Grayling: Nocturnal Creatures Book 3 Read online

  When he raised himself from her fingers, her blood had stained his mouth. Wickedness such as she had never seen in him twisted his face and pulled inexorably upon the uncoiling tendrils of the desire he had planted in her. After all, she was just another winter rose for him—blooming in winter, feeding on blood, cultivated and tended and loved, though yet to be fed from his veins.

  “Take me, my lord. Take what is yours, what I give to you.”

  The king pulled her from her knees, bringing her up against him. He bared his teeth near her parted lips, then hovered them down to her neck, completely exposed to him with her ruby comb holding her hair away. When he pressed the smooth part of his teeth against the flesh, the fangs moved of their own accord, lengthening to urge him to take what she had offered. Another part of him lengthened against her as well.

  “No.” The king turned his head away and yawned once more from the strain of holding back, as though his jaw pained him for resisting.

  Asha clenched fistfuls of his robes between her fingers. Before she could protest his denial, he snatched her off the ground, her skirts curling against his robes like fire licking smoke. Her feet dangled a foot from the platform, but he had no trouble holding her. She did not even have to wrap her legs around him in aid.

  “Not here. The act of sex is one thing. But what will happen when I bite… I would have you succumb alone, my queen. I prefer the intimacy of our solitude now.”

  The king strode single-mindedly down the red carpet. While Asha had been distracted by the king tasting her blood for the first time, the captain had risen from his genuflection. Most of the wolves watched their monarchs with fervent—and for some, burgeoning—interest, but the captain was nowhere to be found.

  The king did not appear to notice his captain’s absence. He merely pointed his claws at one of the scaffolds—the one the wolves had strapped Lysan to for her to whip.

  “Move that to the master’s room. I shall use my own rope. See to it that it arrives in haste, friends.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” one of the male warriors replied, immediately obeying his king’s command despite the discomfort such upright attention in his loose trousers must have caused.

  The wolf delegated two other warriors to help him lift the scaffold from the floor and followed the king out of the audience chamber. But the wolves exhibited not nearly the same fundamental urgency that the king displayed with every twitch in his cheekbone and temple; in the ponderous strike of his boots upon the ground, when Asha knew he could be as silent as an owl; with his insistence on staring straight ahead rather than regarding the length of neck right before him; the way he seemed to have forgotten she could use her legs now that he was not unnerving and rendering her helpless with the promise of his bite. Every graceless step and the image of her husband before her acted as a reminder of how much he wanted her.

  He did not run, but his legs were long and his stride used them to its advantage as he went around the curve of the corridor toward the master’s room. He flung open one of the doors so hard that the wood dented when it hit the stone wall.

  The fire had been kept burning throughout his absence to keep the bed warm. It was the only light in the room.

  The mood he was in, she expected him to throw her onto the bed, but he lowered her to the carpet leading to the bed instead and went back to the door to open the other for the scaffold to fit through.

  “Before the fire, please. Close the door behind you. I do not wish to be disturbed.”

  The wolves that glanced her way expressed an interesting combination of amusement and concern, but Asha did not allow a wolf’s worry to rend the spun webs of intrigue she felt when she stared upon the scaffold. She had experienced other scaffolds—stockades and other shaming displays created for citizens such as her. This scaffold had been created with a finer customer in mind, the wood smooth and stained rather than rough, splintery, or unadorned. The wrought-iron hooks reminded her not of the ones on the outside of the castle wall but of the metal vines that made up the king’s bed frame. The craftsmanship was subtle to not detract from the more practical intentions of the structure, but up close—and without a bound wolf to draw her gaze—she could appreciate the artistry that had gone into its creation.

  “You might have needed to tie me down when you brought me to the castle, my lord, but it is no longer necessary.” Asha stroked the grain of the wood as the king opened one of the many chests in his room.

  From it, he retrieved cord that looked like it had been braided from the same material as the crimson softening the black stone walls.

  “This is not about what is necessary. This is about what I have wanted to do with your body ever since I knew what red does for you.” The king draped the rope over his arm and approached her, his steps nearly silent once more. “Gowns and rubies do you justice, Ashling. I would not detract from such loveliness, nor would I remove a thing. I merely wish to enhance—although I promise, my queen, I shall have this rope on your bare skin another night. Tonight, however, I think you will be better served in the rope’s embrace.”

  “Not in yours?”

  He smiled. “You shall have that as well. Once under my thrall, you will understand why I chose the rope to steady you. Stand under the hooks and do not move. I will move you.”

  Asha obeyed, clasping her hands over her skirts with the same prim uncertainty as in the audience chamber. “You offered your thrall once, when you feared possession of me would cause me discomfort. So it is not something exclusive to your bite.”

  “A bite as deep as ours would be too painful to endure. It is not in the interest of a luring predator to dissuade its prey with such pain. We want our prey to come to us, to desire us, to need what we can give them.”

  “Am I prey, then?” Asha asked.

  “It is a small but significant difference between ‘prey’ and ‘victim.’ Of course you are prey, wife.” He came up from behind her and wrapped the rope around her waist. He used it to pull her back against him. His teeth were cool against her ear. “I have hunted patiently, and my prey has come to me now, finally ready to be consumed. But do not fear, little Ashling. You can be my prey over…and over…and over again before I finally break down the last bit of humanity spared you by such men as populate my dungeon.”

  The king wound and knotted the doubled rope up the length of her spine and between her breasts, as though she were the middle of an elaborate Tapestry braid. His motions were firm, sure, the pace steady and unhurried but without pause. The rope pressed against her skin no more tightly than the corseted bodice, the knots like knuckles against her. They caused her no unpleasantness, nor tingling beyond what his touch alone incited—especially as his claws and fingertips brushed against her breasts. Their size and shape alone could not hold the rope down. The king had set them off with his skill instead.

  Her breasts did not distract him, but he paused at her neck and shoulders, both exposed by the gown to tempt him. Wrapping the rope under her arms, he pressed a kiss to her neck just under her ear, inciting a shiver.

  Asha tilted her neck to give him easier access, raised herself on her toes to bring herself closer. “Have you ever used your predator’s thrall upon me, even just a little? The hissing call, the hint of suggestion, the thorny tendrils of desire unfurling through my veins and knotting in a coil at the base of my spine?”

  His laughter thrummed across her skin. “A suggestion, yes. The call is a different kind of influence, and the desire you feel is your own, although your description pleases me. But the thrall is with me always, like your heat. And like heat in breath, you can sense its touch…”

  The spell she had felt before against her cheek brushed over her collarbone in a gentle caress.

  “But it does not penetrate. It does not alter your thoughts, your sensations, your emotions or loyalties or lusts. In another lifetime, I used it freely, with or without my bite, just as in another lifetime, I would have brought you to the scaffold on our wedding night and con
vinced you much earlier how welcome my touch could be. You have sensed my thrall, but I have not yet enthralled you, Asha.” He straightened when her muscles tensed against his chest and under his palms. “Is it the thrall you fear more than the bite?”

  “I have been bitten before, my lord.”

  “I can see that,” he murmured.

  She bit her lip when he licked across the scars left behind from Lysan’s teeth.

  “Your fears are not groundless. For so many I have pursued, they fled my teeth, but it is the thrall they should truly fear—the power to make my prey embrace their death, for my will to become theirs, my desires their own. It is an easy power to abuse, easy to view prey as mere vessels and possessions, to consider all blood mine if I can have it. Time alone convinced me otherwise.”

  “Yet you create more creatures like you with the same power, the same risk,” Asha said.

  “It takes experience to harness the power.” The king returned to his task of binding her arms, starting with the right. He extended it above her head toward the hook in the corner rather than the ones in the center. “And I was born noble, born into the same entitlement you experienced from those in the Tapestry. For the women I change—”

  “Vengeance can motivate abuse of power as much as entitlement, my lord.” She curled her fingers into a fist around the red cord. It was softer than any rope that had ever abraded her skin, though it was more substantial and less slippery than silk.

  “Would vengeance motivate you?” The king trailed his claws down her bound arm to lead him to the other.

  “Vengeance would tempt me. I cannot say whether or not I would succumb.”

  She could not see how her confession struck him, straightforward and unashamed as it was. He stayed out of her sight, withdrawing even his hands from her now that she was bound, arms stretched and torso braided into the binding, the cord deceptively strong, implacable when she tugged against it.

  “Your choices would be your own, as would their consequences. If it pleased you and you could avoid man’s sword or man’s fire, you could lay your own waste, build your own empire.” The king’s black robes floated to the bed like smoke, curling and twisting before resting over the copper rose vine. “However, you will have vengeance aplenty when you change. Would you lay waste to my entire kingdom, or would the elders who threatened you suffice?”

  The thought that he gazed upon her now as a threat to him—she, whom he had bound and whom he would change of his own volition—made her toes curl in her slippers.

  “We shall have to wait for what emerges after you kill me, my lord. I do not know how death—or life—will change me.”

  He came around the scaffold, taking in the sight of her from head to toe. Without his robes to broaden him, he cut a far trimmer figure. In the three weeks since he had left, she thought he had grown gaunter against his skeleton, all the more apparent in firelight than moonlight. His ribs appeared more prominent against the cut of his tunic, but the fabric rested more loosely over the abdomen. The bend in his legs also seemed more pronounced.

  Asha held her tongue against the changes she noticed. His mind was still sharp, his desire for her no different than when he had married her. And it was neither his desire, his bite, nor his figure that concerned her.

  “I do look forward to that day.” The king lifted her chin with his claw. “I will ask you a final time, Ashling— Are you certain you are ready to offer me this gift? Once I take you, my bite will haunt you as much as your blood will haunt me. I will crave you until your death. And you will crave me as you have craved nothing else. After one bite, I will always enthrall you. It will not be as powerful as when my teeth enter your body, but a part of you will never be your own again. You will question the decisions you make, the things I make you feel, and wonder if it comes from me rather than yourself. It is not without its pleasures, but it is irrevocable. I have tasted your blood—my craving has begun. But I can yet deny myself and give you different affections tonight. There are other uses for the rope than dressing you for dinner.” He ran his claw down her neck to the braided rope, following it down to her waist.

  She clenched both hands now around the rope as though bracing herself for a storm. Her stomach twisted, even as the place lower than her stomach warmed and made itself hollow and welcoming, although he had not removed anything more than his robes and had literally bound her dress onto her body.

  “Enthrall me, my lord.”

  The king tilted his head.

  “If you can send your suggestion over my skin, if you can offer to soothe me through the act of sex, surely you can thrall with more than just your bite. Show me these dire consequences to be graven in stone if I give you everything now.”

  The king stroked her hair, pausing at the rubied comb, his expression solemn. “As you wish.”

  The change was swift yet insidious, because she already wanted him within her, already accepted him as her husband and a better companion than any other that the kingdom could have offered her. And she already felt as though rope or thread or thorny vines bound her to him so thoroughly and invisibly that she could not quite comprehend it.

  Now his black eyes glittered with stars, the night sky of all worlds within. His suggestion stroked not a single part but all her exposed skin, then slipped beneath her gown as though it was not there. He caressed her as though his fingers were everywhere at once, leaving her trembling in their wake.

  They found every place on her body that awoke heat, that brought back the fever until it was almost unbearable to suffer. They tightened her nipples and kept them hard. They stimulated her scars, awakening the phantom pain she and the wolves had caused for ecstasy rather than anger. They cupped her folds, caressed and swelled and tightened her into full, excruciating arousal, then slid into her in ways the king’s fingers could not.

  The world fell away. It was there in her periphery—the bookshelves, the chests, the dark velvet drapes, the high windows, the sumptuous bed of human men cushioned and made fine with silk and copper—but it had become unimportant.

  All that mattered was the creature standing before her, every strange, monstrous inch of him noble, beautiful, and irresistible.

  If the rope had not held her, she would have fallen to her knees—not from arousal but from devotion, a desire to worship him, to submit, to give him anything he asked for, to debase and debauch herself for his pleasure, to offer herself as his vessel and chalice, to efface herself, leave herself clean and empty for him to fill with whatever he fancied.

  Peering into his eyes, she knew what he wanted of her, because he was in her head, whispering and hissing, obscuring anything but what he desired most, and she would give it to him.

  If he had unbound her, then wished her to take her knife and slice through her neck from ear to ear to cover them both in her blood, she would have done so without hesitation. But such a sacrifice was not what filled her mind. He wanted her in his bed, naked, blood dripping from where his mouth had latched to the base of her neck, and her cunt dripping down her thighs as he took her from behind, the bed beneath them writhing in time with their master and mistress. Pleasure, fever, lust, and devotion flowed through and between the king and her as though they were one body, as though her blood ran through both of their veins and his desire entered her through her skin.

  She felt how he wanted her, and so she wanted him with the same intense, bestial rawness, with none of the refinement that he affected as king. Take away the castle, throne, and fine clothes, he was a monster, a beast as much as the wolves of his army, and he desired as a beast desired, without restraint or check. The only reason he had not taken her this way from the very beginning was a will of cold, black stone, a greater desire to have a woman—to have her—come to him, a demon of a king, of her own volition.

  The vision of what he wanted of her in his thrall was what he wanted most from her without it.

  As swiftly as it had come, his thrall fell away like a cloak from her shoulders. She ga
sped for air, trembled in the rope that bound her. Sweat trickled down her skin, fever and desire woven together under her flesh to keep her taut and tight and her heart pounding.

  “So you see why I wait,” the king said softly. “In the full grip of the thrall, I cannot prevent how like one we become, how my will shall overtake yours. But when it recedes to a mere whisper without my teeth inside you, I prefer if it is indistinguishable from what my wife already wants, if our desires already meet in synchronicity. Once, I thrilled in making my women into what I wanted, confusing her desires, bending her to my will as a king to a subject. With the terror just a sight of my face inflicts upon the innocent, it was so much easier to force a woman to want me, love me, give herself entirely, as though her will were thread and my will the loom. Now it is a far more powerful thing when a woman chooses me on her own, in spite of these things. It is the greater challenge, the greater victory.”

  “So it is still conquest for you,” Asha said, shaken but not dissuaded.

  “Conquest. Yes. But I am not the conqueror I once was if the vanquished vanquish me as well.” The king leaned down to kiss her, a gentle but intense promise. “It takes far more for a conqueror to kneel to his victim, for someone with unspeakable power to relinquish it to one who could so easily yield to him. I am still a king who enjoys his power, his influence, who keeps his kingdom like a child plays with miniature houses and figurines. I still send my armies out to remind our neighbors of the power I still hold. I relinquish my power to only one— my queen. If you think I view you as victim as well as prey, you would be dead wrong. You are not a victim, not of the life from which I took you, nor in the life I have given you, nor in the death I will deal. You are more than an obstacle or an enemy, Ashling, the only conquest I conquer kindly.”