Chapter 4
In the pitch black, every sense was heightened.
Damir’s breath rasped in her ear, raising goosepimples on her skin, and his bittersweet scent, like iron and elannot leaves, overwhelmed her as she slid along the velvet of his thigh.
What did he look like in the light of day?
She reached out to feel his face, but he held her back by the tether of her braid, so she was barely able to brush it with the tips of her fingers.
Aster reached for his cock instead, and he hissed at her, yanking her hair back.
The pull on her scalp sent a surge of pleasure shuddering over her.
She leaned against it, wanting more. She braced against the twinge from her ribs, but it never came.
Only a faint echo of the pain, one she didn’t notice unless she paid close attention.
“Your venom is working already!” she gasped.
Damir gave a low chuckle that sent heat coursing into her belly. “I’d think that was obvious.”
“You feel it too?” she panted, unable to still her hips as they rocked over him. “Your burns are healing?”
“My prey worries for me? I have to say, I’m enjoying the irony.
” He tugged her close, and she felt the tips of his fangs skid over her shoulder, and her aching core gripped around nothing.
She slid her hands down his body until she found his cock and tried to fumble it between her legs.
He snatched her hands away, holding her wrists together with one hand.
“You should be more worried for yourself. I think I’ll have to tie you up with those ribbons of yours, or I might do something I’ll regret. ”
His dark words thrilled her, and she doubted it was wholly due to the venom. She could feel its cold burn in her veins, but it didn’t alter her thinking, only heightened her cravings that already existed.
“Do what you want,” she urged, her need brazenly evident in the breathy moan.
She felt a growl vibrate his chest, though he didn’t let it out. “I won’t,” he said gruffly, and disappointment flooded her. “But I’ll do what you need.”
In one movement, he set her aside, leaving her alone in the dark, quivering and cold where the breeze of his departure met the wetness between her legs.
She reached down to dip into her folds and was shocked by how swollen they were, pushed apart and blooming like a flower.
She was drenched with wetness far beyond the shy hints she’d felt there in the past.
She let her legs fall open further and circled her exposed little pearl with the pad of her finger, unable to stifle the sounds that spilled from her lips.
This, too, must be heightened and heated by his venom, because her own furtive touches under the bed linens had never felt so good.
Heat spread as she sped her movements, soft strokes becoming more frantic as the ache inside her deepened.
She was only peripherally aware of Damir’s return, the sound of his claws scraping the stone and his uneven breath as he stopped in front of her.
“Are you watching me?” she asked. The back of her neck prickled with awareness of his nearness, though she couldn’t see or touch him.
“I am. Go on.”
Shocked by her own impulse at the same time as she gave in to it, she widened her knees in the direction of his voice and leaned back so he’d have a better view.
This couldn’t have been far different from the angle he’d seen when he’d used his claws to unknot her ribbons, and the thought of him crouching before her with his fangs so close to her most sensitive parts made her cry out, even though she still hadn’t peaked.
He made a small answering sound. Had he been thinking about this, then? About spreading her knees and watching her rub her secret places? Was he touching himself right now?
The friction built under her finger until it was too much.
She tipped over the precipice, pleasure spilling through her in a great rush.
Her back arched, snapping her head back, and huge hands were suddenly there, supporting her weight and cradling the back of her skull so it didn’t crack on the rocks with her abrupt movements.
When her spasms subsided, and she could speak again, she murmured, “So, is that it?”
Damir’s laugh came without any humor. “Afraid not. Perhaps if I’d seeded you, but as it is, you’ll have to ride it out.”
As though he’d made it happen, a fresh wave of desire licked at her shore.
Suddenly, her whole belly felt heated and tight and needy again, desperately needy, like a days-long thirst. She grabbed the nearest thing, his wrist, and ground his hand between her thighs, trying to rub it away.
But it did nothing, only made it worse. “What’s happening to me?
” she whimpered, though she knew the answer.
Unbound, she was weak and wanton, and there was no going back from it.
He grunted with displeasure but let her use his hand like plaything, his arm limp and heavy as she slid his fingers over and through her folds, a sweet tease that didn’t truly satisfy her.
She needed him inside, that much was clear even in her fogged brain, and she tugged his fingers lower, arching up into them when they brushed against her opening.
He stiffened and pulled his hand away, leaving her choking on her own cries.
“Damir, please,” Aster moaned. “I need you so badly, it hurts.”
“I should never have told you my name,” he bit out.
With little effort, he twisted her arms behind her back, his movements as sharp and efficient as hers were erratic.
Then he bound her wrists together snugly with what she could only imagine were her own ribbons, as he’d threatened, winding them around and around in a figure-eight, trapping them together.
A scandalous image, her wrists wrapped in ribbons! One that she couldn’t stop turning over in her thoughts. It made her chest ache and her cheeks burn as she struggled to free them. Now she couldn’t touch herself and relieve the painful lance of desire that pierced her. How could he be so cruel?
She needed something, anything, between her thighs.
She rolled over and found his knee, capturing it with her legs and shamelessly grinding against it.
It felt so hopelessly good, huge and solid enough that she had the preposterous wish to have it inside her.
She renewed her angle, chasing her release through a dark warren filled with dead ends.
He did nothing, did not even put his hands on her.
“Damir,” she whined, and he stayed silent, unmoving. “I need you to fill me. Please, I’m begging you! I’ll let you do anything you want.”
“You’ll send us both to the salt,” he hissed. He pulled his leg away and rolled her onto her back, holding her shoulders fast to the floor, her ribbon-bound arms pinned beneath her.
“You said you’d help me. You promised.” Nothing from him. Her skin felt like it would peel off any moment, the pressure of her pure want splitting it from inside. And he just watched.
“You are a monster,” she gasped. To her shock, an orgasm rolled through her without any touch, flattening her and shaking her senseless. It went on and on, bursting through every part of her. She was only vaguely conscious that once again, he caught her, cushioning her from harm.
When she regained her wits and her legs stopped kicking, her shoulders ached from the angle of their bondage. Damir lifted her, clasped her tightly to him, and rested his forehead against hers, his breath feathering over her, as though he had come as hard as she had.
Now he held her close, but not when she’d needed him.
“I suppose you enjoyed that. My suffering,” she said, her voice weak and shaky.
“On the contrary. It was excruciating for me in every sense of the word.” This was so much more humiliating than Aster had anticipated. Here she was, naked and bound and begging for her very enemy, and he wouldn’t deign to touch her. Hadn’t even relished her undoing.
Was he so disgusted by her wantonness? From her glimpses of the Revel rutting and the scandalous stories passed behind the fans of the young women in her circle, she’d believed the Nightborn were different than the men she’d always known, the ones who’d lectured her on modesty and the suppression of base desires.
But maybe he was equally moral and upright.
“I expected you to be a brute,” she confessed. “I’m sorry for that.”
“Sorry for your thoughts or sorry that I am not one?” he asked tersely. “Because if the former, you should not apologize for what goes on in the privacy of your mind. And if the latter, console yourself. My own thoughts were quite brutish.”
Brutish thoughts? A fresh lash of longing struck her when she realized he had refrained from touching her, not to punish her, but to stop himself. From what, though?
“Tell me of them,” she blurted out.
A sharp laugh. “Why? So you can use them to tempt me? I’m afraid I’m too fond of my resolve to give you any weapon to weaken it.”
“We agreed that resolve is unnecessary, given our circumstances. That’s how I remember it,” Aster panted, twisting her pelvis until she could brush his hard length, despite his obvious efforts to keep it out of her reach. She made a frustrated grunt. “Untie me.”
“I will not.”
“Then seed me and end it,” she begged. “You have no idea the agony I’m in.”
“I warned you. You agreed to this.”
“You made promises, too!” She ended on a wail as her body was wracked with a spasm of craving so intense that it stole her ability to speak.
She stopped trying to control her movements as her body disgracefully sought any type of relief, her humiliation complete.
Tears stung her eyes, saltier than the sea.
Damir muttered something that sounded like a curse in his own language and then added in common, “I swore I wouldn’t take you, and I won’t.”
That was the promise that he kept, the one that protected him and his people.
Not the promise he made to help her, to satisfy her.
Perhaps her desire was so enormous that it could not be satisfied, anyway.
Aster squeezed her thighs together as the throbs built again, harrowing in their speed and intensity, each one a larger echo of the one that came before, and wept.
Night Mother, was this punishment for her attempted escape? Was this all a lesson that she should’ve learned and now must have etched into her bones? She was unraveled like her ribbons, a snarl of animal need in the dirt. Ruined.
“Your name.” The words rang like bells in her ears, meaningless, until two hands gripped her thighs, spreading them wide. “Your name, prey. What is it?”
“Aster,” she gasped.
“Aster,” he repeated in his silky accent. “Focus on me. I have you.”
The next thing she felt was the soothing warmth of his tongue at the very apex of her thighs, the place that burned most intensely.
He held her legs steady, a ship’s anchor that kept her from tossing on the tempest of her need, and moved with slow purpose, circling her clit in ever tightening gambits.
Never wavering, never stuttering, just one smooth ascension.
His methodical slide settled her even as it stoked her.
It untangled her one knot at a time until she was a single smooth skein, and her hips bucked in gentle rhythm as she climbed.
Her fingers flexed behind her back with the impulse to hold his head, and she flinched, her rhythm faltering.
But he pressed on, never varying, and with his help, she settled once again into her pleasure as though he were leading her in a partnered dance.
“That’s it, Aster. Stay with me,” he murmured against her flesh. His tongue dipped lower, pressing inside her entrance, and he groaned. “Manna save me, your taste. Better than blood.”
She felt his teeth graze her inner thigh, twin pricks that were immediately soothed by his tongue. Regret flashed through her. Why didn’t he want more? She tried to spread her legs wider, offering easier access for his bite, and he growled, clamping one arm across her belly to still her.
“My resolve is worn thinner than your ribbons right now, and I need you to come or we’re both doomed. Do you understand?”
“Mhm.” She gave a frantic nod in case her sounds made no sense. He must have received the message, because he fell on her and feasted, ravenous where he’d been methodical. Her neck arched back when her orgasm ignited, slamming into her with all the force of the waves against the rocks.
“Damir,” she cried out for him as she came against his tongue, as though he flew far above and was her only chance at rescue. Her only escape.