ways to pass the time,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if my little violent outbursts weren’t of actual concern to him. It both infuriated me and intrigued me that he was so unconcerned with my displays of violence, when so many men would’ve had me beaten for less.

“Do you not worry that I might bite it off if you put it near my mouth?” I asked, braving the dangerous tension between us to continue the conversation I should have left unanswered. His gaze felt heavy on the side of my face, his attention fixated on me when I didn’t turn to meet his stare. I focused on my feet, on the way my too-large boots trudged through the leaves and underbrush on the ground.

“Maybe,” he said finally, his eyes leaving my face as he turned his attention toward the path in front of us. A building appeared in the distance, the first of the village where we needed to gather supplies. “But I’d know a few moments of perfection until you did.”

I scoffed, laughter bubbling in my throat and doubling me over as I tried to catch my breath. “Do you believe the lines you feed to the women you try to bed? How do you say them with such a straight face?”

“Oh, my star, you seem to have misread the situation. I do not tell women lines or whisper sweet nothings in their ears or give them false promises I have no intention of keeping. They come to my bed entirely willingly with a great understanding of what I have to offer them: one night of fun. There is no need for romantic lines or exaggerations.”

“Then what would you call the perfection of my mouth? A dramatic half-truth?” I said, letting him guide me off the path itself and into the woods surrounding the village so we could observe.

“I would call it the truth,” he said, turning toward me suddenly and trailing the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. “I think we both know that there wouldn’t be many better ways to die than with your lips wrapped around my cock, Little One. The only thing that might be better is if I was between your pretty thighs, sinking inside you while you struggled to take me.”

I couldn’t breathe. We spoke of his death, of all the ways he could die that would be mixed with pleasure, and yet it was me who felt like I was on the verge of the end. As if my lungs would never draw in air again, not with the filthy words that came out of his mouth and the way his dark eyes seemed to glimmer with understanding as he stared down at me.

“Tell me again how much you don’t want me, my star. I do so love the way you lie.”

“I loathe you,” I wheezed, repeating the words from earlier as a blinding smile claimed his face.

“Hmm,” he hummed, leaning forward to touch his lips to the part of my mouth he’d explored with his thumb. My breath caught, a shuddering rasp in my lungs as he took my mouth and made it his. “Why fight the inevitable? We both know where this is leading.”

“With me brokenhearted and abandoned when you find something prettier?” I asked, the words escaping before I could rethink them. I hated the vulnerability they showed, the weakness it was to admit that he had the power to hurt me.

No one deserved to have that ability over me.

“I’ve seen my fair share of women. Trust me when I tell you there is nothing prettier for me than you. The only way this ends is with you as mine,” he said, drawing back to stare down at me meaningfully. “Always.”

I stuttered as I stared up at him, fumbling over the mess of words that came to my mouth. They all tangled together into a web of incoherence, leaving me with the distinct feeling that he would never stop throwing me off balance.

He enjoyed seeing me flounder far too much to ever allow me to just go about my day peacefully, without fear of making a fool out of myself when he said things I’d never imagined a man saying to me.

He touched a hand to my cheek, running that thumb over the freckles that dotted the arch of my cheekbone. His mouth still hovered just a breath away, the words he murmured brushing the smooth skin of his lips against the junction of mine. “Come out and play with me, my star. I know you’re in there somewhere, burning away where you think no one can see you. Imagine how brightly you’d shine if you embraced all that fire.”

With his palm on my cheek and his face touching mine, we shared the very air we breathed between us. It seemed to sigh, something tangible arcing through the air as his hand slid down from my cheek to the Mark on my neck. The circle on the back of his hand shone with white light as he turned his head toward mine. His lips brushed over mine in a smooth caress, a glide that seemed to steal the breath from his lungs in the same moment it captured mine.

He groaned, a soft and low noise that erupted through the silence of the woods surrounding us. The village not far off ceased to exist, the potential for someone to see us no longer mattered as he dropped his free hand to my waist and guided me to take a few steps backward. The firm press of a tree at my spine ensnared me into the trap he’d set so quickly I didn’t have time to question any of it.

His mouth was a ghost of a thought over mine, almost there but not quite as he held my stare and shifted his head back and forth.

Taunting me. Teasing me.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he murmured, the words brushing against me. They felt like a threat. They felt like a promise. They felt like everything I shouldn’t allow.