11. Isolde
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ISOLDE
I solde had begun to shiver.
Her vision was creeping back, but she could still only see the vague suggestion of shapes in the darkness.
The faint, faint glow of a candle hovered on her right, and on her left—though she knew he was there more from the warmth of his body than anything—the dark silhouette of Bastian’s broad shoulders.
She’d put the wooziness in her head down to the adrenaline wearing off, once Bastian had found her and she’d felt some semblance of safety.
She was even willing to admit that the arousal she’d felt at Bastian’s touch, at that comment he’d made about filthy words on her tongue, might be the reason for her spinning head.
But the dizziness, paired with the bone-deep chill and the ache at the base of her skull… that meant something much worse than arousal. Even if that arousal was for a Wolf.
“Are you cold?” Bastian asked, noticing the way her teeth had begun to chatter. “I can build the fire up.”
He was still being unsettlingly kind as they sat there on his settee. Isolde had closed her eyes and tried to sleep for a while, and when that didn’t work, and the panic of not being able to see began to set in again, she’d demanded he talk to keep her distracted.
He’d started talking about blacksmithing, of all things.
As a boy, living with the Wolf pack, he’d been the blacksmith’s apprentice.
That was how he’d learned the craft, and he’d taken over the pack’s forge when the smith he’d studied with got too old.
Then he’d gone into a detailed explanation of the smithing needs of every person in Bloodhaven—new bits for the horses of one of the farmers, repairing a knife for one of the huntsmen, dozens upon dozens of arrowheads, and swords.
The villagers were all asking for swords to defend themselves from the beast.
Thinking back to that moment in the woods, terrified and completely defenseless, Isolde had wanted to ask Bastian for a set of knives.
Selene had taught Isolde how to wield them shortly after she turned, but she’d never had any weapons of her own.
There on Bastian’s settee, though, Isolde’s pride had gotten in the way, and she couldn’t convince herself to ask him the question.
Now, she said to him, “No, it’s alright. The fire won’t help.”
“You’re shivering.” She could hear the frown in his voice.
“My body temperature is dropping,” Isolde explained. “It happens when I need to feed.”
She’d lost so much blood, and it had been more than a week since Burning Night, when she’d fed on that copper-haired human. Her stomach was hollow, her hands shaking from both hunger and cold.
Bastian was silent beside her. She heard him shift, the settee creaking beneath them.
“You can feed from me,” he finally said.
Isolde’s jaw dropped. She turned to look at him, for all the good it did, gaping at his hazy silhouette. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” he replied steadily. His voice was low and smooth, completely confident. “I assume the situation is fairly dire, no? And you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night to feed on a human, since you can’t exactly go prowling for lunch in the bright light of day.”
He was right on all counts, and if Isolde’s symptoms now were any indication, she’d likely be well on her way to delirious by nightfall tomorrow. But…
“You’re a Wolf.”
“So?” Bastian sounded so matter-of-fact about it all, Isolde hardly knew what to think. “Legend has it that Wolf blood is especially potent for Vampires—enough so that your kind once hunted mine for it—so I don’t think there should be any concern that drinking from me is going to poison you.”
Isolde frowned. “You don’t have some great moral objection to having a Vampire drink from you?” she asked. “You know, considering that my kind o nce hunted yours for their blood. ”
“No,” Bastian said. “Unless you have a moral objection to drinking from Wolves?”
Isolde paused. Did she?
Selene had always been adamant that Wolves were the enemy.
That they were the greatest danger that existed to a Vampire.
Above all else, that was the one thing that really made her wary.
Yes, Bastian was most of the things that Selene always said Wolves were—brutish, and callous, and brash—and yes, he’d admitted to hunting her, but Isolde didn’t think she had anything to fear from him.
Maybe that made her a fool, but if he wanted to kill her, he’d had plenty of opportunity when she’d been out of her mind in the forest just now.
Or on Burning Night, when he had that knife to her neck, for that matter.
A different Wolf might have taken the opportunity to end her life then, but Bastian hadn’t.
Isolde didn’t quite know whether she had a moral objection to drinking from Wolves in particular, but she knew she didn’t have any objection to drinking from him .
“I don’t,” she told him.
“So drink, then, Isolde.”
In that moment, Isolde wished nothing more than to be able to see Bastian’s face. He sounded so serious, so earnest, like this was the most obvious course of action in the world.
“Feeding tends to be very… intimate,” Isolde said, shifting to face Bastian more fully.
She cleared her throat, deciding to just come right out with it.
“The venom from our bites is an aphrodisiac. I don’t want to put you in that situation if anything physical between us isn’t something you’re interested in. ”
“Isolde.” Bastian’s voice was almost a purr, low and rumbling, and the sound of it reignited the pulsing ache between Isolde’s legs. “Despite the fact that I had a knife to your neck, I hope it was perfectly obvious the night we met that I’m extremely interested in something physical between us.”
Oh, God. The memory of that night, of the way he’d claimed her mouth with his, the hard, heavy press of his cock against her core…
Isolde barely realized she’d already leaned toward him, her nostrils flaring as she drew his scent into her lungs. Even from here, with a cushion of the settee between them, she could smell the sweet, earthy richness of his blood beneath the scent of amber and woodsmoke.
Slowly, Isolde reached out a hand. Her fingers met the hot, smooth skin of his forearm, and she felt her way upward, along his bicep to the hard muscle of his shoulder.
She crept toward him, closing the distance between them on the settee until she was tucked against his side, his breath feathering across her forehead.
“Are you sure?” she breathed, drinking in lungfuls of his scent like that was the thing that would sustain her.
Bastian’s fingertips brushed her cheek, then slid to her neck, over her pulse and to her nape before plunging into her hair. Gently, and yet still firmly, he guided her head down to his neck.
Isolde’s canines elongated, her mouth filling with saliva. Still, she didn’t drink. She ghosted her lips over his thrumming pulse, inhaling his heady scent as she waited for him to say the word.
“ Drink , Isolde,” he repeated.
She sunk her fangs into the thick vein at the side of his neck, and he tasted like heaven.
A moan slipped out of her as his blood hit her tongue, hot and sweet and spicy and earthy all at once.
It was richer than the finest wine she’d ever sipped.
He tasted like black cherries and cardamom and something sharp and earthy, like that unique layer of his scent that she could never quite identify.
Bastian’s blood flowed over her tongue, gliding down her throat.
Ravenous, barely thinking, she slipped into his lap, deepening the angle of her mouth against his skin.
He groaned, the sound rumbling from his chest to hers, and for a second Isolde faltered, worry that she’d hurt him cutting through the haze of bliss.
But—no. That wasn’t a sound of pain, but of pleasure.
And the growing hardness of his cock, pressed right against Isolde’s center from the way she straddled him, was as good an indication as any that he was enjoying this, too.
As the blood entered Isolde’s system and her head began to clear, she forced herself to slow her drinking. She circled her hips, grinding against him in time with the deep, languid pulls she took from his vein.
Bastian groaned again at the friction, his hands splaying on Isolde’s ass and pressing her more firmly against himself.
With each swirl of Isolde’s hips, he jerked his, thrusting up against her.
He was moaning in earnest now, the sounds deliciously gravelly in Isolde’s ears.
Cries of pleasure slipped out of Isolde, too, muffled against Bastian’s neck as the combined taste of his blood and the friction of his cock through the rough fabrics of their pants drove her toward the edge.
Finally satiated, Isolde withdrew her canines from Bastian’s neck. She flattened her tongue against his skin in their wake, soothing the puncture wounds she’d left behind.
“You taste so fucking good, ” she murmured against his skin.
The growl that rumbled up from Bastian’s throat at her words verged on feral.
Suddenly, his hands were in her hair, dragging her head up to claim her lips with his.
His teeth scraped across Isolde’s bottom lip, forcing her mouth open for his tongue to sweep in.
Beneath her, Bastian’s hips churned, his hard cock thrusting relentlessly against her core.
Isolde couldn’t keep still as his hands roamed her body, sliding up beneath her borrowed shirt and curling into the waistband of her trousers.
Bastian broke the kiss, his fingers tightening on her hips. “My turn to taste,” he demanded.
Then he was lifting her—no, he was standing, still holding Isolde pressed against him as he turned and lowered her back to the settee.
A desperate whine escaped her lips at the loss of friction against her aching clit, but then Bastian yanked at the laces of her trousers.
A few rough tugs, and the supple leather peeled from her legs.
Isolde gasped as cool air hit her center. Her vision was clearer now, after the blood, and suddenly she could see Bastian where he knelt between her legs. Even through the lingering blur, she could see the way his mouth curled up at one corner, the hungry glint in his dark eyes.
“So wet for me,” he murmured, curling his hands behind Isolde’s knees. “You’re fucking dripping.”
With a sharp yank, he pulled Isolde to the edge of the settee. Still holding her knees, he spread her legs wide, giving himself full access to her center.
And then he dipped his head and devoured her.
His lips closed around her clit, sucking it so thoroughly that Isolde almost screamed. She nearly climaxed from that first touch of his lips alone, but then his tongue was traveling down, plunging inside her as he lapped at her slickness.
“Oh, fuck,” she swore, thrusting her hands into his hair. It was softer than she remembered, the waves thick and silky between her fingers as she pressed his mouth more firmly against her. “ Fuck , Bastian.”
“Just like I thought,” he rasped between swirls of his tongue around her dripping entrance. “That word sounds so pretty on your tongue when I have mine inside of you.”
Bastian’s words sent Isolde spiraling. She tightened her hold on his hair, the motions of her hips growing more frantic as he worked her toward climax with his tongue.
One of his hands splayed on her inner thigh, kneading the sensitive flesh there while the other slipped beneath her shirt.
His fingers trailed over her stomach, and then her breasts.
He rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, twisting gently until the pleasure bordered on pain.
In the same instant that sweet twinge of pain erupted in Isolde’s breast, Bastian scraped his teeth against the hypersensitive skin of her clit, and she exploded . Her climax slammed into her and she arched off the settee, a scream of pleasure tearing from her throat.
Bastian didn’t stop. He chose that moment to slide a finger inside of her, curling it perfectly against her inner wall as he continued to work her clit with his lips and her nipple with his other hand.
One orgasm rolled into the next, and Isolde didn’t know if the spots in her vision were from the nightsbane or the pleasure.
Finally, when Isolde’s cries turned hoarse and the last waves of her climax had run their course, Bastian gave her one last lick, and sat back on his heels. Isolde collapsed onto the settee, boneless. Her vision finally cleared as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Better than I imagined,” Bastian said, wiping his fingers across his glistening chin. Isolde watched, dazed, as he licked every last drop of her wetness from his hands. His eyes didn’t leave hers as he did so, his pupils blown so wide, she could hardly see the ring of gold surrounding them.
“Fuck,” Isolde muttered again, unable to think of any other comprehensible words. She found enough strength to sit forward, reaching for Bastian. “Let me return the favor.”
Her fingers brushed the front of his trousers, where his cock was still hard. Or?—
“No need.” Bastian caught her wrist in his hand and pushed her gently back onto the settee, but not before she felt the stickiness seeping through the fabric. “I came before I even got your pants off.”
He said it without a hint of embarrassment, or even sheepishness. It was so unlike the way the human men sometimes confessed this to Isolde that she couldn’t help but gape at him. Once again, she was struck by his confidence, by the surety in nearly everything he said and did.
“It wasn’t just the feeding, either,” he added, reaching up to pull her— his —shirt down over her stomach, and then to drape the blanket back over her lap. “My cock’s been hard for you nearly every day since that first night.”
With that, he rose and walked around the settee, disappearing from Isolde’s view. She stayed put, staring dazedly at the fireplace before her, the series of odd baubles and trinkets she couldn’t quite make out on the mantel, and the worn rug at her feet.
Lulled by the warmth of the fresh blood in her system and the earth-shattering orgasm she’d just been given, Isolde tumbled into sleep before Bastian’s footsteps even reached the opposite side of the room.