Текст книги "The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

44

ORAYA

The bag of coins made a distant THUMP as it fell to the floor, Raihn’s hands abandoning it for my body.

He kissed me like he was starving. Kissed me the way he had fed from me in a cave once, many months ago—desperate and deep and full of hunger, like I was the only thing tethering him to the world. And Mother, I felt that way, too, like I was grasping hold of something solid for the first time in so long.

Like I had come home.

I had told myself I’d forgotten what it was like to kiss Raihn.

That was a lie. A body doesn’t forget a thing like this—it was carved into my muscle memory, a piece of myself that had awakened from some dormant state. He kissed me with not just his mouth, but his whole body—just like he fought, with every muscle rearranged to the task, centered around me alone.

This dress was so fucking thin.

The silk let me feel everything. His hands, large and rough, trailing down my body like he wanted to memorize every muscle, drink up every curve. The warmth of him, so close I could’ve sworn I felt the throb of his heartbeat beneath his skin. His cock—Goddess, his cock, hard and thick and straining between us already.

Yes, the silk let me feel everything. It let me feel how much Raihn had wanted this, for so long.

It forced me to feel how much I’d wanted it, too.

Lust pooled low in my stomach, my breasts peaking against the too-flimsy fabric of my dress and Raihn’s hard chest beyond it, the apex of my thighs tightening. My body remembered what it was like to kiss him, yes, but it remembered more than that, too. It remembered what it felt like to fuck him. Like a missing piece replaced.

And now, it wanted that. It begged for it. When Raihn’s hands slid down over the curve of my backside, brushing the sensitive flesh at the top of my inner thighs, my breath hitched.

The sound he made in return, barely audible, rolled through me like thunder.

The wave of desire made me suddenly dizzy—desire, though, with a darker edge, sharp and dangerous, forged in the anger I’d held so close for so long.

In one abrupt movement, I pushed him down to the bed. He fell against it roughly, the frame squealing in protest against his sudden weight. I started to crawl over him, but a wince flitted across his face, and I hesitated, noticing again the extent of his wounds—brutal, even if they were already starting to heal now that he was out of the sun.

“Don’t you dare stop, princess,” Raihn rasped, reading my face, the wince giving way to a twisted half smile. “Please. I don’t care if it fucking kills me.”

His calloused fingertips brushed my cheek, sweeping dangling black hair behind my ear.

“Only good thing about the last time it happened was that you were the last thing I saw.”

His voice still had that lilt to it, light and joking, but the smile had faded. Nothing light about that. Nothing light about his touch, either. All of it was steeped in such agonizing tenderness.

It made my chest hurt. Made my eyes burn.

It—it made me angry.

I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not when the remnants of my anger were still so sharp in my veins, the dregs of it tearing at the wounds they’d opened these last few months.

He started to sit up, reaching for me, but I pushed him back to the bed.

“No,” I said.

Confusion flitted over his face.

“Don’t move,” I said. “You don’t get to control this.”

The confusion melted into understanding. Even that, at first, was too affectionate, too soft, until he replaced it with a slow smirk curling over his lips.

I pressed down on his shoulder again, firmly, in a command to stay put. Then I shifted my attention to his clothing. I started at the buttons of his jacket, undoing each knot of silver across his chest. With each one, the blue silk fell away, exposing bare skin—a landscape of swells and dips of muscle, rising and falling heavily beneath his breath, covered with fresh wounds and old scars and soft dark hair that narrowed as I worked down his abdomen.

I’d hated that costume from the moment I saw it on him. And that’s exactly what it was: a costume, trying to make Raihn into one of the people who had once subjugated him.

That wasn’t who he was.

It now seemed so sickeningly obvious, I wondered how I’d ever even questioned it. No, the version of him that I revealed with every opened button, every new expanse of imperfect, once-human skin...

This was him.

I finished with his jacket, and he helped me by lifting his shoulders as I pulled it off of him and tossed it to the floor. I lowered myself over his chest, tracing his muscles with my fingertips, pausing over his nipple as it hardened beneath my touch, then tracing down, over each raised ridge of abdomen, to his stomach and the darkening trail of hair leading to his trousers.

And Raihn, ever obedient, did not move, though I could feel his ravenous stare. Not even when my hands fell to his waistband, unbuttoned it, and set him free.

The first time I’d seen his cock, I’d been shocked that such a thing could be considered beautiful—and yet, this time, too, it was the only word I could think: beautiful.

His entire body tensed when I wrapped my hand around it. It twitched a little against my touch, his abs tightening. I watched the bead of liquid at its head swell.

He wanted me. He wanted me so much he wasn’t even breathing anymore, his hands tight around the bedspread. And Goddess, the ache between my own thighs was getting harder to ignore. So easy, to just crawl over him, let him slide inside me.

Too easy.

There was no such thing as easy pleasure.

I wanted him to suffer for this.

I lowered, brushing my lips over the tip of him, tongue darting out against the salty sweet of the liquid on his skin.

Raihn drew in a sharp hiss. His entire body tensed, straining, like it was taking everything he had not to lunge across the bed and grab me.

Still, he didn’t move.

I softened my mouth against him, this time in a slower, longer lick—still gentle, gentle enough that I knew it would be torturous.

This time, his exhale had a hint of a groan to it.

“You’re vicious,” he murmured.

He had lifted his head just enough to watch me, his gaze predatory, like he’d rather die than blink.

An intense wave of familiarity passed over me at this—me leaning over him, him watching me, and that look of such barely restrained lust.

Should I make you beg? I had asked him then.

I swept my tongue over him again, slow, and he let out another hitched exhale.

“You told me once you would beg for me,” I murmured.

Another brush of my lips.

“So do it.”

I didn’t break eye contact. His sparkled with vicious delight.

“Let me touch you,” he rasped. And Goddess, yes, he was begging, every word desperate. “Let me feel you. Even though I don’t deserve you. Please.”

I slowly crawled over his body, until my hips were aligned with his. My dress was hiked up, silk pooling at my upper thighs—I knew we were both so agonizingly conscious of how close we were, as I let my hips lower just enough that his length brushed my folds. I bit down hard on my own moan at even that momentary, barely-there touch.

I wouldn’t let him see how much I wanted it.

I lowered myself to my elbows, leaving us inches apart.

“And?” I said.

His gaze glinted with pleasure, like a cat enjoying a game of chase. And yet, beneath that feral delight, something deeper lingered. His fingertips raised to my cheek. Not quite brushing it. Still obeying.

“Let me make you the queen that you are. Let me guard your body, your soul, your heart. Let me spend the rest of my fucking pathetic life at your mercy. If I need to die, then let me do it by your hand. Please.”

My chest ached, nearly as fiercely as my desire did.

My hips shifted, and I felt him twitch again, that tiny movement making my breath tremble.

“And?” I whispered.

He loosened a shaky exhale, the smirk twisting his lips. “And for fuck’s sake, princess, I’m begging you, let me go to my knees for you.”

We lingered like that, our bodies so close to total intertwinement, and yet not touching at all.

And then I whispered, “Fine.”

The thread of self-control snapped. If Raihn’s injuries slowed him down, he didn’t show it. His mouth crashed against mine, rolling over and pushing me down to the bed, his hand running up my body as if the last minutes of not touching me had been torturous.

And then, just as quickly, his weight was gone. Instead, he was off the bed, grabbing my legs and sliding me down.

And just as he promised, he went to his knees.

I couldn’t help but watch him, transfixed, as he gently pushed the silk of my skirt up around my hips, pushing open my thighs. In the presence of gods, he had not looked so reverent.

His gaze slowly raised to meet mine.

“Is this acceptable, princess?”

My brow twitched. “Princess?”

He laughed, low and rough. “Queen.”

He started at my inner thigh, his kisses so gentle they almost tickled, lifting my leg and placing it over his shoulder.

“My queen,” he whispered again, the words pressed to my skin with each kiss, trailing farther up the sensitive flesh of my inner thighs.

Mother help me. My thighs opened, making more room for him, my body conscious of nothing but the anticipation of his touch, his kiss.

When it came, right where I wanted it, he was gentle at first, pulling aside my delicate lace underwear and planting soft kisses along my slit.

So light. So gentle. And yet the shock of pleasure wrung my body tight, my back arching.

He hummed his approval against my skin, the vibration echoing through my core.

“Better,” he murmured. “Better than I remember. Better than your blood.”

Another touch of his tongue, this one a little firmer, ending it in a long, lingering kiss.

I clenched my jaw against the whimper of pleasure, my hands clutching the bedspread. Mother, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Not yet. Even if it killed me.

Another touch, another gasp, another shock of pleasure.

Keeping my moans quiet now took herculean will, my teeth so tight I distantly thought they might crack.

More. The word was on the tip of my tongue. But I wasn’t asking Raihn for anything now.

“Let me worship you, Oraya,” he whispered, and something about the vibration of my name on his lips against the most sensitive parts of me made me shiver. It was wrought with such utter desperation. I had told him to beg. He was begging. “And let me taste you when you come. Please.”

His tongue met me firmer now, in a long lick up the length of my slit, swirling around my bud with just the faintest brush of his teeth.

Goddess help me. I—I couldn’t—

A strangled moan escaped me, breaking free from my attempts to swallow it.

His mouth still to me, Raihn met it with a groan of equal strength, like the sound was water to a man dying of thirst.

“Again,” he whispered. “Please.”

And Mother help me, I couldn’t have denied him. Not even if I’d wanted to. Because that sound broke the remaining vestiges of Raihn’s self-control, and suddenly his slow, languid work became fierce and desperate.

He worked at me like his singular purpose in life was to wring the most pleasure from my body—his mouth now firm and unrelenting, strokes hard and definitive, moving from my entrance, to my clit, and back, kissing and suckling. My hips ground against him, chasing his movements—I couldn’t help it, couldn’t control my own muscles anymore.

“Good,” he murmured. “Just like that. Let me help you.”

Yes, I thought, blindly. Yes, yes, yes.

And I didn’t realize until his growl of pleasure that I was saying it aloud, over and over again—giving him the answer he had been asking for. Giving him everything he wanted as he gave me everything I needed. My hands had found his head, tangling in red-black waves, unsure whether I was pulling him closer or pushing him away.

Closer, I decided, as his tongue worked at my clit in just the right way, as his fingers slid inside me, as his curse of pleasure shot up my spine like a bolt of lightning.

I loved his voice. I couldn’t even deny how much I loved his voice.

That was my last thought, before the wave of pleasure consumed me, wiping them all away.

When my orgasm faded, I was breathing heavily. A faint sheen of sweat covered my skin. My muscles felt loose and shaky. And yet, when I opened my eyes to see Raihn, naked, climbing back onto the bed, desire already stirred again.

He looked so damned beautiful—the lantern light playing over the bare panes of his body, marked by time and wounds and scars and a life well lived, flames reflecting in the lustful rust-red of his eyes, locked to me as if nothing else existed.

Seeing, as always, more than I wished he did.

Seeing, as always, me.

Suddenly I felt so wildly exposed, even though he was naked and I was fully clothed. The facade of my games had collapsed. The final heat of my anger had fizzled away like a candle dying in the night.

I blinked and felt a tear streak down my cheek.

Raihn settled beside me. He wiped the tear away with his thumb.

“I hate you,” I choked out. But the words weren’t an admonishment. They were weak, sad, bare.

They did not say, I hate you because you killed my father.

They said, I hate you because I let you hurt me.

I hate you because I grieved you.

I hate you because I don’t.

There was no hurt in his eyes. No anger. Only gentle, affectionate understanding. I hated when he looked at me like that.

Or maybe I hated that, too, the same way I hated him. Not at all.

He kissed me on the forehead.

“I know, princess,” he whispered. “I know you do.”

His lips moved down, to the bridge of my nose. My eyes closed against his kisses, a little damp with my tears.

“You have destroyed me,” he murmured. “And I have hated every moment of it, too.”

The truth of those words swelled in my chest, unbearably heavy. He said them in the same voice he’d said our wedding vows.

I opened my eyes to find his staring directly into mine. The shades of them—so many disparate colors, coming together to create something of such beauty—stunned me.

“Let me kiss you,” he whispered.

Begging, still.

“Yes,” I whispered.

He tasted faintly of my own pleasure, but more distinctly of him—foreign and familiar, sweet and bitter. This kiss was not like our battle from before. This was an apology, a plea, a greeting, a goodbye, a million words rolled into several endless seconds in which time died between us.

I hate you, I thought, with every new angle, every searching stroke of his tongue, every soft apology of his lips. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

And with each kiss, I breathed the words into him, even as I pulled him closer, even as I let his body fall over mine.

Raihn’s mouth trailed down, over my jaw, my throat. Lingering there for a moment—over two sets of scars—before moving down farther still, to my shoulder. Only then did he lift himself up, fingers playing at the strap of my gown.

“Let me see you,” he rasped. “Please.”

I nodded.

He slid the straps from my shoulders. He kissed each new expanse of skin as he peeled back the silk—over my shoulder, my breasts, my hardened nipples, the curve of my waist, my hip, my upper thigh. And finally, he pulled the crumpled silk free and flung it off the bed, gaze already transfixed on me, naked and exposed before him.

It wasn’t cold. Yet goosebumps broke out over my skin.

He let out a rough laugh.

“What?” I asked.

“I just—” His mouth returned to me, lingering at my peaked breasts in a way that made my breath tremble.

“I just don’t have fucking words,” he whispered, as his lips traveled higher, taking a meandering path back to mine. “I don’t have words for you.”

Words were overrated, anyway. I was grateful he didn’t have any, because the ones that jumbled in my chest were confusing and difficult.

“Good,” I whispered, and kissed him.

Our bodies intertwined again. The length of Raihn’s cock against my leg made my thighs inch open. His hands over my body grew more frantic, like he wanted to take in all of it at once.

Mother, I wanted him. I wanted him as open and exposed and vulnerable as he had made me.

A little wordless sound escaped my throat, and Raihn’s lips curled against my mouth.

“What, princess? What do you want?”

A genuine offer. Like he wanted nothing more than to give me what I needed.

Goddess, so many answers to that question.

I want you inside me. I want you to fuck me until I don’t remember my own name. I want to watch you come undone the way you just watched me.

I want you.

But what came out of my mouth was, “I want your blood.”

45

RAIHN

At first, I thought I’d heard her wrong. But no.

I want your blood.

Those words, coming out of those perfect lips. Those perfect lips that had lapped my blood from my thumb weeks ago—those lips that I’d dreamed about ever since, thinking about them with my hand around my own cock with the curtains drawn in the day.

My head was foggy. So much about this last day had felt like a dream. But hell, did I mind all that much, if this was the hallucination I got? Oraya next to me in bed, naked, the light caressing her flawless moonlight-pale skin in a way that made me jealous.

Oraya in bed, naked, asking for my blood.

I could smell her arousal, thick and sweet. Could hear her heartbeat, hard and fast like a rabbit’s.

But even sensing her neediness—neediness that I was desperate to fulfill—I still could have spent an eternity just kissing her. Just making love to that poisonous, perfect, beautiful, dangerous mouth.

I never thought I’d get to kiss Oraya ever again. Now, I couldn’t bring myself to question it. I just wanted to take whatever she’d offer me.

And in exchange, give her anything—everything—she desired.

A faint flush rose to Oraya’s cheeks. I wondered if she knew that she blushed, and easily. I didn’t want to tell her, because I didn’t want her to stop.

“You want my blood,” I repeated.

And still, she didn’t so much as blink as she said, “Yes.”

Sun take me.

Yes, Oraya wanted my blood, alright. She’d wanted it for months. And I was damned lucky that this was how I got to give it to her.

I rolled over and grabbed her dagger from her pile of clothes.

“No poison in this thing, right?” I said.

She shook her head.

Good. That would have been an embarrassing way to go.

I drew the tip along the side of my neck, just hard enough to break the skin with a fleeting stab of pain. Immediately, the warmth of blood bubbled to the surface, trickling down my throat.

I sheathed the dagger and tossed it aside again, turning back to Oraya.

“You have it, princess,” I said. “My blood. As much of it as you want. Yours by right, after all.”

Because I’d already promised it to her, months ago.

I give you my body, my blood, my soul, my heart.

And from the moment her tongue had touched my skin that night, the moment the words left my lips, I knew that I meant them. They were true, even if she didn’t want them to be. Even if she didn’t return it.

I was hers.

Oraya’s stare was hard and steady, those moon-bright eyes spearing me more sharply than any blade. Her throat bobbed. Her gaze lingered on my throat—on the streaks of red-black blood.

The scent of her arousal—her hunger—thickened in the air. My cock twitched in response to it.

“Sit up,” she said.

My brow quirked. I did as she ordered.

She swung her legs over mine, straddling me. My hands fell to her hips. The closeness of her, her scent, her warmth, so much stronger than a vampire’s, left me momentarily dazed.

Immediately, I knew what this was. A recreation of that night in the cave.

Goddess fucking help me.

I was destroyed. I was done.

For a moment, she stared at me, the two of us meeting each other’s gazes, unblinking. A knot tightened in my chest. I recognized that look—fear mixed with the hunger. Fear of herself, and her own desires.

My thumb traced a circle on the bare skin of her hip.

“You’re safe, Oraya,” I whispered. “Alright?”

Her eyes narrowed at me a little, as if calling out my bullshit. And though I hadn’t meant to lie to her—now, or ever again—I understood it. Because nothing about this was safe. Oraya and I and this monstrous, beautiful, terrible thing we’d created between us was so fucking far from safe.

She leaned forward, pressing her breasts to my chest, hands braced against my arms, and brought her lips to my throat.

First, she licked up what had dripped down my neck, starting at my clavicle and traveling up, ending with a little twinge of pain as her mouth pressed to the open wound.

And then she drank.

My breath was a little shaky, my fingers tightening into her flesh. My muscles tensed.

No one had ever fed from me since... since Neculai, or Simon and the other nobles he had loaned me out to. I’d never, ever allowed it since then, not even with consensual lovers long after. My skin didn’t scar as easily as Oraya’s did. Those fangs didn’t leave any marks on my throat. But centuries later, I still felt them. I’d never let anyone open those wounds ever again.

My body remembered that, tensing in anticipation, even if my mind knew differently.

But from the moment her mouth touched my skin, I knew right away it was different with her.

I thought she would make me remember, even briefly, those old wounds. Instead, every stroke of her tongue repainted them with something new.

This wasn’t Neculai or Simon or any other of the countless unwanted invasions to my body.

This was her. Oraya. My wife.

It was almost funny at first, how tentative she was. Her tongue lapped awkwardly against the wound like a kitten at milk, like she didn’t quite know how to drink. Still, my flesh seemed to open for her, as if I was intrinsically made to give her this.

“You don’t have to be gentle.” I couldn’t help it—a hint of amusement slipped into my voice. “You won’t hurt me.”

Alright, maybe the weight of her body against my wounds did hurt a little—but I wasn’t going to complain about those breasts against my chest.

She pushed deeper against my throat, taking my advice to heart. With a long, rough inhale, she drew in a mouthful of my blood, and swallowed.

Her exhale was a groan against my flesh.

Fuck, I echoed it.

I hadn’t known if Oraya had venom. I would have thought she didn’t, without the fangs. But this—this did something to me. Something very different than what the venom of other vampires had, drugging me in sickening ways.

I didn’t know if it was venom, or her tongue, or just the intoxication of having her naked body straddling mine. Suddenly, nothing in this world mattered except for her, and her mouth, and the scent of her desire, thickening with every passing second.

Her tongue rolled against my throat again, with a tiny sound of pleasure I didn’t think she realized she had made. My head tipped back, giving her better access. Her body had melted against mine. Her back arched, thighs opening.

I was so hard it was physically painful. The only thing I was conscious of other than her mouth and her exhales of pleasure was the fact that her slit was so fucking close to my cock, it would take barely a tilt of her hips to lower herself onto me.

She was drinking so fast that she choked a little, pulling away with a tiny spatter of coughs. I tilted my head just enough to look at her, and the pure lust on her face—eyes heavy-lidded, lips swollen and parted, a trickle of red-black smeared at the corner—left me vaguely dizzy.

“Good?” I murmured.

Instead of answering, she kissed me.

My blood tasted salty and iron-strong. Different than hers had—not nearly as good, but better for the fact that I was lapping it off her tongue. The kiss was demanding, not waiting for breath, her tongue slipping into my mouth as she forced my head back.

Her hips lowered. Her sex ground against my length in one long roll, making my fingernails dig into her skin, a low wordless sound rolling from my throat.

“So you have my blood,” I murmured. “What else do you want, princess?”

Another roll of her hips answered my question. Fuck. I had never known what it was to need someone before I met her. I had always thought that kind of talk was silly and overdramatic.

No. I needed Oraya. Needed her, like another bodily function.

I knew what she wanted. She knew what she wanted. But I knew she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. The final vestiges of our game, shaky gates still in place between us.

So she whispered, against another desire-drunk kiss, “Beg.”

It was so damned easy to beg for her.

I pushed down on her hips—just enough so that my tip sat at the slick of her, so sensitive that I felt it tighten at the presence of my cock.

“Let me in,” I rasped. “Let me inside you. Let me feel you come around me. Let me watch you. Please.”

She let out a strangled sigh, pressed her mouth against mine, and lowered herself onto me.

When I disappeared into her wet warmth, everything else fell away.

Immediately, a sound tore from her throat, a mangled moan, and Goddess, it was the most incredible sound I’d ever heard. I thought I’d made myself forget it, put it out of my mind forever.

Stupid of me to even try. And hell, why would I want to? I wanted to drown myself in her. Drown myself in her sounds, her breath, her body—her blood.

She moaned again as she lifted herself off me, lowering again, again, hips rolling, helping me hit where she wanted me. Goddess, I loved it—loved the way she used me. My body still hurt, uncooperative in letting me take her the way I wanted to, but she was more than willing to take what she needed.

My hands trailed her body, memorizing the shape of every muscle, every expanse of skin, from the taut shape of her waist to the full softness of her ass. I kissed her, hard, swallowing all those breathtaking sounds—offering her all of my own.

Our pace was frantic now. Neither of us had patience for this. I wanted everything, and I wanted it now. With every time she took me inside her, grinding against me, allowing me to reach the deepest parts of her, I only wanted more.

I wanted to brand her.

I wanted her to brand me.

My hunger for her was suddenly insatiable, driven to a frenzy by the sensation of her sex around me, the scent of her desire, the taste of my own blood on her lips and the tantalizing scent of hers beneath that sweat-slicked skin.

She broke our kiss, gasping a curse against my lips as I drew her down against me roughly in one particularly deep thrust, her body spasming—and fuck, I almost lost it right there.

“Raihn,” she whimpered.

“Take it,” I rasped out. Knowing, somehow, exactly what she wanted. “All of it. It’s yours.”

She let out a fractured sound between a sob and a sigh of relief, and lowered her mouth to my throat again, drinking deep as she rocked around me.

When she pulled away again, blood smearing her lips, I chased her, desperate to taste her again however I could. But instead, she lifted her chin—exposing the elegant column of her throat.

I paused, a sudden absence of movement that made her tighten around me in protest.

She couldn’t be offering—couldn’t be asking me to—

“Take it,” she said, throwing my words back at me.

My jaw closed. Tightened. It was almost—almost—enough to cut through my haze of lust.

I knew what this meant for her. Knew, too, that the chemical draw of my blood and our sex and everything else between us was probably just as addling to her as it was to me.

I didn’t want to be something else she regretted.

“Are you sure?”

I barely managed to form the words.

She lowered her chin just enough to meet my eyes. What I saw within them stripped me bare. Far deeper than the lust.

“Yes,” she whispered.

No hesitation.

I didn’t even have words to give her after that, just this animalistic growl that came out in a mangled burst as I pulled her closer. Her hips resumed their rhythm, drowning us both in a sea of pleasure that couldn’t be matched, except—

–Except for when my mouth came to her throat.

Her skin there was delicate. Smooth, save for the little scars—two old, two newer. Just as I had once before, I kissed both of them, tenderly, offering some softness before I let the sharpness of my teeth settle over her vein. I could practically taste the beat of her blood beneath, hot and sweet.

My bite was quick, firm, piercing the skin in a single painless strike before withdrawing.

She drew in a little gasp, her hands clutching my shoulders, walls tightening around me.

Her blood flooded my mouth, thick and rich. Nothing had ever tasted like this—like her, at her rawest essence, every nuance and contradiction. From the first moment I had tasted it, I had known it would change me forever.

Better than any wine. Any drug. A pleasure I’d be chasing for the rest of my life.

Maybe it was the sensory overload of the sex, or maybe the venom just worked particularly quickly. Because I scented the sudden spike in Oraya’s arousal rising to an unbearable crescendo. A moan vibrated through her, and I could taste that sound with my next swallow, with every stroke my tongue worked across her skin.

Her pace grew faster now, harder. My fingernails dug into her, leveraging whatever remained of my strength to help her through each thrust.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, the words fractured by ragged breaths. And thank the fucking Goddess she said it, because I couldn’t—I was fucking gone.

It was too much. Everything culminated. Pressure built at the base of my spine. I could feel her getting close, too, her muscles coiling, her strokes growing frantic and her fingernails dragging deep over my back and shoulders.

I needed to feel her come even more than I needed it myself.

I wanted to give her everything.

I tore myself away from her throat, the taste of her blood still thick on my tongue. For one endless moment, her eyes met mine—and so much honesty passed between us, both of us exposed with only our flesh and our desires and our primal impulses.

“Yours,” I ground out. “It’s yours.”

My blood. My body. My soul.

I had given her all of that a long time ago. I even had given her my life.

And I’d do it all again.

I urged her head down as our bodies writhed around each other, rushing to the end. She accepted eagerly, her mouth falling to my throat again, drawing in a deep mouthful of my blood.

I felt her swallow, and then, a moment later, felt her climax take her. A desperate cry, one she didn’t even try to stifle, rang out against my skin—long, whimpering, holding fragments of torn-up curses and pleas.