by Bec McMaster
An enormous hand splays over my ass, grinding me against him. Sensation shoots through me, stealing a gasp from my lips. “Careful, my love. Or maybe I’ll throw down my own challenge.”
“Mmm.” I kiss the words against his lips. “And what… might that… look like?”
Suddenly there’s a hand in my hair, and he rolls me onto my back. “Something like this.” His teeth sink into my breast, his hands slipping under my silken nightgown. “First to cry mercy.”
“Mercy?” I throw my head back and give a smoky laugh. “Have you met me?”
There’s a growl in answer, and then a heated laugh against my skin. “Oh, Zemira. You’re so brash right now. But you just took the leash off the dragon. Think you can tame him?”
He kisses his way down the center of my chest, hands parting the silk of my robe.
“I know I can,” I whisper, looking down the length of his spine and shivering.
Muscle ripples in his back. Keir looks up, amber eyes locking upon me as his hot mouth closes over my nipple. The lash of his tongue burns, the hot suction of his mouth lined up directly with something between my thighs. I arch into him recklessly. More. I want more. I want teeth and pain and pleasure and sin. I want him to ruin me.
The ache within is too intense to contain. Gripping fistfuls of his hair, I ride his thigh, desperately trying to demand more. Teeth rake over my nipple and then he simply fists the thin fabric of my chemise and tears it apart with a wet-seeming sound.
The second my other breast is free, his mouth closes over it.
“Keir,” I gasp, but he’s not finished yet.
He tears apart the entire chemise in slow jerks until it lies in two halves. I’m losing control of my glamor. The faintest of lights starts to glow beneath my skin.
“Pure starshine,” he whispers, kissing his way down my abdomen. Our eyes meet again. “No mercy. Just remember that, Mira.”
Slipping his thumbs under the edge of my drawers, he lures them down, seeking out the throbbing mess between my thighs. Lifting my hips, he draws my undergarments down my legs, and then he’s tossing them aside and returning with a vengeance. Splaying me wide, he dives between my legs like a man determined to devour an entire banquet.
No mercy.
Not even a single word of warning.
He goes after me as if he’s spent weeks, months, years dreaming of this moment and he’s not about to waste a single moment more.
The hot lathe of his tongue swipes up my entire slit, even as he pins my thighs down. Fuck. My eyes go wide as pleasure shocks through me. The gravelly rasp of his stubble on my inner thighs provides the bite of pain, but it’s the way his tongue delves inside me in some defiant parody of the way he kissed me that sets me alight.
Keir groans, and then he’s kissing his way into my wet, swollen flesh. Thrusting his tongue inside me, then dragging it up, flickering it over the bud of my clit. Pushing me toward that edge as if he intends to throw me off it without giving me a single chance to breathe.
I scream as he shoves a hand flat against my abdomen, forcing my spine to flatten. I want to grind myself against his mouth, but I’m not in control here. He is.
“Beg me, Mira.” It’s a hot breath against wet flesh. “Beg me for release.”
Never. The defiance lights through me, but then, hot on its heels is the thought: What the fuck am I fighting him for?
“Please.” I moan, grabbing shameless fistfuls of his hair and arching against him.
His tongue stabs into me again, teasing, torturing. He knows where I want it. “More.”
“Please. Oh, fuck. Please!”
He finds my clit and suckles it into his mouth, even as he drives two fingers into me.
There is no warning.
I simply shatter like a thousand radiant stars. Heat and ecstasy. Burning so hot I’m going supernova. White light fills the room. Me. I’m glowing, until I can see the shadow of Keir between my outthrust legs. The force of climax arches my spine obscenely, until I’m screaming his name, even as he thrusts and kisses and bites and licks at me.
There is no mercy.
Collapsing against the mattress, I beg now for relief. “Stop. Stop! Oh, gods! Keir.”
Drawing his fingers from my body, he licks them clean, and then kisses his way up my abdomen. Little flinches of aftershock jerk through me with each touch, and I can’t stop my gaze from dropping to the hard, tented jut of his erection.
I kiss him.
Simply slide my hand behind his neck and drag his mouth down to mine, tasting myself on his lips. Those wicked hands make short work of the strip of chemise that’s still draped over my elbows. Searching between us, I find the buttons on his trousers. Snap them loose. Tug them open, until the heated steel of his cock tumbles into my hands. He licks at my mouth, a groan tearing through him as I curl my eager fingers around him.
“Inside me. Now.”
Keir breaks free, a reckless light in his eyes. “But, my love, you’re not in control.”
A rough laugh echoes in my ear and then he flips me onto my stomach. It’s a chance to escape, but no sooner do I think it than a hard, mountainous body comes over me, grinding me into the bed.
Oh, fuck.
A treacherous gasp steals from my lips. Arching my spine, I shamelessly thrust my ass back into him.
“This,” he hisses, sliding his cupped palm between my legs from behind, “belongs to me now.”
Gods. Every inch of me bucks at his touch. But I can’t just let him claim me like this. “What are you going to do?” I throw over my shoulder. “Leave your mark on my ass?”
Hard teeth sink into my shoulder. It startles a scream from me.
But worse than that is the breathy gasp that follows.
“Maybe I’ll just ruin you for all others,” he growls in my ear, his fingers forming themselves to my slit. He finds me, fingers gliding through my wet folds. “You want to choose? Then choose, Mira. Tell me yes. Beg me to fill you. Beg me to ruin you.” His teeth sink into the flesh of my ear lobe. “Beg.”
It feels like his teeth have a direct connection with my clit. A cry escapes me and my hips thrust backward, pushing into his touch.
“Oh no,” he warns. “You have to do better than that. You want this, Mira? Then tell me you want it.”
I don’t even know what I’m asking for. “I don’t beg anyone.”
His hand stills. I want it back. I want those fingers driving into me.
“All those dreams…. With you in my head….” He growls. “I am done with this wanting. I am done with you taunting me—”
Shoving my knees apart, he drives two fingers into me from behind.
I cry out again, but it’s got nothing to do with pain.
Fuck. I curl my fingers into the sheets as he fills me up to the second knuckle. Slow, fierce thrusts that work my body until I swear I might even be able to handle him.
“Do it!” I yell. “Do it! Ruin me for all others! I don’t care. Just don’t stop. Please don’t stop—"
“Fine,” he growls, his fingers leaving me bereft.
“No, wait!” I grab his wrist, but he’s not abandoning me in the bed.
Instead, he tears his leathers down his legs and flings them aside. “Fuck,” he hisses, as leather tears.
“I’ll buy you a new pair,” I taunt. And then I can’t stop myself from laughing.
Rough hands capture my hips and haul me back toward him. He stuffs a pillow under my hips and drives me into it, so my ass is in the air.
Fingertips trail down my spine. I shiver, tensing as his touch slides between my cheeks, dipping inside the lush wetness of my body. Our eyes meet in the mirror that hangs on the opposite side of the room. Whatever I’ve thought of Keir—whatever I’ve suspected—vanishes as I see the dangerously carnal look in his eyes. It’s not merely a predator playing with his prey. It’s a hint of what I’ve always sensed.
What I’ve always known.
“Mine,” he whispers, lower
ing his face and pressing a scalding kiss to the small of my back. “All mine, Zemira.”
“Never,” I breathe into the pillow, but the word turns into a gasp as his tongue follows the same trail as his fingers.
Shoving my thighs wide he drives his face into me from behind and I scream as his tongue thrusts inside me. Again.
It’s savage. Hard. Brutal.
Unrelenting.
I scream and scream my pleasure as he fucks me with his mouth and fingers, until I’m spent and writhing on my knees before him. Begging. Desperately.
A hand knots in my hair as he winds the silvery length around and around his fist until I’m practically mobile.
“Beg me for my cock,” he breathes in my ear, forcing my spine to arch.
I bump back against him, feeling the brutish weapon slick between my thighs. “Please. Fuck me. Make me yours. Just do it.”
His fingers slide down my abdomen and delve between my swollen lips. “Mine,” he whispers in my ear. “Say it. Say it’s mine.”
“Never.”
His eyes blaze and the edge of his fingertips quirk up, teasing through the swollen mess of my cunt. “You always have to fight me, Zemira.”
A hard slap shocks a cry from me.
Did he just…?
I clench around him, shuddering as I lower my head. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“It’s yours.” The words burst from me. “It’s always been yours. From the second I saw you.”
He reaches between us to guide his cock to my entrance. The first inch makes me sweat. The second inch is torture. It’s the sweetest of aches, leaving my thighs trembling. My eyes go wide, nails digging into the sheets as he feeds it into me so slowly that my muscles melt around him. He’s so thick.
Panting from desperation, I gasp, “I don’t know if I can—”
“You can.” Curling a hand around my throat, he draws me back against his chest, until I’m sinking down upon him, taking him all. Somehow my moan combines with the sharp hiss that exhales between his teeth, and then he’s driving into me that last, final inch.
The dance begins.
Slow. Bone-melting in its intensity. A dangerous grind filled with soft gasps, and the slap of flesh on flesh. This is not merely fucking. He’s working my body until we’re one. Driving us both closer to a single peak, until my thighs shake with the tension of holding myself in place.
“More,” I gasp.
A hand curls around the back of my neck and then he’s pushing me down onto my hands and knees. Long, slow, driving thrusts. Getting faster and faster, until his thighs slam against mine. The wet suck and pull of flesh does things to me. Fingers find me, flickering over that restless ache. I want to scream again. I want to bite into the pillow, beg him for more, simply take it….
Keir pounds into me, and then his fingers find my clit and he pinches.
It sets me off again, until I’m crying his name, shattering upon distant shores.
Tension shivers through him. Clenching around him, I try and force him to come with me.
“Mira.” It’s a breath. A curse. A plea on his lips.
Shuddering with release, he spills inside me with a growl, fingers digging into my hips so fiercely I know they’ll leave bruises that I’ll relish.
Collapsing against me, he gasps and pant, until we’re a mess of arms and legs. Slick seed spills from my body as he withdraws with a gush.
“Oh, gods.” I don’t think my heart is ever going to stop racing. “I can’t move. I think you’re ruined me.”
“Mmm.” Another hot, sloppy kiss captures my mouth as he spills me onto his back. My pulse kicks against his lips. “Did you think we were done?”
And then he laughs as I simply lie there and shake in the aftermath, his tongue tracing the slope of my neck.
14
I wake with a gasp, a scream trapped in my throat.
For a second, I was trapped in the dark, with not even a single candle to light the way, and the roof closing in upon me. It felt so real I could almost taste the stale air of whatever cell I was contained within, and the old scar across my palm—where Soraya and I once bound ourselves together—is throbbing.
“Mira?”
I turn into Keir’s body, my heart racing. Every inch of me is deliciously bruised and sated, but it’s the way his arms curl around me that does so much damage.
“Bad dreams,” I whisper.
He strokes a hand through my hair. “You shouldn’t be having any bad dreams. Not while I’m near.”
I shudder. “I thought…. I thought it was Soraya, reaching for me.”
He rolls onto his side, so we’re face to face. “We’ll find her.”
“I know.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
Long seconds tick out as he strokes small circles over my arm. “You love her,” he whispers. “Even after everything she did to you.”
I can’t possibly explain.
But I want to.
For the first time, I want to.
“I don’t know who my mother was.” The words come from my mouth, but I don’t recall beckoning them. Still, it’s far too late for regret. “I thought perhaps she was from the Court of Whispers, thanks to something my wet nurse once said, but… I’ve been there many a time. She wasn’t of the Whispers.”
He says nothing.
I want to say nothing further.
And yet, the words are rising up within me, choking me with all the pain and sorrow I’ve never been able to hide. “My father forced himself upon her. It’s what he did to all of them. He sent his wraiths to find him fae brides, and when they were brought to him, he forced them to bear his children. He wanted a child that could pass as fae. One that could walk these lands and bring him what he wished. He wanted a child who could break the curse that afflicts us.”
All the horror spills out of me. “There were dozens of us. Hundreds over the years. Whatever curse afflicts our kind, it breeds true. Barely one in twenty resembled their fae kin. And of those few, only a rare handful have the ability to wield their fae magics.” I hold my hands up and let the glamor slip. It washes from my skin like a warm blanket being withdrawn. A chill settles over me. I’m wraithenkind enough for my flesh to feel like marble. A faint glow settles over my skin, as if the moon itself shines within me.
Not all wraithenkind bear such innate power.
Most of them are maggot-pale and coldblooded. But in this my breeding ran true on both sides. I have the power of my wraith father and the magic of my fae mother.
“Soraya is the only one who stood at my back throughout my childhood. And I watched over her. It doesn’t matter how many times she betrays me, Keir, because she is all I have.” A single tear leaks down the side of my cheek.
The faint light cuts shadows across Keir’s cheekbones. He lifts a hand and rests it, gently, against my hip.
His skin burns feverishly, and my chilled flesh drinks in that warmth as if it longs for it. His thumb brushed against my abdomen, and our eyes meet. My skin explodes like starlight, painting shadows across the wall.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe.
“Who is your father?” he breathes.
A week ago I wouldn’t have given him a name. But there’s a weakness within me that I can’t hide. I yearn for the heat of his touch, for the look he gives me.
And maybe there’s a part of me that is all swept up in this game of pretend.
If I close my eyes, maybe I could still be Merisel, his beloved future bride.
“You know who it is,” I whisper. “There is only one wraith that could steal hundreds of fae maidens from their beds.”
“Raesh. The King of the Wraiths.” His fingers skim the slope of my side from hip to ribs. His thumb works its devastating magic, for it brushes, just faintly, against the undercurve of my breast. “I knew, Zemira, but I wanted the truth from your own lips.”
I shudder.
“Leave him,�
� he says simply.
An incredulous laugh bursts from me. “And go where?” I hold up my glowing arms. “One hint of this and my head is removed. There is nowhere I can go.”
Nowhere that is far enough to escape my father’s wrath, and nowhere that would welcome my kind. Not to mention my soul….
Heat burns to life in his golden eyes. “There is one court that would have you.”
What? My throat grows tight.
Keir rolls onto his hands and knees, his knuckles resting on the bed on either side of my hips as he leans forward. “I told you I was searching for a bride, Zemira. I told you I had waited hundreds of years for this moment. The stars aligned when I sent out that Summons. She was always going to arrive at that moment of time. My bride was going to walk into my court, and I was going to claim her. And the second you appeared, I knew you were the one fate had gifted to me.”
“No.” My protest is weak.
“Leave him. Come to me. You want the truth? You have rooms awaiting you at my court. You have an entire wardrobe of clothes. You will be safe. Protected—”
“I can’t leave my father!” I wrap my arms around me. And I would. I would if I could, but with that soul-trap around his neck, my father owns me. “He’d kill me if I even think about it.”
“He has to get to you first,” Keir points out.
I rake my fingers through my hair. This is a nightmare. Because he tempts me so. “You don’t understand. He doesn’t have to find me. He doesn’t have to get to me. He can kill me with a single snap of his fingers at any time he chooses.”
Keir goes still. The dragon’s a dangerous presence lurking behind amber eyes. “How?”
I shake my head. This isn’t happening. This is surreal. I can’t believe he still thinks I’m the bride who was meant for him, even after everything I’ve said and done.
Dreams don’t exist.
Fate isn’t meant for girls like me.
“Please don’t.” I wrap my arms around myself. “I know what I am, Keir. I’ve made my peace with it. And while it’s incredibly tempting, I’m a wraith. You’re accepted within the Blessed courts now, but if you take me as your bride, you won’t be.”
