Velvet Cataclysm: Princes of the Underground, Book 1

by BETH KERY

  His glance was beseeching. Christina swallowed, unable to break his stare. She suddenly became hyperaware of her body—of her throbbing heart, of the blood that rushed through her flesh. A hot, achy sensation pulsed between her thighs.

  She blinked and looked away from Teslar’s beautiful eyes.

  “Stop it, you bastard.”

  She wished he’d move, wished he’d resume his agitated pacing. Instead, she saw from the corner of her eyes that he remained as still as a statue. She felt his gaze like a touch on her averted cheek.

  “I’m not what you think,” Teslar spoke quietly. “If you love Saint, then you must love me. Saint and I are part of the same whole, Stina.”

  She leapt up from the carpet. “Don’t you dare call me that name. Do you hear me?”

  His nostrils flared, but he said nothing. Slowly, he raised his hands. For the first time, Christina noticed that the palms were reddened. A few blisters had risen to the surface.

  “I touched you. It didn’t affect me like it does the Scourge revenants. It burned, but it was bliss unlike anything I’d ever known. I would sacrifice anything…my very life…to touch you again.”

  She swallowed thickly when she heard how his voice vibrated with emotion. It wasn’t only Saint’s voice that came to mind, it was Kavya’s. Damn. It would be so much easier if Teslar were a simple, animalistic killer instead of the complex, dangerous creature he was.

  She nodded at his reddened palms.

  “I still harmed you. If you can’t touch me, what do you want from me?” she demanded through clenched teeth.

  “To look upon you would be sufficient, I think.”

  Christina rolled her eyes, breaking their stare.

  “If you start quoting poetry, I’m going to be sick.”

  He smiled, slow and brilliant. The sight snagged her gaze, reeling her in. A dull, unbearable ache swelled in her breast, a painful longing for Saint. She dragged her eyes from Teslar and started walking toward the passageway. To call Teslar dangerous was like calling him cute. Words just weren’t sufficient to describe the impact of him.

  She needed to get the hell out of that chamber.

  “You will be my end, Christina.”

  She turned, her mouth gaping open. Emotion so deep she couldn’t fully wrap understanding around it swamped her awareness when she saw that Teslar’s face was wet with tears, despite his radiant smile. Something passed between them, potent and unnamable.

  “I told you I wasn’t what you thought,” he said. “I wasn’t what I thought. Touching you taught me that. I want to thank you for making me see the truth, Christina.”

  “You can fake tears,” she said accusingly, her voice shaking. She didn’t know how she knew that fact, but she did. Just as she also knew, on some bone-deep level, that what Teslar said next was true, as well.

  “I can. But I’m not doing it now.”

  The energy level in the chamber seemed to grow and thicken by the second. She’d never before been in the presence of magic, but she knew it firsthand in that charged moment.

  “Christina.”

  She spun around, her entire body trembling.

  “Saint,” she cried out, her voice cracking in both relief and anxiety at seeing him.

  He stood just inside the entrance, his heartluster drawn, a still, eerie expression on his face as he pinned Teslar with his stare. He made a beckoning gesture with his hand and Christina moved. Saint pulled her behind him when she approached. She glanced around the arm that held his heartluster, wondering what Teslar would do.

  She didn’t know if she was surprised or not when Teslar didn’t draw his weapon.

  “So. You have finally won, Saint,” Teslar said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Saint rasped.

  Christina sensed the brittle tension in Saint’s coiled muscles. She reached out and touched his waist, soothing him instinctively.

  Teslar nodded toward Christina. His cheeks were damp with tears, but he wore a strangely calm, sublime expression, given the circumstances.

  “You possess what I would die for.” Teslar’s words resonated in the subterranean chamber.

  “Speak plainly or shut up,” Saint snapped telepathically. “You sound like Kavya, speaking in riddles.”

  Saint was wary of his clone’s intentions, but he’d also never seen Teslar look this way, precisely. He seemed dazed…transported.

  Teslar shrugged, his eyes still glued to Christina. “Kavya told me that one day, if I was fortunate, I would encounter something that would forever change my destiny, and in order to have that thing, I would have to sacrifice. I didn’t believe him. I didn’t understand. When I first saw Christina, I only thought of possessing her for my own.” He held up his palms, and Saint saw they were blistered and red. “Then I touched her, and found I wasn’t worthy enough to do so.

  “It’s not what I had thought…my own end,” Teslar whispered in Saint’s mind, his gaze latched on Christina. “It beckons to me.”

  Christina stirred behind him. He sensed her confusion…shared in it. Teslar’s behavior was strange, but also…familiar to Saint somehow, as though he’d read a passage in a play long ago, and a scene from that play was suddenly being enacted in real life, and he—Saint—was the main character, a crisis of doubt upon him.

  Teslar had long been the nightmare that Saint fought tooth and nail. It suddenly struck him that he hadn’t stood so close to his nemesis in centuries, never had the chance to truly examine his clone. It was like staring into a dark mirror, with one difference. Teslar possessed a jagged scar just above his heart. Saint realized with a shock that he had given his clone that scar a century before with his heartluster during one of their many violent clashes.

  Teslar met Saint’s stare, his blue eyes moist. Saint had the uncomfortable impression that Teslar’s calm certitude was entirely genuine. Teslar understood something that was occurring in this moment that Saint didn’t—

  “You will conquer me,” Teslar said in his mind. “I would do anything to touch her. She is life. I will gladly die in her fires. I will submit to you if you allow me to love her.”

  His clone’s words reverberated around in his brain. Something coalesced, and Saint understood in a blinding flash what Kavya had always meant when he said Teslar and he were one.

  Christina became distantly aware that the two males communicated, but their telepathic exchange was so rapid, so precise, that she couldn’t quite capture the content. She only experienced emotion so charged, so subtle, that it raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck and forearms. Saint surprised her by suddenly turning and looking at her.

  “I cannot do it,” Saint said out loud through a tight jaw.

  “The mandate to contain me has been encoded in your blood. You know that, Saint. I permit you the opportunity to control me,” Teslar replied. “You must allow it.”

  A taut silence ensued. A fine tremble began to vibrate Saint’s body, as though he held his muscles so rigidly, he would explode from the strain he placed on them.

  Christina read his mind with difficulty—he experienced so much chaotic emotion—but understanding dawned slowly.

  “Saint?” she asked warily.

  The soul that was about to dawn like a fiery new star shone in his blue eyes. Christina knew the moment that Kavya had alluded to had arrived.

  “It is your choice to make, Christina,” Saint said softly.

  “But…Teslar was burned when he touched me.”

  Saint’s angular jaw moved in a tiny, taut, circular motion as he studied her. The amount of tension she felt rising in him both alarmed and thrilled her.

  He spoke to her telepathically.

  “Teslar and I are one. If I accept that within myself, I will overcome what he represents. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t know it would work, Christina. That it was right.” He paused, inhaling slowly. “You are my soul. If I acknowledge Teslar, he will be able to touch you. Just as I do. He will place himself und
er my control. I won’t allow him to harm you. You will feel only pleasure.”

  Christina licked her upper lip anxiously and tasted salt.

  “I’m sorry,” Saint said out loud. “I didn’t understand fully until just now.”

  “Does he understand?” she asked him telepathically, referring to Teslar.

  “Yes. He chooses to be controlled by me if I allow him to touch you.” He paused and Christina sensed his hesitation. “I tried to explain to you what you represent to beings like Teslar and me. Maybe now…you’ll finally know.”

  Christina swallowed. “All…all right.”

  Teslar stepped toward them as though her words had released a restraint holding him. Christina wished she could read Saint at that moment, but he just watched her with an impassive expression and fiery eyes.

  She came out from behind him and took one step…then two toward Teslar. Her heart felt like it would burst. But suddenly she sensed Saint behind her, his long body ghosting her own, giving her strength. Teslar closed the distance until he stood less than a foot away. Her breath caught when she saw the stark longing in his eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  She blinked. Saint had uttered the words in her ear at the same moment that Teslar said them gruffly. Teslar raised his hands. Christina saw how they shook. He placed them on her shoulders, and Saint bracketed her waist with his hands. Saint’s mouth felt hot and urgent on her neck.

  “He is me, Stina. If you accept him, then I can,” Saint muttered next to her skin. She stared, transfixed, by the image of Teslar’s lowering his head to her own. Saint whispered next to her ear, sharing the arcane secret. “If you accept him, then I can conquer him once and for all.”

  A convulsion of desire went through her when Teslar covered her mouth with his own. She leaned her head back on Saint’s chest while Teslar bent…and devoured her. He tasted much like Saint, with an added hint of bitterness. It inflamed her, that added complexity of flavor to a sensation she loved.

  The kiss continued, hot, drugging…delicious. Saint’s mouth became more avid, moving next to the skin of her neck, jaw and cheek. The slide of his hands across the bare skin of her ribs made her moan into Teslar’s consuming mouth.

  They moved in perfect synchrony. Teslar broke their kiss and Saint lifted her shirt over her breasts. Teslar’s hands moved to her back. They both stepped back and her bra fell to the floor. She cried out when Saint’s hands slid beneath her breasts, caressing and cradling them, forcing the centers to thrust forward into prominence.

  “Her breasts are very sensitive,” he murmured, and Christina realized he spoke to Teslar. “Run your teeth over them…but gently. Very gently. Yes,” he added gruffly as Teslar ran his extended fangs over the upper swell of her left breast and she whimpered in pleasure. “Do you like that?”

  “God, yes,” she moaned, thrashing her head against his chest as Teslar awakened her nerve endings and a path of molten heat zipped directly to her womb.

  Both males’ throats vibrated in a soft, yet feral growl when Teslar enclosed a tip in his hot mouth and suckled.

  “Let her lie on her back on the floor,” Saint said.

  Christina knelt at his urging. Her cheeks were flushed and she already panted from arousal. It felt surreal, what was occurring. And yet…on some deep level of her consciousness, it all made perfect sense as well.

  She wondered if she could survive the cataclysm of bliss that was sure to follow. Would her body be able to survive the wild fires of transformation, contain the birth of a soul?

  The desire that pulsed in her was only amplified when she lay on her back on the soft carpet, watching as both males began to shed their clothing, their eyes glued to her all the while.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Both of them paused when they wore nothing but the straps that sheathed their heartlusters. She stared, made mute by the sight of their identical, erect phalluses and firm testicles surrounded by leather.

  Their bodies were identical—a long length of sinew and defined muscle gloved in golden-hued skin. The only difference Christina could see was that Teslar had an old scar on his left pectoral muscle, likely the remnant of a long-ago failed attempt by Saint to kill his clone by stabbing his heart.

  They removed their weapons as one.

  They knelt next to her, two golden gods with fire-lit blue eyes. They bent. She cried out and stared up at the wood-reinforced ceiling of the tunnel, seeing nothing…blinded by ecstasy as each of them worshiped a breast with teeth, tongue, and hot, suctioning mouths. Her pleasure built until it frothed and bubbled just beneath the boiling point.

  “Run your hands through Teslar’s hair,” Saint commanded in her mind.

  She complied without thought, glorying in the texture of Teslar’s thick, soft mane sliding through her fingers. Teslar lifted his head and winced in pleasure, as though she stroked a sex organ and not his hair.

  “You have conquered me, Christina,” Teslar growled.

  Saint released her nipple from his mouth with a soft popping sound. He sunk his teeth between her neck and shoulder. She shuddered in an agony of bliss, her fists clenched tight in Teslar’s glorious mane.

  After a pleasure-infused minute, she blinked open her eyes when she felt strong hands shifting her. She was positioned on her hands and knees, although it was Saint’s and Teslar’s hold that kept her in place, not her will. Her muscles were still slack from her thunderous orgasm.

  “Hold yourself up, Stina,” Saint ordered, his voice thick with arousal. She focused her eyes and saw that he lay beneath her, his hands supporting her shoulders. She realized that Teslar knelt behind, holding her waist.

  Once she’d steadied herself, Teslar deftly removed her shorts and underwear.

  Saint leaned up and Teslar lowered. They began a sensual exploration of her body, charting every inch of her skin with their hands and mouth—Saint pleasuring the front of her, Teslar the back. After a few minutes of this sensual torture, she could no longer hold herself in place. Her body began to sag as blissful sensations pounded into her flesh and mind. She swam in a delicious haze of sharp teeth, soothing, warm tongues, strong, shaping lips, and skilled fingertips.

  “Oh, please. Please,” she begged mindlessly.

  Saint lay on his back and grabbed her, one hand on her head holding back her hair and the other on her shoulder. He pulled her down to him.

  “Teslar,” he said gruffly before he closed his mouth over her parted lips.

  The single word must have been a permission of sorts, because Teslar moved abruptly from where he’d been tonguing and gently biting a buttock. He licked along the sensitive inner skin of her right thigh, making her tremble in Saint’s hold. She knew her thighs were damp with her arousal. She’d felt her juices wetting her skin while the two males made her body a conduit for pure pleasure.

  Her eyes sprang wide when she felt Teslar’s tongue swipe across her labia.

  He spread her buttocks with his hands, pausing to lift her hips slightly, fully exposing her sex to the cool air of the chamber. She cried into Saint’s hot mouth when Teslar slid his stiffened tongue between her labia, laving her clit in a hard, precise caress.

  He ate her so lustily, so thoroughly, that Christina was left in little doubt of how much he relished the experience. Sensation overwhelmed her. She struggled in Saint’s hold, but he held her fast, forcing her to accept their kisses as they branded her both at mouth and sex.

  She climaxed not once, but twice, in shockingly rapid succession. When the shivers of ecstasy eased in her flesh, they broke their kisses at once.

  “She is worth it,” Teslar muttered from behind her. “She runs like nectar down my throat.”

  “Lower her down on me,” Saint rasped.

  Christina blinked several times, trying to focus. Saint’s facial muscles pulled tight and his muscles gleamed with a fine coat of perspiration. They locked gazes when Teslar lifted her in his strong arms, holding her back against his chest. Saint held up h
is cock. Christina noticed the fleshy, arrow-shaped crown glistened with his seed.

  Teslar held her with an encircling arm around her waist. His fingers gently parted her sex.

  He lowered her toward Saint’s awaiting penis.

  She shook in Teslar’s hold as he slowly impaled her on Saint’s cock. Once he was fully sheathed in her pussy and she rested in his lap, she placed her hands on Saint’s chest and tried desperately to catch her breath.

  She felt so full…so incendiary. Saint placed his hands on her face, cradling her jaw, pulling her down until her hard nipples brushed his chest. His cock lurched and swelled inside her clenching hold.

  “I love you,” he whispered roughly.

  Her face convulsed with emotion and mounting sensation when she felt Teslar part her buttocks.

  “I love you too. But I can’t. I can’t hold you both.”

  A single tear fell from Saint glistening eyes. “If you cannot, then I cannot contain him. Please, Stina.”

  She gasped at the feeling of Teslar’s hot, heavy, lubricated cock sliding between her buttocks. Her pussy tightened around Saint and his lips twisted into a snarl.

  “Yes. All right,” she granted.

  His lips silently mouthed his gratitude, and Christina was filled with a sense of determination and love.

  The crown of Teslar’s cock slipped into her. She gritted her teeth as he paused behind her.

  “She’s too tight,” Teslar said in a choked voice.

  “No!” Christina managed between pants. “I can do it.”

  She held Saint’s stare as she pressed back slightly and the shaft of Teslar’s cock pushed farther into the nerve-packed channel of her ass. The pressure and the ensuing friction of holding both males nearly overwhelmed her. They filled her to capacity. Her entire body quaked when Teslar managed to stuff another few inches into her.

  All of them groaned at once.

  Christina felt like they’d carefully built a fire in her flesh and a flame was ready to be tossed, creating a conflagration. In the far distance of her consciousness, she felt the earth shudder beneath her. The ancient timbers that reinforced the chamber creaked and moaned. One of them snapped loudly as it splintered.