Chapter 3 The Immortal’s Lair #2
What better way to prove her wrong about Hesperines than this? Her beliefs about his kind, her family, and herself would not survive three bites from him.
He would destroy her assumptions with his fangs, and he would taste her confession in her blood.
Not such a sacred act now, is it? taunted his darker self.
She wasn’t making it easy for him. Her gray mourning gown covered her from neck to ankles, and a scarf shrouded her head and throat.
“Will you unwrap your scarf for me?” he asked.
“It’s immodest for a woman to uncover her hair before a man who isn’t her husband.”
“I’m not a man. I’m a Hesperine.” He drew nearer. “And giving me your blood last night was far more immodest than showing me your hair.”
She bit her lip. What would that lip taste like? What would her teeth feel like biting him? He shut the thoughts away, but he could not ignore the snap of arousal in her scent or the blaze of her aura. Unruly, undimmable. Vital.
“Do you enjoy things you’ve been told are wrong, Nora?”
Her eyes flashed, and she snarled, “I am doing this for Gloria. Not myself. Don’t you dare forget it.”
She tore off the scarf and threw it on the ground. Her hair tumbled free, falling to her waist in wild red curls. Dav stopped breathing.
The scarf crumpled under his heel as he slipped behind her. She froze. When he lifted his hand, she didn’t shy away.
He wrapped one ginger curl around his finger. “What else are you hiding under your holy principles?”
“Things you cannot take from me, no matter what you do to me.”
“I will only take what you offer,” he reminded her. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
Are you not her worst fear?
He pulled the heavy curtain of her hair away from her neck. Letting its soft weight slide through his hands, he laid it over her other shoulder to leave her throat bare. He traced his fingertips along the sensitive juncture of her neck and shoulder and felt a shiver dance across her skin.
“Will you offer me your throat?” he asked.
“Yes.” The word came out in a husky whisper.
He covered her hand with his and pressed her palm amid the roses, bracing them against the marble carvings. A quiver of excitement went through her.
He buried his other hand in the tangle of her hair, tilting her head. The flow of her blood called to his arcane senses, a coppery pulse summoning his fangs. His canines ached, but he made himself wait.
He was in control. But she was not, judging by her racing heartbeat.
“Can you deny you want me to bite your throat?” he murmured.
“I’m offering it to you freely. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“No.” He lowered his head and kissed her neck.
He could taste the musk of her arousal on her skin. His deprived body rose to attention in the confines of his trousers. Goddess, why did this woman seem perfectly crafted to torture him?
“Admit it, Nora. You want my bite.”
“I have agreed to it.”
“You want it,” he ground out.
He closed his mouth over her vein and sucked her skin. His reward was a strangled little whimper from her. What would such an expressive woman sound like when she climaxed? Dav would wager a Hesperine could make her scream, and not from fright.
This time, he gave her no gentle bite. He took her vein fast and hard.
She cried out, an unmistakable sound of pleasure.
Her blood flowed warm and thick into his mouth, rich with the flavor of her lust. His own blood seemed to halt in his veins and wrench in a new direction.
His thoughts faded, and his body hardened.
He was still in control, he told himself. But she was on the brink of falling from her self-righteous pedestal. He pulled back, her blood trailing warm and wet down his chin. His lips left a crimson smear on her pale skin as he spoke in her ear. “Can you deny you like how my fangs feel inside you?”
“You can’t read my thoughts,” she accused.
“I don’t need to. I can taste it in you. You want me to bite you again, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
He sank his fangs into her once more. Her hand came to his face. But she didn’t push him away. Her fingers dug into his scalp, holding him to her vein with a vengeance.
His jaw locked, and he swallowed her lifeblood.
She was so alive. Rahim was dead. Dav begrudged Nora each beat of her heart.
But he drank down every surge of the elixir that heart pumped for him.
He didn’t want her here, weaving into his blood.
But his own heart pounded harder, driving her essence into the cold reaches of his veins and filling him with her warmth.
He tightened his bite, tugging on her hair. Her head fell back against his shoulder. Her shapeless gown could not disguise the fullness of her breasts or the way her chest rose and fell with a harsh sigh of pleasure. A savage desire overtook him to unbind the rest of her as he had her hair.
He slid his hand down to grip the column of her throat. Her pulse pattered faster under his touch. He slipped his fangs out of her neck and nipped her earlobe. “Can you deny that blush of yours goes all the way to your breasts?”
Her hand curled into a fist upon the wall. “My blood is all you’ll get from me.”
“You’ve already given me more than that. You didn’t promise me the flavor of your desire in the bargain.”
“Go to Hypnos.”
“Holy knights’ daughters aren’t supposed to swear by the god of death, either. But no one can hear you except a heretic. No one will ever know if you ask me to give you what you want.”
He drove his fangs back into her slowly. A moan escaped her. He began to suckle her, pleasuring her vein, teasing each sip out of her and onto his tongue. Her breath came faster.
Her hand slipped from his hair, coming to rest on his where he held her throat. Her nails dug into his hand, prying him off of her. Tugging his hand down to the laces on the front of her gown.
He took over, teasing apart her laces one by one. She whimpered in frustration. He went slower. She cursed him again, but yanked the loose portion of her bodice out of his way.
When her gown hung open to her belly, another layer of fabric got in his way. Finding another lace at her collar, he loosened the wide neck of her undergarment and pulled the fabric down.
A thick band of cloth wrapped around her chest, viciously tight. Dav felt an unexpected rush of anger at the binding that held her natural figure in a vise. With a whip of levitation, he tore it off of her. She gasped as her breasts swung free.
He could make an entire banquet off of them after he was done with her blood. He swept his forearm under the heavy globes, pressing them up toward him. Just as he’d imagined, a rosy flush swept all the way down to her taut nipples.
She shifted her head to look down at what he was doing to her. The motion tugged against his fangs, sending a jolt of pleasure through him. He wrapped his hand around one breast and massaged her, and there came an echoing jolt of pleasure in her aura.
Her whole body tensed, as if she were fighting to hold still. He kept kneading and teasing her breasts, dragging at her vein. Her fist uncurled, and she flattened her hand on the wall. He pressed his fingers between hers, trapping her.
Her blood escaped his lips, trickling down past her collarbone, over the swell of her breast. He caught the crimson trail on his fingers. When he swept the warm liquid over her nipple, the peak drew tighter. He played with the tight bud between his slippery fingers.
She arched back against him, pressing into his straining trousers. Through her thick skirts, he felt an impression of wide hips and full buttocks. The foretaste of her release enriched her blood and filled him with a sense of triumph.
He would not bed her. But he would make her climax against this wall.
He suckled her relentlessly, giving her breasts no mercy from his hand. Her divine pleas dissolved in wordless mewls. Her free hand struck the wall, seeking purchase.
At last, her shocked outcry echoed through the chamber. She came apart, grinding back against him, a wanton mirror of his goddess. He tasted her prim self-control explode into pure, carnal defiance.
He had thought he knew the flavor of a woman’s ecstasy, but no lover of his had ever tasted like this. He shouted against her throat, his body pounding with vicarious pleasure, aching in the grip of his own hunger.
When the crest of her release faded from her blood, and her body calmed, she still rubbed softly back against him, panting.
He gave her neck a long lick. “That barely took the edge off, did it?”
“Oh, gods,” she uttered.
“Only Hespera can hear your prayers.” He braced his feet, nudging the ridge of his erection in the gentle groove he could feel through her skirts. “Do you know why Hesperines prefer willing humans?”
She canted her hips, exploring how they fit together. “Because you’re manipulative bastards, that’s why.”
“Because free Will is sacred to Hespera. We never violate a mortal’s power of choice. This is up to you. If you want more, you must ask for it.”
Her curious movements were a guileless, wicked tease.
“Is this an offer?” he gritted.
She stilled, trembling. He sensed a battle raging in her, an old one that had always been tearing her apart.
It ended in surrender. She leaned forward against the wall and stretched her back, offering her hips into his waiting hands.
“Ask me, Nora.”
He heard her swallow. Then her whisper. “Take my body, too.”
He would not bed her. He would thrust inside her right here.
He leaned his weight into her, pressing her closer to the wall.
He wanted to sample a different side of her neck as he discovered just how wet his first drink had left her.
Sweeping her hair to her other shoulder, he yanked the layers of her clothes down to her elbows, trapping her arms at her sides.