“Turn!” he commanded, grabbing her wrists before she could touch his bare skin beneath the loosened shirt. He held her arms up above her head in a single hand and spun her around sharply so her back was to him. The submissive lines of her body in this exposed position were so alluring that he was a little overzealous when he slid his free hand down her raised arms, over her chest, and on until he was beneath the restrictions of the corset and cupping her breast. His fervor sent her stumbling back into his body, her shoulders snug to his chest and her bottom even snugger against his erection. She pivoted her hips, just an inch or two, and it rubbed her provocatively against him.
Reule groaned savagely, his mouth suddenly against her neck, the slide of fangs warm and deadly sharp against her pulse. She was gasping for breath now. Obligingly, he freed the laces of her confining corset. Once it had fallen away, he knelt behind her to peel off her stockings. He grabbed her by her hips once she was fully nude and spun her back around while remaining on his knees. Her fingers slid into his hair as he nuzzled her belly. The scent of her arousal washed over him.
“I can smell how much you want me,” he rumbled roughly. “Stand with your feet farther apart, sweetheart. I’m going to kiss you.”
“Reule…” Her fingers curled anxiously in his hair, mirroring the tension evident in the way she said his name.
He ignored her apprehension, sliding his hand up along her inner thigh until she naturally made way for him, allowing the familiar stroke of his fingers against saturated sprigs of red.
“More,” he urged her hoarsely, his hot breath spilling over her intimately. He squeezed her thigh and she abruptly stepped out, obeying him and trusting him as he knew she’d trust no one else. The warm, moist scent of womanly musk was matched instantly to taste as he kissed her. Then he slid his hands tightly around the backs of her thighs and drew her fully onto his mouth, flooding himself with the erotic essence of her. She cried out, obviously surprised by the sensations or by his enthusiasm. Very possibly both. When he slid his tongue over her, she threw back her head and groaned with exultation. Her clitoris was flushed and swollen and he stroked and tickled against it until he felt her shaking, squirming, and all but ripping his hair out to clutch him tighter to her. Her leg lifted off the floor, a knee hooking onto his shoulder. It just about drove him insane, watching her give herself over so fiercely to the seeking of pleasure.
Reule taunted her until she was begging him and he was supporting almost all of her weight while she trembled. He continued to feast on her, only he suddenly added the timely thrust of two fingers into her. His tongue swirled around her clit, then he sucked her greedily.
Mystique screamed. It was his name, punctuating long gasps and shuddering groans as her body clutched tight around his buried fingers. She collapsed completely and he had to catch her and ease her quaking body to the floor. He covered her with his body as he stripped his shirt away. He was kissing her an instant later, hearing her react with a little sound of eager appreciation as she tasted herself on his lips. She was so damn sensual, feeling everything so keenly and with such enjoyment, she had the ability to unravel all of his control and obliterate his good intentions. He needed to be inside her again, remembering what it felt like to be in her body’s embrace. He tore at his remaining clothes as she framed his hips with spread thighs. His aching cock was freed an instant later and then her prisoner once again in a single deep thrust.
Mystique was too hot and wet for sanity, so he shouted out like a madman when her body clutched him in its heavenly trap of silk and sweetness. “By the Lord, baby, there are no words,” he gasped, feeling her legs wrap around him eagerly.
“You don’t have to speak,” she panted. “Just love me, and don’t stop.”
“Such terrible demands you make of me,” he teased her on rapid breaths as he looked down into her passionate eyes.
“I’m afraid I’m quite the nag,” she retorted with a giggle. The laugh tightened her inner muscles, causing a vibration, and he groaned with pleasure.
“This is madness,” he swore. “There cannot be this much delight on the mortal plane.”
He punctuated the observation with a soul-searching kiss. After a long minute of tangling tongues together, he decided it was time to move. His first thrust made her whimper and he felt the reaction from the tips of his toes to the very seat of his groin. He hilted himself harder into her, earning a squeak of delight. Before long, he was driving hard, fast, and deep as he could, abusing her body to the utmost, but all she did was cry her enjoyment and dig her fingers into his buttocks to urge him on. She came like a wild thing, bucking beneath him, thrusting her breasts against his lips until he had no choice but to suck and sear her with even more stimulation. His body screamed for release, begged to be allowed to join her, but he was a man possessed of a promise. So instead, he regained his wild rhythm and forced her oversensitive body into a fiercer, further point of pleasure.
Mystique built toward that point as he sank so deep that she was overflowing with him. Something about the pitch of his thrusts was too perfect and she shook in a sort of fear of what was coming. Her own body was beyond her, and he’d wanted it that way. She clung to him by her fingernails, reality swirling around her in keen feedback.
“Reule!” she sobbed, tears squeezing out of the corners of her eyes and spilling down into her ears.
“Oh, Lord, kébé,” he groaned ferociously. “Tell me. Now! Tell me where!”
She didn’t think she understood, but then she comprehended all too eagerly. The first raging ripples of orgasm penetrated in time to his pistoning body, and again, it was with a sharp arch of her back that she presented her breast to him. There wasn’t even time to see it happening. One second there was nothing, then the next the blistering ecstasy of his bite surrounding her right nipple. She felt herself exploding hotly into his mouth, almost as though she were spilling herself inside him while she orgasmed, just as he did an instant later inside her. He lurched against her so hard it was almost as though he were seizing. He released her breast in order to roar with pleasure, his head thrown back, fangs gleaming.
The first thing she felt when she began to come back to awareness was the warm, wet trickle of liquid running up her chest. Reule was braced on both elbows above her, his arms quivering, his chest heaving for breath. He was dripping sweat onto her, the salty fluid mingling with her own, but what she felt was thicker. Heavier.
Blood. Her blood, rolling in two rivulets down her breast and over her collarbone. She suspected the underside of her breast had a similar sensation, except Reule was pressed against her so she couldn’t feel it. She waited while he struggled for recovery, watching herself bleed with an odd sort of fascination. She wasn’t afraid or horrified, most likely because of her medical expertise. The rapture of his bite was too incredible for her to ever find fault with it. It all just seemed so natural. No different from hardening, swelling, touching, or licking.
“Oh, damn, baby, I’m sorry,” he murmured suddenly, drawing her full attention as he shifted his weight. She watched with a flutter of excitement as he bent his dark head and touched his tongue to one of the gleaming red lines and slowly licked along the path with a raspy efficiency. His lips closed over the small pool against her collarbone and a powerful aftershock of delight slithered through her. Since he was still inside her, he felt the reaction. She felt him smile against her skin. He reached the tip of his tongue to the second rivulet. She felt him growing hard inside her, more so with every inch he cleaned away.
“I think you’re insatiable,” she accused drowsily, her voice husky from gratification.
“Mmm, perhaps. But only with you,” he noted, his lapping tongue next traveling to the underside of her breast. “What you do to me, kébé, is indescribable. I wish it were within the realm of words, so I could explain how you make me feel. But I like that I cannot give it speech. It keeps it sacred somehow.”
His words, for all he said they weren’t adequate, turned he
r inside out. Her body began to tremble with emotion and she tried to sweep the intensity of it away before he became aware of her feelings. Something made her fear her emotional response, made her feel weak for it. She didn’t want to spoil the moment with a haunting of ghosts from a past she was growing to despise, so she focused on the man nuzzling and licking her. She sighed with instant relief and contentment. This she could give him. The pleasure of her body. The eagerness and desire of a lover who wanted him beyond reason. She channeled all of those more frightening emotions toward that end.
“Where would you choose?” she asked him as she shifted provocatively beneath him, squeezing inner muscles around him in temptation.
“Choose?” he asked roughly, his concentration all askew once more. He closed her last neglected wound with a few thoughtful licks.
“Your bite, Reule. Where would you choose?”
“Anywhere,” he groaned as hot blood pulsed into his flesh inside her, swelling him into thick steel. “You are ambrosia, kébé, no matter where.”
“Tell me where you’d like to bite me, Reule,” she invited him persistently with a sultry arching of her body, displaying her curves and his options.
“Here,” he growled dangerously, lowering his mouth to her throat until he was sucking her pounding pulse. Then he shifted and took her left nipple deep in his mouth. “I liked this so very much as well.” He reached to wet the tip of his finger, stroking it over the curve of her hip. “But here would be so sweet. And then…” He insinuated his hand between their bodies and his fingers stroked over her sensitive nub. “What would you say if I chose here?”
“I don’t…” She caught her breath. “How? I don’t see how you could.”
“Ahh…well, it would require the artful use of this magical mouth of yours. You would drink as I would drink, kébé.”
The image flared into her imagination and she gasped with surprised fascination. “Oh! I’d like that! Please, let’s do that.”
Reule groaned with heartfelt fever over her enthusiasm. “Kébé, you’ll be the death of me.”
“I can think of worse ways to die.” She giggled.
Chapter 14
Mystique opened her eyes to the overcast light of late day and released a tiny groan. She wanted to move, but her body rebelled. Every muscle ached, and she was decidedly sore in very personal places. She’d been counting on her naturopathic abilities to preempt this sort of misery, but she supposed that she ought to have given a little more commitment to sleep in order for her body to find time to heal itself. As it was, she’d spent the entirety of the snowstorm in bed with Reule. Two days and three nights.
She glanced at the window and squinted against the glare of light, attempting to judge the weather. She didn’t see the blinding swirl of snow today, so she took that as a good sign. Or a disappointment. She groaned at herself. She was becoming a slave to her sexual appetites. To Reule’s sexual appetites. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her, and she couldn’t seem to get enough of being wanted in such insatiable ways.
But she wouldn’t mind a tiny little break, she thought. She reached up and pushed back her hair, slowly turning her head to look at Reule. He was sound asleep on his back, an arm thrown over his eyes, his naked body sprawled in display along his side of the bed, only a sheet draped over his thigh for a cover. That and the length of her body were the only things keeping him warm in a terribly chilled room. The cold compelled her to move, reaching for the warm blankets that covered her and transferring them onto him. He didn’t even twitch in response and she stifled a giggle. He was more exhausted than she was. She’d apparently healed herself more than she’d realized.
She slid out of the enormous platform bed, shivering wildly as she reached for Reule’s robe and wrapped herself in the fluffy warmth of the knitted fabric. She’d fallen in love with the robe and had declared her intention of stealing it. So she made good on her promise and, after a quick peek out of his bedroom into the hall, she escaped across the hall into her own room.
She closed the door firmly, leaning back against it with a sigh, as though she’d just escaped from prison. She giggled at the notion. If that were prison, she’d dedicate herself to a life of crime.
“That good, hmm?”
Mystique gasped, her hand flying to her throat. She laid eyes on the grinning blonde and exhaled a relieved sigh. “Lia! You scared me!”
“I felt you wake at last, read your intention to escape your jailor, and thought I’d meet you here,” she explained, gesturing to the seat she’d taken in the small sitting room. “You know, I think Amando is the only one who could appreciate the type of mourning you and Reule are engaging in,” she noted with a chuckle. “Although it is traditional to wait until after the wedding before indulging in…um…” She snickered. “Well, I’m a virgin, so I wouldn’t have a clue what you’re indulging in. I do in theory, but there has to be a difference between theory and practical application, because frankly, I can’t imagine locking myself away for nearly three days doing what was described to me.”
“You could always read a couple ’pathically while they’re making love,” Mystique suggested with a grin.
“Now that would be rude and…kinky.” She chuckled. “Why, are you volunteering?”
“You may be a powerful telepath, but not powerful enough. Reule would catch you at it and he’d likely have a stroke.”
“Stroke. Thrust. Wiggle. I’m not picky.”
“Liandra!” Mystique gasped with laughter. “You’re incorrigible!”
“No. I’m bored. Please, please tear yourself away from your carnal obsessions and spend time with me before I go stark raving mad.”
“And where is Justas?”
“Justas! Doing manly things, I’m certain. He idolizes Reule’s Pack. Every time we’re invited here, he throws himself in with whatever they’re doing.” She lowered her voice. “Darcio and Chayne are just down the hall playing Iron Rubicon to championship levels. Poor fellows. They’re so bored, yet required to remain nearby. They were having physical contests. I so enjoyed the wrestling and endurance displays.” Liandra sighed, an avaricious look entering her eyes. “They strip down to their breeches and challenge one another until they’re both gleaming with sweat. But Chayne’s recent illness limited them, so they switched to challenges of the mind.” Lia exhaled noisily with disappointment.
“And you’re allowed to sit and watch this? I thought a lady was to be chaperoned around men.”
“I’m not allowed to be alone with a single man. Multiples are acceptable.” She twitched a smile. “The idea being that the honor of two men is stronger than that of one. Anyway, Justas is younger than I am, and I’m head of the household now. The idea of a chaperone doesn’t even occur to him, so I find myself with a new sort of independence. I can see why you like it.”
“Believe me, with Para around, I’m not that independent.”
“Yes, but you’ll notice Para no longer squeaks at you about propriety. Instead, she’s floating around the keep looking like a proud mama cat whose daughter has licked up all the best cream.”
“Lia!” Mystique broke into giggles as she headed into her wardrobe, Lia at her heels. Mystique opened the closet and found that the wardrobe was packed with new clothes. She had no idea how Para managed it. Even Lia exclaimed with delight at the vast array of colors and fabrics. Since it was winter, everything was made of heavy materials like velvet, wool, cashmere, and furs. Liandra lifted out an overdress made of a pale gray animal fur. It was light and warm and just about the softest thing she’d ever felt.
“Oh my,” Lia breathed. “Para didn’t make this. Only a master furrier could create something so perfectly wrought. You can’t even feel the seams! Mystique, Reule must have ordered this days ago. It is extraordinary.”
“Surely not Reule himself.” She dismissed the idea, reaching to join her friend in stroking the fur’s softness.
“Reule himself,” Lia insisted. “No attendant could demand th
e time and effort required to complete a gown so quickly, exactly to your specifications. Only the direct order of the Prime himself could have brought this about.”
“Oh.” Mystique turned away abruptly, hiding her face as a tide of confusing emotion rode over her, causing her heart to race wildly.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Lia asked with concern, draping the dress over a nearby chair. She reached out a comforting hand. “Did I say something to upset you?”
“No.”
“Now, yes, I did, or you wouldn’t be upset. Please tell me,” Lia insisted softly, ducking around Mystique so their gazes met. “I…I don’t know. I’m just suddenly so afraid. I keep getting these rushes of fear over the stupidest little things. Remarks or dresses…” She glanced at the offending garment before resting a hand nervously against her throat. “And Rye. Rye’s behavior drives ice into my soul. Yet I feel driven to understand it. I have to figure it out. Figure how to cure it. It is life and death to Rye that I do, because Reule won’t tolerate a traitor, no matter how long they’ve been friends. But more importantly, it feels like it is life and death to me.”
“Of course you do! Rye threatened your life, Mystique.”
“No! No, it’s not that! It’s s-something else. Damn me and my cursed memory!” she spat suddenly. “I know this is my history rearing up and I wish it would just show itself already!”
“Hush now,” Lia soothed, hugging her tightly. “Be careful what you wish for. It sounds as though this history of yours was no healthy place to be. I’d rather you never found it if that’s the case.”
Drink of Me Page 27
