Paralyzed, I stood on the bridge, eyes hesitantly drifting from the white patches of bone to the dais, and up from there. Enosh oversaw the chamber from his throne, chilling the Pale Court with the aura of his cold presence.

The phantom beat of my heart pounded in my ears, triggering the impulse to run. More powerful was the instinct to go to him—an innate compulsion rooted in my core, which pushed me toward him, no matter how my mind screamed its warning.

Come to your master.

His command echoed within me, quickening my steps as I crossed the bridge, even as my fingertips curled into my palm. Would he ask me to my knees and plunder my mouth? Turn me around and fuck my arse until I tore, then pull out and spread his seed on my face? On the wounds beneath my navel? I dreaded that he would do all those things and worse...

Dreaded more that he would do none.

Ascending the dais was nothing but a blur of gutting trepidation and unbearable longing, of knowingly walking into trouble and embracing it for the sake of his body heat.

“That is close enough, little one.” He regarded the way I came to a painful halt from the apathy of his silver eyes, set into a cruel scowl I recognized all too well. Dreaded it! “Kneel before your god.”

I sunk to my knees willingly before he would make me, finding a shred of dignity even in this semblance of a choice. “You’re still furious with me.”

A grin hushed across his mouth, only to die at the cutting twitch of his upper lip. His black strands hung damp from his head, telling me he’d bathed. His white shirt was tied across his brawny chest, but it didn’t hide the flaming red cuts which still wept from behind the bindings. Heavens, he hadn’t only scrubbed the stench from his skin, had he?

He’d peeled it off.

“No, little one.” His calm voice didn’t detract from its dark undertone, gravelly and unsettling. “Such a fickle emotion, fury. It rushes into existence, only to drift away a moment later. Disappointment, however, echoes caution for eternity. Orlaigh, leave me with my wife.”

I watched her disappear into a corridor, then looked back at my harsh husband, his face restored to all its irresistible beauty. Oh, he could deny his anger all he wanted, but I saw it… the seething rage that drew fine lines across his stoic mask, the simmering fury that thawed its sharp edges.

If only I could rip it off as he had his skin.

Bypass the cruel, arrogant god and go straight for the man beneath. The one who’d come to trust me, willing to put his caution aside, along with this toxic bitterness between us.

I needed him. Desperately.

And I knew he needed me, too!

I let my eyes plead for leniency, for the faith he’d once placed in me. “I would have returned to you.”

“And so you have, delivered by death.” Leaning over, he placed his elbows onto his thighs, letting his hands steeple between his knees. “Crawl to me.”

Every proud fiber of my being bristled. “You’re punishing me for something I didn’t—”

“Crawl!”

My hand reached forward on its own accord, a sight that let humiliation flood my insides. Inch by squirming inch, black feathers caught on the porous bone as I climbed the dais like his pet, and the humiliation ebbed away. Reshaped into an excited tingle beneath my skin as I crawled toward the only source of warmth in this place, no matter its icy core that was my husband’s stony heart.

When my face came into reach, he clasped my chin hard enough it pulled my bottom lip from my teeth, but the remaining distance between us ached me the most. He smelled… different. Wrong. Dark. As bitter and biting as his mood.

His gray stare sunk to my lips, but it never quite reached there as he quickly called it back to meet mine. “Mmm, look how your hair has lost its luster, your skin its softness as it succumbs to decay.”

Ba-boom-boom.

A sudden beat startled me where it drummed in my ears, amplified by a rush of blood that burned beneath my skin.

My heart?

Another followed, letting the veins on the back of my hand fade along with the churning in my stomach. Had he removed the rot from me?

I took a needless breath, only to release it into a whimpered, “Thank you.”

“Thank me?” A scoff. “I have done it for my sake, not yours. Whyever would I subjugate myself to your stench?”

Anger needled itself between my ribs, and my brain urged me to ignore it. Nothing good ever came of rebelling against his godly whims when he was like this.

“You don’t exactly smell like freshly-plucked flowers, either,” I snarled, which put the hint of a tremble on his chin.

“Courtesy of my faithless wife.”

“You’re full of contempt and insult.”

His eyes dropped to my mouth again, staring at it for a minute or ten before he rasped, “Says the woman full of deceit, with lips that whisper the filthiest of lies.”

I lifted my face to his, letting the warmth emanating from his mouth seep into mine. “For something that appalls you so, your eyes give it a great deal of attention.”

He blinked and shifted back.

Just as quickly, his features hardened further—if such a thing were even possible. Curse this mess, he was colder than ever before. With a push against my chin, he shoved me back by a freezing inch that sent a carpet of goosebumps across my skin.

“Mmm, my wife is so cold, suffering the never-ending embrace of death,” he crooned as he regarded the bumps on my arms with a positively mean smirk. “Ought I to warm her?”

Worn down by days of biting coldness, my dignity collapsed into a mewl without consent. “Please! Oh, please… I’m begging you, make the cold go away.”

“At long last, my wife has learned how to beg, and it only took a knife to teach her. Tell me, little one, do you deserve my touch? The warmth of my embrace?” When I said nothing for long moments, knowing there was no answer that wouldn’t paint me either needy or pathetic—possibly both—he chuckled. “Now, now… how could I abandon my cherished wife the way she has done with me?” One hand went to the ties on his black breeches, opening them as he shoved the leather down. The other stroked along the contoured outline of his shaft, reached inside, and took out his jutting cock. “You may warm your hands on this.”

Heat funneled into my belly in equal measures of rage and rapture. I should have told the hateful bastard to go fuck himself. Instead, I eagerly wrapped my hand around his thick length, moaning at the feel of his glorious heat against my knuckles.

He hissed, and the muscles in his powerful thighs flexed and contracted before his mouth pulled into a lopsided grin. “Mmm, you weren’t usually this enthusiastic.”

“I wasn’t usually this dead, either.”

A muscle jumped in his jaws. “It appears as though not even death could cure you of your insolence.”

I lifted my chin, offering at least a smidge of defiance while my hand worked his length. “It tried. It failed.”

“Indeed—mmm…” Strings of groans tumbled from his lips as I jerked the tight clasp of my palm down his swollen length. “Yes, stroke me. Harder, little one. Much harder. Your hand is oh-so cold.”

Scooting closer where I kneeled between his legs at the foot of his throne, I lubricated my palm on the dark pink weeping slit on his crown. Tightening my hold, I let my fingers run up and down the flare with quick pulsations, soaking up the warmth it left around my tips.

Curses, this shouldn’t have excited me so. Warmth pooled right between my legs at the familiar shape of his cock, the weight of his flesh as the heavy thing fought gravity. Oh, how deliciously warm he was!

When Enosh bucked into my fist, I ran my hand down along his shaft. His cock stiffened fully in my hold, and I sensed the rapid rush of his heated blood in a large vein that disappeared into his root. Once at the base, I fondled his sac, tracing the tawny seam at its center, which caused his breath to hitch.