Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
We crashed together violently, as if in battle. My arms wound around his neck. My lips parted for him, his tongue sliding against mine, warring for dominance. He tasted like blood and smoke. Foreign and familiar in so many incomprehensible ways.
His hands slid down my body, resting at my backside, as if he’d been waiting to retread the paths that he’d started to the night he drank from me. And that touch, even through my clothing, lit me like a struck match. I was all too eager to burn up with him.
I was familiar with this. All these uncomfortable hungers and indulgences.
My favorite kind of self-punishment. And perhaps that’s what a part of me thought this was—a way to ease our own sadness, our own emptiness—in the moments before Septimus’s mouth met mine.
And yet, in that kiss, there it was: an uncomfortable shard of something tender, like the shame I’d just presented to him.
Still, the want rose to the surface of my skin immediately, burning up the insides of my thighs, at my core.
I could feel his hunger, his desperation, in every searching kiss.
He lifted my backside to place me on the desk, parting my thighs around him, and I drew in a sharp breath at the recreation of our position the night I offered him my blood.
Like he needed to feel it again to make sure it was real.
I did, too. I wanted it desperately, right now, fast and hard. One of my hands tangled in his hair, and the other ran down his body, sliding into his trousers.
He buried his face against my throat and let out a low groan. I nearly let out one of my own. His cock was already hard and straining, and gods, how was it possible that it could even feel beautiful? It jerked against my touch, and my thumb swirled around the moisture at his silken tip.
He kissed my neck, teeth slowly brushing against my skin, and a little thrill rolled in my stomach at the danger of this—knowing how close Septimus already was to the edge.
But danger was another one of my favorite hobbies, and I was all too ready now, in these hours before the end of everything, to turn myself over to it.
Already, this was too much thinking. My core ached, begging for more friction.
Begging to be filled, hard, hard enough that we couldn’t think about anything else.
I withdrew my hand from Septimus’s trousers and covered his hand with mine, moving to the button of my own—inviting him to pull them down.
I slipped from the desk and began to turn around.
But Septimus roughly pushed me to the desk. One hand came to my shoulder, holding me against the wood, papers scattering to the floor behind me. The sight of him leaning over me, those red, starving eyes stripping me bare, made my heartbeat quicken.
“No,” he breathed. “I have thought about this too much for too long. I am going to see you before I fuck you.”
Not, I want to see you.
I am going to see you.
My lower abdomen tightened. He yanked my shirt up, and I lifted my hands, helping him remove it. The rush of cool air against my breasts was shockingly stark, and as soon as my shirt was discarded, Septimus’s hands were back on my shoulders, pinning me.
He let out a long, low breath. His eyes raked over me, and I felt my skin heating—at my hardened nipples, at my throbbing core—as if his gaze was stirring the blood to the surface of my skin.
He lowered to me, still holding me still, pressing his mouth to the scabbed-over bite marks he had left on my throat, on my shoulder. When he moved to the one below my collarbone, his tongue traced the outline of his teeth, and my skin puckered.
“I don’t even remember biting you here,” he murmured. “I’ll remember this time.”
I tried to sit up, tried to regain control, but he pushed me firmly back to the desk, and before I could protest, his lips closed around my nipple.
I drew in a gasp. His tongue coaxed the peak, and then his teeth gazed the sensitive flesh, making me let out an involuntary moan.
“All I could think about when I washed your hair was licking the water off of these.” His tongue flattened against it, sending a shiver up my inner thighs, my walls clenching around agonizing emptiness. “I’d never been so thirsty. Except, maybe, now.”
My head was spinning. My want maddening. I ground out, “Doing a shit job of showing it.”
He let out a sound against my skin that was something between a laugh and a growl.
“You are incessant,” he hissed. “Always have something to say. What will it take, I wonder, to shut that mouth?”
“I don’t know. Seems like you’ve tried nothing and you’re all out of—”
He yanked my trousers off—undergarments and all—in one smooth movement. And then kneeled before me, forced my thighs open, and pressed his mouth to my slit.
A gasp ripped through me. I began to sit up, but one hand pushed me back down.
The other gripped my thigh, holding me open.
Septimus was hungry, and I could feel his anger, his starvation, in the way he descended upon me.
There were no teasing touches or gentle kisses.
His tongue pushed into me with a force that sent pleasure shooting up my spine. My words dissolved into a garbled moan.
“Better,” he said, with a satisfied hum. His tongue withdrew, teasing at my bud, teeth skimming skin with just a hint of pain. “You can say please. Or thank you. Or my name.”
The pleasure was euphoric, building beneath my skin. I could feel the heat in my body shifting, my blood reacting to him. At the next demanding stroke of his tongue, teasing my entrance before dragging up to circle my clit, I couldn’t hold back the “Fuck” that hissed between my teeth.
“I’ll accept it.” He let out a victorious chuckle against my skin, the sound vibrating through sensitive flesh. His tongue slowed, dragging tantalizingly over my entrance. Still painfully empty.
“Mm,” he hummed. “Tastes like desperation, Vindica Ultis.”
I let out a whimper. Gods, he was right, and I was almost ashamed of it. That I was desperate for him. That I had been for weeks, and now, with all my worst impulses at the surface, I couldn’t even deny it to myself.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
I didn’t know why I obeyed. I propped myself up on my elbows. The sight of him between my thighs, bloody eyes drinking me in with more feral hunger that I saw in him the night he fed from me, sent a flush of desire over my skin.
His eyes sparkled. “For once, you follow orders.”
But with my pleasure came, in equal measure, vulnerability.
Because Septimus, I knew, could see my want—could taste it. And in this moment, I knew he treasured it. He was looking at me like he wanted to sear the memory into his skin.
This wasn’t what this was supposed to be. It was supposed to be hard and angry. And seeing this much, feeling this much, was not the familiar dangerous safety I chased in dark corners with strangers.
I sat up abruptly and slid from the desk.
“Stand,” I said.
And he had only partially obeyed—getting ready, I knew, to argue with me—when I dropped to my knees, pulled down his trousers, and took his straining, glistening cock into my mouth.
Like him, I was not gentle. I took him until I felt him in the back of my throat, relaxing it to push a little deeper still.
He let out a choked groan, his hand tangling in my hair with a satisfying shock of pain.
My hand circled what I couldn’t fit in my mouth, and my tongue worked at the rest, cheeks hollowing with each stroke.
He was satisfyingly responsive, cock twitching with every swirl of my tongue.
And just as our pace grew more frantic, as his grip on my hair grew tighter, I paused, just as he had. I slid him slowly from my mouth, lips resting at the tip. And the whole way, inch by inch, I looked up at him.
His eyes were gleaming sharp, his hair messy, a sheen of sweat over those perfect cheekbones. He was trembling, literally trembling—with desire, maybe, or the strength it was taking to hold it back. It brought me a wave of satisfaction.
My tongue teased against a fresh bead of salty moisture.
“Mm,” I moaned. “Tastes like desperation.”
His hips jerked so abruptly that I almost gagged on him. His eyes glazed over, fingers yanking tight in my hair, forcing my head up to look at him.
“Behave,” he snarled. “I’m going to come in your cunt. Not in your mouth.”
I said, sweetly, lips still brushing his tip, “I thought you had all this impeccable self-control.”
Such a targeted, deliberate taunt.
A shadow passed over his face. An inhuman sound ground from between his teeth.
“If you want to be fucked so badly,” he growled, “all you had to do was ask nicely. But you can never do anything the easy way, can you?”
And then, before I could react, he gripped my upper arms, spun me around, pushed me to the desk, and then he was spreading my legs, and then, before my wet, aching entrance had time to clench in anticipation, his cock plunged into me.
“Holy fucking gods, Septimus.” The words choked from my lips, more genuine than any prayer I’d ever uttered.
I was so ready for him—despite his size, he slid into me easily.
But gods, I had never felt so satisfyingly full.
Like I had been crafted for him. Like he was reaching into something no one else had ever touched.
The explosion of pleasure smeared my senses, reducing me to base instinct.
He gripped my hips, pushing deep, deep, deep, and I arched my back to offer him just the right angle, desperate for more contact.
I only realized that I was letting out panting, ragged moans when he murmured, “I like that sound.”
I had thought, from his quick, hard entrance, that he would fuck the same way. But he stayed there, agonizingly deep and agonizingly still, the faintest shifts of his hips sending shocks up my spine.