Chapter 33 - Glory #2
“Tonight, I want to see if we can keep that window open a little longer.” He was once again right next to my ear, his fingers taking over the exploration of my body where his mouth had left off. “As long as you can bear it, as long as you trust me to take care of you. Think you’re up for it?”
If I’d wanted to let my fears win, his challenge made it impossible. “Do your worst, demon.”
I felt his smile against my neck and then all my awareness shifted to his fingers.
And how they barely touched me at all. Feather-light, they drifted across my breasts and down my stomach, tripping over my hip bones and travelling up my side.
They cut across my body towards him, brushing so briefly and so gently against my tightening nipples I could have believed I’d imagined them, and then they trailed down my other side.
A shiver ran along my spine, and my goosebumps spread even while my blood warmed and my fangs cut into my bottom lip. Just as he’d done last night, he was teasing me. Well, this time I refused to beg. Not until he’d earned it.
He chuckled again, the sound as rich as syrup. “You’re fighting me, Buttons. This isn’t proving me wrong at all. Relax.” The order came as a whisper, and it sent sparks shooting from my ear down between my legs. I rolled my lips together to keep myself quiet.
“How difficult your life must be,” he drawled as his slowly moving fingers dipped over my stomach and ran down the outside of my left leg, “to be constantly on edge. Every single day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. Always keeping people at a distance. Never dropping your guard. You must be exhausted.”
He was trying to get into my head, worm his way through every defence I’d built around myself from the time I was old enough to know I needed them.
Despite the desire pooling within me, the muscles around my spine bunched up, reinforcing those barriers.
Not a conscious decision, but an instinctive response to the threat.
Cammon clucked his tongue in disapproval, and his touch drifted from the outside of my thigh to the inside before it hopped over to my other leg, inside to outside.
“If you don’t want to give in, mage, you can always give up.
I’ll still fuck you, and we’ll both enjoy it.
We’ll satisfy that itch and move on.” He pressed his hips against the outside of my thigh, and I felt exactly how great that itch was for him.
I wanted nothing more than to scratch it.
And I could. He’d said it. I could rip off this blindfold, and we could enjoy a repeat of the other night. My fingers crept towards the knot at the back of my head.
“Or,” he continued, and my hands stilled, “you could give this an actual try. You could choose to let me in. Choose to drop your guard. In being the one to choose, the control is still yours, and in giving up that control… I think the pleasure would be greater than anything you’ve ever experienced. ”
I snorted, though it carried little heat. “Now whose ego is talking?”
“It has nothing to do with ego.” His nose brushed my jawline. “Have you ever—even once in your life—enjoyed pure, unadulterated, unrestrained passion? Or has every good thing you’ve ever had been constrained by your fear of letting yourself go?”
Suddenly my throat felt thick, and behind the blindfold, my eyes stung.
My heartbeat sped up, my stomach twisted into knots.
I could have cursed him for his fucking insight.
A fucking demon reading his victim and manipulating her emotions to get some delicious fucking feast. I didn’t want to play this game anymore.
I dropped my hands to pull away from him, and his palm left my leg to cup my face, his calloused thumb brushing my cheek where a tear had slipped out from under the silk.
“Hey.” There was no triumph in his voice.
If anything, I had to call it pained understanding.
Sympathy, if not pity, and I tried to turn away, not wanting it.
His hold on me, gentle but firm, kept me in place.
The bastard wouldn’t let me hide. “You had your reasons, my goddess of a vampire. I would never judge you, never mock you, for doing whatever was necessary to survive. And you have. Beautifully. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to survive with me.
I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe. ”
On the contrary, I’d never felt more in danger.
My brain fought to tune out his words; my body pleaded with me to listen.
And my heart—my poor heart was caught in the middle, compressed by such turmoil that I didn’t know if I wanted to scream, attack, or run.
Maybe all three. I lay there unmoving, muscles stiff, frozen.
I could barely take a full breath—even my lungs were tight.
And Cammon lay beside me, his chest pressed against my side, his breathing steady, saying not a word. Waiting. Being so patient for me to decide if I wanted to let myself be governed by my fears or if I was ready to accept that—for the first time in my life—I didn’t have to be afraid.
I’d believed I’d let myself go the other night. In sleeping with him, in allowing myself to indulge that much, I’d been so fucking proud of myself.
But he’d seen what I hadn’t. That even while I’d enjoyed our time together—and gods, had I enjoyed myself—I’d only let a small piece of me play. It had been a toe in the water. A romp through an enclosed park.
He was asking me to throw myself into the river, to run out the gates into the open, unprotected fields.
To trust him that much further.
This demon I’d known for less than two weeks.
My heart thrashed against my ribs, each beat so painful my muscles spasmed. Or maybe that was me holding back the panicked sobs that threatened to take hold.
Cammon’s warm hand stroked down my arm, following a soothing up-down pattern as he eased closer to my hand, and I realized I’d squeezed my fingers into fists so tight my nails had sliced deep into my palms.
I could choose to ease my grip.
I could choose to relax my hands.
My choice.
Safe.
With one deep, daring inhale, I did exactly that. I unfurled my fingers and let them rest on the ground beside me. My arms followed.
I could stop there. If it was my decision, I could remove the blindfold and we’d never have to talk about this again.
Instead, I decided to find out what it would feel like if I relaxed my shoulders. They dropped away from my ears, and with that removal of tension, my lungs released their death grip on my breath.
Faster than I was prepared for, the muscles down my sides and in my stomach let go, following the cues of my shoulders, and to my surprise, as soon as my abdomen loosened, the muscles between my legs tightened.
The response was so immediate, so sudden, that the rest of me locked up again, but Cammon’s fingers continued their soft stroke on my arm, reminding me who was in control despite my vulnerability.
With another deep breath, I tried again. Shoulders, chest, stomach relaxed—heartbeat faster, my sex clenching.
I swallowed, caught somewhere in the middle between relaxed and not. Between aroused and terrified.
Cammon shifted, his spicy, musky scent filling my nose, filling all of me. As though I were the pot and he were the water, and by accepting him, I would be fulfilling my purpose. Complete.
A tiny, pitiful whimper slipped from my lips, but Cammon, this prince among demons, caressed my brow and brushed my hair out of my face, soothing and reassuring.
“Whatever you want, Glory,” he murmured against my ear.
And in his lack of pushing, in his pure, unfiltered understanding of everything I’d been denying, I accepted that what I wanted in this moment was him. All of him. More than that—I wanted him to have all of me.
Unseeing, trusting the sensations, I reached for him.
My fingers brushed against his wide shoulder, his back twitching beneath my touch as I ran my hand up the side of his smooth neck and into his soft hair.
I imagined my pale skin mixing with his chestnut locks, and the combination of the two, both of us intertwined, sent another surge of desire shooting through me.
A low moan escaped him, but still he didn’t move. My hand reached the back of his neck, and I dragged him towards me.
“Fuck me, princeling,” I whispered.
Another groan, this one louder, as he bent his head and kissed me, claiming my mouth with his, his tongue stroking mine. “Hands on your head, mage.”
I did as I was bid and arched closer to him, desperate for his weight, but he slid away from me. I whimpered, writhing to make contact again, but he stayed out of reach. Except for those fingers, which returned to my body in those light, teasing touches.
“Relax,” he murmured. “Remember? Trust me. I won’t let you suffer. Not for too long, anyway.”
His words sent the embers in my blood spinning, and I embraced the heat, choosing to trust. Choosing to let him indulge in this game for the sake of his experiment. Could he deliver on the pleasure he promised?
I didn’t doubt it, especially when the throb inside me built with every new caress.
He coasted his hands over my breasts, and this time, instead of skirting around my nipples or torturing me with those too-light touches, he lingered.
The rough pad of his thumb circled one pebbled peak until he caught it between his thumb and the crook of his index finger and pinched just hard enough for me to draw breath.
Then he eased the pain with his hot mouth, sucking and rolling it around his tongue.
I reached for his hair again, but he tutted, and I returned my hands to my head, cursing his name and enjoying the thrill more than I ever would have imagined.
While Cammon’s mouth worked, his hands continued their exploration, leaving a trail of sparks across my stomach and down my thighs. I braced for him to toy with me again, to hop from one thigh to the other without pause, but a deep moan rushed out of me when his fingers slid towards my slick folds.
I was so wet for him. I needed him to relieve the pressure that had heightened with the extended play with my breasts, but he refused to be kind.
He stroked my clit, then stopped and trailed his finger down to my opening.
A slight dip inside, not nearly enough to satisfy, then back up to that bundle of nerves.
Again and again, never spending time in either place long enough to be anything other than maddening.
My breaths sped into panting gasps. I wrapped my hands in my hair, needing to hold on to something and hating that I couldn’t curl my fingernails into his broad shoulders.
My right nipple popped out of his mouth, and he kissed his way over to my left, starting there what he’d begun on the other side.
The sensations shot up into my head and down into my lower belly, and I didn’t know how I was still capable of thought.
Such minimal contact. Barely anything at all, yet my body was on fire.
I was about to combust—but I couldn’t. Not at the pace he’d set.
He chuckled against my breast, his breathy laugh sending yet another spray of sparks across my skin. “So needy. You’re doing so well, mage. Being so patient.”
Every word was another shock to my desperate system, but I refused to give up and take over. With every passing moment, I chose again and again to trust him, and each time the decision came a little bit easier.
When his finger finally slid inside me, I couldn’t hold back my cry and my back arched right off the floor.
He slowly guided it in and out, and the wet sounds of my arousal filled the silence of the cave.
It was obscene, but so sexy that no shame followed as it had in the past. Cammon had brought me to this point, and I hoped he took those noises as a point of pride.
His thumb ran circles around my clit, and when he added a second finger to the first, I saw stars.
And still his tongue worked, now leaving my nipple and travelling up my neck to lap my pulse.
His teeth nipped at the crook of my throat, and that tiny pinch of pain was enough to take me right to the edge, where I teetered. Waiting. Completely at his mercy.
“Do you want to come, mage?” It came out as barely more than a growl, as though he were struggling to hold back as much as I was.
“Yes. Please. Yes.”
I didn’t care that I was begging. I would have kept on begging if he’d asked me to. I was his toy to play with as he would, and the freedom of realizing it—accepting it—was such a novelty that another gush of pleasure slipped out from around his fingers.
“Then come for me,” he said, and he curled his fingers in such a way that they hit a spot I hadn’t even known was in me.
At that firm pressure, I fell. My body shuddered, I might have called out his name, and all the while, he guided me through it with his words, his fingers, his mouth, until I was nothing but a soaked puddle on the floor.
When the aftershocks finally settled, he pulled his fingers out, and I whined in disappointment at the emptiness they left behind.
“Don’t worry, Glory. We’re not finished yet.” His hands scaled up my sides and around my waist as he pressed against me. “We’re only getting started.”