A Court of Hearts and Hunger (Wicked Darlings, #2)

by Rebecca F. Kenney

Curiosity is the dagger on which we impale ourselves.

“Are you ready for that, dearest? Are you ready to dredge up the darkest impulses of your wild heart, stir up every naughty compulsion, voice every cruel thought? Are you ready to step with me into the darkness? Because if you aren’t, you may tell me anytime, and I will take you home. Forget the kidnapped girl and the stolen spellbook. You are my entire realm, and I will commit any atrocity to secure your happiness.”

Can’t trust what you feel. Good sense is the only sense you should ever listen to, because your eyes, your nose, your tongue, your ears, and your skin can lie.

He’s never sure whether he wants to fuck, cuddle, or kill someone.”

“To view art is to be changed instantly,” I say softly. “When you experience it, you are perceived in unexpected ways, and in return you perceive an aspect of the world you never saw before. You are altered in the blink of an eye, and you step away as someone new. I will paint something for this Eater of Hearts, an image that shows her truth to me, and shifts something inside her, as well.”

“There is more in you than meets the eye. Perhaps you yourself are a piece of art. Fragile, and powerful.”

“There it is. Your body desires me.” He leans toward my hand and sniffs deeply. And then he grips my wrist and shoves my fingers into his mouth.

Maybe if I think about all the terrible things he has done, my body won’t keep simmering like this, like hot soup on the stove.

“What if you are my doom, after all? Maybe I want you to unravel me. I think any end in your hands would be a beautiful one.”

“Danger is what makes beauty worth having, precious.”

Perhaps that’s what love is—the gradual disappearance of the walls between two souls. Some walls evaporate on their own; others have to be dismantled, brick by brick. Sometimes you reach out, thinking all the walls have been deconstructed, only to find a thick glass shield around the heart of the one you love. Only the heat of a persistent, intense devotion can ever soften it. I will melt Fin’s final wall, if it takes me years. That sweet, wounded heart of his is worth it.

The effortless, fluid charm of his movements, the savage strength of the blows—it makes me embarrassingly wet for him.

“You brave, impossible girl. I’m right behind you.”

“Precious human,” he breathes. “I want to fuck you until you’re senseless from pleasure. I want to make you come until you can’t breathe. I want to savor your mouth until it is scarlet and swollen from my kisses.”