Chapter 22 #2
The movement was fluid, deliberate, with no trace of submission except what she chose to make sacred. Her wet hair spilled over her shoulders and down her back in pale disarray. She looked up at me once from that place, and the sight was enough to make my hands clench.
Then she licked me.
A long, slow stroke from base to tip, tongue flat and warm, ending in a soft suction at the head that brought stars briefly to the edges of my vision.
I put one hand on the table behind me because men with centuries of discipline were still, at root, men.
Her hand worked the length she could not yet take while her mouth returned to the crown, lips parting, sealing, drawing me in inch by measured inch.
“Christ,” I said softly, though I had not meant to invoke anyone.
She made a pleased sound around me that vibrated down my cock and nearly took my knees with it.
My hand went to her hair.
I did not grab. I gathered. Wet silk over my fingers, heavier from the bath, cooler at the outer layers and warm near her scalp.
I drew it back from her face and held it there while she took more of me.
Her eyes never fully closed. They watched me from beneath dark lashes, bright with intent and the kind of devotion that turned power inside out until it became service.
She sucked harder. Worked her hand in counter-rhythm. Then eased back enough to swirl her tongue around the head before taking me deep in one smooth, startling glide that made my spine lock.
“Devon.”
My voice was wrecked. I did not care.
Her throat flexed around me. She swallowed once, purposely, and the restraint I had been cultivating all evening split with a soundless crack.
My fingers tightened in her hair—not cruelly, but enough to guide, enough to tell her exactly what pleasure she was making of me.
She let me. Followed the pressure beautifully.
Each pull of her mouth left me a little less capable of diplomacy with gravity.
“You are trying to kill me,” I said.
She drew off with a wet sound, stroked me firmly, and looked up. “Not before the war.”
Then she took me again before I could answer.
I was close too quickly. The body kept poorer secrets than the mind.
She knew it. The little smile that curved one corner of her mouth while she worked me with hand and lips said so.
I let my head tip back. Let the firelight press orange against my closed lids.
Let her have the sound I made when she took me deeper and used both hands at once in a rhythm that spoke of talent refined by wicked intelligence.
Enough.
If I let her continue much longer, I would come down her throat before I had offered her so much as one proper thank-you. I slid my hand under her arm, cupped the back of her neck with the other, and drew her gently away.
She blinked up at me, lips swollen, mouth shining, expression halfway between triumph and protest.
“Cruel again?” she asked.
“Preservational,” I said, breath rough. “For both of us.”
Before she could resume hostilities, I bent, got one arm under her knees and the other behind her back, and lifted her.
She gave a soft startled laugh and wrapped herself around me automatically, naked and damp and glorious against my chest.
“Bed,” I said.
“Excellent plan.”
I carried her there while the fire watched, while the golden sword waited in its half-closed case, and while every civilized intention I had left gave way to a more honest form of worship.
I laid her on the bed as if speed would have profaned the moment, though everything in me strained toward the opposite.
The sheets received her with a sigh, pale against her skin, and for one suspended breath I only looked at her—hair damp over the pillows, mouth still swollen from my taking, body open to me with the kind of trust that made monsters pray.
I climbed over her slowly.
My hands framed her face first. Thumbs along her jaw.
A kiss on her forehead because tenderness had become less embarrassing with practice.
Then lower. Her mouth. Her throat. The damp column of her neck where her pulse moved bright and alive beneath skin I knew too well to mistake for fragility.
I kissed the center of her chest, the upper slope of one breast, then took the nipple into my mouth until her back arched and her fingers found my hair with a little desperate force that pleased me beyond reason.
“Kazimir,” she whispered.
The bond carried more than the sound. Want. Trust. The sweet, fierce impatience she had whenever I turned methodical and made her wait for what she already knew I intended to give.
I answered without moving my mouth from her skin. Patience, svetoch.
She sent back a pulse of mock offense so vivid I nearly smiled against her breast.
My hand slid down her body. Over the soft plain of her belly.
Between her thighs. She was already slick, the heat of her opening flooding my fingers the instant I touched her.
I circled her clit once, twice, just enough to make her gasp and spread for me.
Then I coated myself with that welcome and settled between her legs.
Her eyes held mine.
That had become one of the sacred things. Not because either of us lacked shame in the ordinary sense. But because looking made lies impossible. There was no place for performance in a gaze like hers when I pressed the head of my cock to her entrance and felt her body tense in anticipation.
I went in slowly.
The first inch always felt like crossing a threshold built precisely to fit me and still somehow capable of astonishment.
Warm. Tight. Alive in a way no language ever reduced without insulting it.
She breathed in sharply, fingers tightening on my shoulders.
I held still. Let her adjust around me. Let my own body remember discipline rather than conquest.
More, she sent, not in words but with the determined little tilt of her hips.
I obeyed.
Another inch. Then another. Her mouth fell open.
My name touched the air, softer this time, and I kept my gaze on hers as I seated myself fully inside her.
The final depth stole a rough sound from both of us.
I braced my forearms beside her head and simply stayed there for a moment, buried deep, feeling the pulse of her around me and the answering strain in my own body.
No one had ever fit me like this. Not merely physically. Fatefully. Devastatingly.
I kissed her once, hard enough to mark the moment, and began to move.
Slow at first. Withdrawal measured. Return deliberate.
Every stroke a negotiation between restraint and the older, uglier instinct to lose myself in her and let consequences pant outside the door until morning.
She met me with equal intention, lifting into each thrust as if drawing me deeper by right rather than allowance.
The mattress whispered under us. Firelight shifted over the carved bedposts and caught on damp strands of her hair.
I heard her before she spoke—felt the swell of emotion through the bond like a tide rising against old stone.
Mine.
The word was not possessive in the human, petty sense. It was recognitional. Reverent. Terrible in its honesty.
I answered with a harder thrust that made her cry out. Yours.
Her lashes fluttered. Her body clenched around me at the thought.
That road between us remained the most dangerous miracle I had ever been granted. No diplomacy. No misinterpretation. Feeling arriving in its first language, before mouths could dress it up or hide its teeth.
I slid a hand between us and found her clit, stroking in a slow, relentless rhythm that matched the pace of my hips.
She broke beautifully under coordinated attention.
Her thighs widened. Her heels pressed into the bed.
Wings did not emerge, but I felt the instinct of them in the subtle shift of the air, that minute quickening around us when strong feeling brought her closer to every part of herself at once.
You are beautiful like this; I sent.
Her answer came tangled with breath. Then make me worse.
I nearly laughed. Instead, I dropped my forehead to hers and drove deeper.
The pace changed. Not wild. Never careless.
But fuller. Each stroke stronger, less diplomatic, the line of my body over hers turning from shield to pressure.
She took it with a greed that undid me. Her hands moved from my shoulders down my back, nails scoring lightly enough to provoke, not damage.
I kissed her mouth until neither of us could quite remember whose breath belonged where.
Then the hunger for her blood rose.
Not abrupt. Not feral. Familiar now, and because it was familiar, more dangerous. I lifted my head, watched her pupils widen in understanding, and traced the side of her throat with my mouth before I spoke.
“Tell me.”
“Yes,” she said instantly.
I let my fangs descend.
There remained something profoundly intimate in her willingness to bare herself for that.
She turned her head without fear, exposing the long white line of her neck, pulse beating quick beneath skin still flushed from my taking.
I licked once where I meant to pierce. Tasted salt, warmth, Devon. Then I bit.
Her body bowed under me.