Chapter 16 Cora-mancer
Cora-mancer
Aknock sounded on the door of the flat above the club. Cora glanced at the clock in the wreckage of the post-orgy living room. It was late, even for one of Anita’s rotation of lovers.
Another knock sounded. Belting her robe, she padded down the hallway to unlock the door.
“Forget your key again, Anita?”
On the other side of the door stood Malachy. He leaned against the wall, a bottle of whiskey in his hand and an intent look in his eyes.
Relief crashed over her. He was here, safe. And looking like he wanted to eat her for dessert.
His hooded gaze took her in from her stockinged feet to her unruly hair. She had slipped out of her torn dress and into a silk robe that fell mid-thigh. His midnight blue eyes traced every silk-draped slope and swell of her body. Color bloomed across her cheekbones from the heat of his regard.
His shirt was more unbuttoned than not, and her gaze fastened on exposed skin.
Dark hair smattered the broad expanse of his chest, descending in a line that drew her eyes downward, along the ridges of his abdomen, lower.
The evidence of his desire stirred a possessive thrill in her.
She was not the only one who had been left wanting.
Cora saw her own hunger reflected in his face. A frisson of longing raced through her.
She pulled the whiskey bottle from his grip. Whiskey burned, sweet and hot, down her throat. Malachy watched her lick a droplet from her bottom lip.
“You’re not in jail.”
“Not yet.” He took the bottle from her and swigged.
“I won’t let them have you.”
Their gazes held as the air thickened and the space between them narrowed.
Anticipation trailed its finger down her spine. For three long months, for thirty lonely years, Cora had waited for him. She was done waiting.
They launched at each other in a feast of tongues and hands. His arm banded around her waist, crushing her to him, as their mouths fused in a devouring kiss. The whiskey bottle clattered, unheard, down the stairs.
She shoved the shirt from his shoulders, raked her nails over his bare chest, down his abs.
They stumbled into the silk-draped room, a whirlwind of frantic kissing and writhing limbs that knocked down Moroccan lamps and framed artwork on the way towards her bedroom.
They made it halfway down a hallway she didn’t remember being this bloody long before their mutual impatience won.
He captured her hands and stepped her back into the wall, pinning their intertwined fingers beside her head. Bracketed by his arms and thighs, she melted against him, soft curves on lean hardness. His feasting gaze sent hot licks through her core.
“Touch me,” she breathed.
“Where?” His teeth nipped her bottom lip.
“Everywhere.”
He released her hands. The tips of his fingers caressed over her palms, down her arms, along the curves of her silk-draped breasts. Clever fingers slipped under her robe and discovered her naked.
“Damn you,” he groaned, filling his palms with her breasts. “Is this for me?”
“I hoped you’d come back.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist. He cupped her arse and pinned her against the wall, stealing her breath in a possessive kiss. The bite of his fingers into her flesh made her gasp.
“I want to kiss you everywhere.” Achingly soft kisses trailed down the column of her throat, feathering along her collarbone. “Here.” Dipping his head, he wrapped his lips around her nipple and sucked. Her back arched on a long moan.
"Here." His mouth lit a tortuous path down her fluttering stomach as he came to kneel at her feet.
His hands skirted the backs of her thighs and unclasped her garters.
Slowly, he rolled her stockings down, one long leg at a time, tossing them to the floor in a hiss of silk.
He kissed up her bare calf to her inner thigh, charting a scorching line to her core.
Hot breath stirred the dark delta of hair between her thighs.
“And here.” On his knees, Malachy Bane gazed up at her with a question glinting in his blue eyes.
She worried her bottom lip, fingers tangling in his hair. She nodded.
He smiled, slow and devastating. Then he tossed her over his shoulder, carried her into the bedroom, and dropped her onto silken sheets. She landed with a huff. The delicious vision at the foot of the bed silenced any rebuke.
Sconces on the satin-lined walls bathed the angles of his lean, scarred body in golden light. Runes inked with shimmering enchantments and scars gouged by long-dead hands adorned the pale canvas of his skin. Against his trousers strained the hard ridge of his cock.
Tonight, Malachy was all hers.
“We’ll go as slow as you like, love. Say stop, and I’ll stop. We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”
The steadiness of his gaze, the conviction of his deep voice, the gentleness of his touch…
she believed him. Malachy had seen the darkest corners of her and not looked away.
The man who trusted no one had let her into the depths of his private anguish, into the heat of his desires. She longed to let him in, too.
“Lie back.”
She eagerly complied. Warm skin slid on cool silk.
“Spread your legs.” His eyes dropped to the center of her, slick and wanting. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Good.”
He climbed onto the sumptuous bed and settled between her thighs.
He unbelted her robe, baring her to his hooded gaze that devoured her.
With a reverential tenderness that made her heart clench, he explored the dips and curves of her body, until her skin hummed with the tingling traces of his touch, assured yet gentle.
Malachy gripped her hips, opening her wide to him, and bent his head to worship at the altar between her thighs. He kissed her core as he kissed her mouth. Tongue sliding between her lips, parting them, delving inside.
Her lashes fluttered at the burst of pleasure. Heat blossomed low in her belly, radiating from her aching core to the peaks of her breasts, tender from his adoration. He pressed a kiss to her clit, followed by a slow swipe of his tongue.
“I want to make you feel good,” he murmured. “What makes you feel good, Cora?”
“I-I dunno. I don’t think I’ve ever...”
He gazed up at her; thirty years old and a stranger to her own pleasure. “Your pleasure deserves a thorough investigation.”
She felt his smile against her belly as he drew his lips down to kiss her where she needed him most. His tongue caressed her in slow, agonizing circles until she was moaning and writhing, hands fisted in the sheets.
She arched into his touch. Her fingers threaded through his hair, holding him close to her center.
His lapping tongue, the gentle sucking of his mouth, carried her away on a wave of luscious sensation.
Anticipation coiled deep inside her, winding every muscle deliciously tight. Her heels dug into the silky sheets.
“I love the way you taste,” he said, low and rough. A finger stroked through her slick folds. “I want to slide a finger inside you.”
Her thighs clamped around his head. "I—not yet.”
“Not yet,” he agreed. He withdrew his hand and slid it around her thigh, coaxing her open again for his plundering mouth.
Malachy buried his face in her lap and set to the task of devouring her as he did with any worthwhile challenge— thoroughly, and with a singular attention to detail. Gasps and moans and clenching muscles guided the rhythm and pressure of his divine touch.
“Just feel it. Does it feel good, love?”
“Yes,” she said, voice husky.
She scratched up his spine, fisted her hands in his hair, rocked her hips against his mouth, chasing the delicious friction, breaths panting and muscles tightening with each swipe of his tongue.
His name was a long, thready moan as she surrendered, swept away on a rising tide. A wave of pleasure crested and shattered within her, radiating outwards in ripples of ecstasy.
He licked her through her climax, drawing out her pleasure into lingering aftershocks that left her afloat in a liquid paradise.
She fell back on the pillows with a contented sigh, suffused with warmth. She would never go thirty years without that again.
“Good girl.” He lightly ran his tongue over her sensitive clit. “Again.”
“Again?” She met his gaze, glinting with satisfaction between her trembling thighs. “I can’t.”
“Oh?”
His tongue flicked over the swollen bundle of nerves. Despite her languidness, he had awoken a dark craving within her, one she longed to sate again, and again. Lovingly, he coaxed the aftershocks of her climax into a new peak, and another, until she was a puddle of sensations on the bed.
“Such a good girl.”
“You’re not a Choromancer,” she said when she caught her breath. “You’re a Cora-mancer.”
A laugh rumbled from his chest, deep and sinful. He sat back, and she eyed the erection straining his trousers with a feminine thrill. Tasting her had made him that hard. He ached for her too.
“How do you feel, love?”
Her eyes drifted shut on a deep, contented sigh. “Boneless.”