Chapter 10
The brides of Corek had not prepared a chamber, as they had not expected a marriage to be consummated tonight, so Aster and Damir stood and waited while the nuns hurriedly lit candles and freshened the linens and left them with water and wine.
He moved to unbind her wrists, but Aster shook her head, her heart thumping. “They’re to stay that way until…after,” she said, suddenly shy, as though he hadn’t seen her splayed out in the cave, begging for him. As though he hadn’t tasted her blood, hadn’t satisfied and seeded her.
“This is after,“ he said. “I already bound you the night we met. You were mine from that moment. I could not admit it because I did not see how it could be, but the Night Mother was our witness. Her wisdom is as wide as the sea and as deep as the sky.”
With one swift slice of his claws, her ribbons were cut and fell to the floor in dozens of lengths. He dragged the same claw down the front of her gown, severing all the laces so the bodice burst open. Unconstrained, her chest heaved as the ties of her skirts went next.
“Forgive me for my haste,” Damir murmured as he unwrapped her layer-by-layer, leaving her in her shift. “Your wound is still fresh, and I mean to heal you.”
“You’re going to bite me?” she asked breathlessly, thrilling at the thought. He kneeled before her to remove her shoes and stockings.
“No bite this time, my greedy bride. Unless you wish to be deflowered every time we make love, you must heal without it tonight. Plus, I want you lucid so you’ll obey me and keep your hands to your”—he broke off with a groan as she gripped his shoulders to keep steady—“to yourself unless I say you can touch me.”
“May I touch you, then?” she asked cheekily, as he severed her garters and ripped her stockings down her legs.
“No. Not until your wound is healed. Then, Manna save me, you can touch me anywhere you like.” He stood, lifting the hem of her shift as he went, stripping her bare, save the gauze strapped to her inner thigh.
He picked her up and laid her out on the bed, frowning as he cut the bandage off her, too, revealing a deep incision that still seeped blood.
“That idiot thought I’d believe his lies about your courses.
As if a Nightborn nose can’t tell the difference. I will kill him for this.”
Aster grinned in spite of the tiny lance of pain from her wound.
“Don’t waste the effort. He really believed it.
The cut was my mother’s idea to prevent the wedding.
She knew we couldn’t keep his hands off my ribbons, but if I convinced him I had my courses, it would at least delay the consummation. ”
Damir raised his head to look at her, and she blushed at the vision of him between her legs even though he was only examining her wound still. “Why would it?”
She bit her lip, embarrassed to explain. “Colony men think it unclean. It curses the union.”
He laughed. “Your blood? The purest, sweetest thing on Salaan, a curse?”
“So they say.”
Damir was suddenly grave. “If I had known what they were like, I never would have sent you back.”
“I’m not sorry you did. Listen to that.” She paused, letting the sounds of the joyous Revel outside permeate the sanctuary of their chamber. “It was a small sacrifice to ensure the happiness of so many. And now we can have our happiness, too.”
In answer, he licked along her wound, making her shudder with needful pain that had little to do with her injury.
“My mouth is flooded with venom at your scent, Aster,” he murmured against her thigh.
The points of his canines gently scraped around the cut as he licked it again.
“This way, it will knit your skin without making you wild.”
“I don’t mind being wild,” she reminded him. “Not if you’re there to tame me.”
“Maybe your blood is cursed,“ he hissed at her, though the light in his eyes told her he was only playing. “Now that I’ve tasted it again, I’m very nearly convinced.”
When her cut had healed enough that he was satisfied, he crawled up to lie beside her, combing his claws through her braids to loosen them, too, and the slide of his fingers against her scalp loosened every part of her.
When she was thoroughly undone, he took her hands and placed them on his own chest. “Touch me now. In all the ways you begged me on our first night. They’ve been turning in my imagination ever since.”
“In mine too,” she admitted, fingers already moving over him. “I’m glad to have my hands free now that I’m no longer a danger to you.”
He laughed and pulled her into a wet, possessive kiss that heated her core. “I think you’re more a danger than ever, my pretty prey.”
He released her to explore, and she took her time, soaking in every scent, every texture of his velveted skin as she worked her way from his lips, down the column of his throat, and over his broad shoulders to feel where his wings were folded flat against his back.
He shuddered at her touch, eyes on her all the while as she moved to toy with his flat, gray-blue nipples and then slid her palms down his belly, pulling more sounds out of him.
When she reached the lace of his breeches, she paused, skimming her hand over the soft animal hide, and felt his heated hardness underneath, impossibly large.
She only wondered for a moment how they could possibly fit together before the question was chased away by a surge of pride.
She had caused that. She had made him groan and swell.
“You’re mine now,” she reminded him, squeezing him through the leather, tensing against the answering ache that hummed between her legs.
His breath hissed out between his teeth, making the nearest candles flicker, and his claws dragged over the lace, severing that, too. “Take what’s yours, then.”
Warmth rushed over her skin. The power he gave to her so freely was exhilarating.
She pushed his breeches down over his hips, baring his length.
It looked nothing like anything she’d known but somehow exactly as she’d imagined, dark as midnight at the root but blushing up to dawn at its thick tip, the shaft wrapped in veins like knotted ribbons.
“You’re beautiful, Damir, like you belong in the sky alongside the twins.
I can’t stand it.” She grasped him, though her fingers didn’t meet around his girth, and guided him between her legs until he was pressed against her opening.
Her hand came away slick and sticky with the wetness already gathered there.
He took it and licked it clean, his tongue snaking hot around each finger, fangs grazing her knuckles, and she felt herself opening for him against the pressure of his cock.
He must have felt it, too, because he grasped her hips, rocking into her the barest amount before her walls clamped down, allowing him no further. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you feel so good. Even better than you taste. Even better than you smell. Like you were forged for me, Aster.”
He was the one who felt like iron fresh from the forge, like a scorching hard bar of it.
She wanted him deep inside almost as desperately as she had under the influence of his venom, and her own body’s resistance infuriated her.
She threw one leg over his hip, leveraging herself closer to push through the pain, and Damir’s eyes shuttered.
“If you could feel this...”
“I can,” she panted. The burning stretch of his invasion overwhelmed her senses, like sea swells pushing her down any time she tried to catch her breath. A little panicky and lost around the edges, she added, “It’s all I feel. You’re all I feel. It’s so much.”
In one quick twist, he rolled them over so she lay on top of him, still partly speared on his length, his arms wrapped around her waist, binding them together.
“I have you, my honey-blooded wife. Is this better?” He kissed her deeply, rolled his hips gently, and slowly, slowly, it made sense, the ebb and flow inside her like the tide, pushed and pulled by the gravity of her husband and his care for her.
“It’s perfect.” She reached up and twisted her fingers in his dark, silky hair as they kissed, lips whispering endearments between long draughts of each other that felt simultaneously new and ancient, like they were unearthing something long-buried.
Finally, finally, he slid home, and her body embraced him, the sharp pinch transforming into a surprising burst of pleasure once he was fully sheathed in her.
He gripped her hips, and she could feel the prick of his claws denting her skin as he moved her up and down on his shaft.
Her walls fluttered around him, seeking the pressure, and she sat up to better her angle.
“You feel like wings,” he grit out, moving her faster so the heavy veins encircling his shaft thrummed inside her. “Like flying.”
His cock swelled in her and she couldn’t speak, only cry out as the sensations built to such heights that she thought they’d topple her.
Her vision whited, and she felt rather than saw him reach between her legs to press there.
It was too much all at once, like he’d plucked her out of the sea to soar high above it.
“Damir!” she gasped as she came, writhing and grinding on him, wringing out every last bit of her climax. When it finally relaxed its grip on her, she could hardly hold herself up.
He chuckled as he eased her down beside him, smoothing her hair and tracing the borders of her swollen mouth with a claw. “Not so monstrous after all, am I?”
“You’re my monster,“ she corrected, stroking his velvet skin in return. His cock jumped, and she stroked that, too. “What can I do for you, my love?”
“Your love?“ he growled, pushing up on one elbow as his hips bucked into her hand. She nodded, and he bent to nip her lower lip. “Night Mother, what a gift you are.”
“Let me give you what you need, then,” she begged against his mouth, unsure what should come next. “You have to tell me because I don’t know what you like yet. Anything, Damir.”
After a moment’s pause, he said, “I want to rut you in the Nightborn way.” There was something dark in his voice.
Her core clenched, remembering her stolen glimpses of past Revels, blue wings beating above joined bodies, and she eagerly turned to her belly, spreading her legs so he could kneel between them.
He trailed a line of kisses down her spine that made her shiver before drawing her hips up. She arched her back, seeking him, but he held her firm. “The moons drive me to seed you, Aster. Put a child in your belly. Tell me if that’s too much now, because once I start, I won’t be able to stop.”
She moaned, the thought of him spilling inside her stoking her desire anew, and the sound seemed to break him. He drove into her drenched folds, his body slamming against hers. A gust from his wings hit her like an aftershock and extinguished all the candles, leaving them in the dark.
“Corek, you’re stunning like this,” Damir grunted, bottoming out in her again with another rush of wind that whipped her hair around her face. “I wish you could see how you looked stretched around my cock. Your salt gives it the most beautiful burn. I’m already on the edge.”
The vision of his dusky blue length sliding in and out of her with the powerful beats of his wings flared in her mind’s eye, unbearably erotic.
He bent over her back, pinning her down with his weight, and she yearned to feel his teeth in her shoulder.
Instead, he reached beneath her to palm her breasts, kneading them and plucking at the tight buds of her nipples, even as he kept his brutal pace.
Her thighs burned with the effort of resisting his power as every stroke drove her toward a second crest. The darkness reduced her experience to pure sensation, just a body against a body, him against her, and it wasn’t long until she came again, clenching and quivering around him, toes curling with the intensity.
“You’re too good, my lovely Aster,” Damir groaned.
Then she felt him swell to what seemed like impossible proportions before he flooded her with heat, filling her, putting his child in her if the Night Mother blessed them.
And as though she were still intoxicated by his venom, his seed soothed her, quieted something in her center.
She found, afterward, when their limbs were tangled together in the linens, that she felt quite solemn. If a life took root in her, there was no undoing it.
“We are bound now, truly,” she said. “Are you sorry?”
A noise of surprise burst from him. “How could I have regrets when I already want to do it all over again?”
“You wouldn’t have married me if you hadn’t been forced by the treaty.”
He skimmed her eyelids with his lips, kissing each in turn. “And you? Are you sorry you could not marry a human man instead of your monster? Remember, I did not even ask you to be my bride. I simply took what I wanted, without a thought to whether you were willing.”
She laughed outright, cured of any solemnity. “My heart was already yours. It would always have been yours, no matter what happened. Even if you had married another, and I had married another, I would have been yours.”
“Then you know I could never regret being bound to a such fierce, faithful, loving queen. No other has your strength. No other could fill your place. I am forever changed by you,” he said, covering her with his wings.
“Ruined, you mean.” Her lips curved into a smile that she knew he could see in the dark.