Chapter 35
The Very Physical Embodiment of Temptation
The feral bitch had bitten him!
A flash of ire zipped through his pumping blood as he stepped beyond her reach.
How dare she? Didn’t she realize he was trying to be merciful?
Didn’t she understand that he didn’t want to kill anymore, and hadn’t for a very long time?
If he showed leniency, it would be interpreted as weakness, and he’d have to be more brutal the next time he faced his opponents in battle to make up for it.
Even here, locked away in this miserable castle with his friends, there was still the staff who’d never pretended to answer to him. In the Opalese, eyes and ears were always watching, always eavesdropping, always trading in tidbits of information, trying to gain advantage.
Alobaz was obviously a fool when it came to his prisoner, but he wasn’t when it came to Mauldrene. He didn’t trust a single one of her lurking shadows.
With gentle fingertips, he dabbed the tear in his lip.
His fingers came away bloody. He studied the blood, how it glistened a deep, dark, enticing red in the lumoonlight.
Even his own blood fascinated him, part of his s?nglure nature he couldn’t deny.
It drew him, tantalized him, made him desire.
Made him subservient, at times, to its demands.
He licked his lips, tasting his own blood. Only when he felt his prisoner’s attention trailing his tongue around his mouth did he look back at her.
Oh. Oh my.
His prisoner was back to panting, her laden breaths emulating the rhythms of sex.
If he closed his eyes, he would all too easily conjure the image of her stunning body naked and on top of him while she rode him.
Scorchit, it was happening even with his eyes wide open, which he wouldn’t—couldn’t—drag from her.
She sat once more on the bed, but this time she leaned back, her skirts hiked up so that the fabric bared her thighs to his ravenous scrutiny.
Her legs were long, lean, and smooth, indented with muscles.
They opened and closed, wafting the titillating scent of her arousal in his direction.
It overpowered all other smells of the room, the largest and nicest in the dungeons, probably built with aristocratic prisoners in mind.
He watched her legs open and close, open and close, and then again, and again—and again.
As if in a stupor, he eventually dragged his stare up her body, pausing on the plump swells of her breasts.
He indulged in a brief fantasy of taking each one into his mouth, sucking on each nipple until she cried out in ecstasy.
He’d been hard practically since he entered the room and smelled her desire everywhere.
Then, it had been an annoyance. He shouldn’t be so weak as to want the woman who’d tried to murder him—really!
Now, his dick throbbed so hard it had a pulse all its own.
His desire for her was becoming a real problem.
He had to concentrate to keep from walking over to her.
His feet kept lifting from the floor, angling to move forward.
Slowly, so fucking enticingly, she drew her wet tongue along her lips. They glistened, shining a bright cherry-red even in the dim lumoonlight. No whore Alobaz had ever taken to bed had been more enticing, not even fully nude, putting on a show, using every ploy in a prostitute’s arsenal.
Alobaz understood right then that no woman more alluring existed in all the Opalese.
Even with the dampening collar secure around her delicate neck, even stripped of her many weapons, his prisoner was the most dangerous woman he’d ever met.
She licked and licked her lips. He watched and watched, listening to the smooth glide of tongue against soft, cherry skin, smelling his blood on her mouth, on her tongue.
Her eyes … by the Ethers, her fucking eyes. They were glazed with need and pinned on him, as if there were nothing in all the world she wanted more than she desired him.
It was intoxicating.
She was intoxicating.
Alarm clanged in Alobaz’s mind. In a fight, the seasoned warrior never ignored his own cautions, that subtle guidance that had proven to be the difference between continued life and a brutal death.
But the enchantress held him captivated, as if he were the true prisoner here. Against his wishes, his feet succeeded in taking a step closer. Then another.
“Your blood…” she said on a husky exhale. “It’s…” She dragged her teeth along her lower lip, sucking on it. “It’s … fucking delicious.”
She stood, reached for him.
Get away from her, his thoughts screamed. Move, you idiotic bastard, move!
He didn’t. He held perfectly still, needing to see what she would do.
She dragged the tip of a finger gently along the cut in his lip. Came away with his blood. She stared at it for several beats, during which he couldn’t decide if she was trying to resist his blood or as entranced as he was.
When she sucked her finger into her mouth, closed her eyes, and moaned—long and salacious—his cock twitched, straining against his pants. Obviously his dick didn’t care that indulging in her might bring about his demise—shit, there were no mights about it. It was likely.
“By the Ethers and all the Fuerin,” she groaned. “Your blood is…” Her eyes snapped open, locked on his. “The best I’ve ever tasted.”
His breath hitched, then tumbled out raggedly.
She licked her lips again. Reached that now wet fingertip toward him. When it alighted on his battered lip, he sucked it into his mouth.
He hadn’t planned on it. Hadn’t given it any thought. But once it was in his mouth, he sucked hard.
She threw her head back on another moan, this one so lascivious he thought his dick would find a way to burst free of his pants all on its own.
He sucked on her finger again. This time, they both moaned.
She pulled her finger from his mouth and dragged it anew across the cut in his lip. It was bleeding less now, and she dug her nail into the slice to emerge bloody.
Her face two feet from his, her eyes gobbling his up, she licked his blood from her finger, took her sweet time with it, loosing little moans of pleasure.
Then she shoved her finger all the way inside her mouth. It had to be hitting the back of her throat. As if it were his dick, she sucked on it hard and loud. From the surge in her arousal, the sweetness that permeated the air, he was certain she was picturing the same.
“You bit me,” he said. His accusation lacked its earlier ire—the appropriate rage.
She sucked her finger some more, than drew it from her mouth to lick its tip in a slow, languid circle. “I did. I don’t regret it. Do you?”
Of course I do, that was the only logical answer. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“I won’t feed from you,” she said, her voice still that rough, husky roll that made his groin pulse with need.
He could have pointed out that she already was feeding from him, even if a little amount. But he didn’t. He didn’t want to do anything to disrupt this bizarre moment they were sharing.
The alarm bells kept ringing inside his mind. Each time he pushed them farther from his awareness.
“I can’t feed from you,” she added softly, as if she were convincing herself instead of him. “I won’t. Not ever. Your blood is off limits.”
That was a fantastic reminder that she was off limits to him.
Again, she swiped her finger across his lip, digging into the tear. Even with the fresh stab of pain, his cock throbbed as he anticipated that she’d lick her finger clean.
His breath audibly caught when she didn’t bring her hand to her mouth but rather leaned back onto the bed, hiking up her skirts so he could make out the crease of her thighs but no more.
Then.
Fuck me.
Then … she looked from him to the blood on her fingertip, and then to him again.
Holding his stare, her fangs dragging along her plump lower lip, she plunged her finger—his blood, a part of him—deep inside her.
When she threw her head back and leaned more heavily into her one arm, her skirts shifted.
He caught a glimpse of a dusting of soft, dark hair—and of her hand pushing her finger—and his blood, his fucking blood—deeper inside her.
He was frozen in place. He wouldn’t have abandoned the room, abandoned her, if it had been on fucking fire. A squadron of enraged dragons wouldn’t have been able to drag him away.
When she next moaned, her breasts bobbed—yearning to break free of their restraints, he thought.
Before he knew what he was doing, he discovered himself moving, and he didn’t bother trying to stop himself. There was no halting what she’d set in motion. Not that he wanted to.
All he wanted in that moment was her.
His prisoner.
The very physical embodiment of temptation.
He observed his actions as if from afar. However much he would feel her, it wouldn’t be enough. Never enough.
Somehow, somewhere, he already knew that. He didn’t know who she was, had no idea of her name or origins, but he already knew.
He had to have her.
Had to make her his.
Only his.
He heard himself growling, “You’re mine,” as he slid her finger from inside her, pushed her down onto the bed, and straddled her waist—where just days ago he’d sliced her open; pink welts remained.
Her eyes were blown wide, devouring his as he sucked her wet and glistening finger into his mouth. When he mingled her juices with the blood from his lip and sucked some more, she arched her back and moaned loudly enough that surely someone in this wretched castle would hear.
The niggling warnings were too faint to overpower the roaring want in his blood, his body.
His heart.
No! his thoughts warned in one final attempt at reason. She’ll devour your fucking heart and leave it in shredded pieces.
So fucking be it, he replied. He couldn’t help it. He was feeling, and feeling, and feeling … more than he’d felt since Arabella and Carina had been taken from him. More than he’d felt in all the long centuries since.
It was reckless and stupid and foolish, but right then, with her, none of that mattered.
“By the fucking Ethers,” she croaked. “Stuff your dick inside me already before I lose my damn mind.”
He’d well and surely already lost his.
With deft fingers, she undid the laces of his britches, while his cock pulsed with each passing caress of her knuckles.
He sucked on her finger a final time as his dick sprang free.
She hissed. “Dragondamn, man. You’re built to please, alright.” Beneath him, she squirmed.
He would have answered. Probably could have come up with something sly and smoldering to say.
But before he could, before he could prepare himself for the sensation of her sheathing his cock, she pushed him down her body, slid her legs around his, and impaled herself on his shaft before he could process a single fucking thing.
He bent over her chest. “Oh my fucking Fuerin,” he breathed into her neck.
Her own breath shuddered, pushing her breasts, desperate to escape from her corset, into his shirt.
She was slick and fragrant, lush and wet. When she writhed against him, he could only do one thing.
He pulled out of her just enough so that he could thrust into her with a smack, with all the violence she’d come at him with.
She screamed into his throat, slapped her hands to his bare ass, and demanded more.