Chapter 36 #2
He didn’t retaliate. Just pulled away from my lips, pressed a series of even softer kisses down my jaw, and murmured, ‘Patience, Thraga.’
To the misty halls of hell with that.
I needed more than this – so, so much more.
But I clawed at his head and found him unmoving, tried to grind my burning body against his cock and discovered his hand on my hip wouldn’t let me.
When I reached down, palm aching for that taunting hardness, he batted me away almost thoughtlessly – then released my hip to pin my wrist against the wall, his fingers unyielding iron on my skin.
A curse escaped me.
He let out a quiet hmm, tugging back my head so he could trail his mouth down my throat. ‘Did you say something?
‘Go to hell,’ I managed, then gasped at a feathery graze of teeth over my skin. Every inch of me was aflame with need – like white-hot steel, aching for the hammer to come. ‘And let me fucking touch you.’
‘You do seem to be touching me.’ His hand slid from my nape to my jaw, thumb brushing my lower lip as he kissed his way up the side of my neck again. ‘All that skin at your disposal. What more could you possibly want?’
The urge to kick him was overwhelming – but then again, so was every other urge in me. I bit down hard on his thumb. He laughed, a sound of such genuine delight that I wanted to melt on the spot, then retaliated by pulling free and viciously pinching my nipple.
‘Fuck,’ I yelped.
‘Hmm?’ His hand enveloped my breast, not nearly as rough as I wanted him to be, thumb drawing a slow, taunting circle. ‘I didn’t catch that, I’m afraid.’
‘You bast— Oh.’ He’d flicked his thumb over my nipple again, and the sensation shot straight down into my lower belly, down between my thighs. I dug the fingers of my free hand into his shoulder, made another hopeless attempt to wriggle free, and gasped, ‘Please. Please— I just—’
He paused – holding me, waiting.
For a single heart-stopping moment, the words faltered on my lips.
Oh, no. I’d been here before, spinning and speechless. And that was not going to happen again – it was not – because I was no longer looking to numb myself, to drown out my fear and doubt and heartache. I just wanted. I just craved, and if he needed to hear me say it …
Words, Thraga.
‘Fuck me,’ I said on a rush of breath. ‘Fuck me, please. And then you can go right back to your rational life for all I care, hell knows I shouldn’t want you either – but we’re both alive and I want to feel it, so do your worst, and also, I want your cock in my hands now. Please.’
‘Excellent,’ he murmured against my forehead, then easily nudged my hand away as I lowered it again. ‘And no.’
‘I said please!’
‘I don’t fuck obligingly, thorn of mine.’ The edge in his voice sent tight shivers coursing through every nerve in my body. ‘You’re getting what you want, the way I want it. I suggest you learn to go along with it.’
Had I thought I was on fire before? The heat rising through me now would barely let me string two coherent words together, a tightening in my core unlike anything I’d known in my life. ‘You shameless bastard.’
The corner of his mouth curled. ‘So much for asking nicely.’
‘As if you’d listen,’ I gasped – except, of course, that he would.
If I stopped insulting him and told him to step back, I knew with bone-deep certainty he’d pull his hands off me before I could finish the first word …
but hell, what was the fun in that? ‘Take that smug grin off your face. You haven’t won yet. ’
‘Oh, I know.’ His fingers curled beneath my chin, nudged my face up to meet his gaze. His voice was soft, suddenly. ‘I adore it.’
It held the weight of absolute truth.
I thought for a flash of a moment he’d say more, our gazes locked for a heartbeat of deafening silence – and then he released my chin and kissed me again, hard and demanding, crushing me against the stone behind my back with the force of weeks of pent-up longing.
Just like that, it was frantic. I clawed for his hair, found the hard ridges of his horns under my fingers; he gave a breathless snarl as I brushed the ribbed surface.
He grabbed my thighs and lifted me; I wrapped my legs around his hips.
Water splashed around us, cold stone scraped across my back, and his cock—
Hell take me, his cock.
I gasped against his mouth as inches and inches of silky steel slid between my thighs, teasing but not entering – a single stroke across the core of me, and my senses no longer registered anything else.
He was so unfathomably hard. So incomprehensibly large.
I should be bracing myself, should be fearing the pain, and instead I could do nothing but squirm desperately in his arms, trying to get more, closer—
He made a sound that was half growl, half laugh. ‘Is that what you want, Thraga?’
‘Please.’ It was a shamelessly wanton moan. ‘Please, I need you, I …’
‘I know you do.’ He dug his fingers into my bottom, hard enough to bruise, holding me steady against the wall as he rocked his hips against me in a slow, torturous rhythm.
His hard length brushed over my entrance with every twist – maddening pressure, never pushing in. ‘Shame you’re not getting me yet.’
A curse tumbled from my lips. I clutched at his back, nails sinking into muscle and scar alike, and he gave a ragged hiss against my lips – the strain in his body unmistakable, and yet his movements didn’t quicken even at my hoarse, ‘Dur.’
He pressed closer. ‘Patience, sweetling.’
‘Up your arse,’ I gasped, which was gratifying for the short moment before he slowed down in retaliation and blistering regret set in.
I nipped vengefully at his lip. He pulled away – pulled away, the wretch – and lowered me back into the water, catching both my wrists in one hand before I could get my fingers around his cock.
Had he always been this stupidly strong?
Fuck, he was glorious naked – the ripple of lean muscle as he pinned my arms above my head, drops catching the firelight as they cascaded down his scarred chest. My nails had left red lines across his pale skin.
I tried to arch closer, seeking contact, and he easily stepped back to deny me the satisfaction – smiling as I cursed, an expression so obscenely wicked that I almost moaned at the sight. ‘What did you say?’
‘Fuck me,’ I breathed, ‘fuck me, fuck—'
‘Oh, I will.’ He moved closer, voice low with heat, and the words dried up in my mouth. ‘Later. When I'm sure you can take it.'
I gasped in outrage—
And he slid his hand between my thighs.
His fingers found me slick and ready despite the water, hitting the perfect spot with uncanny precision.
A gentle touch, nothing like his iron grip on my wrist, and yet it was ruthless – because there was no getting away from him as he stroked me once, twice, eye taking note of every gasp and tremble.
There was no pacing myself. The tip of a finger pressed into me, coldly demanding, and then his thumb flicked over me a third time, hard—
Release hit me like a fist to the gut.
It caught me out of nowhere, no time to brace myself before pleasure burst and every muscle in my body clenched around it – a single well-aimed touch and the building pressure within me came apart, taking my sanity with it.
My vision went white for a moment. My knees buckled, and if not for the hand on my wrists, I’d have gone under – if not for another arm sweeping around my waist, for the hot lips descending on mine.
I moaned his name, and he kissed me as though he could taste the sound.
Then he was carrying me, out of the water, where the night air and the glow of the fire fought a battle for dominance on my skin.
Flames flared brighter on the edge of my sight.
Just like that, the edge of cold melted away – even the rocky floor mellow to the touch when Durlain laid me on it, my hips at the edge of the pool, my feet dangling in the water.
His cock brushed the inside of my thigh.
Half a step forward, and he’d be able to bury himself inside me.
He didn’t take half a step forward.
He watched me instead, silent and intent, fingertips circling lightly over my thighs, as I came back to myself and the last shuddering waves of pleasure finally ebbed away.
‘Oh,’ I gulped, then just as breathlessly, ‘Hell below.’
His smile was a work of savage triumph, a twist of his lips that punched the air from my lungs all over again. ‘Is that surrender I hear?’
I couldn’t push myself up on my elbows fast enough.
He didn’t step back this time. My grasping fingers found his straining length with unexpected ease – the skin taut and silky beneath my touch, the hard pulse of his arousal throbbing below.
His breath hitched almost inaudibly as I wrapped my hand around him.
Nothing changed in his posture or his expression; his caresses on my thighs didn’t falter.
His girth was a blunt weight against my palm. I should have been alarmed and felt nothing but greedy, hankering need.
‘If I surrender …’ My voice was gravelly. ‘Am I finally getting this pretty thing inside me?’
‘That’s rather a significant if.’ He sounded almost pensive, tilting his head as though he was taking my measure. When I’m sure you can take it. ‘I don’t believe surrender usually comes with attempts to negotiate.’
‘Please.’ There was no rhyme or reason to the desperation in my voice.
I’d come harder than I’d done in my life; I should have been more than satisfied.
Instead, that one release seemed to only have sharpened my hunger, a hollowness that went bone-deep and needed urgently to be filled – and hell, the feel of him against my palm …
‘Please, Dur. I think I’ll die if you don’t. ’
He finally moved, then, to the edge of the basin, hands nudging my thighs wider apart as the length of his shaft brushed along my drenched lips again. A shift of his hips, and his blunt head settled against my entrance, promising torment, promising abandon.