“I ought to cherish my wife… every part of her, even this little hole.” As if to make a point, he lapped slower, letting it tingle in the most delicious way. “Next time I take you here, I might ease you into it with this. Make it wet and needy until it begs me to stretch it so nicely.”

He made my back arch, or perhaps I arched it as I moaned, “Oh my god…”

His obligatory snicker followed as he dipped inside, wiggling the hardened tip of his tongue in a way that sent surges of need through me. My hand slipped beneath my hips, venturing toward my cunt, where I played with my hard bud—

His tsk stilled my fingers. “What a poor husband would I be if I left you to chase behind your pleasure, hmm?”

His weight pressed down on me once more.

I braced for a violent thrust.

Instead, Enosh entered my cunt slowly, stretching me wide, one agonizing inch after another. “Ah, you are so deliciously ripe, your womb flourishing between the rush of blood.”

I moaned when he seated himself fully inside me and stilled for a moment, for once allowing me time to adjust. “Ripe?”

“Ripe for a load of my seed.” His suggestive stroke from my waist to my belly sent a shiver across my skin. “I will give you what no other has. And what is that, my little one? Tell me.”

I shook my head.

He retaliated by drawing back, only to snap his hips forward again. “Still stubborn.”

“Still arrogant.”

“Rightfully so.” His hand slipped beneath my belly, only for his fingers to wander lower. He pressed against my nymph, pinning it until it grew a second pulse. “I will sire a son or a daughter on you. Your belly will grow heavy with the child of a god. Our child.”

A moan escaped me unbidden.

His words infused my blood with liquid desire, and for once, I had no doubt it was my own. It stoked a flame deep in my core, burning me with a longing I’d carried for years. Years!

“Yes, I will fill you with my seed, again and again, until it catches in your womb.” His pace quickened and his breathing altered, masculine groans mingling with the slap-slap-slap of skin against skin as he snapped his hips in quick pulsations. “Mmm, I am so close. Five more strokes. Four. Three. Ah, yes, you want this perhaps even more than I do. Show me how nicely my wife can clench around me, milking the seed from me to the last… precious… drop.”

I bore down against the workings of his hand, pressing my lips together against the scream building at the back of my throat. It dislodged anyway, mingling with his throaty groan as we both reached our acme of pleasure. The intense throbbing of his shaft joined the violent flickers around my nymph until his hips lost their rhythm, and Enosh’s deafening roar shattered from the bony walls.

With a sense of utter exhaustion, as though all energy had left me in one spark, my body turned sluggish. Enosh wrapped his shaky arm around my belly, lifting my hips as his weight retreated, allowing me to inhale deeply. But only until he pushed between my shoulder blades, pressing my chest into the furs.

“Stay like this,” he commanded as he gingerly withdrew, all while steadying my hips, keeping my arse raised high. “Do not spill a single drop of my seed, or I’ll have to repeat this sooner than you can recover.  Tsk-tsk… my love, did I not tell you not to spill?” His blunt crown swiped up along my folds, slowly, until he nudged my entrance once more. The sudden invasion of his cock made me gasp as he pushed deep, then he slowly retreated, and suddenly collapsed onto the bed beside me, grinning at me. “I put it back in.”

I wasn’t sure what to do with this, or the unexpected thrill beneath my sternum for that matter, and only stared at him, not even daring to shift my balance. “Even hale women take time to conceive.”

“Ah, but I quite enjoy the effort, my treasured wife.” One arm propped underneath his cheek, he raked his fingers through my tousled strands, brushing them over my shoulder. “We have all of eternity to make children.”

Children.

As in, more than one.

A gentle buzzing started beneath my skin, like little pulsations of excitement I couldn’t condone—or fully condemn. “Let’s hope a plow horse comes in before then, so you can have a cradle of bone ready by the time I give birth.”

He gave a long exhale as he took in the room he’d formed for me, pupils going from bed to stool to bookshelf—and that was it. No tub, no table, no trundle. Only four thin alabaster walls forming a small square room, as bare and boring as the rest of the Pale Court.

It bothered him.

I could tell by how his lips pressed into a white slash, and he briefly rubbed two fingers over his temple as if warding off a headache. It quickened the pulse in my veins because I could use this to my advantage.

But he only sighed and said, “Mmm, but there is always wood from beyond the gates.”

Blast it to hell, I made no progress here. “I’m hungry.”

His brows knitted together, probably because I wasn’t hungry at all and he knew it, but I needed the man out of the room and Orlaigh here in his stead. “Very well. I will have Orlaigh bring you food and take the opportunity to assess the bridges.”

“Thank you. Can I… can I move now?”

Reluctantly, he nodded. “I shall have you again once you have eaten.”

I sat up and, unable to help myself, stared behind his firm buttocks as he left. When the doors closed, my gaze went to the stool and the clay pitcher of water that rested inside a bone basin.

The longer I looked at it, the more my skin itched. I should wash his seed out of me, shouldn’t I? What woman would want a child with Enosh? But if I was hale, how long could I escape that fate? And if it might help me get him to open the gates to the dead…? Wasn’t I allowed then?

I swallowed.

Looked forward to it, even?

Orlaigh cut my internal ramblings short when she stepped through the door, balancing a platter with bread and, from the sweetness of it, steamed pears. “Ach, lass, have a look.” Platter placed on my bed, she lifted her hands and wiggled ten immaculate fingers. “Not a speck of rot on me old bones. Whatever ye did to me Master, do more.”

I sensed my forehead wrinkle. “That’s an issue because I have no idea what I did, exactly.”

A hearty chuckle shook her chest. “Only taken the man as yer wedded husband.”

I quickly rose to wash between my legs, then slipped into my chemise, and took a warm slice of pear. “And gave a vow he doesn’t need. Enosh would’ve kept me locked here for eternity in any case, so what’s the difference?”

She placed her hand onto my shoulder, the touch cold but the gesture warm. “The difference, lass, is that me Master couldn’t make ye give a vow.”

Nothing bores me more than to make you.

One of his first words to me.

Well, he hadn’t looked all too bored when he’d made me swallow his seed or viciously fucked my arse. What difference did it make to him if I came at my own choosing, given how little effort it took him to make me? None. Not unless he actually cared about my opinion of him.

Or my feelings…

My stomach tumbled as I thought back on his brother’s offer. I will make her love you, he’d said. She’ll adore you. Enosh had responded with silence. Something I’d dismissed as arrogant indifference then, but what if it had been hesitation? If he had the very human desire of a mate and a child, what if he also desired to be loved?

My mouth turned dry.

Could I ever find affection for the heartless god?

No… not heartless.

Saying Enosh had neither heart nor compassion would have been a lie. The grave he’d dug for Anna, the pain in his eyes over a daughter lost, that he’d agreed to at least rot the children…

It worked on me.

Scraped away my hate one small kindness at a time, uncovering compassion for his pain and an understanding for how the curse damning our lands had come at the hands of mortals. Still, sympathy was a long way from love.