Page 168 of Decimation

My back hits something solid, the trunk of an olive tree, ancient and gnarled and silver in the moonlight. The bark is rough against my spine, scratching through the thin silk of my dress, and the sensation makes me gasp. Or maybe it’s the way Lazarus presses against me, his hips pinning mine to the tree, the hard length of him already obvious through his trousers.

“I’ve wanted this,” he rasps against my throat, his ruined voice turning the words into something sacred. “Every night. Every night for three months, I’ve lain beside you and wanted this and didn’t take it because you were healing. Because you weren’t ready, because I was trying so hard to be good.”

His teeth graze my pulse point and I moan. I can’t help it. The sound tears out of me, high and desperate, and nothing like the composed woman who stood on that stage today.

“Are you ready now?” he asks, and his voice is a growl, a prayer, a challenge. “Tell me you’re ready, Leandra. Tell me you want this as much as I do.”

“More.” The word comes out strangled. “I want it more. I want you. I’ve wanted you since…”

Since the hospital room, since the chapel. Since the first moment I saw his colours and knew, somehow, that this man would be my salvation or my destruction, maybe both.

I don’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t let me. His mouth crashes against mine again, swallowing whatever I was going to say, and his hands move from my waist to the straps of my dress. He pulls them down roughly, not bothering to be careful, and the sound of silk tearing is loud in the quiet garden. The night air hits my bare breasts and I gasp again.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, pulling back just far enough to see me. His eyes are black in the moonlight, pupils blown wide with desire. “Look at you. Every scar. Every mark. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

His hand comes up to cup my breast, his thumb brushing over the nipple, and I arch into his touch like a cat. The sensation is electric, sharp and sweet, and when he pinches gently, I cry out.

“Shh.” His ruined voice is almost mocking. “You don’t want the guards to hear, do you? You don’t want them to come running, thinking something’s wrong?”

“Let them come.” The words are reckless, wild, the kind of thing I never would have said three months ago. “Let them see. Let everyone see. I don’t care anymore.”

Lazarus laughs, a low, dark sound that vibrates through his chest and into mine. “There she is,” he says. “My wicked wife. My beautiful, vicious, holy terror of a wife.”

He drops to his knees in front of me.

The sight of him there, kneeling in the grass with his dark hair catching the starlight is almost religious. Like a supplicant at an altar, like a knight swearing fealty. Like a man who has finally found something worth worshipping.

His hands slide up my thighs, pushing the torn silk of my dress higher. I’m not wearing anything underneath, I rarely do anymore. Not since the scars healed, not since I stopped trying to hide my body from him and when his fingers find me, wet and wanting, he makes a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a growl.

“So ready for me,” he murmurs. “So wet. Is this all for me, Leandra? Have you been like this all night? Standing on that stage, announcing judgement while you were dripping down your thighs?”

“Yes.” I’m not ashamed. I’m past shame. “Yes, all for you, always for you…”

His tongue replaces his fingers, and I forget how to speak.

He eats me like a man starving, like he’s been wandering in the desert for forty years and I’m the first water he’s found. His tongue slides through my folds, finding my clit with unerring precision, and I grab his hair to keep from falling. The strands are thick and soft between my fingers, and I pull harder than I mean to, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He groans against my flesh, and the vibration sends a shockwave of pleasure straight through me.

“Lazarus, please….”

I don’t know what I’m begging for. More. Less. Something. Everything. The bark of the olive tree is scraping my back raw, and the grass is cool beneath my bare feet. The stars are spinning overhead, and Lazarus’s tongue is doing wicked, wonderful things between my legs. I’m going to come, I’m going to come right here in the garden like some kind of offering to the night…

“Not yet.”

He pulls away and I nearly sob with frustration. My body is trembling, wound tight, seconds away from release. But he just looks up at me, his lips glistening with my wetness, his scarred throat catching the moonlight.

“Not yet,” he repeats. “When you come, I want to be inside you. I want to feel it. I want to feel you.”

He stands and I grab him, pulling him against me, my fingers fumbling with the fastenings of his trousers. He helps me, his hands covering mine, then he’s free and I’m wrapping my fingers around him. He’s thick, hot, and so hard it must hurt.

“Leandra.” My name is a prayer on his ruined lips. “Leandra, I need…”

“Yes.”

I guide him to my entrance. I don’t want foreplay anymore, I don’t want patience. I want him inside me, filling me, stretching me, owning me in the way only he can.

He thrusts in with one brutal stroke.

We both cry out. The sound echoes through the garden, probably loud enough to wake the whole villa, but I don’t care. I can’t care. All I can feel is him; thick, deep and perfect, stretching me in ways that are just this side of pain. He waits for a moment, letting me adjust, and I can feel him trembling with the effort of holding still.