Chapter 32 #4
“No,” I argued, “You’re the one who keeps hitting the brakes.” But an icy doubt crept into my thoughts, and I began to wonder if Casimir didn’t want me quite as much as I wanted him. Maybe mortal women didn’t hold the same appeal as female Daemons.
“What’s with the face?” he inquired, sinking onto the bed and crossing one leg over the other.
“Nothing,” I grumbled. “I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want.” I turned to face the wall so he wouldn’t see me pout.
He barked out a laugh, and I whipped around to glare at him. “Is that what you’re worried about? That you’re forcing me?”
“What else am I supposed to think?”
His face was torn between amusement and disbelief.
Leaning forward, he cupped my jaw in his hand and tilted my chin toward him.
His eyes darkened, but I saw the fire and the restraint in them.
“And if I told you that in all my years roaming this earth, I’ve never met anyone as stubborn and impossibly irresistible as you? Would you call me a liar then?”
I was momentarily robbed of the power of speech.
Stubborn and impossibly irresistible? My mind was reeling at his words, but their effect was instantaneous, like an electric jolt straight to my core.
I took a calming breath. “Then I suppose the only problem, Wrayburn, is that you keep making excuses to avoid this.” I gestured to the air between us.
Again, I read the uncertainty in his gaze, the fear that I might regret this tomorrow.
“Casimir,” I implored, maneuvering across the bed to tug on the loops of his belt. “Please.” I was not above groveling. My need for him was that bad.
The sound of his name on my lips struck him like a blow, rippling across his marble features. A low noise escaped his throat before our lips finally collided, and it sounded, to my ears, like a resignation. An unleashing. At last, he’d come undone.
“This is probably a very bad idea,” he muttered as he climbed over me.
My heart fluttered against my ribs, heady anticipation flooding my veins. The trembling in my limbs returned with a vengeance.
“Please shut the fuck up,” came my hushed request.
Despite the frantic urgency of my kisses, Casimir took his time, exploring the curves of my mouth with the edge of his tongue as though he had centuries to spend in this way. I arched my spine until our bodies were flush, sighing as Casimir slipped a hand around me to press me harder against him.
A familiar warmth in my core began to build again as if no time had passed, and I encouraged his touch with small gasps and noises of pleasure.
While he explored my collarbone with his lips, I took the opportunity to rake my hands through his thick curls, relishing their velvet softness, wishing I could sink into this moment forever.
He frowned when I pulled back to gaze down at the Moros branded into his bicep.
“I hope you know that you didn’t deserve this,” I murmured.
He shook his head. “No more talking,” he said, and then he was kissing me senseless.
As I whimpered beneath him, Casimir’s carefully wound restraint began to slip and falter.
I could feel it in the way his kisses became more punishing, in the way his hands gripped me more roughly, in the way he grazed his teeth against my neck a little too sharply.
In return, I dragged my tongue along his throat and nipped at his ear, all while arching my hips to grind against his.
All of it only served to unravel him more.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, his voice rougher than before. The sound of it sent another jolt of electricity pulsing through me.
“I thought you said no more talking,” I huffed.
He let out a frustrated sigh and continued his slow exploration of my collarbones and neck with his tongue and mouth.
When his knuckles grazed the underside of my ribs, just beneath my breasts, I made a keening noise.
Sliding a hand under me, he unhooked the clasp of my bra and tossed it to the floor. My jeans followed soon after.
His eyes scanned down my body, a hungry expression on his face.
A faint blush bloomed over my cheeks as I realized that I was nearly naked, while he still was clothed.
Despite the warmth of the fire below, a shiver ran down my spine as he lowered himself to press a kiss to my thigh, over the skin where his name was written on my body.
“Does it bother you, still?” His voice was soft, his eyes dark as he peered up at me from between my legs.
My body hummed with electricity, buzzing with warmth, my mind too overwhelmed to process his question. “What?” I panted.
He dragged a nail over the tattoo, sending a flurry of sparks across the sensitive nerve-endings. “This,” he said.
Oh.
“I guess I’ve gotten used to it,” I admitted. “Among other things… ”
Casimir smiled in that slow, feline way of his. Like he knew his name might as well have been branded onto my soul for how much he already possessed me.
I belong to the Darkseer. The words I’d once spoken out of rash self-preservation were now coming to fruition, like a prophecy.
The Darkseer’s eyes turned, if possible, even blacker at my reply. A gasp tore from my throat when he dragged his tongue across the brand. Dangerous. Violent. Sweet.
“Good,” he growled.
And then his lips and teeth were everywhere, and I was adrift in a sea of sensation.
I sank deeper, the kind of drowning I’d only dreamed of.
The kind that only exists in fables and folklore.
His magic enveloped us both, sparking with black fire and warmth, lingering like a caress on my skin.
Every place he touched was tainted with it, and I knew I would never purge him from my body now, not when his magic had fused into flesh and bone.
His heady fragrance was magnified tenfold under my tongue, his skin salty and sweet.
I quickly discovered that I was woefully unequipped to focus on more than one sensation at a time, and there were more than enough to overwhelm me.
I was wrenched from my daze when Casimir’s fingers delved beneath the band of my underwear.
Breathless, I reached down to remove them, but he stopped me.
His eyes smoldered with a sultry heat I hadn’t seen in them before. “I’ll do it,” he said. A moment later, he tugged them down my legs, leaving me bare before him.
With aching slowness, he made his way up my body, capturing my gasp of surprise with his lips as he pressed his fingers against the sensitive bundle of nerves at the center of my thighs.
I cried out at the contact, and he dragged a finger over the same spot again, making my hips quiver in response.
“So demanding,” he murmured against my neck, his fingers stroking lightly over my clit.
I moaned at the sensation, my hips grinding against his hand, seeking friction.
The warmth that had begun to pool low in my core under his touch was now entirely molten and in desperate need of relief.
I trembled beneath him, unable to do anything but grip onto his arms hard enough to draw blood as the coil in my abdomen wound ever-tighter beneath his clever fingers.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, his voice coming out in a rasp.
I would do no such thing. “Don’t stop,” I said.
With a low growl that was almost feral, he slipped a finger inside me.
I barely had time to adjust to the sensation before he added a second, eliciting a guttural moan from my throat.
“Fuck, Arden,” he swore at the slick wetness he found waiting for him.
His fingers slid deeper, curling against my sensitive walls as the heel of his hand pressed against my clit.
I was beyond words.
While his fingers worked my cunt, he kissed a searing path down my body, pausing to swirl his tongue against my left nipple, pressing hot, wet kisses against my stomach, not stopping until he reached—
“Oh gods!” I gasped.
I clung onto his shoulders as his tongue swept over my clit, making me jolt. I clenched around his fingers as the coil inside me grew tighter and tighter, hurtling toward release.
He withdrew his fingers, eliciting a noise of protest that was quickly cut off when his tongue darted out to plunge into my core. Tasting me.
My whole body tensed, taut as a bow. I hadn’t expected this. No one had ever touched me like this, not even August, and my first instinct was to stop him. What if he didn’t like it? What if—?
But then a soft, involuntary groan slipped past his lips, and I forgot my embarrassment and unraveled entirely.
As he lapped at my core, his fingers continued pumping a steady rhythm, and I couldn’t cease the instinctive rocking of my hips against his mouth, seeking friction. I forgot to be gentle as I raked my nails over his back until I felt the soft skin break, marking him.
He drew back to murmur a slew of curses against my inner thigh, his own breathing growing unsteady as I shuddered and clenched around him, my mouth a hot gasp against the pillow.
“Casimir, please,” I begged, and at the sound of his name, he finally gave me the pressure I was desperately craving. I didn’t see the cliff approaching as I fractured over the edge and fell, my body shattering into a thousand pieces and trembling with the force of my climax.
He guided me through the waves of pleasure until I was limp and gasping in his arms, breathing his name like a mantra, like it was the answer to my salvation, the spell of my undoing.
Slowly, he withdrew, dragging his way back up my body to laugh softly against the column of my throat.
The sound crested over me like the sun emerging from the clouds.
As the waves of pleasure grew fewer and farther apart, I began to pick up the fragments of myself. I glanced over to see Casimir watching me, his eyes dark and his expression inscrutable.
The roaring fire in the hearth downstairs must have died down, because the light was dimmer now, its faint glow casting Casimir’s bronze skin with shadows. Together with the faint blush in his cheeks from our exertions, he looked positively devastating.
As my lustful haze began to lift, a sense of dawning horror sharpened my senses.
Oh my gods. Had I really just let Casimir fuck me with his mouth and fingers while I begged him and moaned his name?
Yes, I had. The truth of it was written in the smirk ghosting across his lips, in the sheen of sweat that still clung to his skin. My sweat.
He leaned down to kiss me, and I tasted my essence on his tongue, salty and floral. I hadn’t been with anyone like this since August. I felt as vulnerable and exposed as I had during those first mortifying training sessions.
Noting the change in my expression, Casimir withdrew, regarding me with some wariness.
He was waiting for me to speak, to declare my regret for what had just occurred.
Of all the things I could’ve said or done to reassure us both at that moment, what I did instead was this: I reached for the metal buckle of his belt and began to undo the loops, the implication clear.
I wanted to return the debt—to make us even.
The moment he registered my intent, his hand darted out to intercept mine. “Stop,” he said, shaking his head, the heat suddenly extinguished from his gaze.
I recoiled as though slapped. “Why?” To my utter horror, my voice came out sounding hurt and churlish.
Gently, he brushed a lock of hair behind my ear. It was a gesture meant to show me that this was not a rejection, merely his way of drawing a boundary for tonight. “We don’t have to do… everything tonight. Go to sleep now. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow.”
I frowned, but did not argue with him further. I didn’t need to glance at mirror across from the bed to know that I looked like an absolute mess—like some wild beast who had never come across a hairbrush in her life. I patted at the wild, dark tangles and groaned in dismay.
“What’s wrong?” Casimir asked, halfway through the act of changing into sweatpants.
“My hair,” I groaned, making him laugh.
“I like your crazy hair.”
I shot him a death glare. “Well, I don’t.”
He rolled his eyes and tossed me a comb from the dresser drawer. While I snagged the proffered comb through my tangles, I took the opportunity to examine my reflection and immediately regretted it. Not only was my hair a snarled nest, but I’d also sustained more than a few love bites.
“I can glamour those for you, if you like,” came his sly offer from his repose on the bed.
I froze halfway through the act of untangling a knot, my gaze colliding with his in the mirror.
He was watching me ready myself for sleep. The act struck me as somehow more intimate than anything we’d just done.
I tried to cover up the moment by offering him a weak smile. “I suppose your abilities do come in handy from time to time,” I conceded.
I opened a drawer with the intent of borrowing one of his black T-shirts to wear to sleep, but when I discovered that the drawer in question contained over a dozen identical black shirts, I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from teasing him for this eccentricity.
Once changed, I crawled back into the huge bed.
Casimir encircled me in his arms, warming me as he pressed a kiss onto my hair. “Sleep, Arden.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep again.
Our limbs entwined beneath the covers. I felt safe. Warm. His knuckles traced hypnotic circles on my cheek and down my neck and shoulders, and before long, fatigue coaxed me until I slid under the black wave, succumbing to unconsciousness.