When a burning sensation spread across an arse still sore, my hands grabbled for hold, finding it on the bone of his throne. “No. No, please… not there.”

“Not there,” he repeated as he slipped lower and thrust into my cunt, seating himself completely before he pulled back, then snapped his hips forward again. “Ah, you’re gripping me so tightly all on your own. You want this. You like this.”

Hard thrusts turned to aggressive pounding as he panted, fucking me so hard that the porous bone I held on to chaffed my palms. My body heated as I arched my back and, Helfa forgive me, I braced against him so I could take him deeper.

“So good. So wet and eager for me, no matter how you snarl.” His next hard push set me aflame. “Yes… say my name. Do it!”

A scream slipped from my lips without permission. “Enosh!”

“Ada,” he groaned in response. “So warm around my cock…” A deep stroke pinned me between glorious hips and the judging stare of two corpses. Ropes of hot seed filled my womb while Enosh’s trembling fingers stroked through my hair. “Mmm… there’s your reward, little one. Feel how I spend my seed inside you. Ah, it’s all yours. Only yours.”

When the height of pleasure ebbed away, nothing remained but bleakness. There was no fighting this; there was neither escaping this pleasure nor the shame that tortured my conscience.

Clenching my eyes shut, I said, “Guess I ended up at the whorehouse after all.”

Still seated deep within me, he leaned over and ardently kissed between my shoulder blades. “Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Never my whore, forever my woman.”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 9

OceanofPDF.com

Ada

I was dead.

I had to be.

Time meant nothing to the dead.

Time meant nothing to me.

It no longer passed in hours, minutes, or even seconds, but instead, time passed in pieces of my soul chipping away one moan at a time.

“Enosh…” Clink. Dignity, gone.

“Enosh…” Clink. Duty, gone.

“Enosh…” Clink. Hope of escape?

Gone.

Whenever I was awake, the god worshipped my body in ways I hadn’t known existed, from feasting on my sex to rutting me from behind while he pinned me against his throne—sometimes the dais—strokes so violent, bonemeal dusted my breasts after.

He brought me pleasure so many times, it overwhelmed and exhausted me into compliancy. The kind where I often fell to sleep rolled up in my nest, or worse, sitting on his lap as he nuzzled my temple.

When I was his good little mortal—screaming his name across the Pale Court—he brought me flowers. He turned the dais into a garden of pink roses, fragrant lavender, and stunning lilies—all plucked from fields I would never walk again, placed into a cage of bone so I could watch them wilt.

And I wilted alongside them.

Limbs heavy and senses dull, I kneeled on the ground before Enosh, where he sat on his throne, and yawned. “I’m tired.”

“You only just slept, my little one.” He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger, once, twice, then draped it over my bone collar. “Your body shouldn’t be so tired, its weariness burdens even my senses.”

Had I just slept? “Is it night or day?”

“It is both and everything in-between.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, of course not.” Scooping me up from the floor, he rose and took that one step into my nest, letting me sink into the warm bed of pelts and feathers. “Would you like to paint?”

As if I had any canvas left. The surrounding dais was covered in paintings of roses and ravens. “You could take me outside.”

“Or I could bring outside to the court.” He showed me his hand, palm up, and let bone dust form into the skeleton of a bird. Shortly after, gray flesh covered it and black feathers appeared around it. Its wings soon flapped, lifting into the air, only for tiny feet to wrap around the edge of my hand. “You can play with it.”

“I’m not a child.” A hard-to-defend statement considering how I clung to his neck as he cradled me. “How can you not get bored in here?”

“I assume immortality cured me of that.” His fingers slipped underneath my skirts, stroking my inner thigh. “What happens when my little mortal is irritable?”

“That depends.”

A snarky remark? His cock down my throat. Pretending that I felt nothing? So many orgasms, it left me sore. Refusing to moan his name? His fingers pinching my nymph. Snarling at him, calling him a bastard, and cursing him to drop dead? His cock up my arse…

“I’m unclean,” I said after a while and, when wrinkles formed between his brows, I clarified, “My bleeding arrived when I woke.”

“I know. Why does my mortal woman think I had Orlaigh provide cloth and braise for it?” Something I might have called considerate if I wasn’t the prisoner of a lusty god. “How curious of you to call yourself unclean for something so… natural.”

“Helfa forbids a man to lie with his wife while she’s impure.”

I flinched at my words.

I shouldn’t have said that. Enosh hated few things more than talk about another taking his place beyond the Æfen Gate. On a much more serious note, I also shouldn’t have said it because I wasn’t his damn wife.

“I am your god.” Where I expected rage in his voice, I only found the slightly elevated pitch of a smile, as if he were so very pleased with how I’d called myself his wife. “And I see nothing impure about you or the act we share as man and woman while you bleed.” He leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Very well. I’ll give you this one concession, my little wife.”

My pulse thudded faster.

Did he truly spare me the indignity?

Because I’d called myself his wife?

That… scared me.

I rubbed at my tired eyes. “I’m not your wife.”

“Indeed, you never gave me your vow.”

A sudden heaviness settled on my shoulder, followed by a voice I’d almost forgotten. Almost.

“Flesh and scar and skin and bone, feed her body to the throne,” the voice sing-songed into my left ear before it shifted to the other, curdling the blood in my veins. “Sweat and breath and soul and flaw, my brother surely… fucked… you… raw.”

My skin crawled wherever muscles tightened. I was mad, mentally unwell. My mind drained from the dullness and monotony of this place; why else would I now hear voices?

At the very first shiver gripping my arms, Enosh cupped my cheek, bringing my eyes to meet his. “Why is your heart racing?”

My shoulders hiked toward my ears, but it did nothing to ward off the cacophony of whispers hushing through my skull. “Heart and blood and veins and death, the third will come and steal your breath.”

“What’s this voice?”

 “Voice?” Enosh took my face between his hands, thumb stroking over trembling lips. “What does it say, little one?”

“Terrible things…”

With one quick move, Enosh slung his arms around me as though to shield me. “Get out of her head.”

“But it is… so…” The whisper turned into moist breath, breaking against my cheek. “Fun in there.”

A man took form beside us, his face inches from mine until he shifted back. He perfumed the air with sandalwood, staring at me with grass-green eyes. He straightened to an impressive height and skipped down the dais; long, auburn hair shifting on a brown felt jacket elaborately embroidered with golden leaves.

“Did John escape his grave? Who will take care of Pa?” Voice mockingly high-pitched, the man fanned himself as though he was close to a fainting spell, feeding my veins with liquid anger even as my mind struggled to understand what was happening. “Had I done my duty as a wife, my poor John wouldn’t have a—”