“Say it.”

“Fuck me like I’m your altar,” I pant. “Use me. Spill in me. Mark me.”

And that’s when he thrusts.

Hard. Deep and without mercy.

The altar rocks beneath us. My scream breaks into laughter. My nails scratch over blood-warm stone like I’m trying to claw my way inside him. He doesn’t slow—doesn’t stop—his grip on my hips turning to bruises, his breath ragged in my ear.

“You were made for this,” he snarls. “Made to take a god. You’re mine,” he snarls, fisting my hair. “Say it.”

“Yours,” I pant. “Always yours. My god. My monster. My madness.”

His mouth is everywhere—biting, marking, branding. He drives into me like he’s carving runes into my bones. I come once, then again, and I’m still begging.

His voice is ragged, like thunder fraying at the edges.

“Everything else belongs to the gods.” He grabs my throat, eyes burning like firelight on an altar. “But not you. Never you. You’re the one thing I’ll never give them.”

A pause. A whisper. A vow.

“You’re mine, ma petite mort. My little death. Only mine.”

He pulls out too soon.

“Up,” he snaps. “On your knees.”

I obey, giddy, shaking, hair a mess, and lips swollen. He strokes himself in front of me—slick and red, and dripping with the proof that I’ve undone him.

“Open,” he growls.

I do, grinning like the obedient little monster he made me.

He finishes across my tongue, hot and heavy, breath torn from his throat like a war cry. But before I can swallow, his blood-streaked hand fists my hair and yanks me back up.

Not done. Not yet.

His mouth crashes into mine—brutal, hungry—and suddenly he’s taking it back. The taste, the heat, himself, claimed right off my tongue.

He groans into me, kisses me deeper, and then spits it back between my lips with a filthy grin.

I swallow it down like it’s the holiest thing I’ve ever tasted.

My lips are smeared with spit and sin. My throat burns.

And I smile like the good little darkling I am.

It’s not sweet. It’s not pretty.

It’s twisted. Wet. Hungry.

He presses his forehead to mine, still breathless. “Ma petite mort.”

“Say it again,” I beg, giggling into his mouth.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he smirks, lays me back on the stone and starts again.

chapter eight

bjorn

The moment the first support beam buckles, I know this isn’t the gods.

This isn’t some divine reckoning raining down on the unworthy.

No—this is sabotage.

And I will find the one who dared.