Bend Her (The Transformation Trilogy, #1)

by Cassie Alexander

In sleep she was perfect. Soft. Quiet. Helpless. And my beast had a feeling she would taste good, no matter where he licked her.

My beast paused, panting, as a slight breeze blew her scent toward his finer nose—she smelled like almonds and honey—and my beast knew who it would be before I did.

“King Jaegar sends you his most valuable possession, All-Beast,” Castillion growled, standing firm in the face of my monstrosity. “Princess Lisane.”

For she was my death made flesh, and she was beautiful.

And my beast had a feeling she would taste good, no matter where he licked her.

blunted promise of potential violence as he spoke. “All-Beast—do not hurt her.”

I gnashed my teeth lightly at him, returning his subtle threat, and said, “I vow nothing.”

She knew nothing about my fate or future with her, or how she was destined to kill me. Which meant in the present . . . she was mine, to do with as I pleased. And I wanted to see her crawling.

How many men get to watch their death crawling toward them, in utter obedience, with spite in her eyes?

Yes, I would die, and yes, she would kill me, but until then, I was going to earn out every moment of my glorious death from her, for as long as fate allowed it.

Scared of being alone with me—but also scared of being alone without me.

“I am not yet weary of her,” I told him, in a precise tone that could mean all things and no things at once, but mostly that he should feel very damned for having given me his daughter.

Most men were monsters, but they got to live in denial of this fact. I did not.

Yes, my beast refuted me. She belongs to me, he continued, curling his claw-tipped fingers into grasping fists. And someday, I will mark her and knot her and make her mine.

Yes, princeling, I thought but didn’t say aloud, as I took a step toward him. I am the beast that you have sold your sister to. She wants to be with me now—and I will never give her back.

I breathed in its bookish scent.

“Your ambition whips you harder than I ever could. It makes me worry for you. I can help you to heal your body—but only you can heal your mind.”

Now that I was slightly less angry, I was worried for him for the first time. “All-Beast,” I called after him and he paused. “Wherever it is that you go, will you be safe?” He turned back to me briefly. “I am safer there than here,” he said. He didn’t sound like he was teasing, as he closed the door behind him.

“I am never giving you back, Lisane. No matter what your letter says.”

I didn’t even fight him because our wants were one and the same—the utter destruction of anyone involved.

Tasting her tears and blood was not enough. He wanted to rip her skirt, spread her legs and enter her—he wanted to hear her cry out as he thrust, to feel the snug tightness of her cunt as he made her fit him—and he wanted to fuck her until he came and knotted her, then crouch down after his knot subsided, to lick his cum and her virgin blood away until she was ready for him again.

“I will not hurt you,” I told her—and then she had the temerity to laugh at me.

Everything he did frightened me. I never wanted him to stop.

Then he made a noise against me, a sound of satisfaction like he found me delicious, and he pushed a hand up my belly to lift and tilt it back so that he might eat me more easily, and it washed that thought away.

My towel fell open and I didn’t care; the sun was gone, but the moon was here, and I wanted its light to touch me just as badly as . . . I wanted him.

“Rhaim,” I said, and made his name a prayer.

My attentions had left her dripping like a fountain, and after the guilt I felt, I wanted to make her wet enough to wash my soul.

I was so swollen with desire for her, so straining, so eager, that it burned—I had lived almost a thousand years—and I would have willingly died, just to get to shove myself inside her delicious cunt, only let me come just once—

Her softness made hard parts of me break, even as it made other parts twice as feral.

“I told him I didn’t want to go back.” Her cheeks turned red and she looked down, softly adding, “Ever.” I had lived through centuries of violence, and no other creature had come quite so close to stopping my heart. And at the thought that they’d tried to take her away from me . . . I growled as I stood. “No man will ever touch you again, Lisane. That’s the only promise I can give you.”