“Praising your false god, no doubt.”

“Why would they do that?”

“You’re not listening, little one.” Another pitying stroke through my hair. “Mortals are wicked creatures, always striving for more power than they can handle. If the masses pray to a god who doesn’t exist, then the mortal who speaks for said god amasses great power. Riches too, I would assume.”

My mind went to the tithe the priests collected twice a year. “The temples have gold-plated signs.”

“I have little bone at my disposal, it is true. The price I pay for an oath given.” With a flick of his hand, he reshaped my collar, widening it enough that a calming chill settled on my skin. “The stiffness in your muscles over your discontent is cumbersome.”

“If it’s so bad, how about you take me outside for a walk?”

“No.” A kiss against my temple. “But… I’m ever so tempted to send Orlaigh for fresh flowers whenever you please me.”

My skin heated beneath my collar, driving out his soothing chill until it itched again. “I don’t want damn flowers.”

Fuck the violets on John’s grave, too! I wanted to get out of here, drag three millstones onto my husband’s grave, then run from Enosh until my skin wrinkled and my hair grayed.

But the god only sighed, as if my mortal moods bored him. “Careful with that mouth of yours or I’ll find something to stuff it.”

As if to make a point, I watched my hand lift to knead over the significant bulge behind his leather breeches. Only trickery. “If the idea of my escape vexes you so, then why won’t you rot my husband’s bones like I asked?”

“You want me to leave my court—after two hundred years, no less—to rot the body of a wife-beating man?”

I’d rather be beaten than collared and raped. “I won’t expect a god who abandoned his purpose to understand the meaning of duty.”

“Duty?”

“Of a wife.”

“Something you seem to take very seriously.” His gaze intensified, eyes slipping to my lips for a second. “How come?”

“I gave my vows.”

“Vows,” he repeated slowly, as if tasting the word. “No mortal will find rest within my court, little one.”

“I’m not asking you to rest his bones at the Pale Court. You’ll just turn him into a cup and make me drink from it.”

“There’s an idea that makes this worthwhile.” Of course, he chuckled, ever so amused.  “Now, lift your skirts and show me how wet you are.”

Only trickery.

Regardless of how Enosh stirred my flesh, I didn’t truly lust for the god. As long as I remembered it, recited it like a prayer, then my body wouldn’t betray me again.

I shook my head, ignoring the heat climbing my inner thighs. “I won’t.”

“Very well. Touch me, then.”

That… was unexpected.

He leaned back and stared at me, amusement sitting in the depths of his turbulent gray eyes. One corner of his lips carried a slight uptick. It hiked into a lopsided smirk as I reached my damned hands for his chest.

Leisurely, I palmed the vast plains of hard muscle before I let my fingertips curve down along the dips and valleys of his abdomen. A bastard like him shouldn’t be this perfectly built. I balled the hem of his shirt in my fists and pulled it over his head, his scent wafting off him like flames licking the wet chill of a winter night.

His chest rose and fell easily with each breath, the shoulders above wide, with strong muscles tying into the trunk of a broad neck. He was so beautifully sculpted, every inch shaped to divine perfection that hid the depravity in his heart. Enosh was so terribly cold, so terribly cruel, just… so terrible with how he folded his arms behind his head.

“Yes, just like that,” he praised, striking a long-neglected chord deep within me until it hummed. “Touch me, my little one.”

The soft lilt coming from his lips only deepened my utter humiliation, and how I cupped his cheeks with a lover’s touch. I stroked the sharp line of his jaw, dug my fingers into his long, black strands, and thumbed his bottom lip in nothing short of worship.

Only trickery.

My folds didn’t truly grow wet when I reached his breeches, frantically undoing the laces to release his hard flesh.

My insides didn’t truly heat when I brushed my skirts aside and mounted him, knees braced against the bone of his throne.

And my body didn’t truly tremble when I reached between us, lining his crown up with my sex before I impaled myself on his thick—

“Oh my god!”

“No need for such formalities.” His arms remained folded behind his head, no matter how I rocked against him, rubbing my nymph over his hard body. “Call me by my name.”

“Arrogant jerk.”

“Stubborn, insolent, beautiful woman,” he rasped. “Take your pleasure from me, Ada. A reward for my good little mortal, and how stunning she looks, collared and chained.”

A ripple of anger tensed my muscles as lust and loathing fought within my core. No, this was no reward; this was mockery. A blatant display of his power over me as he watched… and did nothing.

Enosh neither forced nor restrained.

Instead, he agonized my flesh with unwanted hunger, letting its fangs bite so deep into my heated center, lust won—and flesh answered the call of its master. I bucked against him, seeking pleasure while my mind echoed with the fading lifeline of my prayer: only trickery, only… trickery, only—

“Kiss me!”

Already my weight shifted toward him, tongue wetting my lips. His breath tingled over my mouth, the warmth of his proximity seeping deeper, deeper, until—

I pulled back on a mumble, “Only trickery.”

“Only trickery, hmm? What makes you so certain?” Deep and lustful, his groan purred across the skin of my neck as he reached for the bodice of my dress. “How can you tell where your obedience ends and your cravings begin?”

He undid the laces of my bodice, exposing my breasts to his greedy lips. They suckled a nipple into his mouth, tongue teasing the little bud until it grew painfully hard. He did the same with the other, warm hands kneading the flesh, weighing it.

I moaned, relishing the time he took to fondle my breasts, giving them attention they hadn’t known in so, so long. “None of this is real.”

“You feel painfully real to me, little one. Now kiss me.” When I did nothing, he gripped the bone chain near my collar. “Kiss me!”

A hard pull and he hauled my face closer before he slanted his mouth over mine. Confident lips brushed the corner, kissing me with ravenous need before his tongue stroked my lips apart.

The hunger in his kiss, his unforgiving grip on my chain, the absurd tenderness of his hand as he cupped the back of my head… it sparked a need I had no control over.

Fingers trembling with defiance stroked over the arch of his brows, down the slant of his cheekbones, only for my arms to wrap around his neck. I hated myself for it, but that didn’t keep me from rolling my hips each time he thrust upward, working his thick cock deep into me.

He gripped my chin in the vise of his hand and something desperate fleeted over his gray eyes. “Say my name. My true name.”

“Enosh…”

He answered with a grunt and guided me along his rock-hard length, filling my sex with pleasure it hadn’t known in years. Oh, the thickness of his flesh, the bliss of how he filled me so completely, the obscenity of all this. It was… was…

“Not real.”

A cloud of feathers puffed up around me. Clank, clank, clank went teeth and bone as my bodice fell into just as many pieces, skipping down the dais, leaving me naked.

Enosh rose, slipped me off him, and spun me to face the corpses in his throne all in one movement, his snarl predatory. “It’s realer than you’d ever confess to yourself, so let me help you.”

He gave another yank on the chain until my collar pulled against my throat. “Your flesh has been deprived of touch for so long that it blooms beneath my hands. It calls for me, longs for me.”