Chapter 36.2 #2
“When you accept my mating bite, you will not have to wonder what I am thinking,” I mutter, eyes glued to his graceful hands as he starts unbuttoning his shirt. “You will see into my mind. As I will see into yours.”
“And that’s supposed to be an incentive, is it?
” His tone is still mocking, but his face is shuttered.
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for that night, dragon.
Whatever tasty hors d’oeuvres I might allow you to sample from the buffet of my scrumptious self, rest assured a mating bite will never appear on the menu. ”
This does not sound so discouraging.
Especially when he unbuttons to the waist, so his schoolboy uniform frames the taut pale length of his torso.
I want to coil up and lick his smooth fair skin.
I want to suckle those ruddy nipples that are begging for my tongue.
I want to grip his hips and pull him over my aching shaft and grind into him until our pleasure explodes and we both spill all over his fashionable clothing and ruin him.
I want everything with him.
Still, he is dangerous. This knife currently lying crosswise in casual threat across my abdomen is not to be taken lightly. Nor is it the only blade he carries.
Besides, he is in a queer mood tonight.
One that I cannot read.
I pull in a careful breath. “If a mating bite is not on the menu—”
“Tell me.” With a swiftness that makes my pulse skyrocket, he swoops in to lick a long wet stripe up my abs and chest. “If I wrap my mouth around your dick and suck you off until you spill, will your barb engage?”
“Yes.” Saints of the northern steppes, he knows how to inflame me. “Sweetheart, that will always happen whenever I am inside you.”
The words lie between us like a landmine, in this battlefield of unexploded ordinance that is our history.
If I were sly and twisty like he is, no doubt I would be more subtle.
But I do not know any other way to be with him.
Except to say honestly what I want with him, as many times as he needs to hear it, until he believes me.
Until he trusts me.
He hums over my admission and continues his voyage of conquest over the terrain of my quivering flesh. His tongue skates up my neck until his cool lips tease my ear.
“Tell me,” he whispers, soft as breath. “If I give you what you want from me… if I let you have me, precisely the way you burn for… what will you give me in exchange?”
My breath hisses in on a gasp.
By Christ, can he possibly be offering what I am thinking?
My hands lock around his hips to hold his slippery body in place.
In my ear, his breath hitches.
I want so much from him I can barely speak. The words jam in my throat and throttle me.
On fire with frustration and anticipation, I lunge to kiss him. Crackling with spite, he coils back so I cannot. When our gazes meet, his eyes simmer with heat and secrets.
“Vasili,” I breathe. “Do you mean that you would let me… you would allow me to… fuck you?”
This infuriating creature has the nerve to smirk at my excitement.
“Well, darling, you haven’t exactly been subtle.
You’ve wanted me to bend for you long enough.
You’re dying to fill me and lock me and come buried so deep inside me I’ll taste you in my throat for days.
I’m merely asking what you’ll give me in exchange. ”
“What I will give you?” Hearing him acknowledge what I am burning to give him most, I am beyond having the guile to play his deep games.
Forthright and earnest, my bottled-up words tumble out.
“My love to ease your loneliness. My strength to guard your back. My body to bring you pleasure and my heart to cut your cruel careless teeth upon. My protection and my loyalty—”
“Yes.” He pounces on the word. “Your loyalty. That’s what I want. All the rest of that rubbish, you can keep.”
“You have it. You have all of me. I swear it.” In this welter of excitement and lust, with my dragon trumpeting with possessive triumph in my ear, I can barely think. I fumble to unbutton him and tug his trousers down his lean hips.
Beneath the respectable fabric, he is wearing a scrap of black lace panties that tuck into his crack and frame the pert swell of his ass.
This discovery makes me groan. I knead his sweet ass and drag him hard against my stiff and aching cock. His lace chafes my exposed dick.
“Dushenka,” I breathe. “Oh sweetheart. I swear to Christ, you will ruin me—”
“Now let’s not be hasty, do ,” he purrs.
He too is excited and aroused, he cannot hope to conceal this from me.
Still, he takes the time to retrieve his knife and lay it safely on the nightstand, still within his dangerous reach. Then his narrow hands pin my shoulders to the mattress. He braces above me to lock onto my stare.
“First I’ll have your promise,” he hisses.
“Your word of honor as a dragon. Swear to me that, after what I let you do to me, tonight and every night as long as it suits me, you’ll do my bidding.
You’ll be my spy. My warrior. My ally. My slave.
Swear to that, and you can fuck me into this mattress until we split the seams.”
I am so eager to claim what he is finally offering that I barely heed his words. Too slowly, a cold trickle of warning seeps through my maddened senses.
“Wait.” I frown. “Are you saying—are we having some kind of—business transaction?”
“Well, I’m not asking you to pay me for it with your gold card, darling. But you know perfectly well I don’t bottom for anyone. Not even Lucius.” His pretty mouth purses in a pout. “So yes, in appreciation for this unprecedented favor on my part, I’d like something from you in exchange.”
“A favor.” The word tastes bitter as salt. He is letting me fuck him as a favor? My chest burns with frustration and disappointment.
I growl and roll to pin his sinuous frame hard beneath me. His eyes widen and his lips part.
“Vasili Nikolaievich Romanov,” I snarl, mere inches from his breathless mouth.
“You are the most provoking creature. When I fuck you with my dragon cock, you will welcome me into your body because you are aching for me to fill you. Just as I am aching. Because you can no longer bear to be apart from me. Because you love me. As I love you. And for no other reason.”
That loaded word echoes in the air between us.
Love.
Because it is true.
I love him.
His lean supple frame stills beneath me, half naked in the wreck of his Academy uniform and that black lace that ignites my senses. His scent of caramel and vetiver fills my head. I burn to kiss that sulky pout off his lips.
“You’re so certain that will happen?” he whispers. “So certain of your… love?”
“Yes, dushenka ,” I growl. “I am certain.”
Under his smoky lids, his eyes turn crafty. “Don’t you even want to know what I’m asking you to promise before you refuse to swear it?”
“I can barely imagine,” I mutter. “But what.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, which is all the invitation I will ever get to kiss this vexing creature.
I lean in and give him what he wants—a slow deep lick of a kiss that makes him sigh and me moan.
His hot mouth tastes like juniper and poison.
He lets me have the kiss I’m craving, my tongue plunging deep between his deadly little fangs to claim him.
Then he pushes me away to breathe the words against my mouth. “Our darling Zara means to add that pissy little fuck of a Fae—that green-haired tyrant—to our harem.”
“I am aware.” Since he now seems receptive to my advances (even if only briefly) and he is not demanding that I swear to this or that bloodless transactional arrangement in exchange for having him, I return to pushing his trousers gently down his long legs.
He wears another blade strapped to his thigh with a woman’s garter—a discovery that captivates me more.
Carefully, I unstrap this blade to render him less deadly.
In truth, I am already his slave.
It is this rare yielding, this fleeting pleasure of his submission, punctured by these sharp reminders that he is lethal and never safe, that makes me so desperate to claim him.
“She’ll tire of him,” he murmurs, stretching languidly beneath me like a snake while I help him shed his skin. “She’ll tire of that fucking stiff-necked Fae and that pole he carries up his imperial ass. I know this. But her tiring of Zephyr will undoubtedly take time.”
I give a noncommittal grunt that concedes nothing.
In truth, I am not so certain Zara will tire of Zephyr.
My sovereign is a woman of strong passions, clear vision, and determined mind. Besides, the Dark Fae King seems like a worthy mate.
But Vasili is now so unexpectedly accommodating, shifting his weight to let me peel him out of his shirt (revealing more knives strapped to his forearms, which I also remove, and the violet shadow of a love bite that Ronin or Lucius must have sucked onto his shoulder) that I choose not to argue.
Instead, I trace the lacy strip of panties that stretch across the sharp angles of his hips. Hopefully, he is not carrying another knife under there.
He has the prettiest cock of any mate in our polycule. All those inches look very tempting, pressed hard and eager against the black lace gusset.
Christ.
I am wild to coax him out of those panties.
But the subtle tensing of his body warns me he is not yet ready.
“The thing is,” he mutters, “I don’t trust that arrogant one-eyed bastard.
I don’t trust him with Zara. And I certainly don’t trust him anywhere near Ronin.
That Unseelie is going to split our polycule right down the middle.
Ronin and me on one side. Zephyr and Ash on the other.
With Zara and the others caught right in the middle. ”
Distracted from leering over his supple and outrageously appealing body, my head jerks up to find my love’s vicious face.
He meets my gaze with a smoldering look and finishes on a growl. “When that happens, darling, I want you on my side and not his. Agree to that, and you can slip off these panties you’re so hot to get me out of, then bend me over and have your wicked way with me right now.”