Suddenly, his chest beats against hers, rapid and shallow. He looks young. And nervous.
She doesn’t care. She’s had enough.
It’s about time he gets as harsh as he gives. This attitude adjustment is overdue, to see whether he likes being baited, to see whether he can take it. If he wants a match, he’ll get a match.
Wonder curls into him, pliable curves molding into chiseled angles, testing what the contact does to his cocksure demeanor, which isn’t cocksure any longer. His mouth slackens, his inhalations reduced to spurts.
His eyes leap with trepidation. How unusual.
“You talk too much,” Wonder seethes. “You like listening to yourself far, far too much. But now you’re going to listen to me. Insult my peers, mock my desires, or abuse my words, and so help me, I will stab you with your own claws. Show me respect, show my class respect, and return my damned corsage, or I will pull your weaknesses from the roots and leave them to wither. I’ll tear through this Chamber and find every fact you seek, and then I’ll make you prostrate yourself for them. Do you understand me?”
Malice stares at her, his body pressed against her damp nightgown. For once, he’s at a loss for words and not bothering to hide it.
And then a declaration slides out of him—a word she hadn’t actually expected to hear given so freely. His jugular bobs as he answers, “Yes.”
Wonder blinks. He’d spoken with humility, without a guise, as bare as his flesh. It’s a complete departure from a second ago, with a blush sprinting across his jaw and his eyes tripping all over her.
It’s the countenance of that boy.
But it’s not that boy. It’s Malice.
It’s her rival, her adversary gazing at her as if he’s never been this near to a female, as if he doesn’t know what to do. For all his lewdness, Malice’s expression scarcely parallels his indecency, nor the slices of eroticism that had slipped between the cracks. Gone is his bravado, leaving behind the vestiges of a well-played fraud.
A harrowing notion drains Wonder of contempt. She loosens her hold on him.
It fills the void until it doesn’t, because it tells you only so much about what you like.
Malice’s speech clashes with his physical response to her, the hints compiling and pointing toward an unfathomable conclusion. This whole time, he’s been mouthing off with dirty innuendoes as if he knows what he’s talking about, as if he’s experienced.
When in fact, he’s…
No, it can’t be. Not at his age.
But then, what deities would lust over a hedonistic god, no matter how striking his features? No matter how stimulating they find his diabolism?
Wonder gnaws on her lower lip, a thrill shimmying up her calves when his gaze traces the motion. Curious, tentative, she experiments. She slips a golden lock behind his ear, a gentle ministration that causes him to flinch.
Her mind stutters. Yes, that’s it.
For all his profanity, he excels at bluffing. He’s nothing but a pretender, a consummate fake who’s lived a less promiscuous life than he lets on. By Fates, he’s been celibate for almost two centuries.
It’s unthinkable. Yet it makes all the difference.
Their gazes collide. He glowers with speechless defiance, all the while molten pupils swallow his irises, and his lids grow hooded. She dismisses the past hour, sweeping aside prudence and rationale in favor of this one sinful morsel.
True, she’s had only one male before. But she’s frolicked with others enough to know a thing or two.
They trade breaths as she leans in and whispers, “Now where were we?”
Astonishment splashes across his face. It’s the only warning she gives as her head veers beneath his jaw, her mouth dragging across the underside to skim his flesh.
Malice goes rigid. “Shit,” he hisses.
The exclamation ends on a croak, a naive reflex that provokes a euphoric clench between Wonder’s thighs. Her head swirls, drawn into a vortex, her nostrils fueled by the scent of wood and rainfall.
As she nuzzles him, Malice shivers. His fingers grasp her sides, either to shove her away or cling for balance, as if the universe is about to collapse. Marveling breaths skitter from the misfit as her lips pass over him, sketching the softness. His wet flesh yields to her mouth, a delicious bead of salt leaking onto her palate.
The sounds trickling out of him are borne of epiphany, wrought of pure, unsophisticated innocence. Nothing has ever sounded like this, tasted like this, felt like this. Moisture collects at her center, and his length wedges between their hips, impaling itself there for her to chafe against.
She wants more of this friction, needs more of his voice. She’s going to take it all, take everything she’s been denying herself. She’ll consume him like a selfish little goddess, and she doesn’t care, and she won’t regret it.
The flat of her tongue flicks out. And she licks him, gathering another droplet.
Malice buckles, a full-bodied convulsion as his muscles go lax, reduced to putty in her arms. His head falls against the wall, his eyes rolling to the back of his head. And it’s the sweetest surrender.
“Christ,” he says on a strangled groan.
“Is that all?” she coos, her mouth sinking to the crook of his throat and shoulder. “That isn’t like you, Demon. You say so much, in order to say one thing.”
“You say so little, in order to say a hundred things,” he grinds out, his head flopping to give her better access. “It drives me crazy. You drive me crazy.”
“You were already crazy before we met. And it’s the ones who know the least that exhaust their tongues the most.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
The harsh delivery is a throb inside her, an ache to be filled. It’s the word Fuck thrusting from his lungs.
They pant against each other, gasping through their confessions. Wonder cranks her head upward, kissing the incline between his lower lip and square chin. Then she swabs the chin itself, speaking against the hard ridge. “I’ll do nothing of the sort. I cannot stand you.”
“Yes, you can. You’ve withstood me plenty, so knock it off.”
“If you insist.”
With that, she twists. Her mouth latches onto the corner of his neck and begins to suck.
Malice dissolves into a moan, velvety and flitting to the rafters. He melts into the façade while his talons dig into her, puncturing her ribcage. It’s a pleasurable sting that makes her gasp into the nook of his jugular. She works him between her teeth, then laps at the spot, ending with an open-mouthed kiss.
And another. And another.
She devours his neck, rolling kisses across the veins. Her tongue flicks, catching the tempo of his pulse point, then migrates lower, sampling a clavicle with her canines. He likes the twinge of pain, so she pays similar attention to the other slender cylinder until his joints quake.
Wonder cannot think straight because there’s so much to ravage, and she’s consumed by the serration of his moans, the glorious tremors wracking them both. She feathers the spongy dip between his collarbones with the point of her tongue. His hoarse gulp infatuates her, spurs her on as she strokes him there, inside that receding spot.
Malice hyperventilates as if he wants more, as if he’s afraid to want more, as if he doesn’t know how to want more.
Wonder mumbles against swell of his Adam’s apple. “You’ve never done this.”