Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine Book 1), page 24
“Thank you,” I said, the word close to a whisper when he returned to feed me some bread and soup.
Florian’s hand paused over the golden bowl, his eyes upon the creamy concoction within. Then he brought the bread to my mouth. “Do not thank me, butterfly.” Lust brightened his gaze and dropped his dark lashes as he watched me eat. “I am far from selfless, especially when it comes to you.”
I understood his meaning, and it didn’t erase my gratitude in the slightest. “I’m sure many a male has desired another in the way you do me, but that does not mean they’d be so...” I gripped his wrist, taking the rest of the bread and smiling as I chewed and settled on, “Doting.”
Florian huffed, again wiping at the food that’d escaped my lips and sucking it from his thumb. “Doting is not the right word,” he said, and headed back to the tray.
Instead of asking what was, for I had a feeling he would not answer, I asked another burning question. “Who’s watching Snow?”
He returned to me with more bread. “The twins.”
I missed her. It hadn’t been that long, yet I was beginning to miss the entire estate I’d thought to be my prison full of enemies. “Can I see her tomorrow?”
“Not unless I bring her to you.” Noting my displeasure, he murmured with a gloss of his knuckles over my cheek. “You’re still vulnerable.”
I gently pushed his hand away when he offered me another bite of bread, forcing back a smile when he scowled. “I’m over the worst of it.”
“I’m not,” he said, gruff. “I want you where I know you’re protected and can see you until it’s over.”
I sighed and bit into the bread, the pleased glint in his eyes tempting me to bite his fingers. He wouldn’t mind, and so I didn’t bother.
“What happens,” I said, swallowing the dough, “after it’s done?” I’d been so distracted with trying to survive it, then satiating it—obsessed with overindulging in this king with an appetite to rival any goddess-given heat—that I hadn’t been able to give enough thought to what would come.
Florian glared down at the bowl, as if unsure how to answer that.
Cold slithered into my chest.
I attempted to ignore it by saying, “My abilities.” I’d never expected to have any outside of materializing unless they were small and few, for I’d never expected to discover that I was a royal.
“Your ability to materialize will be easier, but as for the rest...” He dipped the bread and pushed it between my teeth. “We wait and see.”
If I could materialize with more ease, and if Florian could teach me how to break into the energy folds for that to happen, then I could reach Baneberry.
I could reach King Molkan. My father.
Perhaps, I thought dangerously, I could even find more than the answers I desired about my family. Perhaps I could find more information about this hatred between Molkan and Florian.
And perhaps then I could help end all of this.
Unable to bite my tongue nor keep the gathering eagerness from my voice, I said far too quickly, “I want to test it. Materializing.”
The king frowned as if knowing exactly why I would want to learn. “Not while the scent of your constant state of arousal still lingers so potently.”
Of course, he would not teach me such a thing. He didn’t trust me, and he was right not to.
I didn’t take it personally. I would indeed run as soon as an opportunity arose, and Florian trusted very few. And though I knew he would tend to my every need inside these chambers, I did not trust him either.
If there was a way out of this game of war and revenge, I would not find it here. No matter how skilled the king was at tempting me to believe in this false sense of safety.
“It is a song,” Florian explained in my silence. “A call to the wild that has found many their counterpart.”
That piqued a new curiosity that was certainly better left alone. “A mate, you mean?”
He nodded once and turned back to the tray of food. “The heat repeats for a handful of years until a mate is found, or the female body simply learns to respect the soul’s decision not to hurry the search for one.”
I stared at the captivating expanse of his back, the question I didn’t need to ask stuck like glue behind my teeth.
Florian braced his hands upon the drawers, seemingly lost in thought as he stared down at the food. Muscle bulged in his biceps when he clenched the wood, then swept a hand through his tousled hair.
It was best to talk of something else, so I decided to show him what I’d sensed after he’d left me alone in his chambers.
I stood and crossed to the drapes covering the balcony doors. “Look.”
Florian turned, his brow furrowing and his lips forming a tight line.
“Baneberry royals have an affinity for nature, do they not?”
Birds filled the balcony. Every inch of the stone railing was covered, and some even perched upon the ground.
The king walked over to join me, and I expected the birds to fly away. They didn’t.
Sunlight streaked across his cheek and torso, his taut skin close to gleaming in response and his eyes nearing a rare shade of purple. “Flora, usually.” The belated words were absent. “That which grows from soil.”
His quiet tone, and the hardening of his features, flattened my excitement yet again. “Perhaps they’re drawn to fornicating royals, then,” I tried to say in jest to lighten the unexpected arrival of tension, but my voice was weak.
Florian said nothing.
After another moment of studying the birds who still hadn’t moved, he tore the drapes closed and returned to the tray of food. “Perhaps.”
I stalked behind him and grabbed his waist, wanting to rid the heaviness that’d filled his voice and the room. “So perhaps you should stop feeding me food and give me something better instead.”
Florian smirked when I slipped between him and the drawers, and he clasped the back of my head. His gaze danced with mine, his smirk falling with the growing hunger that brightened his eyes. Then he lowered his head to place his mouth over my thundering pulse.
He kissed it once before his lips moved lower, the only warning I had. His teeth sank into my neck at the same time he plunged two fingers into my body.
My legs quaked, euphoria rushing through my veins and pushing with cold heat against my skin.
The undulating mixture of bliss, coupled with his hooking fingers and the rumbled groan in his throat, rendered me instantly mindless. Stars danced before my wide-open eyes as I gripped Florian’s head and his bicep.
“Delicious creature.” He kissed the punctures in the curve of my neck. His arm lowered to hold me up while I convulsed over his hand. My chest heaved, my blood heating all over again when he slowly ceased pumping his fingers and carefully withdrew them from my body.
He brought them between us, his eyes aglow on mine as he sucked them clean. “Sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting.”
Jealousy threatened to taint the warmth those words gave me.
I needed to cease wearing my thoughts on my face. That, or this male needed to cease being so damned perceptive. He smirked and undid his pants. “Your possessiveness is showing, Princess.” Closing his lips over mine, he kissed me so softly, then murmured, “And it’s making my cock throb.”
“I do not wish to share you, Florian,” I said without thinking.
Anger had taken hold, spurred by the sickness induced by the mere thought of him doing any of this with another. As well as remembering what that hostile guard had said—how he’d still indulged in others when he’d had Nalia as his lover.
Florian stepped out of his pants.
Embarrassed by what I’d said, though I’d meant it, I couldn’t even bring myself to ogle all of him. I stared at the tray beside us with its leftover fruit and remaining mound of bread. Unsure what to say as the silence stretched but knowing I’d already said too much, I reached for the glass of water.
Florian allowed me two sips before setting it back on the tray. “What have I told you?”
“Not to make emotional requests, for they will be used against me.”
Florian huffed. “And to fucking look at me.”
Oh.
I gave him my attention, mortified even more.
Seeming amused and perhaps shocked that I remembered what he’d said in that room in the pleasure house, he loosened his jaw. “You think I would use such a desire against you?”
“I am here to be used,” I said carefully but firmly. “Am I not?”
He had nothing to say to that. He could not refute it. It was the cold truth.
Releasing a rough breath, he lifted me to the drawers and stepped between my legs. His nose trailed mine, his gaze holding mine captive. “You’re here because it was always supposed to be this way.”
Those words were meant to mollify me, I knew. They didn’t.
His mouth crushed mine, his claiming kiss drawing blood and chasing away the darkness that had unfurled with his caged responses.
He left me panting to rub his cock through my center. His gaze stayed there, and I trembled with every nudge at my clit. “Feet up, sweet.” I placed them on the edge of the wood, and he gripped me behind the knees. I was shifted forward and spread wide, his command strained. “Put me inside you.”
We both watched as I did.
He released one leg to grasp behind my head, the wooden drawers groaning with every hard yet controlled thrust of his hips. I whimpered into his neck as a violent climax took me under, my teeth pinching his skin.
I didn’t overthink it. I wanted all of him, needed to taste everything he was upon my lips and tongue.
And if he wouldn’t give me what I needed, then I would take it with the same lack of remorse he’d shown me.
My canines pierced his skin.
“Tullia.” His pace slowed, the hand in my hair tugging me back as the first heady drop of his blood met my lips. “Once you start surrendering to it, you will only last so long before needing it.”
I swallowed, the copper and warm taste of him sliding down my throat. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. “I know.” I licked my lips. “But it’s natural.”
“Some think differently.” He looked at my mouth, his jaw and tone hardening. “Especially those from Baneberry.” His eyes rose to my own. “Over time, it will weaken you. For it’s one thing to drink blood, but to let that same creature take from you in kind can bind you.”
He spoke as if I had not already bound myself to him in ways I would never escape.
“Well, I’m not in Baneberry, Majesty,” I said, a touch too bitterly. “I’m here with you, and I want all of you.” His nostrils flared, his pupils expanding. I frowned then, wondering if perhaps he had other reservations. “But if you do not wish for me to—”
His mouth slammed over mine, furiously bruising.
He moved inside me slowly while breathing me in. His hips halted when his mouth broke from mine with a rough exhale. “Go on, then, butterfly.” He gripped my neck and cheek, then pushed my mouth to his throat. “Let me live inside you like you do me.”
Though those words gave me pause, I greedily did as encouraged.
The taste of blood was not something I’d ever thought would appeal to me.
But feeding from Florian wasn’t merely a consumption of the nectar that lived beneath his skin. It was a necessity I’d never known I needed. A nourishment I shouldn’t crave but now knew I would indeed not last long without.
I needed no instruction for this. My legs twined tight around his waist. My teeth remained embedded in his flesh. My tongue lapped while I sucked. My heart soared as my body welcomed his essence with as much greed as my mouth.
I clasped his jaw to keep it tilted, unwilling to let him take this from me.
Not that he tried.
He cursed, a hard swallow sounding over my slight moans and bumping my nose. He was fire-coated ice, the warmth of him invading and spreading in a cold caress. The taste of him was pleasure and contentment unlike any other.
Intimate, indeed. I’d do atrocious things to make sure no one else could taste him in such a way—and to make sure I could do so again and again and again.
For if it were true that Mythayla provided an eternity of treasure to deserving souls in the last life, then this was it. Feeding from Florian would be it.
He groaned as I suckled and licked and swallowed, his hold at the back of my head gentling as he began to move inside me again. Within seconds, I came undone in an entirely new way. My release hit differently—a thunderous burn that tingled and cramped.
Tears filled my eyes.
The cries I’d smothered in Florian’s neck were set free when he lifted my head, his thumb brushing over my cheek. “You’re okay,” he crooned. All the while, he didn’t let up. He continued to fuck me with steady, unhurried thrusts. “Look at you.” His eyes flared with his nostrils, then narrowed. “What have I done to you, sweet creature?”
I couldn’t answer that, even if I’d been capable.
His smile was that of the true tyrant he was. He lifted me from the drawers and, still inside me, carried me to the bed. He laid me down and loomed over me. An exquisitely gentle kiss was pressed to my jaw with his gritted demand. “Answer me.”
I croaked out, “You’ve ruined everything I’ve ever wanted.” His head rose, tilting as he studied me with his gaze hardening. I smiled, reaching for the sharp crest of his cheek with fingers that still tingled. “You’ve ruined me.”
His eyes flashed, his lips whispering over mine with his words. “You no longer seem so disappointed.”
Because I wasn’t, and he knew it.
I slid my hands into his hair and kissed him.
I might not have been disappointed, but I was unwilling to believe that the heat would change much of anything regarding Molkan and the kingdom of Baneberry’s fate.
My kingdom’s fate.
As night arrived and Florian returned from taking our dishes to the kitchen, I curled away from the drapes that blocked the birds still residing outside on the balcony. “When exactly do you intend on finalizing your plans of revenge, Majesty?”
That muscle feathered in his jaw. “Florian.”
“Florian,” I said, intentionally breathy.
He paused in kicking off his loose cotton pants. “Say that again.”
I laughed, turning into the bedding. “Answer my question, and I’ll consider it.”
He smirked. “I’m afraid you’ll need to be more specific.”
“The wedding.”
A tilt of his head as he neared the bed. “In a hurry to make sure I hold you captive forever, Princess?”
I scowled, but laughed again when he leaped onto the bed and tugged my leg until I was trapped beneath him. Above me, he was a darkness that blocked out all else, his eyes and teeth the only light. “I like it when you do that.” He nipped my finger when I traced his mouth.
“Do what?” I whispered.
“Stare at me,” he said gruffly. Lowering his head, he skimmed his nose over my cheek. “Smile at me.”
My heart faltered, swelling when his lips grazed and gently tasted mine.
“Laugh because of me.” He trailed a path of kisses down my chest to my center. “Time for dessert.” That earned him another laugh that grew louder when he gripped my hips and nibbled playfully at my mound.
The following night, I woke starving but feeling more like myself than I had in weeks.
How that was possible when the changeling I’d been just weeks ago was now hard to see beneath all that had happened, I failed to comprehend while I searched the rooms for something to eat. There was nothing but a pitcher of water on the tray upon the drawers.
I drank half a glass, wondering about Florian’s whereabouts.
I’d fallen asleep right after dinner, so it wasn’t so late that Florian’s absence was unusual. Mercifully, the heat had unlatched its claws. I wished I could have said the same about the desire for the male who’d seen me through it.
I opened the drapes to watch the birds that still resided on the balcony, and belatedly realized the ice encasing the doorframe was gone. Peering behind me to the doors giving entry to Florian’s chambers, I found the same.
Even the door leading to my own chambers had been unsealed.
I wasn’t sure why that unsettled me.
Florian hadn’t wanted anyone hearing us fuck night and day. But even as the heat had simmered to a milder burn overnight, we’d still spent all day doing just that.
He’d unsealed the doors tonight, then, I surmised, and walked toward them. That meant he was comfortable with me leaving, and although that fact troubled me, I still donned the robe Florian had hung in the bathing room and did so.
I crept down the stairs with fears of what tomorrow might bring now that I didn’t need Hellebore’s vengeance sworn king to feed, bathe, and soothe my every aching need. I should have felt relieved. I should have been thinking about the address whispered to me by the stranger I hadn’t seen at the festival.
I should have been devising a way to get there to see if it would lead me to the only king who could answer the many questions still haunting me—my father.
The halls were silent save for the flower-shaped clock above the foyer entrance ticking toward midnight.
Which made the hushed conversation floating through the open doors to the manor all the more easier to hear.
“... finish this, Flor. Before she is taken and your precious advantage is lost.”
“Do not give me orders, Fume.”
I froze upon the landing before the last row of stairs, watching wisps of snow dance between the doors to melt upon the stone floor of the foyer.
“I’m not giving you orders. As your friend, I’m pleading with you to see reason,” Fume urged. “I know the twist of fate makes it difficult, but you’ve come this far...” His voice dropped, but I still heard what sounded like, “To back down will only make you look even more distracted.” A pause. “And therefore weak.”
