Snatching the back of his head, I brought his mouth to mine and did just that, rocking into his rubbing, twisting movements and wanting so much more while never wanting him to stop.

As if reading my mind, he pulled the digit free and aligned his hips with mine. Our lips refused to unstitch, his hand seeking mine and clasping them both tight above my head as he slowly, torturously, entered my body.

“More?” he rasped, but all I could do was quiver, my lips shaking against his. He smirked, gaze lupine. “You’re so fucking swollen, wildflower. Soaking my cock in pure, blood-rushing gold.” He shivered, his teeth catching my lip.

His hand clenched tighter around mine when I attempted to touch him, needing to—needing him to move.

Then he did. His forehead rolled against my own, an utterly inhuman noise falling from between his lips into mine as he mercifully filled me completely. More torturous seconds passed, the glint in his eye wicked and knowing. Knowing that I was so desperate, my thighs climbing his body, that as soon as he moved…

He covered my cry with his mouth, whispering me into pieces, “That’s a good little flower. Come.” He shivered again atop me as I shook and whimpered. “Stars, you murder me.”

Then he truly moved, sudden and coaxing. He kissed me, and he moved inside me with the knowledge of exactly what I needed. With a roll of his hips, a careful stretching and filling that ensured every pleasure point awakened, hungered, and spasmed.

I’d always been so naïvely certain of most things in this life—what I felt, who I needed, and what I’d never do.

Yet when Scythe’s mouth left mine to kiss and suck and nip at my neck, and he whispered, “I don’t want just one more night, I want them all, Aster,” everything I was, everything I’d always thought I’d be, ceased to exist.

A new soul, scarred and bruised and hungry for someone and things I never saw coming, bloomed in place of who I once was.

But as midnight neared and I lay half draped over this male who was never meant to be anything more than a talented stranger, our fingers entwined over his stomach and the book he’d been reading to me forgotten in the bedding, I swallowed back the urge to cry.

The female I used to be might have been gone, shattered beneath the brutality of another male’s actions, but that didn’t mean I could leave the skin I’d begun to shed.

I couldn’t hide from him forever.

Too much longer, and I knew Rorn wouldn’t just tear through the countryside and into dangerous, war-ruined territory, but he’d calculate the days. He would soon realize I’d never disappeared for this long before.

Too much longer, and he would begin to hunt.