Chapter 21 #3
I let her have my mouth, then take hers back with interest, one hand braced behind her, the other roaming with restraint that feels more like torture than virtue.
Her clothes shift beneath my fingers, then give.
Skin appears in fleeting, incendiary glimpses as I bare Eira Cross inch by maddening inch.
Her body is all tension and reaction, furious at its own responsiveness, and I am drunk on the contradiction.
I undress her slowly because it is the only way I can keep from tearing the fabric off with my teeth.
One button at a time. A kiss for every inch of skin I reveal.
My mouth grazes her shoulder, then the elegant line of her collarbone, and the shudder that runs through her feels as though it passes through me first. Her hands are everywhere, at my shoulders, in my hair, on my chest, each touch a demand she would never voice cleanly.
‘Squisito,’ I tell her, the word from the country of my birth dragged from somewhere rough and dark inside me. ‘Do you have any idea what you do to me?’
My fingers slide lower, peeling away another layer, and fury flashes hot in my blood at the sight of her. At the way she lies there and undoes me without trying.
I praise her because I cannot seem to stop. Her skin. Her scent. The tremble in her breath. The pulse beating wildly beneath my lips.
Each compliment sounds too reverent to my own ears.
The truth is worse.
Reverence is exactly what this feels like, and I resent her for making a creature like me feel it.
‘Why the fuck do I allow this? When you smell all—’
‘Do not tell me I smell wrong again, Moretti. You’ll hurt my feelings. And then I’ll have to— Uunhmph!’
I pinch her nipple to stop her words.
She glares at me even as her back arches off the sofa, chasing the pleasurable pain.
‘I was about to say you smell uniquely you. Maddeningly intoxicating.’
Her eyes widen a touch. ‘Oh, well… carry on then,’ she mutters, as a flush creeps up her neck.
I want to chase it with my tongue, then the graze of my teeth.
Instead, I splay her vest open, the sheer number of visible and hidden weapons impressive enough to give me momentary pause.
Then she trembles.
And I burn with the effort of restraint.
I drag her trousers off and drop to my knees between her thighs, a position that gives me what I want. Her parted legs. Her breath catching. The full, unbearable sight of her unfettered breasts, rose-tipped and heaving, begging for my mouth.
I anchor one hand on her hip hard enough to remind myself she is real, then drag the other slowly up the back of her leg, feeling the tension in her muscles, the tremor she cannot hide.
I do not go near her collarbone or throat because if I feel her pulse beneath my lips, I may lose what remains of my mind.
So I kiss down her sternum with a patience that feels like torment, skating over silky skin to one tight peak.
I lick and tease her nipple into my mouth.
And fuck, she is exactly what I called her in my mother tongue.
Exquisite.
Warm and alive enough that my fangs threaten rebellion again. I let my eyes drift shut, as much to concentrate as to savour, linger on the opposite peak, and pray to the Gods of the underworld that this infuriating woman will not ruin me with a taste of skin.
‘Stay still,’ I murmur, voice low and frayed. ‘Let me look at you.’
I should hate how much I want this. Want her. But the lie dies before it forms.
I am already lost.
‘Exquisite,’ I repeat, grip tightening when she trembles again. ‘Do you hear me, little hunter? You make monsters out of men who were doing perfectly well pretending they were stone.’
I spread her exactly as I want her, look up into her face with fury and desire warring in equal measure, then down at her cotton-covered pussy.
One insubstantial rip and her panties are useless shreds on my floor.
And I loose an unstoppable groan at the sight of Eira’s beautiful cunt.
I spread her wider, rabid to see every sublime, drenched shape of her. She squirms, self-consciousness flickering across her face as she tries to close her legs.
‘No. You will show me what I mean to feast on.’
Her flush deepens.
My tongue darts out, anticipation dragging across my lips.
Then I swoop, burying my mouth in her slick cunt.
She gasps and grabs for me, and I close my eyes for one brutal second, half maddened by the taste of her, half enraged that I could kneel here like this and still feel it is not enough.
That it might never be enough.
Which is absurd.
I grunt and growl as I taste and suckle and feast. As she rewards pleasure with increased wetness I am only too eager to drink down. Sweet horned demons, but I could eat her for eternity and it would not be enough.
Is she a fucking witch? Some sort of demoness, able to cast this spell on me?
‘Ah… oh Gods,’ she gasps, fingers delving deeper into my hair, pulling at the roots.
The pain barely registers, but the frantic grip swells my cock thicker, releasing eager, desperate spurts of pre-cum into my trousers.
Stars above, any more and I will blow wide open. Regress to a base creature without control of its impulses.
‘Oh… that feels… Right there!’
I suck, then toss the pebble of her swollen clit over and over my tongue, revelling in the keening sound growing higher in her throat. I barely manage to slot one finger shallowly into her tight channel before she’s screaming.
Her hips pump, grinding against my face, her whole body shaking as slick pours from her, and I cannot stop groaning as I devour it.
For this taste alone, Eira Cross has earned herself a modicum of leeway to sass and snark.
Not much. But I will allow wider parameters. Because this taste… this sensation. Power.
Unique.
Like her.
When she climaxes a second, glorious time, it is with my mouth still fused to her cunt, one hand on her collar-covered throat, basking in the echoing pulses from both vital, beautiful places, and the other curved possessively at her waist.
Her body goes taut, then shatters in waves against mine, the sound she makes low and stunned, as if she did not expect pleasure to betray her so completely.
For one suspended moment, I can do nothing but hold her.
Her breath is ragged, her fingers trembling where they clutch my shirt.
My own body is a live weapon I have not yet sheathed. I am still forcing my fangs down, still deciding whether I am more relieved or enraged that I stopped where I did, when Malachi’s voice strikes across my mind like flint.
Sire, we have a problem.
I go still.
Eira feels it at once. Her lashes flutter open, dazedness clearing by degrees as she tracks the shift in me, the way every line of my body tightens.
‘What?’ she asks, breathless and suspicious. ‘What happened?’
Malachi does not hesitate.
The teleporter. Tezra.
A pause, brief and lethal.
He has been killed.
The words detonate.
Eira’s eyes lock on mine, climax stripping her expression raw even as she tries too late to pull composure over it.
Outside my quarters, I feel Malachi moving closer, mind sharpened for briefing and damage control.
Inside, in the wake of pleasure and threat and death, the room turns abruptly cold.
And in my arms, my little hunter goes rigid with alarm.