Chapter 3: Feral Hunger
The snarl that ripped from Kael’s throat wasn’t entirely human. It was the sound of splintering wood, of rock grinding against rock. Lila’s defiance evaporated into the charged air, replaced by a flood of pure, instinctual fear as he surged forward.
His hands were on her, not hands anymore but claws that scored the air before catching the collar of her soaked shirt. A brutal wrench and the fabric gave way with a sound like a scream, rending down the middle. The cold, mist-laden air hit her exposed skin, pebbling her nipples, but the chill was immediately scorched away by the heat rolling off him.
He shoved her back. Her shoulder blades hit the spongy, glowing moss, the impact driving the air from her lungs with a soft oof. Before she could draw another breath, his weight was on her, solid and impossibly heavy. The hard ridge of his cock, already thick and wet, pressed insistently against her inner thigh through the denim. His eyes were wild, unseeing pools of lunar fire.
“You wanted this, little human?” His voice was a guttral rasp against her ear, his breath hot and tasting of wild herbs and ozone.
One of his clawed hands seized the waistband of her jeans. A single, savage tug and the button flew, the zipper tore. The wet denim was peeled down her legs, the rough drag against her skin a brutal caress. She kicked weakly, a protest half-formed on her lips, but it was swallowed when he shoved her thighs apart, his frame settling between them.
He didn’t kiss her. There was no prelude, no gentle exploration. He buried his face between her legs with a starved, animal intensity. The first swipe of his tongue was a broad, hot stripe from her entrance to her clit, rough and demanding. Lila gasped, her back arching off the moss, a shockwave of sensation jolting through her that was part terror, part startling, unwelcome pleasure.
“Fuck,” she choked out, her hands flying to his silver hair, not to push him away but to fist in it, her fingers tangling in the silken strands.
He growled against her, the vibration shooting straight to her core. His tongue was relentless, a wicked, agile thing that speared into her, tasting her deeply before circling her swollen clit with ruthless precision. He lapped at her like a man dying of thirst, his nose pressed against her, breathing her in. She could feel the slight, sharp points of his elongated canines grazing her tender flesh, a dangerous promise.
Her fear was melting, transmuting under the raw, skilled assault of his mouth. It was angering, humiliating, and unbearably arousing. She was wet, sopping wet, and every flick of his tongue drew another slick, shameful gush from her. Her hips began to move of their own accord, rocking against his face, seeking more pressure, more friction.
“Kael,” she moaned, the name a foreign plea on her lips.
He pulled back, his mouth glistening with her. His chest heaved, his pupils blown wide in the silvered gloom. “You taste like sunlight in a dark place,” he rasped, the words shocked out of him, a sliver of something like awe breaking through the feral hunger. It vanished as quickly as it came.
With a movement too fast to follow, he flipped her onto her stomach. The moss was cool and vibrant against her cheek, its glow painting everything in surreal, pulsing light. His hand pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her down. She heard the rustle of his own clothing, the soft, wet sound of him spitting into his palm.
Then the blunt, broad head of his cock was pressing against her entrance, hot as a brand. He was huge, thicker than anything she’d taken, and slick only with her moisture and his spit.
“Wait—” she started, panic spiking again.
He didn’t wait. He drove forward in one brutal, unstoppable thrust.
The stretch was immediate, agonizing, a searing fill that stole her breath. She cried out, a sharp, broken sound swallowed by the moss. He was fully seated inside her, his body molded against her back, his teeth sinking into the tender junction of her neck and shoulder—not breaking the skin, but claiming it.
He held there, buried to the hilt, both of them trembling. The pain was a bright, white-hot ring that slowly, insidiously, began to smolder into something else. A fullness. A shocking, devastating sense of rightness.
“Tight,” he groaned into her skin, the word shaking. “So fucking tight.”
Then he moved.
He withdrew almost completely, the drag exquisite and torturous, before slamming back in. The rhythm he set was relentless, punishing. Each thrust rocked her entire body forward, her breasts scraping against the moss, her nipples hardening into aching points. There was no tenderness, only a raw, pistoning need. The sounds were obscene: the wet slap of his flesh against hers, their ragged breaths, her own choked moans morphing into sobs of pleasure.
His claws were back, digging into the swell of her hips, surely leaving marks. He pounded into her, each impact jarring a cry from her throat. The pain had melted entirely, replaced by a coiling, desperate tension building low in her belly. She was meeting him thrust for thrust now, pushing back against him, driven by a hunger that mirrored his own.
“Yes,” she hissed, the word a raw scrape. “God, yes, like that.”
His hand slid from her hip, around her thigh, his fingers finding her clit. His touch was rough, calloused, and perfect. He circled the swollen bud in time with his drives, the dual assault dragging her toward a precipice she could no longer see.
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice ragged with his own straining control. “Come on my cock, human. Let me feel you.”
It was the command that broke her. The coil snapped. Her vision whited out as her orgasm ripped through her, convulsing around his thrusting length, milking him, pulling a raw, shouting groan from his chest. He fucked her through it, his movements becoming erratic, desperate.
With a final, deep plunge, he stilled, buried to the root. His body went rigid against hers, a guttural, almost pained sound torn from his throat as he emptied into her, pulse after hot pulse. He collapsed over her, his weight a welcome anchor, their sweat-slicked skin sliding together.
For long moments, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the distant rumble of the departing storm. The frantic glow of the runes began to soften, dimming to a gentle pulse.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The cool air on her heated skin. The deep, throbbing ache between her legs. The weight of the centuries-old Fae prince shuddering against her back.
His breath was hot on her neck. When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow, stripped of its wildness, laced with something like horror.
“What have I done?”
He went utterly still above her, the heat of his release inside her a stark contrast to the sudden chill in his voice. His weight, which had been a heavy comfort, now felt like a sentence. Lila tried to turn her head, to see his face, but he was a statue of tension and remorse.
“You didn’t do anything I didn’t ask for,” she whispered, her voice raspy from crying out.
“You don’t understand.” The words were choked. He began to pull away, to withdraw from the devastatingly intimate join of their bodies.
A searing jolt of energy, white-hot and vicious, arced from where they were still connected. It lanced up her spine and down his, a shared circuit of pure, unadulterated magic. Kael cried out, a sound of shock and pain, and slammed back into her, deeper than before, locked in place.
The glade erupted. The pulsing glow from the moss and the runes didn’t just brighten; it detonated into a silent conflagration of silver light. The light didn’t illuminate—it consumed, pouring into their skin, through their skin, weaving into the very air they gasped into their lungs.
Lila couldn’t move. She could only feel. The burn wasn’t on her skin; it was in her veins. It felt like liquid moonlight was being forced into every cell, a scorching cold that traced the exact path of his last thrust, that mapped the bite-mark on her shoulder, that followed the scratches on her hips.
“No,” Kael groaned, his forehead dropping between her shoulder blades. “Not now. Not like this.”
“What’s happening?” Her question was a strangled gasp. The pleasure-pain of his fullness was now secondary to this invasive, binding fire.
“The old magic.” His voice was thick with a horror that went beyond his earlier regret. “The glade… it witnesses. It takes. A life for a life. A soul for a soul.” He shuddered, his cock twitching inside her as another wave of energy passed between them. “It’s a binding. I’ve spilled my seed into your mortal flesh under the full moon’s gaze in this sacred place. The magic claims its due.”
The light began to solidify. Fine, shimmering filaments, like spider-silk forged from starlight, spun out from the glowing runes on the trees. They drifted lazily on the still air before descending, seeking their flesh. One touched the back of Kael’s hand where it gripped her hip. It didn’t rest on his skin; it seared into it, leaving a faint, silvery scar in the shape of an intricate knot.
Another found the curve of Lila’s breast, branding her with the same searing cold. She flinched, a whimper escaping her lips.
“It’s marking us,” Kael said, his breath hot and ragged against her back. “Tying my fucking essence to yours.”
More threads descended, a gentle, inexorable rain of binding. Each touch was a brand, a stitch sewing their fates together. One wrapped around his ankle and hers where they lay tangled. Another curled around a lock of her auburn hair and a strand of his silver, fusing them with a soft, sizzling sound.
The physical sensation shifted. The burning intensity softened, transmuting into a deep, resonant hum. It was a vibration that started in her core, where he was still lodged inside her, and echoed outwards. She could feel him there, not just his body, but the frantic beat of his heart, the chill of his dread, the ancient, weary weight of his years.
Worse, she knew he could feel her. Her racing thoughts, her blooming fear tangled with the lingering aftershocks of physical pleasure, the raw ache of her well-fucked cunt.
“Get out of my head,” she breathed, panic rising.
“I’m not in it,” he replied, his voice hollow. “It’s just… there. A door that’s been wedged open. The magic doesn’t just bind our bodies, Lila. It binds our awareness. Our vulnerabilities.”
He finally pushed himself up on trembling arms, the movement pulling another sickening wash of shared sensation through them both. The physical connection broke, his cock sliding from her with a wet, final sound that echoed in the now-silent glade. The severed feeling was immediate and profound, a loss that felt like a missing limb.
But the other connection, the silent, humming thread of magic, remained. It pulsed between them, a taut, invisible leash.
He rolled onto his back beside her, staring up at the clearing sky where the moon now shone, cold and pitiless. The silver scars on his skin gleamed. Lila pushed herself up on unsteady elbows, looking down at the identical mark now etched into her breast, just above her heart. It was beautiful and horrifying.
She looked at him, really looked. The feral hunger was gone, burned away by the magic or his own shock. In its place was a devastating emptiness. He looked centuries older.
“What does this mean?” she asked, her voice small.
He turned his head, his moon-shift eyes meeting hers. A flicker of her own reflection—pale, marked, undone—glinted in them. He knew she felt everything: his revulsion, his sense of catastrophic failure, a thread of something darker, a possessive curl he immediately tried to smother.
“It means,” he said, the words flat and final, “you’re stuck with me. And I am, against every law of my kind and every shred of my will, bound to you. The magic won’t allow anything else.” He sat up, the movement graceful yet drained. “Now get up. The forest is not safe for a mortal tied to a Fae prince. My problems are now your problems. Your life is now mine to protect, however miserably I might wish otherwise.”