The Songbird and the Heart of Stone (Crowns of Nyaxia #3)

Chapter 37

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A sar’s mouth tasted as good as his blood. His arms folded around me like he’d been waiting for this for days, weeks, months. His kiss was vicious. The hand that had been tangled in my hair now tilted my head to deepen it, like he was desperate to savor as much of me as he could.

My hands ran down his back, tracing the hard lines of his body through the fabric of his shirt—gods, I wanted that gone. My fang opened a small cut in his lip, and the taste of his blood awakened a maddening rush in my veins.

But he broke the kiss, pushing me away. His eyes kept going back to my mouth, the smear of blood at its corner. His lust was etched into every line of his form. His cock was already hard between us, thick and ready. But he blinked away that haze of desire, and when his hand slid to my cheek, brushing a strand of hair from it, it was all gentle concern.

I didn’t want gentle right now.

“You’re upset,” he said.

“I want this.”

I wanted to seize it while I could. I wanted to find something right in all these broken pieces. And gods above, I wanted him. I wanted him while I could still have him—here, in this moment where it all aligned, fleeting as an eclipse.

The muscles in his throat worked.

“I don’t want to be something you regret, Mische.”

I knew it was a confession that came from the most vulnerable parts of himself. The echo of Ophelia’s words hung between us: You’re nothing but a regret to everyone you ever loved.

My heart hurt for him.

I cupped his cheek, thumb caressing the elegant threads of his scar.

“I’ll never regret you.”

An easy truth. My soul had been marked by a litany of shames. I’d carry them forever, and I’d likely carry more, too—I knew that. But Asar, I knew certain as the nightfall, would never be one of them.

He leaned his forehead against mine, swallowing thickly. I wondered if perhaps no one had ever said that to him before. The thought made me so overwhelmingly sad.

I kissed his cheek, drawing a deep inhale of his scent of ice and ivy. Then his throat, right where I’d drank, the pulse beneath his skin intoxicating. Lower—his collarbone, half-covered by the collar of his shirt. My fingers went to his buttons, undoing the first one, but his hand fell over mine.

When I peered up at him, he looked back at me with an unspoken fear.

“I want to see you,” I said softly.

Had anyone ever said that to him, either?

He hesitated, then released my hand and took over the buttons, avoiding my gaze. His shirt fell open, and I slid it from his shoulders.

The shifting light from the storm outside highlighted the swells of his lean muscles, silver light dripping down the ridges of his abdomen, where a line of dark hair led into his trousers. It was the body befitting of a vampire prince—a vampire king.

And then, there were the scars.

They trailed down his throat and over his shoulder, extending across his left pectoral and all the way down his arm. Black swirling lines crawled along his ribs, then down the muscles of his stomach, falling off into little fractures near his hipbone and barely brushing the edge of his waistband. They looked like cracks of lightning. Like ivy caressing stone.

I flattened my hand against his chest. His flesh twitched beneath my touch.

“They’re beautiful,” I said.

I meant it. It now seemed ridiculous that when I first saw him, the scars seemed like a mar on an otherwise perfect face. But I’d now seen what he’d looked like before them—like a boy trying hard to be something he wasn’t.

He flinched, giving me a look that said, You don’t have to lie to me. But I kissed the knot of black at his shoulder, his pectoral, his bicep, his throat, and then his mouth again, dizzy all over again with the want of it.

“Really,” I murmured against his lips, and with the length of my body pressed against his, he didn’t seem to have it in him to argue.

He tilted my head up as my lips opened for him, our tongues sliding against each other like silk. My hands roamed his bare skin, and his tightened around the fabric of my shirt, as if offended by its existence.

He let out a low sound deep in his throat as my fingertips slid beneath the waistband of his trousers, feeling the hard curve of his backside.

“You’re challenging my self-control, Dawndrinker,” he growled.

My lips curled beneath his kiss.

“Good. You’re too restrained.”

Let him unravel. Let me see what he looked like in the ruins of all that self-control. Let him drown my grief and my sadness beneath the exquisite sin of his touch.

He loosened a rough breath against my lips, and suddenly, he spun us around. My back hit something hard—the edge of the altar. One of Asar’s large hands braced my hips against it, holding me still. The other worked at my shirt. Halfway down, I muttered, “Gods help us,” and ripped it off myself, sending buttons raining to the marble floor.

What was wrong with me, that I was so eager to expose myself to him when I’d spent years now hiding my body as my greatest shame? The self-consciousness hit me when the cool air did. He pulled back to look at me. He drank me in inch by inch, a line of concentration over his brow—like witnessing me was a task that required his total attention.

When I had lain with Atroxus, I’d thought that the way he had looked at me was lust. Like I was an attractive item to be coveted, all my value in the surface appearance of my beauty.

But Asar looked at me like he wanted to see me, layer by layer. It was uncomfortable. I wished he’d return to the harsh desire, too furious to allow for thought. Tenderness was painful. And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to stop him as he lowered his mouth to my throat. My collarbone. The swell of my breast, brown nipples peaked with anticipation. His tongue darted out to taste one, gently swirling its peak, while his thumb rolled over the other.

His hand flattened around my waist, fingers tracing the curves of my hips. I resisted the urge to shy away as they encroached on my scars, the newer ones that had extended over my shoulder blade and down my side. But he touched them so gently, so lovingly.

It had been a long time since I had let anyone touch my bare skin at all, for fear of showing them all those shameful marks.

Stop , I wanted to tell him. I don’t deserve that.

But I couldn’t make myself.

His mouth kissed down my body as those deft fingers moved to the clasp of my trousers. They were a little too big for me. With the button undone, they slid right down, pooling around my ankles.

Asar straightened, eyes starting at the floor, moving up, up. I wondered if he could smell the desire at the apex of my thighs, the slick already starting. I could smell his, heady and sweet, clouding my thoughts in a tantalizing haze.

His eyes darkened. The light of his left eye smoldered like a flaring flame. His nostrils flared, ever slightly, as I forced my thighs to loosen, the cool air startling against my core.

It was too much, the way he was looking at me. Too real. I gave him a lopsided smile that probably looked as weak as I felt.

“I thought I was challenging your self-control,” I said. “You’re being awfully slow for someone who?—”

His hands slid beneath my backside, quick but firm. The next thing I knew, I was lying upon the altar, my back against cool stone, looking up at the raging storm clouds through the glass ceiling. Asar leaned over me, a curl at the corner of his mouth.

“Slow,” he scoffed. “You’ve seen how I work now, Dawndrinker. I’m thorough. I’m patient.”

“You’re uptight.”

“I have impeccable attention to detail.”

His teeth grazed a spot on my breast that made my breath hitch. He paused there, smiling.

“Like that.” His tongue slid out, soft and wet, giving that sensitive skin a long, sweet caress. My self-consciousness fell away. A small, wordless sound escaped my throat.

“Noted.” One hand slid up to my shoulder, gently pushing me back to the slab, while his mouth lazily worked over the underside of my breast.

“One learns a lot about bodies in my line of work. Every one is different. But yours?—”

His tongue pressed over a spot on my abdomen, and a deeply unseductive giggle escaped my lips. My knees jerked up, and I would have hit Asar squarely in the jaw if he hadn’t dipped out of the way.

“Sorry!” I sputtered, pushing myself to my elbows. “That just—that tickled.”

Asar’s smile, the amusement dancing in his eyes, reminded me of the dawn.

He gently replaced my wayward knee. “It’s nice to find your weaknesses. Even if that wasn’t the one I was looking for.”

Nice to find my weaknesses. What a ridiculous thing to say. I felt like I was all weaknesses.

“You’ll tickle the dead back to life?”

I was still giggling a little, struggling to compose myself. I felt lightheaded. The sight of Asar’s bare skin struck me all over again. The cocktail of nervousness and overwhelming, carnal desire was scrambling my thoughts. I felt like my human self and my Dawndrinker self and my vampire self were at war with each other.

A wrinkle formed between Asar’s brows. He touched my cheek in a way that I knew was an unspoken question— Are you all right?

The affection in his gaze sobered me immediately. The sensation it stirred in my heart was more complicated than lust.

I coaxed him toward me, giving him a kiss that started tentative and quickly deepened, my vampire desire rising in my veins again. When he broke away, I let out a small sound of protest. He gave me a tsk .

“Typical of you. Always rushing.”

His mouth suckled at my throat. Moved down to my nipple, then my waist—carefully avoiding the spot that had nearly gotten him kicked in the face.

My hipbone.

Oh, gods.

I stared at the clouds. Asar’s hands fell to my knees.

Pushed them open, as he lowered himself to kneel at the altar.

“You asked me what love should feel like,” he murmured. I tensed as his lips brushed my inner thigh.

“It should make you think of nothing else.”

Higher, where the skin was so sensitive that I jolted when he dragged his teeth over it.

“It should make you see stars.”

Gentle force on my inner knee. My legs widened for him at that lightest touch. My heartbeat thrummed in my veins, and I knew he could smell the rush of my want, now overtaking all other thought.

With Atroxus, he had taken what he wanted hard and quickly. Maybe some part of me had been expecting the same from Asar, not this torturous wait.

I could feel his breath on the heat of my desire. The faintest brush of his lips when he said, “This was what I wanted to do that night.”

His kiss, long and slow, wrung a languid moan out of me. His tongue slipped between my folds and ran up, lingering at my bud.

My back arched against the altar.

Holy gods. I had never felt anything like that.

My legs had opened in a request for more. But he’d already withdrawn, his kisses retreating to my inner thighs.

I didn’t intend to make the needy sound of disappointment aloud. He chuckled against my skin.

“I’m patient,” he murmured. “A man can’t rush worship.”

And gods, that was what he was doing. Worshipping. He moved over me like his hands had moved over the piano keys, as if my every sigh or moan of pleasure was a symphony to be composed. He kissed and nipped at my flesh, moving to my breasts until he felt my muscles go taut, before returning between my legs to offer another agonizing indulgence. Heat built. My hips rolled against him without my permission. When his tongue pushed inside me, sucking greedily, I cried out so sharply my voice echoed against the glass ceiling.

“Mm.” He hummed his approval as he withdrew again. Now he kissed my throat, his face close enough that I could scent my own pleasure on him.

I couldn’t think of anything but the proximity of his body. My hips lifted, but he kept himself carefully suspended over me, never touching. When my hand slid between us to curl around his length through his trousers—gods, it was incredible, so thick I couldn’t curl my hand around it—he sucked in a breath and roughly pushed my arms back against the altar.

He lifted his head to look into my eyes. They were dark with want, the deadly edge of his desire exposed. I liked it. I wanted to let it rip me open.

“Not yet, Dawndrinker. I want to taste you as you come the first time. There will be plenty more.”

He continued his work, giving equal attention to every inch of my flesh, dropping back between my legs to lick and suckle until I was crying out for release, only to leave me there on the precipice again. Slowly, heat rose across my entire body. Every flick of his tongue on my hip or my breast or even the rough skin of my scars threatened to throw me over the edge.

“Asar,” I begged, the next time he pulled away from me. I tried to pull him closer, tried to sit up to take control myself, but he pushed me back to the altar and held me there, firm.

I could see now how Asar had once been a master at torture. He was so cruelly attentive, so aware of every unwilling tell of the flesh. He knew exactly how to bring my body to the brink of collapse, and how to pull away right before it happened. And yet, my agony translated to such unbelievable euphoria. Every inch of my body had turned so sensitive, the pleasure burning me up.

“I’m being slow now, because I want to remember this. Exactly how you sound.” His tongue flitted out against my nipple, and I gasped. “I like that one.”

“You’re such an asshole,” I ground out. It wasn’t a very inspired response, but it was all I could get out.

He laughed, low and cruel.

“And I’m being slow now, because I won’t be able to later.”

And then, at last, his mouth pressed to the soft skin of my inner thigh.

“I was so jealous of your hand that night. I wanted to taste you come even more than I wanted to taste your blood.”

His breath, hot with desire, tortured me.

“You make me so greedy, Dawndrinker,” he murmured. “I can’t deny myself around you.”

And then he held my thighs apart, and slid his tongue inside me, long, slow, hard, vicious.

The pleasure he had been wringing out of me for a slow eternity crashed over me all at once. My eyes squeezed shut. My muscles spasmed. I clutched for him, anything, for an anchor as he ripped me apart at the edge of his blade.

When awareness slowly filtered back to me, my hands were tangled in his hair. He was breathing heavily, quickly. He was still kneeling before me, licking the sweat off my inner thighs.

“Exquisite.” The word was barely audible, like he didn’t mean to say it aloud. His eyes rose slowly, trailing up my shaking body, until they met mine.

Did I look like he did? So shattered? Like all his defenses had broken apart, leaving the tender vulnerability of our want exposed and raw. I’d never known it could feel so good, to let yourself be unmade.

And holy gods, he was perfect. The storm beyond roiled, the eerie dark light falling over his body like streaks of paint.

I pushed myself up. I kissed him, tasting myself on his lips, and gently urged him to stand. He did, our kiss deepening, never breaking, as my hands slid over his body. Slid down, to the cut V running into his trousers. His tongue slipped into my mouth as I undid the button—I nicked it with my fangs as it came free, relishing his hiss as an intoxicating drop of his blood hit my tongue.

And then his trousers were on the ground, and his cock, hard and wanting, was in my hands. I stroked it as I kissed him, enjoying the way he tensed when my thumb ran over the bead of moisture at its tip.

I’m being slow now because I won’t be able to later.

I pumped him once, and I was barely able to complete the movement before he let out a growl and pushed me back against the altar.

That one challenge, and the self-control of the eternally thorough, eternally patient, eternally uptight warden of Morthryn shattered, releasing the monster.

We crashed together. He lifted me, my backside against the edge of the altar, the height perfect to align our bodies. My thighs opened for him—I was so wet, so ready. His cock notched at my entrance, and he buried his face against my shoulder as he pushed.

But partway through the movement, he paused. One arm cradled me, the other leaning against the altar, palm splayed. We both were panting, our bodies twitching in protest at the pause here, right at the precipice of finally, finally being brought together.

I looked down to see us combined, him barely inside me, the tip gleaming with my slick.

Two sinners on the edge of something we both knew would change everything, here upon an altar of all that had destroyed us.

I raised my eyes to meet his.

And that was all it took. One glance at each other, at all our wants.

He plunged into me.

I gasped and clutched him, my fingernails digging into his back. From that first thrust, I knew that the time for patience was over. This was raw and frantic and brutal. This was pleasure and pain and desperation, faith and destruction, fire and ash.

He drove into me like I was the only thing tethering him to life, and I clutched him and rode against every violent clash of our bodies. I reshaped around him, his length searing every part of me.

The pleasure he’d given me had been unbearable before—but this, to experience it with him, feeling every muscle respond to me, was devastating. Some part of me had known that this would change me. I didn’t realize the extent of it until this moment. Before, sex had been an offering, something to be taken from me.

But here, as my body and Asar’s writhed together, moving in time with our heartbeats, the innate connection terrified me. I had opened myself up for him, and now, he was offering me his guts, too.

I knew it when he was getting close to his own release, his muscles coiling, his hands clawing at my thighs. He pulled back, forehead pressed against mine, his eyes bearing into me as his body did. He pushed deep, pausing there as our bodies strained against each other. A moan, almost a sob, escaped my lips. He captured it in his.

“Ignite, Mische.” He was commanding me. He was begging me.

I shifted my hips, urging him into another thrust as my hands tangled in his hair, eyes staring unblinking into his. I wanted to watch him as we both fell apart.

“Fall with me,” I whispered. Because I was oddly terrified to lose control—terrified to do it alone.

He exhaled against me, our pace rising to a desperate crescendo.

“I’d burn with you till the end of it all, Dawndrinker.”

I fell back against the altar as he drove into me, the two of us collapsing against the stone in a swell of pleasure. I cried out as he slammed into me, and I felt him spill within me as my climax wrung his from him. I watched his pupils dilate, watched the pleasure of my body destroy him. Watched him watch me through it, too.

And then I wrapped my limbs around him and held him through the aftershocks as the fire subsided. His lips pressed against my temple, my cheek, like he wanted to make sure I was still here, with him.

I would always be with him, I knew in this moment. I would never be able to leave.

I kissed him, tasting the remnants of our pleasure. He was still inside me, and I was still so conscious of his presence. I wasn’t ready to let it go. I was selfish. Sinful.

My mouth moved to his throat. I ran my fangs against his pulse in a silent question. He stilled, his cock twitching inside me, then lifted his chin for me. One bite, and his blood flowed over my tongue, sweet and thick and wonderful, too good to be wrong.

He exhaled, his presence inside me hardening unmistakably now.

I drank deep, then released him and offered my throat to him in return. The stab of his teeth made me gasp. His near-silent groan of pleasure as he took my blood was dizzying. I slipped free and urged him down to the altar. Then I crawled astride him and slid his again-ready cock back inside me, filling an emptiness that now felt meant only for him.

We took each other slowly this time, smoldering and sweet, pausing to drink each other’s blood—relishing in skin against skin. I came again on him as he whispered sweet urges against my flesh. Then I let him roll over me and we found one last euphoria with each other, our limbs so entwined that we became a single being. He kissed me through my last climax as he came for me one more time, his fingers locked with mine as if he would never let me go.

He slipped from me, but our bodies still folded around each other, peaceful in the darkness.

“Exhausted with pleasure,” he murmured. “I keep my promises.”

I laughed. My heart felt heavy and full. My palm flattened over his chest as my lashes fluttered. I traced the lines of his scars, painting affection over pain. And as exhaustion fell over me, I watched our blood, ruby black, drip over the edge of the altar.

I didn’t regret any of it.

I hoped our blood would stain this stone forever.

“You have always been such a foolish, impulsive little creature, a’mara.”

My bare body was cold—alarmingly cold. Asar’s absence struck me like an icy blow. Without him, I felt like I was missing a limb.

A dream.

I opened my eyes to blinding sunlight.

This was a dream.

“But this,” the voice said, inevitable as the dawn, “is an affront .”

The rage of a god is impossible to describe. It reshapes the world. You feel it in the air. It seeps into your soul and burns from the inside out. Gods wear the faces of mortals, but they’re closer to a storm or the sea than a human—forces capable of crushing a mortal life out of nothing but fickle whim.

I had loved Atroxus my entire life. I’d showed him my childish gifts. I’d let him into my body. Sometimes, even I forgot the true nature of what he was.

This was a dream, I prayed.

But dread fell over me as Atroxus’s rage rose like smoke from a pyre.

It was not a dream.

I lifted my head. Atroxus stood before me, sun scorching in his eyes, flames licking from his flesh, his fury so hot it warped the air.

“Do you still wish to tell me,” he breathed, eyes burning, “that you have been loyal ?”