Chapter 9
Rowan
Holy bloody stars. I gasp as Kai’s face disappears between my thighs, his mouth moving with deliberate slowness that must be designed to drive me insane.
With my one leg on Kai’s shoulder and his powerful hands holding me open, I can do nothing but feel as he licks his way up the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, igniting a trail of shivers that ricochet straight to my core.
His breath is a hot contrast to the cold water swirling around us, and the dampness now slicking my folds has nothing to do with the stream.
“Don’t fight your pleasure,” Kai orders, his words tickling my skin.
I don’t know what I hate more, that he’s ordering me around even now… or that a part of me likes it.
I grip his shoulders, my nails digging into him harder than strictly necessary for balance.
Or maybe it’s not hard enough because he just nuzzles in further and inhales.
I can’t imagine I smell good between my thighs, but when Kai lifts his face for a moment, he wears a shimmering haze of water and want. Dark and starved and unguarded.
Then his head is down again, his tongue delving between the lips of my sex, tracing intricate, almost cruelly complex patterns, circling in closer to my swelling apex. Closer still.
I can’t help the humiliating whimper that rattles out of me, and I bite my lip to keep from moaning too loudly—but it’s pointless, really, given the way the fae watch us from the banks, their eyes gleaming, their lips parted in anticipation or jealousy or both. The way I know Theron is watching us.
Kai’s mouth finally beaches the last millimeter of distance to my need’s center and I gasp, my hips canting up in a traitorous, eager motion.
I try to pull back but Kai growls a warning into me, the vibration a lightning bolt straight through my core.
And then, just in case that wasn’t enough, follows it with a sharp nip.
“Don’t fight your pleasure,” Kai says again, readjusting my leg over his shoulder as he grips my backside with his free hand. “Especially if you would like to keep breathing on a regular basis.”
Breathing on a regular basis. It takes my desire drunk mind a heartbeat to process the words.
Right. The act. Kai isn’t worshipping me, he is worshipping the pact we made.
But stars take me—he is very good at it.
His calloused hands are unyielding as he grounds me against the slick boulder, his canines scraping against my skin, trailing ever closer to my apex.
The tiny prickles of pain ignite arousal I’ve no hope of controlling.
Suddenly Kai’s tongue flicks directly against that swollen, aching bud, and my entire body jolts. I cry out, unable to contain the sound as he does it again, and again, relentless now where before he'd been teasing.
"Kai—" I gasp, my fingers tangling in his hair, unsure if I'm trying to pull him closer or push him away.
He doesn't respond with words. Instead, his mouth seals around my clit and he sucks, gently at first, then with increasing pressure that has my thighs trembling against his ears.
The dual sensation of his tongue flicking against me while his lips create that perfect suction is too much. Far too much.
The tension coils in my lower belly. I tremble, my head thrown back, my eyes squeezed shut against the overwhelming pleasure. I can't think about the fae watching us, can't worry about Theron's eyes boring into my back. There is only this—only Kai and the relentless fire blazing through my blood.
"I can't—" I choke out, but he slides one finger inside me, curving it upward to stroke against a spot that makes stars burst behind my eyelids.
The release strikes though my core without warning, tearing a scream from my throat. My body arches, every muscle seizing as sparks of pleasure ignite outward in a chain reaction from where his mouth is still working my engorged nub.
As the tremors subside, Kai lifts his head, his mouth glistening, and runs the tip of his tongue over his canines. Lapping the last bits of my juices on him.
"Beautiful," I hear Theron smack out from somewhere nearby, his voice thick with something I don't have the capacity to analyze right now but know I hate.
Ignoring the slime Theron’s words just cast over us, I slide my hands down Kai’s arms, the muscles beneath my grip taut and unyielding. I can feel the strength in him, the power that he holds in check. The magic that vibrates inside him. And the darkness.
Dipping my head, I run the tip of my tongue along Kai’s ear and the leashed violence inside him roars inside my soul. He groans. The sound is low and primal. And not at all human.
“Stop that,” he demands through clenched teeth, his chest heaving as if he’d been running. Even the shadows leaking from him are pulsating.
I grin savagely and lean down to croon into his ear. “Don’t fight your pleasure, prince. Especially if you would like to keep breathing on a regular basis.”
Lifting my head for a heartbeat, I meet him glare for glare and slowly, deliberately, take the tip of his ear back into my mouth.
And suckle it like a sweet.
His responding desire is evident in the water, rising hard and insistent against my thigh. I feel him blazing, even through the cool stream, his body vibrating with the same bloody need he’d made me feel moments earlier.
Unholy satisfaction echoes through me. Yes. Two can play this game.
I slide one hand into his hair, twining the wet blond strands in my fingers. His body’s response is as savagely satisfying as the flash of renewed fury across his face.
Kai's mouth crashes against mine, his teeth sinking into my lower lip with a force that's equal parts punishment and passion.
The coppery taste of blood mingles with the water around us, but I don't care.
Liquid heat is filling my core, radiating outward, pouring through my veins.
The feel of his claiming tongue in my mouth is a taunt of what can happen. A threat.
And despite everything, despite the watching eyes, the cold water, the hard stone beneath me—the knowledge that all this is but an act—I want more.
I crave it. I bite back, my teeth scraping against his lip, drawing a low growl from deep within his chest. His shadows swirl around us like sheets of black silk writhing in a storm, blocking out the prying eyes of the fae, but I know they're still there, watching, waiting.
Kai grips my hips, his fingers digging into my flesh with a bruising force. "Stop playing with fire, little alchemist," he says against my mouth, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "You’ll get burned."
“Try me.” I trail my teeth over his wet skin and run the tip of my tongue along his neck, right before sinking them into the sensitive flesh.
Kai jerks then plunges his fingers back inside me.
Filling me with a sudden intensity that steals my breath away.
On the heels of release, the sensation is overwhelming, a harsh and skilled invasion that sends shockwaves of pleasure so intense it crosses into pain, coursing through my body.
His thumb finds my clit with unerring precision, circling it in a rhythm that matches my heart’s hammering.
My desire throbs, as if the satisfaction that it had gotten moments earlier had never happened.
I gasp, throwing back my head, my back arching as I try to first escape the intrusion and—failing that—seek it more.
To take in more of him, to deepen the contact.
The water around us churns with our movements, splashing against our skin.
Kai's eyes grip mine, his pupils dilated with lust and something darker, something more possessive.
Inside me, his fingers move with a relentless pace, driving me higher and higher, pushing me towards the edge of ecstasy.
I can feel the tension building inside me, a coil of heat and need that threatens to again consume me entirely.
It’s beyond what my body can handle. I’m sure of it.
My nails leave bloody crescents in Kai’s skin.
My breath comes in short, sharp pants, my chest heaving with the effort to contain the storm of sensation that's raging inside me.
I try to hold back, to maintain some semblance of control, but it's a futile effort.
Kai's touch is too skilled, too knowing.
He plays me like an instrument, drawing out sounds and sensations I didn't know I was still capable of.
A second orgasm tears through me like an earthquake.
Every muscle tightens. The release is even more potent than the first. So much so that it hurts.
A searing, exquisite pain that blurs the line between pleasure and agony.
My channel convulses around Kai's fingers, my inner muscles clenching and unclenching in a desperate, futile attempt to withstand the after shocks that threaten to undo me.
It’s an eternity until the wave of sensation begins to ebb.
Until I can draw breath, shaky as it is.
But Kai shows no mercy. His hand moves again, fingers curling expertly inside me, stroking that spot that sends fresh shockwaves of sensation coursing through my body all over again.
As if nothing that happened before bloody counted.
I try to scream but his mouth covers mine, swallowing my cries and claiming me with possessive strokes that leave no room for me to do anything.
The kiss is brutal and possessive. A reflection of the primal, savage being that he is.
And yet, somehow, that only spurs my desire to come again.
And to rip him into shreds. In any order.
Before I can manage the latter, another release comes.
It's too much—too intense, too consuming.
My body shudders violently, my hips bucking against his hand as I ride out the crest of this new wave.
My nails rake Kai’s back. He takes it all, absorbing my pain, my pleasure, my screams. His eyes, those cold, glacial ice blue eyes, bore into mine, unyielding and relentless.
They anchor me, ground me, even as the rest of the world falls away, dissolving into a haze of raw, primal sensation.
I hold onto him to keep from being swept away entirely by the force of everything that’s coursing through my blood.
My heart hammers. My core throbs. Kai's fingers are slick with my arousal as his palm slides up my abdomen, shifting to get around the curve of my belly button. My belly button. That’s what he’s careful to not disturb. I—
A guttural noise disturbs my mind’s fog. Despite the warning of Kai’s tightening arms, I turn about, my breath still coming in ragged gasps.
Theron stands closer than I’d expected, his eyes locked onto us as hungrily as his hand is locked onto his cock.
“Don’t stop now,” he huffs at us irritably, the sounds of his grunting growing louder and more insistent, his arm muscles flexing as he continues to pleasure himself.
“Unless you find the girl has grown boring for you, Prince of Slait?”