CHAPTER 139: ONE HUNDRED & THIRTY NINE

Lucien

"Val," I say softly, my fingers reaching for her shoulder.

The sound must have startled her because she swung for me next, the bloodied edge of the wood hitting me square in the nose. "Fuck," I swear, but she swings again, nearly cracking my head in half.

Her eyes are black--no pupil, no reflection, no soul--just hunger. She stares right through me, animal and divine and terrifying... then growls at me in a language that is all animal and not human at all. Before turning back to the body, raising the stick and continuing her assault.

I think she might have just told me to stand right there and not move or she’ll kill me, in a very Lycan manner, with no words at all.

She’s in that absent place she goes when she’s overcome with rage. I understand it, the need to feed it that never quenches, and for that reason alone, I wrap my arms around her small body and crush my face to her neck. "He’s dead, Val. It’s okay."

She snarls at me, hands grasping onto that stick like her life depends on it. And with sickness churning in my stomach, I realize it must have. She thrashes against me, swinging wildly at nothing, frustration hissing out of her in small snarls. "Valka," I say again, gently, though, mildly coaxing in a tone that commands it. "Look at him."

Her lashes droop, her head lowering slightly. Her body trembles as she takes in, for the first time, what she has done to him.

I suspect he’s been dead for several minutes, if she’s used to the wood to chop him up into cookable slices. Even his little head is in pieces. And the region between his legs is particularly in dices. You could not tell his skin apart from his clothes.

"Dead," she says, voice harsh, and her body gives a small tremble as the stick clatters from her hands. "Dead," she repeats again in a small chant, as if to calm herself.

I kiss the curve of her neck softly, running fingers along her stomach in soothing circles as the tremor subsides, knowing she is one moment away from breaking.

But the break doesn’t come. Neither do the tears. Instead, she murmurs, "I’m hungry."

I blink and pull back to see her eyes and know that she is alright. But Valka swerves without warning. It’s a lurch and a pull at the same time, and I am caught completely off guard when her hands yank down my head to hers and her fangs--now healed and longer than usual--tear into my lower lip, drawing blood.

The reaction is instant. I would never quite be able to tell what it is about her that makes me hard and soft in the same breath, in two vastly different ways. Her tongue slides over the puncture, as if in apology, but the hands on my face travel, gripping the back of my head harshly as her tongue slides hotly against mine, feeding the taste of my blood and Rafael’s back to me.

The latter is so fucking disgusting, I suck it off her tongue and spit it out.

My hands find the indent of her waist and I lift her off the ground. Her legs wrap around my hip eagerly and lock tightly and I pull back just enough to murmur, "Here?"

She nods, lips trailing down my neck, and my cock swells in my pants when she grazes my pulse and sucks tenderly.

"There’s a rotting body a few feet away, Valka," I exhale hotly, fingers tightening on her backside and pressing her closer despite myself.

Beyond words or reason, she just hums with annoyance against my neck and rocks her hips against mine urgently.

A low, ragged laugh curls out of me, dark and delighted. "Sometimes, I genuinely worry you might be more deranged than I am, and that’s saying something."

Whatever thought I had after that disintegrates when her lips part and she sinks her fangs into my pulse. The first time she did it, it felt like dying exquisitely, like someone folded pain and ecstasy together and forced me to swallow it whole. There is no language for it. It hits your knees, burns through your veins, and makes you want everything at once. Blood, violence, breath, sin, oblivion. It hurts like pleasure and pleases like damnation.

If we were rational beings, there are surely a million different things we could be doing. Joining the fight outside, getting the fuck out of this haunted place, or finding a healer.

Reasonable choices. Sensible priorities.

But Valka doesn’t need reasonable. She needs this. She needs teeth and instinct and the space to finish what was forced shut inside her. She’s caught mid-way a full shift and the silver jammed up the process like a rusted blade in a wound. A healer would take time. Time we don’t have with the current state of things.

I can only hope my blood does some fraction of good in helping her heal. Outside and on the inside. And it is that thought more than anything else that makes me give her the reins.

My aim is off-kilter and somehow, she maneuvers us both without speaking towards that large throne in the center of the room, tipping her weight forward and my spine nearly cracks from the force of being pushed against stone and metal.

The chair is anything but comfortable, but she notices nothing, straddling my tights and drinking from me. It hurt. Heat licks through me, making it painful to sit still as my body stretches taut and my groin bulged and lengthened. She didn’t stop. I knew she wouldn’t, not until she sucked me fucking dry.

"Valka," I say, breathing faint. My vision hazes and my fingers curl on her lower back.

She doesn’t stop, but her movements begin to change. Her fangs retract and her lips leave a trail of hot kisses down my neck, up my jaw, haphazardly. She assaults my mouth, fingers wrapping around my neck, choking off my breaths until air becomes inconsequential.

I shouldn’t have found it hot that she was doing to me what I once did to her, mimicking me in the same exact way I have ravished her at our home. But I did. And my cock most definitely loves it to as it twitches, pulsing in tandem to the gyrating, aggravating movements of those maddening hips.

After starving for so long, living in several ’worst case’ scenarios in which I had lost her again, it feels like coming back to life again. I feel everything again, reacquaint myself with every little detail, now more vivid, more colorful, more intense. Her smell. Her heartbeat. The way her hair clings to her skin. The exact shade of it. The curve of her lips, the shape of her teeth. The curve of her eyebrows. The blonde baby hairs that curl on her forehead and close to her ears. The shape of her fingers, thin, mangled and broken as they are. The way they feel sliding across my skin with surety, with ownership. Roughly. Softly. I’d take all of it and so much more. Her thighs. Her skin.

Bruised, not broken. And even if in the little way it was, I would heal every ounce of it. Every scar she bore for the sake of being my mate, physically and inwardly, I would rewrite. For every dark memory, we would make another. A brighter one. Or a much darker one to completely erase it.

Her hands discard the armor. They rip the tunic underneath. She runs her hands down my body, her blackened gaze wide with fascination. I’ll never get over the way she looks at me. Like I am truly something priceless, something worth holding on to. And it baffles me. Because I wish she could see herself through my eyes.

Every day. Every minute. Every hour.

Her eyes flick to mine as her fingers hover over the buckle of my pants. There is nothing gentle in her touch, but it fills me with love, nonetheless.

And I know, once again, like I had figured out all those many years ago that I am well and truly fucked. Happily so.

Her hands slip into my briefs and close around me with two tight fists. She doesn’t tease me. Doesn’t bother playing around before crawling forward, locking her thighs tightly around me until the tatters of her dress is bunched high around her hip and she sinks down my length in one tight, hard throw.

White explodes in the back of my eyes and I jerk, cock tightening so hard, I think for a second that she’s going to fucking kill me.Everything narrows to the feel of her around me. To her mouth that has returned to my pulse as she clenches tight and rolls around me slowly like this is her favourite sport.

My head drops back against the stone throne, my neck arching to give her more access as she bites hard, slams down ever harder.

I do not know when the words tear out of me. "I want to live inside you."