Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ARKEN
Kieran hissed as he withdrew, his hips jerking while mine spasmed with the aftermath of my orgasm as he spent himself across my belly.
He’d been doing that rather often lately, and not out of any manner of precaution.
Kier took the necessary tonic daily, but I think he knew I liked to watch him come.
And I knew that he liked watching himself come on me.
With a self-satisfied growl, he took hold of his cock, gave it a few rough strokes, and then buried himself back inside me.
“Gods above, you’re insatiable,” I groaned, savoring the delicious ache as we found our eager pace yet again. We had already come together twice. And he was already fucking hard. Again.
“You complaining?” he teased between hot and heavy breaths, nuzzling into my neck. “Need a break, Little Conduit?”
I eyed the pocket watch on his bedside table. We had time.
“Nope,” I gasped, and he took the opportunity to thrust into me harder. Just once. As if to prove a point.
“You sure about that?” he teased, beginning to slow down. Easing himself in, pulling almost all the way out. Achingly slow, yes, but the lack of speed meant that I could focus on the feel of every last inch as I took him to the hilt.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
“It’s okay if you’re sore, sweetheart. We can take a break.”
The smirk on his face and the gleam in his eyes had a vicious little edge, but I knew there was sincerity in the check-in.
“Not. Sore,” I panted as he withdrew again, pausing to brush the head of his cock against my swollen clit.
Not yet, at least.
The bastard had the nerve to look disappointed.
“Unfortunate,” he crooned. “I guess I’ll just have to try harder.”
His next thrust was anything but slow—it was a harsh spear, absurdly fast and hard, causing me to cry out.
“Because that’s what you want, isn’t it? You like it when I leave you sore,” he whispered in damning accusation. “You love the ache. You love feeling me right in between those pretty thighs, even when you’re taking notes in a lecture. Do the memories make it hard to focus, Arken?”
Fucking Fates, was I that transparent?
“Oh, I know, sweetheart. I know,” he said, pushing hair back from my face. “It’s okay. There’s no need to hide,” he cooed, the cruel edge to his tone doing my fucking head in. “You’re already so wet by the time you come home to me. Dripping at my doorstep…Pathetic little thing.”
My body quivered in response to what anyone else might have perceived as an insult—Kieran had quickly learned the exact flavor of degradation that got me off, and he wielded that deadly weapon with dark pride.
“How bad do you wanna miss me later, Arken?” he teased, nipping at my ear. “You still have an exam later.”
“Screw the exam,” I moaned. “Just keep fucking me.”
I felt the rumble in his chest against mine as he laughed.
“Oh, and I’m the insatiable one? No. You’re not skipping any more of your classes, Asher.
I’ve done enough damage to your education.
Though…” Kieran murmured, running his nose up the column of my neck.
“Perhaps not quite enough damage to this pretty little throat of yours.
“By all means,” I breathed.
“Beg for it,” he replied softly.
Fuck.
The ease with which he could command me, his understated yet overwhelming sense of confidence, was intoxicating.
“Bite me. Please, Kier. I need it so bad,” I whimpered, lifting my jaw, exposing as much of my skin as possible.
Claim me. Mark me. Ruin me.
“Hmmm,” Kieran murmured, teasing me first with his tongue.
“Please.”
“So needy,” he sighed, wrapping the words in a heady blend of condemnation, contentment, and desire.
He was drawing this out on purpose. I knew he was. Kieran had been far too pleased with himself the first time he made me come from a bite to the neck to be holding back now.
“Y’know, not to brag or anything, but I’ve made plenty of people come,” he had mused later that day with a shit-eating grin. “With my cock. With my fingers. With my mouth. But I think you might be the first person I’ve ever made come with my teeth.”
And so he’d done it again. And again. Figuring me out, discovering precisely how tight I needed to be wound up, learning the exact edge where pleasure and pain could meet to deliver me into perfect bliss.
“So desperate,” he whispered as I writhed beneath him now, knowing I could think of little else except his mouth, his tongue, and those godling teeth against my throat again. “Are you sure you want it?”
One of his hands kneaded my breast as he spoke, his fingers teasing at the nipple he’d left almost painfully sensitive.
“Gods, yes,” I groaned. “So badly. Please, Kieran.”
“Mmm,” he replied softly, briefly disarmed.
On the subject of our studies, I had discovered that Kieran really liked it when I said his name in bed. Sometimes all it took was hearing his own name on my tongue to get him off.
But by the time he spoke next, the vicious little edge had returned to his voice.
“I’m not sure if I believe you, pretty girl,” he growled in my ear. “You were rather quick to rid yourself of my handiwork, were you not?”
There it was. The second reason he was drawing this out, teasing me harder than usual.
“I had to,” I gasped as he just barely grazed the flesh of my neck with the tips of his teeth. His tongue followed suit, but again, just the very tip.
Bastard.
“Kieran, you know I had that lecture in the Arboretum. I had to put my hair up, it’s humid as all Hel in there.”
“Mhm,” Kieran hummed, seeming to deliberate over whether or not my excuse was satisfactory. “You had to…”
“Kier,” I whined. “It wouldn’t have been appropriate—”
Suddenly, Kieran’s mouth was replaced by his palm, his calloused fingers wrapping around my throat. There was fire in that glacial gaze, burning ice cold.
“Ah, so what you’re saying is that you didn’t want poor Scholar Larkin to know his star pupil secretly loves to be fucked like a whore?” Kieran snarled, his grip tightening for just a fraction of a second before letting me go.
Fucked like a whore.
Well, that implication was new, but Fates help me, I think I liked it. I think I really, really liked it.
Gooseflesh pebbled over my arms.
Yeah, I had enjoyed that form of degradation far too much, and Kieran saw straight through me—saw exactly what sort of sick little pleasures I took from the notion of being used. A soft moan escaped my lips as his cock twitched, still inside me. It would appear he enjoyed it, too.
Like a whore.
Gods, I would so gladly be his whore.
“Or…” Kieran stilled, his breath still hot and heavy against my neck. “Were you simply keeping your options open, just in case Scholar Thompson is on the market?”
Holy Hel. He was jealous.
Ridiculous man. And here I’d thought Kieran was only half blind.
I rolled my eyes, bucking my hips in an attempt to take him in deeper, changing the subject. He shifted himself back, refusing the escalation.
“I don’t want to fuck Ezra,” I bit out, trying not to hiss in frustration.
He was going too slow now, only sliding the very tip of his cock in and out of me. Teasing. Punishing.
“Yeah, well. He wants to fuck you,” Kieran whispered back. I could hear the envy slither around through the velvet and gravel of his rasp.
“I sincerely doubt that.”
Scholar Thompson had been nothing if not perfectly professional.
Friendly, sure—but he’d given me no indication of interest, as far as I could tell.
And yeah, to be fair, I couldn’t always tell, but even if he had, it didn’t matter.
The only cock in Sophrosyne that I had any interest in whatsoever was the one attached to this dickhead—the jealous, possessive, perfect bastard that he was.
“Oh please,” Kieran scoffed. “Half of this city wants to get in your pants, Arken. You’re probably his dream girl.”
Again, he buried his face against my neck, breathing deep but denying me succor.
“It drives me fucking crazy, you know that, right?” he groaned. “Knowing that half of this godsdamned city wants to fuck you. Knowing that they’d all kill to have who I have in my bed, right here,”—his fingertips trailed across my arm gently, raising gooseflesh—“right now.”
“How very unfortunate for them,” I mused, tilting my head and slipping a hand beneath his jaw, forcing him to look at my face and not my throat.
I claimed his willing mouth with a slow kiss, the taste of him dancing on my tongue. If half of this city would kill to fuck me, the other half would burn the world down just to be fucked by him, and yet…
“I only want you,” I murmured as we parted.
It was meant to be a tease, a more sensual sort of confession than anything else, but my pulse scattered as I said those words out loud. They were so dangerously close to the truth.
I’ll only ever want you.
“And Mason Park,” Kieran corrected. “And Avery Evanson, Conor Desjardin, Serena—”
“You fucking stalker!”
Kieran scoffed again and rolled his eyes. “Hardly. It’s not like you were all that subtle about it.”
“I wasn’t trying to be subtle! And how did you even have time to notice between Fionn Blackfriars, Caitlin St. Martin, James St. Martin, Ruelle Wagner, fucking Roshanna—”
Kieran’s eyes widened before a sly grin spread across his face. “My, my, my Little Conduit. Who’s the stalker now?”
An irritated snort escaped my nostrils. “I didn’t need to stalk you for that information. People talk, Vistarii. People brag.”
“Are you feeling jealous, Miss Asher?”
“Are you?” I shot back.
“Maybe,” Kieran answered, a touch of raw honesty surfacing behind the sensuality, breaking through the banter. “But should I be? Do I need to be?”
His tongue was tracing teasing little circles at the base of my throat now, delivering pleasure where I craved pain. I didn’t want his patience right now. I wanted his possession. Ridding myself of his markings had been a mistake, and I wanted them back.
“You know the answer to that already, Kieran.”
“Maybe I want to hear you say it out loud.”
His tongue paused its ministrations in exchange for a gentle, encouraging kiss. Soft enough to distract me from my frustration, long enough to draw the truth from my lips.
“No. You have no reason to be jealous. Never in my fucking life have I wanted someone the way I want you, Kieran Vistarii. They were all nothing compared to this,” I confessed, my body pleading for him. “Now will you please just fucking—Oh my gods.”
Having successfully teased me to Hel and back, he finally bit down without preamble, pinching at one of my nipples as he did it.
Kieran worked his jaw so that his teeth were grinding against the sensitive flesh of my throat, sucking the skin into his wet and eager mouth.
I bucked my hips, pulling him in deeper as I cried out over the beautiful agony bursting between his lips.
Fuck, fuck, fuck—why does this feel so fucking good?
“That’s my girl,” he whispered, pausing before pushing the flat of his tongue against the stinging, bitten flesh. Had he broken skin? Who could say? What did it matter? He could do whatever he wanted with me.
Lost in a swirl of euphoria, feeling wholly inebriated, my boneless body melted into the mattress beneath him. All I could do was tilt my chin higher, beckoning him back as I gripped tightly at the sheets. I received my reward as Kieran bit down again. And again.
“And by the way, Asher? The feeling is very mutual.”