Chapter 24
Gemma
I was satisfied. I felt warm and sated, like a sleepy, smug cat. I nearly arched off the desk in contentment, not at all fearing the warning in my husband’s voice.
It was inconvenient, I decided, to be attracted to my husband. Unfortunately, I was. Terribly .
Every part of my body felt scorched by him. I didn’t know if I’d ever be the same.
He’d been blazing hot like a forge just now, I thought, nearly shivering just remembering his intensity.
I felt calm. As if the two orgasms had helped rewire the anxious part of my brain.
“I won’t lie,” I informed him. “I just won’t tell you.”
Azur stilled, looming above me. His hand flexed at my throat, but I was beginning to realize that my husband was all bark and no bite, as the Old Earth saying went.
Well, he has a lot of bite , I thought. A bite that I craved, needed , like food and water and air. Food and water and air and Azur’s fangs.
“Gemma,” he warned, his tone low, filling my senses with his glare and his heat and the scent of his skin. “ Do not stoke my ire right now.”
Azur was stubborn. He wouldn’t let it go, I knew that already. But I’d promised Ludayn I wouldn’t tell, and I would keep my promise.
He would have to be satisfied with the answer I gave him. Though I had the gnawing sensation that he might’ve already known who it’d been. There were just a few Kylorr in the keep who I saw and spoke to every day. Even fewer who I trusted to ask for help.
“It’s not important who it was. I just wanted to know how it felt,” I told him, a little embarrassed to admit this to him. More embarrassed than lying spread out on his desk with his seed—which was silver —covering my lower half. “How it felt with someone else. If I would feel…”
Azur rumbled. His hand left my throat, and he rose, my skin rapidly cooling in his wake. I closed my legs quickly, feeling the squelch of his come, which made my cheeks burn and my clit throb . I sat up quickly, the papers beneath me wet, and I hoped we hadn’t ruined anything important.
Azur glared but he didn’t speak. His enormous curved cock was still half-hard, hanging out of his black pants. My fingers nearly curled at the sight of it. Long and impossibly thick, he would stuff me full. Not to mention the strange, curious swelling at the very base, a bulbous bulge that I didn’t know would even fit inside me.
And because I was feeling level-headed and satisfied—even a little loopy, pleased as hell that the agitating buzzing beneath my skin was gone—I tentatively reached out to touch his chest. Wondering what he would do.
His pupils only slitted tighter, but he didn’t move away.
“And what were your findings, wife?” he rumbled, his voice dark and husky. He reached forward to slide his hand into my hair, pulling gently so I met his gaze. “From your little experiment?”
I curled my fingers into his shirt. He wasn’t wearing a hard, structured vest tonight. The material was soft beneath my fingertips. “That it felt like nothing at all. Nothing like this .”
“And it never will,” he hissed softly. “If you ever allow anyone to feed from you again, I will retaliate against them. Consider this your first and only warning.”
Jealous, indeed, I thought with parted lips, realizing why Ludayn’s hesitation and fear had been so pronounced when I’d asked her.
“Your blood is mine , Gemma,” he growled. “I will not share it. I will not let anyone feed from my wife. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whispered. Feeling a spark of pleasure which mingled strangely with annoyance. “But who have you been feeding from?”
Azur grunted. His hand left my hair and settled over mine where it was burrowed in his shirt. He tugged it away. Even still, he didn’t drop it. He clasped my hand in his.
“No one.”
I blinked. All the fight leaving me. “You’re lying.”
Though I knew he wasn’t.
He shot me an irritated glare. “I told you before. Kylorr can survive on food alone. Blood is a luxury that some cannot even afford.”
That…softened me. Here I’d thought he’d been drinking from others, giving that sublime pleasure to faceless beings, and I could finally admit that it had cut me up more deeply than I wanted to admit.
Only in my relief could I admit it.
“Oh,” I whispered, brows furrowing. “Then why haven’t you come to me? Isn’t that the whole point of this marriage?”
He looked away from me, making me regret the words. Dropping my hand, he finally stepped away, and I watched as he attempted to tuck his cock back into his pants, which were suddenly very, very tight on his massive thighs.
“ Raazos ,” he cursed softly, gritting his teeth when he finally got the waist band clasped again. I flushed when I saw his fingers were glimmering in the light from my arousal.
It made me remember that I was entirely naked, perched on the edge of his desk, and I saw the tattered remains of my dress— another he’d ruined—lying innocently on the floor at his feet.
He scooped it up.
“Azur?”
“Have you ever been with a male before?”
The question was so unexpected that it caught me off guard. As I blinked at him, he unraveled my dress. He had ripped it straight down the middle, and I took it from him wordlessly, slipping my arms through the thin straps. It was like a robe now and I clutched the middle, holding the edges together to cover my nakedness.
Not that it mattered. I was sticky with his come. I could feel it, slippery and still warm between my legs.
“You…you mean sex?” I asked.
“Yes,” he grunted, waving his hand impatiently.
I nibbled on my lip. And I hated that the instinct to lie pressed hard on my tongue. An old instinct instilled in my society in the Collis, on all the New Earth colonies. That a woman should be pure and untouched until she got married. A virgin.
And I hated that I was tempted to lie at all. I’d done nothing wrong.
So I told him the truth, wondering how he would react.
“Yes,” I answered though the mere memory of it filled me with discomfort, dashing the calm that had settled in my bones. “A long time ago.”
His eyes narrowed. “How long?”
Hugging my arms around me, I told him, “About five years ago.”
He stilled. “ That long?”
His tone made me study him, my gaze flitting between his.
“Please tell me that it wasn’t just once,” he murmured.
“I…” I trailed off, feeling like my world was tilting. He… wanted me to be more experienced ? “Yes, it was—”
He cursed, running a hand over his curved horn. “Human? A male?”
“Yes,” I whispered, trying to understand what was happening. “You’re not upset?”
He scowled. “About what?”
“That I…that I’ve been with another man when I was unmarried.”
Azur froze. His nostrils flared. But there was something else that entered his expression. An expression that resembled sympathy. Or perhaps even pity.
“I’m upset about the fact that when we do fuck, Gemma, I’ll likely tear you in two,” he growled. “Because in case you haven’t noticed, wife, a human man is not built like a Kylorr.”
My breath went shallow. He’d said when . Not if . I’d known sex was a possibility. A pretty good one, judging from the escalation of his feedings.
He was upset that he would hurt me.
That was where his ire was stemming from.
“Don’t you want to?” I couldn’t help but ask, unable to keep myself from poking at him even though my brain told me to keep my mouth closed. “I thought you wanted to hurt me.”
Azur was in my face in the blink of an eye. I gasped but it was caught in his mouth as his lips crashed into mine. My mind went pleasantly blank, and I felt the sharp glide of his fangs as he kissed me almost angrily. It was a mean, hard, punishing kiss…
Until it wasn’t.
Moments ticked by but they felt like an eternity I never wanted to leave. His kiss gentled as I clung to his tunic, my dress slipping open again. His arm wrapped around my hips, tugging me more fully into his hardened, massive body as he stepped between my thighs. I learned how to move my mouth against his so his fangs wouldn’t snag on my bottom lip. I relaxed in his arms, feeling the back of my neck tingle pleasantly as his other hand raked through my hair, his dull claws scraping against my scalp.
A deep groan left his throat. His cock felt like a thick, hot rod, resting just above my sex against my lower belly. Heat bloomed, my clit beginning to warm and pulse.
Azur broke the kiss first, lowering his head so that it hung in front of me, his horns nearly scraping my cheeks before I leaned back.
Silence dropped between us as we caught our breaths. My lips felt swollen, my eyes half-lidded from the gentle sensation and memory of his kiss.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Azur finally tilted his head up to regard me.
“I did want to hurt you,” he informed me, and I swallowed at the gruff turmoil in his voice.
“But not now?”
I held my breath as he shook his head.
“No, not now.”
“And you won’t tell me why?” He stiffened against me, but I pressed forward. “You won’t tell me why you wanted to hurt me? A daughter of House Hara?”
Azur studied me, his slitted pupils darting back and forth, before he lowered them down my neck to my exposed breasts to the mess he’d made below them. I felt that gaze like a caress, hot and firm.
“No,” he said.
He was retreating already, closing himself off once again. Dread pooled low, but it was what I’d expected.
I thought that maybe I should leave. It was clear he wanted me to, waiting until I hopped off his desk and hightailed it out his office door so he could work in peace once more, late into night.
Instead, I found myself saying, “The man I had sex with was named Petyr. He came to work in my father’s mines one summer, looking for work as he was traveling between the Quadrants.”
A sound that resembled a growl rose from Azur’s throat, but he pinned me with a cool, assessing look.
I raised my chin to meet his eyes. “I had just turned twenty-five. So incredibly young and yet in the Collis, my purpose was over. Women are expected to be married at twenty. Every year that passes after twenty, people begin to look at you with a little more distaste. And if you aren’t married by twenty-five…you never will be. I was a disappointment to my family.”
Even saying it sparked familiar bitterness I’d thought I had long forgotten.
“Overnight, I lost all my value in my terrible, terrible society. And it hit me hard. Really hard. I was angry. I was restless. So I went to the mines and I picked the first human man that I saw. I took him to my bed. Afterward, I never saw him again. He stole a few trinkets from my room, and he was off the planet by the time I realized it.”
A wry smile lifted my lips.
“The whole experience was lackluster to say the least. But I don’t regret it. It made me feel better in that moment. But it made me realize how meaningless the act truly was. How foolish I’d been to believe that if I remained untouched before marriage, then I would get everything I’d ever wanted. That idea had been so ingrained in us. Since childhood. And it makes me sick to think about it now.”
Azur was watching me carefully. Only listening, though I had no idea what he was thinking.
“Shortly after, my mother died,” I said, looking down to the floor, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. “Then I found out about the debts and I poured my disappointment and shame and grief into something else entirely. And it was easy to forget.”
“How did she die?” Azur asked me.
There was a stone lodged in my belly. A heavy weight that would never quite disappear.
Instead of answering, I shook my head. Because the truth was too terrible to say out loud. Truthfully, I’d never spoken it out loud. Not once. Not ever.
My eyes went to the Halo screen, which was still flickering on the edge of his desk. Longing went through me like a spear straight to my chest. I’d nearly forgotten it.
“Would you let me call my family?” I asked quietly, meeting his eyes. “On the Halo? Just to see them? I’d like to see my sisters’ faces. My friend, Fran. My father.”
Azur reared back. I’d managed to shock him. He hadn’t expected me to ask that, and I watched, with a lump in my throat, as he scowled. All trace of his former expression, however gentle, was gone.
“No.”
“But I—”
“I said no ,” he growled. “If you think you can manipulate me and make me feel anything for you just so you can try to get your way, you should know better. You should know that that will not work with me.”
I gaped. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”
“Weren’t you?” he rasped, stalking toward me. “Giving me your sad story about your fucked-up race, trying to make me sympathize with you when you told me your mother died and how hard you worked to save your family from all the debts. I see right through it, Gemma Hara.”
Where was his anger coming from?
That sudden anger made my mouth go dry. He thought I was using my mother’s death to try to get something out of him?
I was asking to call my family . Not to leave Krynn. I’d thought…I’d thought we’d been making progress. Seeing eye to eye. I’d thought that we could at least be civil with one another if we were to be married for the rest of our natural lives, dammit, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
I was trying to make this work with him.
But he fought me at every turn, and I was getting incredibly demoralized by it.
“You’ll never see me as anything else,” I breathed, a surprising sensation of pain at the realization stabbing at my chest. “You’ll always see me as this conniving person trying to take something from you. You’ll always look for the worst in me, won’t you?”
Azur’s glare seemed to falter, but then it doubled in its intensity, as if he was steeling his mind.
“Hara blood is Hara blood, after all,” he said.
The words stole my breath.
I jumped off the desk, now finding the slick sensation between my thighs—his come mingled with my own— mortifying .
I wouldn’t do this with him anymore.
He could fucking starve for all I cared. I wouldn’t make an effort anymore.
“And you can’t get enough of this Hara’s blood,” I snapped back, throwing him a dark glare at the door. “Can you, husband ?”
Then I stormed from the room before he could see the tears welling up in my eyes, threatening to fall.