12. Chapter 12 #3
The room seemed to grow smaller around us. Not trapping. Concentrated. My pulse should not have mattered anymore, but something beat hard inside me, anyway.
“You say things like that very calmly,” I whispered.
“If I said them less calmly, I might frighten you.”
I believed that. I also suspected he might frighten himself.
I shifted, slowly, until I sat more fully across his lap. The sleep shirt rode up my thighs. His hands did not move there. He kept one on my back, the other braced loosely against the mattress as if giving himself something safe to hold.
The restraint was so obvious it became its own kind of touch.
Maksym extended his wrist to me.
The inside of it faced upward, pale and strong, blue veins faint beneath skin that had known centuries and still appeared unmarked there. I stared at it, and hunger woke instantly.
Not polite hunger. Not hesitant. My mouth watered.
“Visualize letting your fangs descend,” he said. “Do not force. Invite. Then the venom. Let it flow when you bite. It will ease the pain for me.”
Pain for him. The thought troubled me more than I expected.
“Will it hurt?”
“Remember how I taught you? It will hurt if you don’t help.”
I looked at his wrist again. His blood lived beneath that skin.
I could smell it now that I knew what to notice. Dark. Rich. Powerful enough that my gums ached before I tried to make anything happen.
My fangs dropped on their own.
The sensation startled me—a quick, sharp slide, as natural as flexing fingers I had forgotten I owned. Maksym saw it and stilled.
“Good,” he murmured.
The approval went through me low and hot. I leaned down.
“Grace,” he said.
I paused, fangs hovering above his wrist.
“Take what you need. Remember to will your venom to flow as well.”
I bit.
His skin gave beneath my fangs with a resistance that lasted less than a heartbeat. Then heat filled my mouth.
Maksym’s blood did not taste like the blood wine. That had been nourishment made civilized. This was power.
Hot, dark, alive in a way that made no biological sense. It rolled over my tongue with copper and smoke and something almost sweet beneath the iron, something that made my throat work before I chose to swallow. My hands caught his forearm. Not to hold him down. To hold myself in place.
A sound left me. Low. Embarrassing. Mine.
Maksym’s hand resumed its slow circles on my back.
I felt the muscle in his arm shift beneath my mouth as my tongue moved instinctively against the punctures. Press. Draw. Swallow. Again. My body knew the rhythm.
The room filled with quiet sounds. My breathing through my nose. The wet pull of my mouth at his wrist. Maksym’s low exhale when the venom must have entered him. A faint shift outside the closed door. My eyes opened. Taras.
I could hear him beyond the room. Not at the threshold, not crowding the space. Guarding. His weight shifted once, nearly silent, then stilled. The palace had arranged itself around my rest and Maksym’s protection so completely that even embarrassment had to wait its turn.
Maksym’s fingers spread over my back.
“Do not worry about him,” he said softly. “He hears enough to know you are safe. Nothing more matters.”
A laugh tried to rise around his wrist and became another moan instead. Because safe was not the only thing I was.
Maksym’s length hardened beneath me.
There was no pretending otherwise. I sat across his lap in a thin sleep shirt, mouth locked to his wrist, drinking his blood while his hand moved over my back and his body responded with a frankness that made heat pool low in my belly.
He did not grind against me. Did not shift to force contact.
He simply existed beneath me, aroused and restrained, which may have been the cruelest combination available.
My hips rolled once before I gave them permission. Pleasure sparked. I froze, fangs still in his wrist. Maksym’s hand stilled, then moved again, slower.
“Use me, Grace. Take your pleasure,” his voice was just above a whisper.
The words went straight through me.
I swallowed another mouthful of blood. Heat slid down my throat and bloomed outward.
My nipples tightened beneath cotton. My thighs parted slightly over him.
The pressure between my legs built with humiliating speed, sharpened by hunger, blood, bond, and that he watched me as if there were no throne, no kingdom, no family, no war—only me and the way I shook against him.
“You are beautiful,” he said.
I made a protesting sound. It convinced no one.
My tongue worked against the wounds again, and he groaned. Quietly. Barely.
But I heard it. Felt it in his chest, in his thighs beneath mine, in the bond’s dark answering pull.
His desire did not feel like Lucian’s. That mattered so much I nearly broke apart from the comparison.
Lucian’s hunger had been consumption, a hand closing around the throat of the world.
Maksym’s was held open. Offered. Controlled so I could choose whether to step toward it.
I rocked against him again. This time, I knew what I was doing.
The seam of my underwear pressed exactly where I needed it.
My breath hitched around his wrist. I drank more deeply, and the pleasure built, curling through my spine.
Maksym’s arm flexed under my hands. His other hand moved from circles to a slow, grounding pressure at my back, guiding nothing, allowing everything.
“Good,” he said, voice rougher now. “That is it. I am yours.”
The orgasm gathered differently than before.
Not like the shocking, involuntary detonation that had come with my first feeding.
This one climbed. Slow enough to frighten me.
Strong enough to make my hands tighten on his arm, nails pressing into skin.
My hips rolled once more, then again, seeking friction with an honesty I would have denied in court.
Maksym bent his head. His lips touched my temple.
“You have taken enough,” he said.
Not a command. A warning. A care. The words tipped me over.
Pleasure broke through me hard enough that I tore my mouth from his wrist with a gasped moan. My whole body tightened, then shuddered. I heard myself say his name, not elegantly, not carefully, just “Maksym” dragged from my throat like a confession I had not authorized.
His hand held steady at my back while I shook. His wrist bled against my fingers.