Chapter 30 #2
I drew in a lungful of his earthy scent. This wasn’t a dream. It was too real, too detailed—and I thanked the Goddess for that.
“Please,” I said, the word dissolving into a moan.
His answer was a scrape of his teeth over my already sensitized skin, his fingers busy at the waistband of my jeans. When he had it undone, he lifted his head and stripped away the rest of my clothes, leaving me in high-cut red panties.
His gaze moved over me in a look that was pure hunger. The kind of look you don’t just see, you feel, like a heated lick over your skin.
He thrust his fingers beneath the satin waistband, cupping my mound in a firm, this is mine hold. “Tell me you haven’t had another man since Paris.”
I shook my head, my attention on where his hand was.
A finger probed my wet folds. “What does that mean—that shake of your head?”
“It means no, I haven’t.”
“Since when?” He glided a fingertip around my swollen clit.
I gasped and arched my hips, blood pulsing in my ears.
“Tell me,” he demanded. “Give me that much, at least.”
A jagged exhale escaped me. “Since you,” I confessed. “There’s been no one since you. Since that first time in Montreal.”
“Good,” he said against my ear. “Because I’d stake any man who’d had you. And then I’d make you pay for it—like this.”
He removed his fingers. I whimpered my displeasure.
“Hush.” He crouched at my feet and helped me out of my panties.
The rest of his clothes vanished in a blur of vampire speed. He drew the comforter back and lifted me onto the cool linen sheets. I stretched, arms above my head on the pillow, one leg bent and falling to the side in a deliberately provocative sprawl.
He got a condom from his pants and set it on the night table, then paused, one knee on the mattress, taking me in. “Beautiful,” he said in husky tones.
I shifted restlessly, reaching for him. “Come here.”
He complied, crawling over me with an unhurried grace.
The canopy lights turned his platinum hair into molten silver and his eyes—impossibly blue against those dark eyelashes—locked on me with a focus that felt almost feral, like the white Bengal tiger from my painting had stalked off the canvas to claim what was his.
He zeroed in my breasts again, drawing the tips into the warm cave of his mouth, sucking them into needy points. My hands came to his head, holding him close until he finished and pressed a line of kisses up my neck to my mouth.
“Beautiful,” he said again, lips moving against mine. “Incredible face. Tight, fuckable body. Even your fingers are pretty.” He turned and kissed my palm.
I blinked, drugged by pleasure. “You’re the beautiful one.”
He snorted.
“I mean it.” I toyed with the short hairs on his nape. “I love looking at you. I always have.”
He was on the move again, slithering down my body to my lower belly. I bent my knees, opening to him.
“Look at this, then,” he said, and waited until I met his eyes. Then he licked my clit.
Pleasure jolted through me, bring my hips off the bed. “Yes,” I rasped.
He teased the seam of my sex with his fingers and tongue. “Say please. We agreed you’d beg, didn’t we? You said it was fun.”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes.” He nuzzled my mound, his stubbled chin brushing over the tender skin of my inner thighs.
When I just moaned, he growled against my clit, the vibration almost too much. “Say it.”
“Please.” I paused and added, “Lieutenant.”
He lifted his head and smacked me right—there. “Don’t call me that.”
I yelped and yet I loved it, wanted more of that pleasure/pain.
I pouted and raised my arms above my head, conscious of how it lifted my breasts, and wriggled on the sheets. “You don’t answer to ‘Lieutenant’?”
He bared his teeth, the tips of his fangs glinting sexily. “Not when it’s you. You can call me sir.”
“Yes, sir.” I traced a slow, teasing line down my throat. “Forgive me, sir.”
He rewarded me by parting my folds and swiping his tongue up to my throat. He sucked the swollen flesh into his mouth, drawing circles with his tongue until I was panting and arching into his mouth. “Please, sir. Please…”
But instead of letting me come, he lifted his head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” I asked, half-pouting, half-serious.
“Because I said so.”
“Maybe I don’t want to wait.”
I slid my hand down my abdomen, my gaze daring him to stop me. He watched as my hand crept closer to my mound. His nostrils flared once, like he was taking my scent deep into himself.
But just as I touched my clit, he intervened, removing my hand. He flipped me over, dragging me onto my hands and knees. His hand landed on my ass. “I said, Not yet.”
I quivered, tempted to keep fighting him, but also needing to take this. To be punished a little. That new page couldn’t be written until we’d cleared the air.
“Right now, I’m in charge,” he reminded me. “And I think you have a lot to make up for. After this, you’re going to stay on your hands and knees and take my dick, anywhere I want to put it. Is that right?”
He spanked me again, harder this time. And then again, and again. My head dropped forward, my butt tingling, my brain scrambled with lust.
“Answer me,” he ordered.
What was the question? But I knew the correct answer. “Yes,” I told the mattress.
Another hard slap that made my whole body clench. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s better.” He smoothed a hand over my burning cheeks. I tensed, waiting for another smack. Instead, he turned onto his back and slid between my open legs. When I glanced down, his fangs were fully unsheathed. He dragged them over my inner thigh, a slow scrape.
I moaned, so wet and ready, a single touch might set me off.
“Is this what you want? Or maybe this?” He drew my clit between his fangs.
I tensed, nerves sparking. The sharp points were on either side of it. Still, knowing they were so close to my most vulnerable flesh was scary but in an erotic way, like being tied to those four teak posts, open to anything he wanted to do.
“No?” he said, voice garbled because his mouth was full of me.
I shivered and grabbed his head, keeping him there. “More.”
A dark chuckle. He lifted his head. “Try again, pretty girl. You used to be better at begging.”
I knew exactly what he was remembering—that first night in Montreal, when he’d made me say it. Had kept me trembling on the edge, until I was babbling his name and “please,” over and over.
I loosened my grip on him. “I’m begging, okay?” I said, low and raw.
He just looked at me, waiting, until I said, “Please, Cain. I mean, sir. Please let me come, sir.”
“That’s better.” And then, without warning, instead of sucking my clit back into his mouth, he sank his fangs into my thigh just centimeters from my sex, injecting the aphrodisiac into my bloodstream.
Lights exploded behind my eyes. I dropped to my forearms on the bed.
“So good,” I moaned. Or maybe I screamed it. “So good, so good, so good.”
He didn’t let up, drinking and sucking until I was whimpering and yes, begging. Then he licked the small wounds closed. I knew he hadn’t drunk nearly enough. He was still taking care of me even though he must be aching to feed.
My heart turned over. I wanted so badly to tell him that I loved him. That of course, I’d accept his mate bond. Instead, I pressed my lips together.
The aphrodisiac was a fever in my blood now. Cain brought his mouth back to my pussy. A few slow circles of his tongue and I shattered, chanting his name, my inner walls clenching in hard, rhythmic pulses.
I was still scattered in tiny pieces around the room when he rolled me onto my back and entered me with a low, hungry sound.
“Yes,” I whispered, tightening my arms and legs around him, taking him as deep as I could. If tomorrow night went south, this might be all I ever had of him. Our forever in a single night.
He buried his face in my throat, stubble scraping against my skin, grounding me in the ache of now. In this bedroom with draped gauze and soft shadows and the man I loved.
The bond stirred again, tried to claw its way out of my heart. I slammed a lid on it, keeping it caged, silent. The effort made me gasp, and Cain lifted his head.
He stilled. A beat stretched. I held my breath, waiting for him to demand what the hell was going on.
His eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “Not now,” he said. “But when this is over, we’re going to have a long talk, you and me.”
Relief flooded me. I forced a smile, praying he wouldn’t pick up on it, wouldn’t catch the truth bleeding through. “As long as we can do it with your dick inside of me.”
He cursed. “You are such a bad girl.”
“You like me bad.”
“Fuck, yeah, I do.” His fingers slid into my hair, tugging my head back, baring my throat to him. His mouth closed over my skin, hot and claiming. Reminding me that he was in control. That if he wasn’t pushing me for more, it was his choice, not mine.
He propped himself on his forearms and started moving again—a measured rhythm that was somehow both perfect, and not enough. Beneath my fingers, his back flexed with each thrust and retreat. Stroking deep until I felt myself rising again.
A low sound escaped me.
His mouth brushed mine. “Good?”
“So good,” I breathed, tightening my inner muscles around him.
“Firefly,” he returned hoarsely.
That name—mine alone—made my heart constrict.
“Cain,” I whispered back.
He broke first, driving into me with short, uneven bursts, his restraint thrown aside.
“Take it,” he gritted. “Take me.”
A fierce, possessive instinct flared. I tightened my grip on him.
I’d done that, made him lose his control. The realization cracked me wide open. Waves of pleasure slammed into me. My sex clamped greedily around him.
“That’s it,” he said hoarsely. “Come for me. Now, love.”
He came down fully on top of me, hips still working, face buried in my neck, and groaned out his release just as I soared, star-lit and ecstatic, over the edge.
After, he rolled onto his back, drawing me into the curve of his body, my cheek pressed to his chest. I curled up, my bent leg over his thigh, breathing in his spicy scent. His heart slowed to a vampire’s pace, a handful of beats per minute.
He let out a rough exhale. “I missed this,” he murmured against my hair. “Missed you.”
“Yeah?” I snuggled closer.
“That night in Paris? I should’ve never let you leave. I went back the next night, but it was too late. You were already gone.”
A corner of my mouth tipped up in a small, regretful smile. “You couldn’t have stopped me,” I said into the warm hollow of his throat.
“No?” He caught one of my curls, winding it around his knuckle. “There’s something I’ve been wondering. That night on the island—you wanted me to know you were there, didn’t you?
“Yes and no. A part of me was hoping you’d find me, force me to come back to Lilith Island with you.
Then I’d tell you what I’d done for Eden—that I’d made sure she had food and water—and you’d say I had no choice.
That I belonged to you now. That you were keeping me even if it set off a blood feud.
” My laugh sounded thin in my ears. “And in a way, that’s exactly what happened. Just not how I pictured it.”
His lips brushed my temple. “I wish you’d come to me that night. Because you’re right—I wouldn’t have let you walk away. I would’ve brought you back here.”
His voice sank lower, slowed, like he was making me a promise. “And that fire on the island? It was nothing compared to what I’d do if someone tried to take you. Then—or now.”