Chapter Thirty-Two Inana
Chapter Thirty-Two
Inana
His kiss is hard and insistent as he works his mouth against mine.
This isn’t like the kiss we shared in my dream, where touch was only an imagined thing and friction was nonexistent.
This is rough. Wet. And so fucking good.
His beard scrapes against my chin and his tongue moves against mine, tangling with it.
I’ve never had a kiss that felt so much like sex before any of our other parts came into play, but that’s exactly what this feels like.
Fucking with our lips. Seducing each other with our sighs.
I fall back, guided down by Dominic until I’m lying on the bed.
Dominic’s mouth leaves mine to drag kisses across my jaw, then down my neck.
His hands explore me too, roving down my shoulders, my arms. Finally, one of his rough palms cups my breast, and I lean into it.
He circles my nipple with his thumb, sending shock waves of pleasure through me.
His mouth moves from my collarbone down to my other breast. He kisses all around it, teasing me.
Then he looks up, eyes locked on mine, and lowers his tongue to my nipple without fully touching it, just like in my dream.
“How often have you dreamed of this, sinner?” he says, his breath caressing my skin.
“Not as much as you think, asshole,” I say, and arch my back, lifting my chest until he has no other choice but to taste me.
He grins as he does, then swirls his tongue over my hardened peak.
I whine, my cries pitching higher as he fully takes my nipple into his mouth and sucks.
My apex burns hotter, and I rock my hips, hooking a leg around him to lower him farther down.
His cock grazes the inside of my thigh but he refuses to lower himself any closer.
Instead, he glides a hand between us, over my stomach, down my side, and around the curve of my ass.
“You’re so wet I can feel it all the way down here,” he says, slicking his fingers through the moisture between my inner thigh and ass crease.
I groan, and he silences it with another kiss. As he pulls away, our gazes lock, and I’m startled by the tender look in his eyes. There’s still a dark and heavy want in his expression, but there’s a gentleness too. One that has my heart thudding faster. Deeper. My legs spreading wider.
He leans in to kiss me again, slower, sweeter, and his hand leaves my ass to trail down my outer thigh, then to my knee, then up the inside of my leg.
He’s finally close to where I want him to be, but there’s something about the slow caress of his mouth I can’t shake.
The deepening emotions flooding my heart.
I pull back from the kiss, and his hand freezes on my thigh. “Blindfold me,” I say before I can reconsider.
He frowns down at me, and I can’t handle that expression. Such concern. Such care.
“Isn’t that part of your vows?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“You’ve already seen my scar. I don’t have to hide it from you.”
“Do it anyway,” I say. “I want you to.”
What I really want is to smother this terrifying tenderness that feels inseparable from the lust and need burning inside me.
I don’t know which one of us is responsible for this feeling, and I don’t want to know.
I don’t want this to be special. I want him to fuck me the way he’s fucked everyone else who came before.
This can’t be anything more than that, and he knows it.
I know it. I may understand him better than before, and I may want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone, but that doesn’t change what we are.
He’s a Shadowbane on a dangerous path, one that will likely end in his death.
I’m an outlaw with her heart fixed on freedom.
Now that I know the other lands aren’t damned by Shades like we’re led to believe, my hope for a future is brighter than ever.
I have no place in whatever revolution he’s part of.
I believe in his cause, but I’m a survivor.
I could never risk my life the way he does, for a war that feels too daunting to fight.
For a goal I might not live to see fulfilled.
Our relationship ends in less than six months.
This can’t be anything more than sex.
His eyes volley between mine, and I fear I’ve spoiled the moment. That I’ve lost him, lost this delicious euphoria we were only starting to stir.
Then his crooked smirk returns. “What do you say to get what you want?”
My trepidation melts away, crashing beneath a tidal wave of seduction. “Please.”
He pulls back, but there’s a tangible pressure that lingers, curving around my wrists and pulling them overhead. I watch his impressive backside as he strolls toward the fire, perplexed by what’s holding me down, when it dawns on me.
His Shades.
I can’t see them, but I can feel their phantom touch, as solid as it was the first time they held me down in the hall outside the Wretched Lair.
A similar shock courses through me now, but it’s smoothed by my own intrigue.
These shadows aren’t random monsters he collected and subdued like I first thought.
They’re…pieces of his soul. They are separated yet still tethered.
He can feel what they feel, direct them, control them. They are, by extension…him.
Dominic returns with one of my stockings that I’d hung to dry.
The Shades release me, and he pulls me to sitting, then crouches behind me. “You sure you want to do this?” he asks, draping the stocking over my eyes but not yet tying it behind my head.
“Yes, but…one question first.” A blush heats my cheeks as I debate the best way to word my query. “Is…is Sloth going to…you know? I mean, I know he’s you, but I can’t think of him as anything other than a dog.”
Dominic brings his lips to my neck, a deep chuckle rumbling in his throat. He grazes my flesh with his teeth. “No, love, Sloth will not be joining us. He isn’t interested in these kinds of activities.”
I relax at that, and he drags his tongue up my neck now too. Not being able to see him through the stocking that covers my eyes adds a layer of curiosity. Danger. Pleasure.
“What about the others?” he whispers as he finally ties the stocking behind my head.
“They don’t normally join in things like this, but…
I can’t fucking help it when I’m around you.
I want to be around you. They are me, so they want to be around you too.
Sometimes I can’t tell whether it’s me or their nature as Shades that wants you more. It drives me fucking mad.”
A thrill moves through me, pooling between my legs. Then a light and teasing touch finds my knee, caressing up my thigh like Dominic did before I stopped him with my request to be blindfolded. Yet this touch is softer than his hand was. It’s one of his Shades.
“Do you want me to stop?” His voice is hard and gravelly in my ear. “I can make them stop, but…fuck. I just want to touch you everywhere. With every hand I have.”
This should be strange. It is strange. And yet…
“Don’t stop,” I say with a gasp.
Dominic tilts my head back, kissing me deep.
Then I feel him lay me back down and move over me like he was before.
This time, however, those other touches join too, pinning my wrists and cupping my breasts.
With my eyes covered, I’m hyperaware of every touch, of the distinct difference between Dominic’s firm flesh and his shadows.
He gently parts my knees and settles between my thighs.
His hand trails down my belly again, then sinks down, down, until his fingers find my folds.
He swirls them through my slick arousal, giving me the first sense of the friction I’ve been longing for ever since I was teased with it in my dream.
I roll my hips against his touch, awaiting the firm press of his hips over mine, for the length of his cock to nudge my entrance, but that isn’t what happens.
Instead, he shifts lower, lower, dragging kisses down the front of me, over my abdomen, then across my inner thigh.
I can’t understand this torturous preamble until he kisses toward my center and his lips reach my outer folds.
Panic rushes through me as I realize what he’s about to do. No one has ever kissed me…down there. I was more than happy to put my mouth on him, had he let me, but him doing the same to me feels different. Self-consciousness has me squeezing my thighs, tightening them around his shoulders.
“Do you not like this?” he asks, pausing before he can lower his mouth.
“I…I don’t know,” I breathe, two instincts at war within me. One side wants to urge him away. The other yearns to lift my hips, spread myself wider, and push that mouth right over my center. “It’s just…I’m not one of the perfumed courtesans you’re probably used to.”
Another chuckle rumbles through him. “Did you not bathe just for me?”
“That was hardly a bath.”
“Do you think I fucking care?” The darkness in his tone has my legs weakening, my core heating, and when he gently presses a palm on the inside of my thigh, I fully yield. “Last chance, love. Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
The first brush of his tongue has me crying out.
The second has my eyes rolling to the back of my head.
He drags his tongue up the center of me, then presses it over my clit.
The euphoria that courses through me as he swirls his tongue over it is better than anything I’ve ever felt, and it grows tenfold as his shadows glide over my nipples, circling them in tandem with Dominic’s tongue.
I feel like my entire being will be torn apart by the force of my pleasure, and my whimpers turn to moans.
Dominic’s hand joins his mouth, stroking my center until one finger dips ever so slightly into my slick core.
I buck my hips, begging him to enter me deeper.
He obeys my wordless command, thrusting his finger all the way in, then out.
In then out. His tongue continues to work my clit, and a phantom mouth closes over my breast, suckling with the softest, most delectable pressure.
Fuck, this is too much.
And somehow not enough.
I want him inside me, filling me to the brim. I want him slamming into me with his full force.
As if he can read my yearnings, he satisfies my want by adding a second finger.
Gods, it’s so good.
I struggle against the shadow hands pressing my wrists, and they let up, allowing my fingers to fall to Dominic’s head.
I weave my hands through his hair, pressing his face more firmly against me as my back arches off the ground.
I’m losing control, unraveling in a way I never have before.
His tongue works faster, dancing with the rocking of my hips.
His fingers pump harder, curving to reach deep inside me.
One phantom hand cups my breast, while another joins Dominic between my thighs.
“Are you going to come for me, love?” Dominic asks, and two other voices join with his, but it’s all the same. All him. All united in the coaxing of my pleasure.
My orgasm rises from deep within, surging with every thrust of Dominic’s fingers, every flick of his tongue, every tightening grip of his shadows.
“You taste so fucking good,” he says against my clit.
I fall over the edge, my climax coursing through me in mind-obliterating waves.
Even if I weren’t blindfolded, I think I’d see nothing but stars.
I cry out with the undulating swells of pleasure, and Dominic guides me over every crest, shifting his momentum, his motions, until the last vestiges of my orgasm pulse around his fingers.
I’m a limp, spent puddle of satisfaction, mute in the wake of my moans. Now there’s nothing but our panting breaths.
“Fuck,” Dominic says, his body taut with restraint. “Inana, I have to come.”
I’m shocked to hear he was brought so close just by pleasuring me.
“Then come,” I say, voice weak. I reach between us, fisting my hand around his length.
I’m still quivering from my orgasm, yet hungry for more.
I want him to fill me, to thrust inside me.
But when I try to angle his cock toward my center, he stalls my hand.
“Not this time, love,” he says. If he’s trying to torment me and leave me aching for more to ensure there is a next time, I daresay it’s working.
I moan, half in frustration, half in appreciation of his girth.
Gods, he’s huge. I pump my hand up and down his shaft and his fingers join mine.
He jerks suddenly, then again, and hot liquid spurts over my inner thigh.
I gasp in surprise and perhaps a touch of pride at having made him come so fast. His hand guides my pace, emptying him completely until he goes still.
“I’m sorry,” he says, slicking his hand through the mess he just made on me. “I should have asked before I came on you like that.”
“No,” I pant out. “I liked it. Besides, I told you not to be a gentleman.”
I reach for the blindfold and shove it away from my eyes.
There’s a bashful grin on his face as he stares down at me.
I mirror his expression, then drink in the sight of his sweat-slicked skin, his wet, swollen lips, his empty yet still-imposing cock.
He takes my stocking the rest of the way off my head, then runs it over my thigh.
A corner of his lips lifts as his gaze meets mine. “I’ll wash this for you.”
“What did I just say about being a gentleman?”
His expression turns serious. “This isn’t being a gentleman,” he says as he finishes cleaning me up. “This is what you deserve.”
I don’t know what to say to that, especially when I see that tender spark in his eyes again. So I say nothing and fall back on the bed, catching my breath. I say nothing as he lies beside me and covers us in my cloak.
“Sleep while you can,” he says, folding his naked body around mine. “I’ll keep watch and keep you warm. Since you begged so fucking nicely.” He brings his lips to my earlobe, nipping it before settling back down.
Still, I say nothing as I let myself melt against him. As I envelop myself in his warmth. Knowing that if I let myself speak, I might accidentally admit that I’m ever so slowly—ever so certainly—falling for a man with a death wish.