Chapter 4 Rhianelle #4
“You could end this,” he murmurs against the inside of my thigh. His breath is warm and his lips barely graze the skin as he speaks. “Just give me back what you stole.”
“I didn’t steal it.” My voice wavers. “I borrowed it.”
A low sound escapes him. Not quite a laugh. What follows is merciless. No easing in, no gentle build. That mouth returns to me with the hunger of a man who has been denied this for centuries and is finally, finally allowed to feast.
I bite down on my lower lip and force my eyes open.
The mirror above me shows everything. His dark head between my thighs.
My chest heaving and my fingers white-knuckled inside the shadow restraints.
The stone dragon presses against my hip through the bunched fabric of my nightdress. It is still warm and still mine.
I will not give it back.
His tongue flattens against me and the pressure builds so suddenly that a cry rips from my throat.
My body bows off the altar. The shadows tighten, holding me spread for him.
His mouth never falters, working me wickedly without mercy.
Every time I get close, he slows. Every time I think I can bear it, he changes the pace and the pleasure spikes sharper.
My head falls back. A moan breaks from me before I can swallow it.
He responds by pressing deeper, his tongue tracing a slow circle that makes my vision blur.
I twist against the bindings, pulling uselessly at the dark tendrils around my wrists.
My toes curl against the cold stone, the only part of me free to move.
I arch and twist and fight for any scrap of control, but the vines lock my hips to the stone and force me to feel every single thing he is doing.
“It’s mine. I want to keep it. It looks like...” I trail off. “It’s pretty.”
The confession earns me nothing. Not a pause or a flicker of mercy. His tongue works me, circling my core, dipping inside me, dragging over the most sensitive parts until I’m shaking. The sound that comes out of me bounces off the vaulted ceiling.
His tongue finds that bundle of nerves and I nearly sob.
“Oh gods,” I gasp. “Oh, please—”
He sucks my clit into his mouth and I scream.
The orgasm hits like lightning. White and blinding, ripping through me from my core to my fingertips. My thighs clamp around his head and my spine lifts off the altar and I am coming apart, unraveling, every thought and fear burned to nothing by the force of it.
His mouth stays on me through every wave, drawing the orgasm out until I am shaking and gasping and pulling weakly at the shadows. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes. My legs tremble so violently that his hands tighten on my thighs to steady me.
When it finally passes, I collapse against the altar. My chest heaves. My body feels wrung out and boneless and still buzzing with aftershocks that pulse through me every few seconds.
The masked man lifts his head. His lips are wet. He watches me with those dark eyes through the mask and says nothing for a long moment.
“The seal,” he says evenly.
He would stop if I gave it to him. I know that. I shake my head.
His eyes narrow. The faintest ghost of admiration crosses his face before something darker replaces it.
“Defiant to the last,” he murmurs.
Before I can recover, his hand replaces his mouth.
Two fingers press inside me without warning, and the sound that leaves my throat is something between a sob and a moan. My body clamps around him instantly, still swollen and oversensitive from the first release. Every nerve ending screams.
“Too much,” I choke out.
“You stole from me. This is the price.” His voice is impossibly calm for a man whose fingers are curling inside me.
Because he knows. Somehow, impossibly, he knows exactly where to press. That hidden place deep inside that I have searched for with my own fingers on shameful, lonely nights and never once found.
He finds it on the first try.
A broken noise spills from me. My wrists twist inside the shadow bindings and my heels dig into the edge of the altar.
Pleasure builds so fast that I cannot separate one wave from the next.
It rolls through me in a continuous assault, sharp and relentless.
My inner walls clench around his fingers and each time they do, he presses harder against that spot, punishing me with exactly the pressure I need.
“Give me back my seal, Rhianelle.” His thumb circles the swollen bundle of nerves above where his fingers work, and my vision fractures.
I shake my head. Tears stream freely down my temples and into my hair. My jaw aches from clenching. Every muscle in my body is pulled tight enough to snap, yet I cannot bring myself to surrender. Partly because I want to keep the little dragon that looks like Coral.
Mostly because I don’t want him to stop.
“Stubborn,” he murmurs, almost fondly. His fingers curl again and white light bursts behind my eyes.
My back arches so violently that only the shadow restraints keep me on the altar.
A scream builds in my chest and rips itself loose, raw and ragged and stripped of every pretense.
The orgasm crashes through me in rolling waves, each one harder than the last. My walls seize around his fingers in rhythmic pulses that I cannot control.
Tears pour down my face. I am sobbing and trembling and still coming.
His hand does not relent until the last aftershock fades and leaves me shattered on the stone.
For one merciful moment I think it’s over. My body is liquid, boneless, and the aftershocks pulse through me in slow, diminishing waves. I try to close my legs and catch my breath.
His tongue returns to my oversensitive flesh and I whimper.
“No, I can’t, I already—”
It is too much. The pleasure has sharp edges now, almost painful. I squirm, trying to close my legs, but the vines and his hand hold me open with embarrassing ease.
“Please,” I beg. My voice breaks on the word.
Tears prick the corners of my eyes from the overwhelming intensity of sensation.
The shadow vines shudder as if they can hear my plea.
Something in my begging must have reached them.
One by one, the dark tendrils loosen from my wrists and ankles tenderly.
They dissolve into smoke and sink back into the floor, leaving my limbs free for the first time since he bound me to the altar.
I almost sob with relief. I can push him away now and end this. My palms press against his shoulders and shove.
He doesn’t move. Not even an inch. My arms tremble with the effort and his mouth never leaves me.
“It was sitting in an empty room in an empty palace. No one was using it,” I manage between ragged breaths. “Please, I can’t—”
His tongue works me relentlessly and pleasure blooms again. Every thrust of his fingers drives against the spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes. His mouth returns to my clit, sucking and licking while his fingers pump in a steady rhythm.
My hands push weakly at his shoulders, his hair, the air between us. None of it matters because he is immovable and relentless. Something inside me is building toward a peak so high I am terrified of what will happen when I fall.
I thrash in his grip but he holds firm, fingers buried deep and tongue unrelenting against the aching center of me.
An overwhelming sensation tears through me harder than the ones before, ripping a cry from my throat so loud it echoes off every mirror in the chamber.
My body convulses around his fingers and my vision whites out. I feel like I’m falling, falling, falling through the altar and the floor and the foundation of this forgotten palace into something vast and dark and endless.
He doesn’t stop.
“Please.” I’m sobbing now, oversensitive to the point of agony. Tears slide down my temples into my hair and my whole body trembles and I can’t take another second. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I stole the seal.”
I pull it from my dress with shaking hands. The little dragon, warm from my body heat, amber eyes blinking up at the candlelight. I hold it out to him. A sob wrecks my chest because it’s so cute and I wanted to keep it.
“It was too pretty,” I manage through the tears.
My hand is shaking so badly that the warm stone nearly slips from my grip.
“Here.” My voice is wrecked as I surrender the seal. “Take it.”
Giving it up feels like losing something important, but my body has nothing left to fight with.
His fingers close around the seal. Without looking at it, he sets it on the edge of the altar beside my hip. Carelessly, as though the imperial treasure he chased me through an entire palace for means absolutely nothing to him.
I stare at the discarded seal. Then at him.
He doesn’t care about the seal. He never cared about the seal.
“There is still the matter of the other thing you stole,” he says.
Confusion cuts through the haze. “What other thing?”
He braces one hand against the altar and leans over me. His mouth hovers above mine, close enough that I feel the warmth of each breath but not the touch.
“The kiss,” he whispers. “The one you took from me.”
Oh.
A weak smile pulls at my lips despite everything. Something about this moment feels familiar. I have been here before. I am certain of it, though the memory refuses to surface.
I look up at the mouth beneath the mask, the jaw I want to trace with my fingertips, and the dark eyes watching me.
Something quiet settles inside my chest.
I want him.
This is fine. This is more than fine.
It's my mate.
The certainty washes through me like warm water. Our bond is pulling us together across dreams. Nothing to feel guilty about. This is the bond doing what bonds are meant to do, bringing us together, showing us what we are to each other.
Fate chose him for me. Why have I been fighting this?
I reach up and pull him down to me.