Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
KIERAN
Careful, pretty girl.
I had already slowed down on the gin with my next pour—this would be more than enough to get me drunk.
And drunk was, regrettably, exactly what I needed to be right now in order to numb my daemons long enough to put them in chains, to ease the harsh bite of my own self-loathing long enough that I could swallow it.
I needed to shove it all down before it pulled me under.
I wasn’t about to drag her to Hel with me. Not like that, anyway. But my grip on my self-control was always tenuous at best around Arken, and I swore on the fuckin’ Source, if she tried to pull my hair like that again…
No. Don’t go there. You’re in no place to dominate her tonight.
I ceded to my conscience as the liquor began to heat my blood, tempering my senses.
But I could still make good on that promise.
I could still fuck her up. I’d already had plenty of fun with Arken’s little masochistic streak, even without a formal power exchange between us.
And I didn’t need her submission to shove her up against a wall and fuck her hard and fast and messy—just the way she liked it.
One of these days, however…
The liquor had done its job. Memories of the day circled the drain, replaced by nothing except her. Only her.
And I watched her with darkening pleasure as she bit down and suckled at her lower lip—the absent-minded, anxious habit of hers the main reason I’d developed a taste for her blood on my tongue.
Between her restless mind and the inherent aggression of our kisses, that pink and plush little thing was almost permanently split as of late.
“Am I making you nervous, Ark?”
Arken took a long sip of her drink before responding.
“Yes.”
“Good,” I said. “I like you nervous.”
The haze of the gin had set in, clearly loosening my lips. I studied the way Arken’s flushed chest seemed to rise and fall a little faster now, enraptured by the way those perfect breasts strained against the bodice of her dress.
“Is that so?” she murmured.
“Yeah.” If she wanted an explanation, the girl would have to work for it. I wasn’t in the most forthcoming state of mind, and I liked watching those gears turn like clockwork behind her golden eyes.
But Hel, she was so fucking sexy. Hard to resist, and so much harder to deny.
I watched greedily as she tipped her head back, throat bobbing while she drained what remained of the whiskey in her glass.
She wasn’t quite catching up to me and my daemons, but the girl was a lightweight, which meant she was getting just as drunk as I was.
The notion thrilled me for some reason, and it made my cock hard.
Distantly, I knew that urge was rather unlike me, but at the same time…
Gods, I had wanted to fuck Arken in some state of inebriation ever since that first night I saw her get drunk at The Clover, watching the way her body moved, transfixed by the way a touch of liquor on her tongue seemed to loosen her up.
It was a strange thing for me to crave, because consent was so critical to me that I very, very rarely took anyone to bed while intoxicated. I had always required lucid, enthusiastic consent from a partner to even get it up.
But I had grown very, very well-versed in what constituted Arken’s consent over the last few days.
It was as if her body spoke a language that only I knew how to interpret, and because of that, I knew damn well that my Little Conduit had been craving my cock long before that whiskey ever touched her lips.
And I knew she was still craving it now.
I was so enthralled by the way she was looking at me, so interested to see what else might loosen between us—what secrets we might expose under the influence of both liquor and lust.
Arken’s lashes lowered as she tilted her head toward me, not intimidated. Just curious. Intrigued.
“And why is that, Captain?” she asked, her honey-sweet voice a little huskier than usual.
“Because I am a very, very depraved individual,” I replied, the words rolling off my tongue thick and slow.
“Mmm,” she mused, studying me over her glass. Again, I watched those gears turn as she interpreted my words, calculating…extracting her preferred translation. “I couldn’t tell.”
I chucked darkly, toying with the empty glass in my hand. I tested myself by spinning it on the countertop at just the right angle—good. I still had my reflexes intact, even as the liquor was beginning to burn through my veins with the blood and aether, emboldening my desires.
“Oh, Arken,” I breathed, eyes gleaming as I stared back at her. “You’ve barely even scratched the surface of that depravity.”
She slipped a delicate hand behind my back, running her fingertips up and underneath my shirt. They were cool to the touch, but the shiver she’d drawn forth wasn’t from the chill.
“I guess I’ll have to try harder, then,” she murmured in my ear.
Now what did she mean by—
I sucked in a sharp breath, eyes blowing wide then meeting the back of my skull as Arken fucking Asher took her perfectly manicured, almond-shaped nails and dug them into the hard muscle of my back. I groaned as she dragged them down viciously, hissing in both shock and approval.
Fuck me.
I turned around, one hand grabbing her by the waist while the other took hold of her errant wrist, shackling her newfound weapon of choice.
“Careful,” I warned her again, maintaining searing contact with her molten gaze.
I didn’t actually want her to be careful. Not really. The warning was still sincere, but fuck. I wasn’t a masochist, but I didn’t mind pain—it sharpened my own edges. And her aggression? Well. That was about to turn me into a monster.
“I’m not afraid of you and your so-called depravity, Kieran,” Arken stated, defiant challenge in her eyes.
“You probably should be,” I replied dryly.
I took care to deliver those words like a flippant tease rather than what they really were: a confession.
But warnings and confessions aside, I really didn’t want her to be afraid of me right now.
I just liked it when she got all nervous and skittish.
I liked making her react to me, in any number of ways, really—but when her eyes grew wide and wild, her breath catching and hitching with those pathetic little pants, I came undone.
Seducing Arken’s mind was as satisfying to me as placing pleasure upon her flesh.
Thankfully, she didn’t look scared right now…Not at all. Arken looked like she wanted to eat me alive.
“Fuck that,” she snarled in response to my warning, shoving her free hand down between my legs so she could push the chair back from the counter with no small amount of aggression.
I was startled enough by her audacity to release her wrist as she straddled me on top of the barstool. Startled, and exceptionally turned on.
Oh, fuck yes. Bare those fangs for me, pretty girl.
I knew she had a vicious streak. I’d only caught glimpses of it, little flickers here and there, often gone so fast that I had to wonder if they truly existed at all.
It was entirely possible that I was just seeing what I wanted to see, desperate for a level of compatibility between us that couldn’t possibly be real. And yet…
As she wrapped her thighs around my waist, Arken’s hands were in my hair again, tugging it back, exposing my throat.
With what felt like utterly indecent intent, she ran her tongue from my collarbone to the hollow of my throat, all the way up until she paused against the side of my neck, nipping at one of my earlobes.
Again, harder than I’d come to expect from her, but fucking Hel, I enjoyed it.
Yeah. Just like that.
“Godsdamn, you are so hard already,” Arken groaned as she began to grind herself against the length of my cock straining beneath my pants. “Isn’t that supposed to be a struggle or something when men drink? Whiskey dick and whatnot?”
“For starters, I’ve been drinking gin,” I said as she bucked her hips even harder, seeking pressure, demanding friction. “And more importantly, this realm will be swallowed by the depths of the fucking Abyss before I ever struggle to get hard around you, Arken.”
If liquor was enough to temper the demands this woman drew from my cock, I’d have been at risk of becoming an alcoholic by now.
There was an awful lot of self-satisfaction present in her responding giggle as she slipped one hand between us to caress the throbbing erection she’d summoned.
Her other arm wrapped around my neck, both steadying herself and pulling our bodies closer.
Her tongue made its way back to my neck, eliciting a sharp inhale as I felt her bite down.
Sweet fucking Fates.
It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d kissed my neck, or even the first time Arken had bitten me. Our bodies played a savage game once we fell prey to our baser instincts together, but this was different. She may have been drunk, but Arken was lucid enough to be doing this with intention.
I groaned, running my hands from her thighs to grip her ass cheeks, hard.
Fuck, if only she were wearing a dress. I wanted to rip these accursed leggings off her body with my bare hands—never mind that I’d bought them for her—so that a quick fumble with my belt would be all I needed to get inside her.
That urge only seemed to intensify as she worked that tongue against my pulse point, laving at it, suckling where she had bitten, trading off between nips and licks and—holy fuck.
“Are you trying to mark me, Asher?” I rasped.
“Maybe,” she snarled.
My cock twitched, straining harder against its confines.
Abyss fucking take me right fucking now, because I couldn’t handle the notion of Arken trying to stake her claim like this.
Yes, she had left marks on me before, but again, this was different.
Impulse versus intention. I knew what it felt like.
I knew what it would look like by the time she was done with me. And I was losing my fucking mind.
Fuuuck.
My head was spinning, and it sure as shit wasn’t just the gin.
“Fucking insatiable,” I growled as she started to deftly undo my belt buckle with one hand. The other remained curled against my neck, her nails biting into the flesh. “Oh, you little fucking whore.”
“Don’t act like you don’t want it,” she bit back.
Gods, she’s brazen tonight.
She moaned a little as I began to knead the ample flesh of her ass with both hands, and suddenly, I was far too impatient to let this continue on a fuckin’ barstool.
I slid my arms beneath her thighs so that I could push us both off the chair by my hips, keeping her legs wrapped around my waist as I stood.
“Oh,” she said, surprised by the transition that brought us face to face. “Hello.”
“Hi,” I murmured as she leaned into it, arms around my neck, fingers in my hair, resting her forehead against mine as I carried her toward the hall. She probably thought I was carrying her to bed, but I had much more immediate plans.
I bit down on her lower lip to tug it toward me, drawing her mouth against mine and sliding my eager tongue into her heat with a slow and promising fervor. Thrusting my hips forward to anchor her, I shoved Arken’s body up against the wall, crushing my thighs against hers and holding her steady.
Whimpers and mewls fell from her mouth when I broke free of our kiss, having placed myself so that my thickening length was pressed directly against the apex of her spread thighs, only a few layers of fabric between temptation and release.
I only had to rock my hips, juuust enough, as my mouth met her neck, and—
“Kieran,” she cried, writhing beneath me as much as she could with my body pushing up against hers with such force. “Kier, I—Fuck.”
“What’s the matter, Ark?” I purred.
I kept moving my hips, nudging the crown of my cock against her clit, imagining just how slick and hot she must be beneath those godsdamned leggings.
After groping at her tits, my hand palmed her neck, thumb splayed, holding it around her throat like a collar.
I kept my grip gentle, with no pressure against her windpipe, more a caress than anything else.
The gin in my system left me reckless, and I only wanted to see what it would look like.
For a moment, I wanted to imagine what it would feel like to pin this poor, pathetic, pretty little thing up against the wall by her godsdamned throat.
Ark and I had played rough before; we had been flirting with the edge of our own proclivities, and fuck, I wanted so much more.
I wanted her submission, craving the authority to control even the amount of breath this woman drew into her lungs.
Not tonight.
Yeah, yeah. Drunk as I was, I could keep myself in check. But I hadn’t exactly anticipated what came next. Probably should have. I’d been too wrapped up in my own fantasy to realize what I’d done, because Arken’s pupils were so wide now that I could barely see any gold.
“Harder,” she whispered, tongue rolling over her lips, coating them in a thin sheen.
I stilled. “Beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.” Arken jutted her chin upwards, flexing that sinuous length of flesh beneath my hand. Intentionally. Fucking Hel.
“Ark…” I warned, my voice dropping low. This girl was drenched in kerosene and playing with matches. Dangerous. So very dangerous.
“You know you want to,” she sang beneath her breath.
My fingers still flexed, almost instinctively.
I let them tighten, just a little bit. Just barely.
A whisper of pressure against the pulse points beneath her jaw, and suddenly Arken’s lashes fluttered as she sucked in a breath.
I knew that one of Arken’s most sensitive erogenous zones was her neck, as evidenced by the way she reacted and the sounds she made any time I put my mouth on it…
But she didn’t want to be bitten right now. She wanted to be fucking choked. It was clear as day, dark and dizzying behind the molten gold of her gaze.
“Harder,” she repeated.
Oh, I am so fucked.