King of Flesh and Bone (The Pale Court, #1)

by Liv Zander

“Shh…” Pa glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t speak of books this close to the priests. You know how they get with ungodly writings about this devil—”

“It’s realer than you’d ever confess to yourself, so let me help you.” He gave another yank on the chain until my collar pulled against my throat. “Your flesh has been deprived of touch for so long that it blooms beneath my hands. It calls for me, longs for me.”

“Oh, what delicious agony houses behind those blue eyes of hers, matching your misery, Enosh,

above all, you are my woman.” I shuddered. Not an unwoman. Not a woman. His woman.

Ah, my little one called me heartless, the world I had created cruel; yet it had produced a woman so at ease around the remnants of death, she had begged me for rot instead of fainting at the sight of it. A most perfect mate. My woman, my wife.

“Do you see its beauty?” Enosh lowered my toes back to the forest floor and stared down at me from the gray storm of his eyes. “The perfection of flesh and bone when in the hands of its master?” I looked up at him, barely a sliver of air left between our lips. “I see it.” When I placed my hand on his cheek, he moaned before he said, “You, my little one, were made for me.”

“Love comes unbidden and has no care for precautions, turning us into fools for liars and monsters.”