Anathema (The Eating Woods, #1)

by Keri Lake

“Have you lain with a man before?” The question sent a hot flush to my cheeks, stirring an irritation. “If you must know, no. I have not.” “Good.” Frowning, I turned my head. “Good?” “Yes,” he said, casually, and as he shifted on the bed, his massive leg brushed mine. I turned back over, puzzling his words for far longer than I should have. Nearly two minutes must’ve passed before curiosity drove me mad enough to ask, “Why is that good?” He groaned. “Must you always prod for an explanation?” “Yes. I like to have clarity of thought. Why are you so hesitant to say?” “I’m not hesitant.” “Well, you’re not saying.” A growl rumbled from his chest. “Because I’m a jealous cunt who refuses to entertain thoughts of you lying next to another man. Is that explanation enough?”

“Do you find it difficult, lying beside a woman this way?” “As a general rule? No. But when that woman is you? Yes.”

“Fucking hell, you are a vicious little rosebud. One minute, you’re soft and inviting, the next, you’re thorns and blood.”

My heart beat a strange rhythm that sent a wave of panic through me. I pushed against his chest to sever the kiss, and in resting my hand there, felt the rhythm of his heart, beating in time to mine. As if in perfect sync with one another. The cadence of it calmed me, and I could feel myself growing weak, drifting, floating, lifting out of my body. What was this strange sensation? I surrendered myself to it. To him.

“A thousand times I’ve fantasized this moment, and still, I failed to imagine you’d be this perfect.”

Zevander looked at me as if I were something more than the disparaging word that’d been hammered into me since I was found by the edge of the woods: unwanted. Lorn. He looked at me as if I was worthy of being seen.

“I can’t fucking breathe. I ache for you, Maevyth. Believe me when I say this.”

His mate. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Mates were for those who believed in fate, who gazed at the stars with a longing to capture them. He’d lived too long with the practicality of knowing the stars were too far out of reach, and yet, in his arms lay the brightest of them all. The girl with the moon in her eyes and fire in her soul. Damn the gods for sending him one so beautiful, with a heart so pure. So fragile.

Maevyth radiated an irresistible warmth that he voraciously craved in his cold and calculated existence. Like scattered rays of sunlight reaching down to the darkest depths of the sea. The promise of redemption for all the vile things he’d done.

A turbulent gale of confusion over what he wanted and what he’d have sooner carved his own heart out to avoid. And in the center of that storm was Maevyth. The only constant. A beacon in a dark, black sea. A light too bright for his eyes, but damn the gods, even if he had to maim and kill for all eternity to keep her safe from his enemies, one fact remained true. She was his. Lunamiszka. My little moon witch.

“You’re aware that if Prince Dorjan dies, a black plague will be unleashed, and all of Aethyria will be at my mercy. But the prince and I are also linked by blood magic,” he went on. “Should I die, he will surely die, also.”

“Forgive me,” he said, and I frowned. “Forgive you?” Tears wobbled in my eyes. “I’m the one who touched you without asking.” “And I am yours to touch, Maevyth. I crave your touch more than my next breath.”

A craving for things I shouldn’t have wanted from a man who’d suffered so much. This virile creature who made me feel safe. Who made me feel like I was home, even as we lay in a cold, dark hovel in the thick of hell. One who’d clearly been mistreated and abused.

“I’ll never know what in seven hells inspired the universe to send you to me, Maevyth.” “Some might call it a punishment,” I said, smiling. “If this is punishment, then I welcome an eternity of suffering.” The kiss that followed was gentle and teasing in the way he merely brushed his lips across mine. “You consume me entirely, little moon witch.”

“My body belongs to you, Maevyth. It is yours.”

“I crave every part of you with an ungodly voracity.” I smiled as he planted kisses along my neck. “It seems such an appetite would make you a dangerous predator.”

“Put your hands above your head. Grip the headboard.”

OKAY CASSIAN

“You are mine, moon witch. For all eternity and whatever lies beyond it. No soul has ever been more intricately woven into mine than yours.”