Chapter 17 #3
“Don’t make me sound more noble than I am,” I muttered, but he tapped my lips with a clawed forefinger.
“Hush,” Wroth commanded. “Shall we now discuss how pampered you are? You came because I needed an Artificer, and you knew your skills were up to it, when you could’ve passed the torch to another.
If you had refused, I would have sent to Argent for another, no matter how much longer it took, no matter if we lost the trail.
You have marched well over a mile into the bowels of the earth.
You have fallen into a river, which should have rightfully killed you, and passed through places no living man has seen and lived to speak of in decades.
You have found some of your people, and will keep going until the bitter end, until you know you have them all accounted for…
and you have stopped the man who set this all in motion. ”
I rested my forehead on his chest, and his massive hand cupped the back of my head.
“I think, in light of those things, you may take a bath without flagellating yourself for it,” he said gently.
I took several deep breaths, rubbing my face in his silky mane before I raised my head. “All right.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, tracing the line of my cheekbone and leaving beads of hot water to run down my face like tears.
I nodded, leaning into his hand until he cupped my cheek.
“I will leave it alone, if you wish,” Wroth said. “But I will happily sing your praises, Jesamin. Simply look at who is here with me in the dark, unwilling to leave until it’s all over…and who is not.”
“It’s probably better to leave it alone,” I rasped out, my throat unaccountably tight.
He wriggled under me, forcing me to straddle him, and despite the tears that I was holding back with ferocious determination, the liquid heat of lust bloomed in my core.
“Now, as for the gruel…that is a valid complaint,” he mused. “But consider that I suffer alongside you, drinking the reconstituted blood of an ox from a communal pot. We can heartily complain together.”
I managed to huff out a laugh, torn between that awful self-loathing and the rising need for him to be inside me, filling me with nothing but the feel of him and his restrained power, and it was the lust that was slowly winning.
And there was nothing I wanted to erase from my mind more than the thought of my year of purgatory, living in the house of a fiend who was marrying another, all for the sake of those who could no longer be saved.
So when the blunt head of his cock brushed over my folds, I wriggled onto him, wrapping my legs around his waist. “Push me down,” I whispered, my nipples hardening despite the heat of the water. “Let me feel you.”
His pupils had narrowed again, focused on my face.
Wroth gripped my hips, slowly easing himself upwards and his hands downwards, impaling me on the stone hard pillar of his cock.
This time he moved with me, without savagery, ensuring I felt every second of my pussy stretching to its limits to accommodate him.
And with the water making me weightless above him, he lifted me with no effort at all, eight inches sliding out and thrusting back in.
He let out a long, rasping groan as I gasped, riding hard against the pressure of his hands with the desperate need to be penetrated and flooded.
He made me forget everything but him, and when he was all I could think of, I found the world to be a wonderful place.
It all became so simple: when I was with Wroth, I could peel away the barriers I’d wrapped myself in until the uncertain core of myself was revealed.
And when he was in me, all the self-recriminations and regrets fell away, leaving only primal instinct and desire.
The next time he lifted me, I kissed him, and tipped my head to nuzzle my throat against his mouth. “I want you to drink from me. I want a permanent reminder of this time.”
When Esteri married him, I wanted to know that I alone was marked, and she would never feel him in the way that I had. It was selfish and jealous, but…he was mine, in a way he would never be for her.
“You burn my willpower to ashes, woman,” he growled, but his rough tongue slipped out, touching that ticklish pulse point.
I hummed, letting him feel the vibration against his tongue, and Wroth let out another groan, settling me on his cock and burying his fingers in my hair to tilt my head.
“Ride me while I drink,” he murmured.
With a gasp, I obeyed, my hips gyrating forward and bringing that liquid heat to a rising inferno in my core. His fangs brushed the sensitive skin of my throat, and I felt the wetness of saliva and venom before the first piercing note of pain sang through me.
I shuddered, holding back a cry, and with the gentle suction of his lips on my throat, the pain faded, replaced by a warm, euphoric sweetness.
Venom. I knew vampires were capable of numbing their prey to all pain, to giving them a euphoria that ranged from sexual ecstasy to suffocating dreaminess, but I didn’t lose myself entirely.
I simply went molten, every fear and worry deliquescing from my mind and leaving room for nothing but Wroth, how much I wanted him, how much I needed him.
He drank, gently thrusting his hips with every swallow so I felt him glide over the sensitive bundle of nerves, radiating pleasure like ripples through my body.
He brought me to edge, his growls rumbling through me with every wave of euphoria, and forced me to stop. I whimpered, pinned in place between his cock and the fangs in my throat.
It was exquisite torture, until he let me ride again. He took a deep swallow, sealed the wound, and bit again, flooding me with a fresh wave of bliss just as he drove deep with a forceful push.
My muscles tightened, clenching, and then exploded into quivering ecstasy. I cried out, my hips jerking wildly with every wave of pleasure, and he pushed in deeper, lapping at my throat until my body went limp.
“Wroth,” I breathed, still writhing against him. In the grip of euphoria, every inch of him was bliss against my skin. “I don’t want this to end.”
“I would keep you forever.” He lifted me higher to skim his tongue over my throat, sealing the wounds into permanence even as his cock slipped free.
Between the heat of the water and the blood loss, dizziness claimed me, the world spinning and dark specks glittering before me, but when I focused again, Wroth looked…
different. Satiated, yet still ravenous.
I smiled at him, and slowly melted.
“What are you doing?” he asked, a note of warning in his voice, as I slithered down his body, kissing a trail over the silky, fur-covered muscles of his torso. He rose up from the water before I could drown myself to reach my desired target.
“I’m eating you.” I bit the deep V of muscle at the base of his stomach, enjoying the way his muscles jumped and quivered, and then twisted my head to take the head of his cock in my mouth.
Wroth hissed, but even in the haze of euphoria I hardly noticed because my entire world became the hot, silky shaft against my lips. He was thick enough that my jaw popped as I stretched my mouth wide open, a distant sound, and the closer sound was the deep, rumbling purr in his chest.
My fingers moved over his shaft, gliding up and down until I had the swollen knot squeezed in one hand, and his heavy sac in the other.
“Gods,” he whispered, thighs tensing and claws gripping my hair as I sucked, stroking and licking, enamored with the pulsing hardness in my grasp.
My tongue swirled around that blunt crown, probing at the soft seam just on the underside, when I felt his hips jerk.
“Jesamin, you little menace,” he panted, and I looked up at him, using my own saliva to force another inch deep into my throat.
With another stroke of my tongue, I released him, kissing his cockhead and running my tongue down to the swollen knot. “You came after me. I’m your menace now.”
He stared at me in disbelief, jerking as my teeth nipped at the silky skin, then I soothed the tiny bite with another lick.
Wroth threw his head back, another one of those rolling-thunder rumbles erupting from his throat, his hips bucking forward as I laved my tongue upwards over his wet shaft and massaged the swollen knot.
Short, quick strokes, his cock throbbing in my hands and mouth, his growls building in intensity, yet his hands were gentle on my hair.
When I heard his breathing hitch, shaft pulsing and knot burning with unspent come, I wrapped my lips around his head, and slowly grazed my teeth over the delicate flesh.
He gasped out several words in Nord, thighs tensing, and snarled with a thrust.
I swallowed down the first hot flood of seed. Drawing back, I kneaded his knot, stroking out ropes of come that spattered my face and breasts, painting me in gleaming droplets of thick, pearly fluid.
He stood above me like a conquering titan, taking deep, rattling breaths, every muscle in his body quivering.
I licked his cock clean, laving my way back up his body, and he grabbed me, collapsing back into the bath with me cradled against his chest.
“I should have bargained more time out of you,” he finally said, his heart thumping beneath my cheek. “Come live with me in my castle, beautiful menace. I can’t let you leave.”
I giggled, the euphoria of the venom loosening my tongue. “Ha. Would you paint me with pearls every day?” I ran a finger through the milky droplets on my breasts, tracing a nipple, and his pupils dilated to thin slits.
It was difficult to focus, every worry still miles distant, but there was a war in his eyes that hadn’t been there when he looked back up at my face. Something between regret and sadness, and hidden fury.
Deep down, I regretted the insouciant comment, thinking of a woman awaiting her wedding, but then he splashed some water over me, caressing my face, then down to my shoulders and breasts until they were clean.
“I would give you anything,” he said softly, and plucked the soap from the side of the bath. “Now let me bathe you, lover. We’ll need to refill the bath.”
The thought that I’d ruined the moment lodged in my brain like a splinter, but as Wroth began soaping me, it was easy to let the euphoria pull me under and away.
Only one thought remained utterly clear: I was for him entirely.