Page 36 of Liar
Ember
Thorne doesn’t need to be told twice.
He digs in, the heel of his palm crushing my larynx. Black stars explode behind my eyes. A feeling of lightness releases the guilty weight on my chest, my heart pounding with the adrenaline to live, to fight. If I could moan, I would. Ever since the first time Thorne cut off my breath, I’ve been chasing this high. The toeing of the line between life and death while my center grows hot, swollen, and wet, it’s like a new world is forming inside me with Thorne as its god.
He’s an addiction, one that stumbled into my bedroom in the black of night, threatening and tempting and daring.
Thorne’s hard-on rubs against my belly, my thin, old, angry unicorn T-shirt doing nothing to cushion the friction. Heat flows between my thighs. I feel faint. Dizzy. That I might…
A gush of air opens my throat, the oxygen rushing into my lungs.
Thorne steps back, his hand dropped at his side. He tilts his head, assessing.
“You don’t mean that,” he says.
It’s difficult for me to swallow, the tendons in my neck already reacting to Thorne’s grip and swelling. Worse, the muscles strain.
Like they want more.
I croak, “You don’t get to tell me what I want.”
Thorne paces forward, his eyes dark craters aiming for mine. “If you keep asking for this, that’s exactly what you’re allowing. I don’t do tame or soft lovemaking. I fuck. And I do it while in control. I order you to suck my cock; you do it. I spread your legs; you ask me how wide I want them.” Thorne’s close enough to yank me by my hair, his stare dropping down to my exposed throat. “I demand you hold your breath; you willingly stop breathing. Does that sound like something you want?”
He pulls so hard that my scalp burns. But that burn travels, wrapping around my neck before spearing between my legs. I’ve never been dominated like this. I was curious, sure, on how it would be to have someone so cocky and confident take my body for his pleasure. I just never considered I’d be in a situation where it was an actual possibility.
My heart slams against my ribs while nerves fire out from it. I’ve only now regained breath, and I’m about to ask him to stifle it again.
I know I am.
Thorne’s seen me at my worst. He witnessed the dark fetish that cracked through my resolve when I first lifted the paddle to swing toward Zeke’s head. He’s tasted my desire, both for the Societies’ secrets and for him. Thorne is fully aware of the black ink traveling through my veins and polluting my blood. And he’s calling to it.
I respond with a shaking whisper, “It sounds like something I’m desperate for.”
Thorne’s pupils eclipse any light remaining in his eyes. I’ve asked the god to keep creating his dark kingdom inside my chest. There’s no turning back.
He understands the darkness. Which means when I’m with him, I’m not alone.
Thorne shadows me, still as a statue, while I tremble with my back to the wall. For a moment, everything is quiet. The howling manor has grown sentient as if waiting for his next move as much as I am.
My heart flutters along with the pulsing at my core.
I can’t wait for Thorne to go through all the wrongs of this in his head.
Won’t.
I leap for him, crushing my mouth against his while my arms wrap around his neck and my thighs thread over his hips. He absorbs the impact like he was waiting for it, his fingers spearing into the fatty tissue of my ass and his mouth opening up, then clamping down.
Metallic salt explodes in my mouth along with a flash of pain, my bottom lip bursting open under his teeth. Instead of reeling back and shrieking—like he wants me to, like this is his last warning before his demon breaks loose—I push into the kiss, my tongue swooping in and swirling into his mouth, lapping up the blood before he swallows the rest down.
Thorne swivels us on a bone-chilling growl, the length of his dick digging into my underwear, close to my folds where I’m practically soaking him with need.
He rips his mouth from mine and tosses me onto the bed. I land without grace—gangly, surprised limbs everywhere. Thorne looms over me with blood at the corners of his lips.
Thorne’s voice is low, carnal. “Don’t ever lay claim to my mouth again.”
The feel of his stubble still burns against my quickly swelling lips. I tongue the fresh cut, reveling in the brief re-awakening of pain. We’ve only kissed once before, when Thorne was at his weakest, both of us trembling, cold, and vulnerable on top of a cliff. Kissing to him is the equivalent of wearing your heart on your sleeve. Unacceptable. “No kissing. Got it.”
“Wrong response. Say, ‘yes, sir.’” He thinks for a moment. “Or ‘yes, my prince’ would also be acceptable. Your choice.”