Chapter 4 Fire & Fangs #2
“That’s it. You haven’t forgotten how to be wet for me, have you, beautiful?” I murmur, and then my mouth is on her.
Elara keens, her hips bucking up into my face as my tongue drags through her folds, slow and deliberate, as if I were savoring a fine wine. My hands grip her thighs, spreading her wider, holding her open for my feast.
The first stroke of my tongue against her clit makes her fingers claw at the furs beneath her, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “Sweet Gods, Lucien—please—”
I don’t answer, not with words.
Instead, my mouth seals over her hot pussy, my tongue working in relentless, swirling motions, lips sucking at her clit until she’s caught in savage shudders, babbling incoherently.
I glory in the sight of my Elara trembling, so fucking close to the edge that I can taste her coming undone before it happens. I drag my tongue over her, slow, deliberate, and when my fangs graze that sensitive bundle of nerves, the sting of it tips her over.
The sound she makes wrecks me.
Her climax rips through her in waves, her back bowing off the bed, a broken cry tearing from her throat.
I drink her down, lapping at her release like salvation, my growls vibrating against her oversensitive flesh until she shudders again, pleading incoherently for mercy I have no intention of giving.
When she finally collapses back against the furs, boneless and trembling, I kiss my way up her body, over her stomach, her ribs, the soft undersides of her breasts, and each press of my lips a promise I never stopped keeping.
When I reach her mouth, I claim it in a bruising kiss. She tastes of herself—musky, sweet, holy—and I can’t get enough. She moans into me, fingers fisting in my hair, dragging me closer, as if she could crawl inside my skin and live there.
“Again,” I command, my voice a velvet growl against her lips, more prayer than order.
She stares at me, helpless, caught in savage need, and she nods, breathless, trembling, radiant in surrender. “Yes. Please.”
I don’t make her wait.
I’ve never been capable of patience where she’s concerned. My hands find her thighs again, spreading her even wider, and when she opens up for me with the grace of a prima donna ballet dancer, I descend with a hunger that steals her breath and very nearly my sanity.
There’s no teasing this time, no slow worship.
I dive into her, tongue thrusting deep, thick and relentless, my nose pressed against her clit as I devour her like I’ve been starved for centuries—because I have.
The taste of her hits me like blood and the devil’s own benediction, and I groan into her, the sound rough, reverent, desperate.
Her fingers twist tighter in my hair, her hips rising to meet every stroke. When her walls clench around me, it’s like being claimed in return.
Her cries fill the room, raw and beautiful, and then she shatters, her second release tearing through her harder than the first.
I hold her there, trembling and wild beneath my hands, until the last wave breaks and she goes still, spent and shaking, her scent clinging to my tongue like the sweetest ambrosia.
I lick her clean and my hands grip and convulse on her hips before rising to my knees. My cock strains against my trousers, the outline filthy and obscene, and when I finally free it, Elara’s breath hitches.
Even to my eyes, I’m absurdly huge, thick and veined and desperate, my crown already glistening with pre-cum. I can’t help it…I stroke myself once, slowly, my gaze locked with hers, and I see her pussy clench at the sight, flushed and empty and aching.
“Now,” I say, my voice a hoarse and messy command. “You’re going to take my beast inside you, aren’t you, love?”
With a whimper, she reaches for me with ravenous hands to guide me to her sodden entrance.
The first press of my cock against her is an insane tease, the broad head parting her folds just enough to make her whine.
Then I surge forward, burying myself to the hilt in one brutal thrust and unhinged roar. Elara gasps and her nails dig into my ass as her body stretches to accommodate my size.
I freeze above her, my breath ragged and my forehead pressed, ignoring my body’s agonized demand, to give her…us…a moment to adjust.
“Fuck, I’ve forgotten how tight you are,” I groan, my voice barely coherent and strained. “Like a fucking vice.”
She shakes and shakes, and then she rocks her hips experimentally, testing the stretch, and my cock twitches inside her, making us both groan again.
“Move, Lucien” she demands, her voice thick with need. “Or I’ll die.”
I pull out slowly, almost all the way, before slamming back in, the force of it driving the air from her lungs. She cries out, but the sound is lost in the wet slap of flesh as I set a punishing pace, hips snapping as I pound into my lost and found love.
Each thrust sends her sliding up the bed, her breasts bouncing gloriously with the motion, her pussy clenching around me, greedy and wet and so fucking sublime, constellations shine brighter in worship.
“Mine,” I growl, leaning down to capture her mouth in a savage kiss, my fangs scraping her lips. My hand slide between us and my thumb finds her clit, circling it in time with my thrusts. “Say it.”
She’s too far gone to deny me. “Yours,” she gasps, her body tightening around me, her orgasm building like a gathering storm. “Only yours—”
My cock swells inside her, and my rhythm falters as her walls flutter around me, milking me. With a roar, I tunnel myself deep and I come hard, my release pulsing into her, hot and thick, filling her as her own climax wrings every last shudder from her body.
I collapse onto her and neither of us cares that my weight presses her into the furs. Only that my heart pounds against hers, echoing our union.
For a long moment, there’s only the sound of our ragged, frantic breathing, the magnificent scent of sex and sweat heavy in the air. A smell I never thought I’d experience again.
But already I’m anxious and ravenous for the sight of her beautiful face, so I lift my head, my eyes searching hers, my fangs still bared because this hunger…this manic need…is nowhere near sated.
“It’s been two and a half centuries, love,” I remind her, my voice a dark promise, “I’m nowhere near done with you. Next time, I’m doing what I should’ve done last time. I’m marking you.”
Elara smiles, her thumb brushing over my lower lip, tracing the sharp point of a fang, fearless when it almost draws blood. “Next time,” she echoes, her voice a challenge, “I will let you.”
I kiss her impertinent mouth as her hands begin to explore me, tentative at first, then bolder, palms skimming old strength, old sin.
When I lift my head, her gaze travels over my shoulder.
Then around the room.
I tense a little when her storm-grey eyes return to me. “You kept me on your walls,” she says before returning her attention to the portraits beyond my shoulder.
“I kept you everywhere,” I admit, discarding my shame. She’s my weakness. From the first. There’s no point denying it. “Walls. Words. The empty side of the bed.” I kiss the corner of her mouth. “There was nowhere you weren’t, my Elara.”
Her laugh is small and broken, her eyes misting a little. “My beautiful madman.”
My lips travel to the corner of one eye, eager to taste her tears. “Yours.” The affirmation is simple. Unequivocal.
Then I hush her with my mouth again, deeper now, suck her tongue into my mouth and the world falls to its barest essentials: heat, blood, the rip of furs and sheets and the give of mattress, the pull of gravity as we move together.
I take my time undressing myself since I didn’t get around to it yet.
And when she lifts her hands to help, I let her feel each fastening like a stubborn century I’ve waited impatiently for her to undo.
She trembles beautifully at every inch of ravaged skin she bares, not from fear this time but from the voltage running between us, and I murmur nonsense against her shoulder until the trembling becomes a rhythm we can both survive.
“Look at me,” I say, when the last barrier slips and the last stitch falls away.
She does.
The portraits watch from the dark, but her gaze holds me in our own private orbit.
I brace my forehead to hers, both of us breathing hard.
“I’m going to fuck you again now, my love.
Harder and longer than before. We will pass the point of savagery but I know you can take it.
And when you’re at the point of madness, I’m going to mark you,” I remind her.
“So thoroughly that whatever they’ve done to you will not matter.
We will vanquish it and laugh as we do. Because…
this is ours. Not theirs. Never theirs.”
Her eyes locks on mine. Bold and unafraid in this moment. Then her throat moves in a swallow. “Then let’s take it,” she whispers. “Let’s take it all back.”
I move.
Slow, possessive, reverent at first. Like prayer, and maybe like penance, like I can convince the night itself to grant us a second chance or risk me taking it by force.
She answers me with gasps that turn to pleas, with hands that hitch me closer, with a desperate litany of my name that makes the stars on the ceiling feel newly charted.
The fire gulps air and flares; shadows climb the walls and kiss every painted version of her until the room is a chorus of Elaras. The bed creaks its complaint and I don’t care; I want the house to remember this, to hold the echo in the brick.
When she breaks with a fierce, startled sound that shivers all the way through me, I hold on and follow, drowning with purpose, breath torn from my chest like a confession I should have made centuries ago. We ride it until the world steadies, until the ceiling constellations stop their slow spin.
Silence after. Not cold. The warm kind that happens when two storms finally choose the same sky.
I gather her close, kiss her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. “No more running,” I say, softer than I mean to. “No matter what comes, no more.”