Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Excerpt from the Veydran Code of Conduct:
Show nothing until there’s nothing left to show.
RIVEN
She swallows against my hand, her brown eyes gleaming. There’s more life in them than I’ve seen since the gateway in Georgia locked her out.
I’ve watched her disappear further inside herself every day since, terrified to push her too far.
After we found yet another locked gateway today, I knew I had to do something.
I almost called the others, but I need to prove I can handle this.
Can handle her. If I can’t, it’s better for us both to know now.
There are two perfectly good beds, but there will be plenty of time for that later. I want her boneless, thoughtless, and completely wrung out. For someone as strong as Celine, that’s going to take time.
Using my grip on her neck, I push her against the wall, kissing her because I can’t bear not to. She melts against me, sipping from my mouth in the sweetest surrender.
I shudder, pulling back to say, “If I do something you don’t like—”
“Then I’ll fucking stop you.” Celine bites my shoulder, and heat twists low in my belly.
Gritting my teeth to keep from moaning, I yank the zipper of her jeans down and cup her through her underwear. She’s perfectly warm. I lose myself imagining how good it will feel to bury myself inside her.
Celine whispers my name, and it rips me back to reality faster than a shout.
Her cheeks are flushed, and that cursed bun is listing to one side, but none of that matters because she’s looking at me like I’m someone.
I kiss her again, but this time I can’t be anything but soft. Gods help me, I want her to feel better. I want her mean teasing to come back along with the cocky glint in her eyes when she knows I’m checking her out and puts an extra sway in her hips.
My grip on her neck relaxes until it’s more caress than control. She rocks against my hand, and I smile. “Take what you need, Celine.”
Her eyelashes flutter, and she moves. My pants hit my ankles; she wraps her fingers around my cock; and her thumb rolls over the head. All my blood rushes south.
The next thirty seconds are nothing but a frenzy of flying clothes.
Naked, we collide again. I fall backward. I mostly land on the mattress, but my shoulder smacks the edge of the hotel’s bedside table. The pain is intense and irrelevant. Celine is horrified.
“You’re bleeding,” she hisses. “Shit, Riven, I’m sorry. I should have been more careful.”
I sink two fingers inside her. Her pupils expand, doing more to erase my pain than anything else could. “Don’t apologize to me,” I tell her. “Never apologize to me.”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
I lay back on the bed and stroke her, enjoying the subtle changes of her face and body.
For the first time in my life, I’m grateful for my ability to read people.
I don’t have to wonder if I’m making Celine feel good.
Her body tells me. All I have to do is drown out my own needs and listen. I’ve never heard sweeter sounds.
Pure satisfaction rolls through me when she clenches around my fingers. Making her come is my new addiction. Gods, I would volunteer to get her off at any time, day or night.
Before she can come down, I grip her hips and yank her over my face.
I catch a flash of her grin before she spreads her knees and sinks down on my tongue. With one hand braced on the headboard and the other buried in my hair, Celine rides my face as if she was born to do nothing else, taking her pleasure unapologetically.
She tastes like something I shouldn’t be allowed to have. Gripping her ass in both hands, I sink my tongue inside her. I’m not good enough for her, but I don’t care about that anymore. If she wants me, she gets me, for however long it lasts.
And when she gets tired of fucking a faceless killer, I’ll disappear, leaving her to live the rest of her life with the good guys. I may be able to lie to everyone else, but I’ve never been able to lie to myself, and villains don’t get happily ever after.
“I need you inside me,” Celine gasps, scooting off my face and collapsing on my chest.
She’s breathless, panting and languid, but I need her undone.
I flip her onto her back and crawl between her legs. “What do you need, darling?” I ask, licking one nipple while I pinch the other.
“You. Inside me. Now.” Her tone is sharp, a warning that I won’t like what happens if I don’t follow her orders.
I grin, notch my cock at her entrance, and wait.
“Are you sure you want it?” I focus on her breasts, caressing one nipple gently while I torment the other until she’s writhing beneath me and canting her hips.
“Riven, if you don’t—”
I slam into her all the way, not letting her finish the threat.
Her groan is eclipsed by mine.
She’s tight, wet perfection, and my heart skips a beat. I could live inside her.
Her heels slam into my lower back, forcing me deeper as she rocks against me. I give her what she wants, thrusting hard and fast until her moans are all I hear.
It’s messy, and loud, and perfect. There are no awkward adjustments or mismatched rhythms; her body moves with mine like we’ve done this in ten different lifetimes. Maybe we have. I know I won’t get enough of her in this one.
Digging my knees into the mattress, I prop both of her ankles on my right shoulder and lean forward until her toes nearly touch the cheap hotel headboard. And I fuck her. Without mercy or restraint. I fuck her as if it’s the only thing I’ll ever need to be good at.
My breath saws in and out of my lungs—I could use a break. I fuck her harder instead.
When she squirts around my cock, and the pressure forces me out, I fuck her with my fingers until her arousal drips into the crease of my elbow. Then I pick her up and put her on her hands and knees. She glances over her shoulder, sweat dripping down her temple, and frowns.
A second later, I land on my back.
“Not like that,” she says.
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you not enjoy it from behind?” I want to know everything about her. I’m greedy for her in every way.
“I love it from behind.” She crawls over me and grips my chin. “But I want to see you.”
She takes me completely off guard. My face glitches, a single band rolling down my neck and chest. It fizzles out before it reaches my legs. I don’t know why I’m surprised: Celine has made it abundantly clear that she’s not disgusted by this form.
When she guides me back inside her and sinks down to ride me, it takes all my focus not to come. I think of monsters tearing each other to pieces. Barthol’s desiccated corpse lying broken on the ice. Crag doing literally anything.
It barely works. Celine has options. Devoted options. And while I’m confident in my ability to please her, I’m not arrogant enough to assume the others aren’t doing the same.
“The face stays?” I ask.
She nods. “The face stays.”
“What about this cock?” I ask, working a finger in beside it. “Do you want something bigger, darling?”
One of her eyebrows shoots up, and I focus carefully on the partial shift, holding her hips in place as I grow inside her.
She gasps. “T-that’s a neat trick.”
Using my grip on her waist, I drive her up and down, controlling the pace even with her on top. Celine takes it all, squeezing my neck with one hand and giving me the view of a lifetime while she rides me.
“Will you soak me again?” I intend for the question to sound confident. It comes out like I’m being actively strangled instead, which . . . I suppose I am in two places at once.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Do you want that?”
Is she serious? I nod, blood rushing to my head as my neck throbs.
“Here’s the thing, Riven.” Celine clenches around me, grinning evilly as she arches her spine. “I don’t do that on command. You’ll have to earn it.”
It’s a taunt. A challenge. And the confidence on her face is exactly what I’ve been missing since the gateway in Georgia turned red.
I sit up and flip Celine onto her back again, driving into her relentlessly. When she comes this time, she’ll take me with her, and I want this orgasm to be the best yet.
Our skin is slick with sweat, but it still takes effort to work my hand between our bodies. I twist my wrist, rubbing where we’re joined while pressing down on her pelvis with the heel of my other hand.
Celine’s head rolls back, and her mouth opens in a silent scream. I did that. She’s writhing for me. Pleasure like nothing I’ve ever felt before rolls through me. If I could make this moment last forever, I would give anything to make it happen.
Her face is relaxed—no hint of the stress and despair I’ve grown used to seeing this week. An unfamiliar sense of pride curls around my heart. I cradle her cheek and smile.
She frowns. “Riven, I asked you not to shift your face.”
What is she talking about? My stomach flips. “I didn’t change it,” I say, wincing as my face glitches, the telltale buzz of static rolling through the amber barrier.
Celine strokes my cheek, running her thumb over my lips. “For a few seconds there, you weren’t you. You were someone else.”
“Impossible.” I kiss her thumb to soothe the sting of my denial. “I felt no pain, darling. Shifting always hurts.”
Celine shrugs. “I didn’t imagine it. Maybe you didn’t notice.”
I open my mouth to argue. I didn’t shift. I’m sure of that. Unintentional shifts are for children, and if I wasn’t confident in my control, I would never have put Celine at risk by initiating a partial one while inside her.
My face is stinging, though, from my hairline to the tip of my chin, and I don’t have an explanation for that.
Celine kisses me, and I forget all about my face. Her lips are almost shy, moving against mine as if she’s asking a question. “We ruined this bed,” she says, wincing as she scoots away from the damp spot on the sheets.
I smirk. “We made it better, seasoning or something.”
She makes a disgusted face. “That’s gross. It’s a hotel bed, not a cast-iron skillet.”
I don’t understand the reference, and I don’t care to, so I scoop her up and head for the bathroom. “It’s a good thing we have two of them, then.”
The water from the shower stings my face, but I ignore it and focus on Celine, settling on the closed toilet in a towel after we’re done to watch her methodically rub lotion into her skin.
Neither of us speaks, but it’s not awkward.
I can’t help feeling as if I helped her—not with my shapeshifting cock—but by making her see herself.
If she needs me to do it again, I will. As many times as she needs me to.
And if she needs Malach, she’ll have him, too.
I don’t care about his character or how many angels we have to kill to make it happen.
As long as I’m around, Celine loses nothing else. S’lach wanted her broken. He told me to make it happen, and I failed. Now, I’m going to do the opposite. I only hope I’m better at this job than I was at my last.