23 Understanding #3
Another bitten-off epithet, and her head hit the bed.
His tongue trailed down her abdomen, then parted her to lick deep, growling his approval when she gripped his hair and shamelessly used his mouth.
He pressed her hips down, voracious, lost. She could see herself in the vanity, mouth swollen, eyes glazed with pleasure, praising him, desperate for him.
Throughout it all, he watched her with such love, this fearsome man of hers.
Her pulse clamored through her veins, desperate for more.
His mouth never stopped devouring, stubble scraping along her inner thighs with every flex of his jaw.
All thought vanished as ecstasy boiled up in her core.
Tremors sizzled down her legs, meeting in the middle, and she flew, screaming his name, while he nuzzled her through the aftershocks.
At least, until he flipped her onto her stomach, drew her knees in and made her sit on his face.
Minutes and orgasms blurred until she slumped face-first onto the bed, begging for him.
He withdrew to push her to all-fours. His cock strained against his stomach.
Biting off a curse, he stroked himself hard, teeth gritted.
She met his gaze over her shoulders. His eyes held a brazier’s heat. “Give me everything.”
His muscles bunched, shuddered. Then, everything left of his control vanished.
Blanketing her with a curse, he fit his cock to her entrance and drove in, muffling her scream.
He found the tender skin between her neck and shoulder and pulled it between his teeth, marking her as he drove ferociously, desperately.
A dark hum against her skin when she clenched around his girth. He interlocked their hands, shuttling further into her. She tossed her head back against his muscular shoulder, surrendering to the onslaught with pleas and whimpers, adoring his low groans of pleasure.
“Beautiful woman, letting me take you this hard.” Turning her head to face him, he took a drag of her mouth, his teeth clinging to her bottom lip, pressing her upper half down into the bed and giving her his weight. “You love this. Fuck, so do I.”
She couldn’t speak beyond moans, sensation holding her captive, so she simply arched her back. He sucked another mark into her shoulder, one hand coming under her stomach to stroke her as he thrust, thick and demanding. A cataclysmic claiming.
She half sobbed into the mattress at the repeated fullness, the slap of his body against hers, the desperate praise in her ears, the way he kept vowing that he belonged to her. His drives came at a vicious, hungry pace.
She was burning up, relishing his harsh grunts, the possession in his gaze.
He moved in a frenzy, like a man fighting for sanity.
“Fuck, fuck. I adore you.” Half declaration, half plea, the words left as a visceral, seething hiss.
The dazed love in his eyes, the utter loss of control on his cruely hewn features, it was too much.
She screamed his name, her body trembling, clenching around his until she was gasping for air, insensate. Her orgasm came on in fiery waves.
He hunched forward, wrapping his arms around her to thrust through her ecstasy.
A slurred stream of filth and adoration left him as he stiffened.
“FUCK,” he spat. “Sarai—” Her name ended in a clenched groan as his body shuddered behind hers, flesh jerking between her legs.
He pressed her into the bed for a few deep, deep thrusts, flooding her with come.
Breathing fast, he cradled her as they gasped through the aftershocks.
“Too much?” he murmured into her neck.
She hummed in contentment. “I think you’ve killed me,” she mumbled and felt his smile against her hair.
He squeezed her against the protective warmth of his chest for a long moment before reluctantly withdrawing to wipe her clean.
When he returned and gathered her close, it was with lingering incredulity and a certainty of possession that she hadn’t felt in him before. “Thank you.”
She trailed a finger down the long blade of his nose. “Are you burden-free now?”
“One more,” he said gravely.
She propped herself up on her elbows, eyes widening as he recounted the nature of what he’d begun seeing after returning from the dead and the bargain he’d made with Wrath. Fire crackled in the hearth, night claiming the sky by the time he finished.
“And you feel well?” she fretted. “Telmar said something about recipients of Wrath’s strength going mad. You looked quite ill after your bout at the Aequitas.”
“I feel no different.” He slanted her a droll look. “The madness might take a moment to discern.”
He wouldn’t joke if he was feeling poorly. “I always did see you as one of the Wretched,” she admitted, laughing when he dryly raised an eyebrow.
His lips ghosted down the column of her neck, eliciting a shiver from her sensitized skin. “I have given you everything. The rest is all detail.”
She traced the length of his spine. “Like how your father repeatedly broke your back. Was it healed poorly on purpose?”
“No child of the Clan should fear pain. We got to know it intimately.”
What an unfathomable level of cruelty. “How does your back feel now?”
“Like I can do more.” His eyes made a meaningful sweep of her flushed body. “Seductress.”
She turned red. “Well, I couldn’t have you keep believing that I’d leave!”
He traced her chin with a rough finger, dulcet voice going guttural. “I adore you. Language itself is inadequate. I’m no wordsmith before this, my Sarai.” He brought her hand to his still-rapid pulse, stern features raw and undone.
“I’d say you are.” She nuzzled his stubbled cheek. She’d thought him deeply private and perhaps too jaded to speak of love, but he was simply unused to it. He had never known it growing up and was still learning to utter it, let alone believe himself a recipient.
“I believe I was born around midwinter,” he murmured after a moment.
“Clevsin didn’t place value in birthdates.
There was nothing I was particularly good at or enjoyed as much as bloodshed.
I became a Tetrarch to prevent the rise of those like the Clan.
It was a practical application of my talents.
Fully-fledged criminality never interested me. ”
He said it with utter detachment, as though guilt had played no part in the decision when this was the same man who had tried to end his life for leaving her the night of the Fall. How much have you buried without knowing it?
“I think I’ve been seeing portions of your life.” She blinked when he looked unsurprised. “You knew?”
He smiled. “I guessed.”
“It’s the god looming over the country, isn’t it?” She sighed. “Like northerners killing with whitesleep and my having the urge to slit everyone’s throat at the Aequitas earlier. Whoever this is, they aren’t benign.”
“Hmm.” He brushed a kiss against her jaw.
She loved seeing him so languorous, menace quieted, tanned skin backlit by fire. A predator at rest. “I’m dreading leaving this room.” And thinking of coups and gods and men who used their voices for ill.
Kadra drew his knuckles down her throat.
“The land may fall, but I will lift you above it. Ruin and Death will lay no claim on you while my hold persists. I may become a most exacting member of the Wretched upon death, and you will still be mine.” Strength pulsed off him in waves. “Do you understand?”
Mesmerized, she nodded.
“Keep looking at me like that, and I’ll take you again,” he murmured.
“Really?” she asked hopefully.
“A Tetrarch lives to serve.” He rolled her on top of him, a wicked gleam in his eyes. His cruel-edged smile turned tight. “The gods enjoy their games. We’ll have to play them if we’re to learn this one’s identity.”
Her haze of contentment crumbled. “Swear to me that you won’t do anything reckless. Bad enough that Noceo wants you dead without you taunting a god.”
“I won’t.” He soothed the goose bumps rippling over her flesh. “Noceo won’t kill me either. We’re too evenly matched, and he’d find my death unacceptably boring.”
Thank the Elsar for strange cruelties. She dropped her head to his chest. “How do we plot against a being who can hear our every word?”
For all the tenderness in his eyes, his voice was decidedly grim. “We wait for them to slip.”