“Perhaps you’d better find a synonym,” he says.

Des’s magic winds around my windpipe, and I’m prisoner to it.

“Des—” I give a strangled cry.

“Much better,” he says, the devil in his voice.

All this stimulation, all this sensation of being pressed and prodded and filled to the brim, it’s nearly too much.

And still I hold out. The sensation is too intense, too exquisite, too enticing, and I can’t bear the thought of it ending.

So I hide from my release.

I don’t know how long the two of us stay locked in our strange, taboo love-making. Only that at some point, Des’s white hair brushes against the skin of my shoulder and his lips are in my ear.

“Am I not servicing my queen well enough?”

My siren merely purrs.

He shifts against me, and I shamelessly gasp at the exquisite feel of him.

“Surely you should’ve come by now—or am I losing my … touch?” He tweaks his finger, and I let out a choked cry, nearly climaxing then and there. “But perhaps you need a little more persuading.”

Never want this to end.

He breathes against my cheek. “Come for me, siren.”

I can feel magic and darkness in those words. They settle into me and through my haze of pleasure I register that this is all going to come to a swift end.

I manage to squeeze one final order out. “Give me … everything.”

He does. Des drives into me as I shatter, his flesh pounding against mine harder and harder and deeper and deeper. The pleasure is so extreme, so acute, I can barely hold onto it. It washes over me, blinding, unnatural, addicting.

His body was meant for this—screwing and claiming and twisting my will into his own. Just as mine was meant to allure him and seduce him, and ultimately bend his desires to fit my own.

With a groan, he comes, his hips slamming into mine as he fills me up. Each stroke of Des’s hips sends another wave of pleasure through me.

We come down slowly, our bodies sweaty and dusty.

Des collapses next to me before dragging me onto his chest. He holds me captive in his arms, stroking my flesh softly, his lips trailing over my shoulder. He playfully bites the skin there. “Stay in my arms, cherub. Stay here and never leave.”

“Alright,” I say, settling in against him, blissfully uncaring about the chill creeping in with the evening.

For a little while, we lay there in silence. Then, slowly, a laugh bubbles low in my belly. “I can’t believe I let you stick a finger up my butt,” I finally say.

I’m such a smooth pillow talker.

I sense rather than see him smirk. “Says the girl who once got me to come in my pants.”

Now it’s my turn to smirk. Then my thoughts circle back. “I can’t believe I liked it.”

“My saucy little siren? I can. I have the feeling that by the time the sun sets on our lives, you’ll be the naughty one to my virginal, saintly soul.”

I outright guffaw at that. “As if.”

A grin spreads across his face. “You’re probably right.” His hand smooths down my spine, making my skin pucker. “I have more tricks in my bag. All you have to do is say the word. Or challenge me again. I rather enjoyed pitting my magic against yours.”

I can’t contain the excited shiver that courses through me. I don’t think I’d realized just what being mated to Des means. He rules over sex; everything that we’ve done together so far—that’s all just the tip of a very large iceberg.

And I probably still won’t fully understand what being mated to him means until I’ve seen and savored every last one of his perversions and witnessed every last one of his horrors. Only then will I fully be able to grasp this force of nature I’m mated to.

We’re quiet for a time.

“It’s not enough,” Des eventually says, his hand rubbing up and down my arm. “Having you. I always assumed that once you warmed my bed, it would be.” He cups my pussy as he speaks, and I swear to God, I am this close to jumping him all over again.

“But I’m a greedy bastard, and I want more. Always more.”

My fingers glide over his arm; his tattoos seem to leap and dance in the firelight. I lift my head and rest it on his chest.

“Tell me a secret,” I whisper.

He traces the curve of my cheek. “Secrets are meant for one soul to keep.”

I feel myself tense at his words.

“My mother used to say that all the time,” he explains. “It’s one of those formative lessons of hers I’ve carried with me since childhood.”

My brows furrow. Some of my sex-induced haze is slipping away. “And now the sleeping soldiers say it.”

“Up until now, I hadn’t been able to figure out how exactly they knew it.” Des’s finger traces my lips. “And then I fought my father, who is in league with the Thief of Souls.”

His finger drops from my mouth. “You wanted to know a secret, here’s one, Callie: some time, long ago, my mother whispered those same words to Galleghar Nyx. She, a spy set on escaping him, said them as a taunt. And now he’s taunting us both with them.

“I need to understand the nature of his undeath to understand the rest of this mystery.”

Undeath. There should be simply life and then death, but in the land of supernaturals, both earthly and Otherworldly, there are a whole range of beings that somehow fall outside this dichotomy.

“Perhaps then I can understand how he learned that phrase. And so we wait.”

Des pulls me to him and kisses me deeply, tasting like salt and sex and the night in all its secretive goodness—and then our clothes peel themselves off the ground and slide back onto us.

The two of us break apart, and whatever moment we were having, it’s over.

I sit up and gather my legs to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

“Tell me about him,” I say softly.

Des has already told me the short version of Daddy Dearest’s life, but there’s so much I still don’t know.

Those silvery eyes are on me in an instant.

“He’s not worth wasting any more breath on.”

“We’re already wasting breath searching for him,” I say. “Tell me something about him—something I don’t already know.”

The Bargainer beckons his discarded flask with his fingers, calling it back to him like a wayward soldier. It’s not until he’s caught the thing and taken a sip from it that he speaks again.

“He had hundreds of concubines,” Des finally says. “Hundreds. Just take a moment to imagine that.”

Hundreds? That’s like having a wife for every day of the year.

“I don’t know how many of them he fathered children with, but the number is large—large enough for the killing to get a name in our histories. It became known as the Royal Purge—the Purge, for short.

“And when Galleghar died and I first walked the halls of his former castle, I saw firsthand the women he’d taken in.

“They had this look about them.” Des gestures to his eyes. “Soldiers get that look when they’ve lived through too much. Many of them had it. And yet … and yet dozens of those women cried for him when he died.” Des scoffs to himself. “He killed babies—their babies—and they still cried for him.”

I don’t say anything. There aren’t words for this kinds of atrocity.