Her smile faded and she lowered her gaze to his chest. “I have caused you trouble though.”
“You had to fly,” he said in a matter of fact tone, one he hoped would make her see that he understood her now and that what she had done mattered little to him because she had needed to do it. Her smile returned and it was hard to hold back and stop himself from caressing her cheek. “My prince will understand when we return to the castle and speak with him.”
Taryn stiffened. “I cannot go back.”
He sighed and rubbed her shoulders, frowned at how cold they were and teleported the blanket to his hand. He wrapped it around her again, and then encircled her in his arms and drew her against him, using his body to warm hers.
The tension melted from her the instant they made contact and the warmth in the pit of his soul grew hotter, a flicker of flame that she had fanned with her acceptance of his embrace, one that comforted him deeply.
She settled her cheek against his chest again. He rested his chin on top of her head and stared across the cave.
“They will put me back—”
“It will not happen again,” he cut her off and held her closer, surprised when she pressed against him, as if she needed to be closer still. As if she needed him. “I will make sure of it. I won’t let anything happen to you, Taryn. I will protect you.”
She pulled back again and looked up into his eyes, hers wide and filled with warmth and surprise that he could feel flowing through her blood.
He released her and gave up fighting his urges.
He brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek, and murmured in a husky low voice, “I will protect you… from your brother… from the soldiers… from everyone if I must.”
Heat stirred in his veins as she gazed up at him and it ran through their connection too, flowing from her and into him. That connection blossomed, grew stronger as he fell into her eyes, forging an unbreakable link between their hearts.
Her hands pressed against his bare chest, burning him with her touch, turning his control to ashes as her lips parted and she leaned closer.
His gaze fell to her mouth. He tried to look away, but his eyes refused to leave the tempting curves of her lips as she tilted her head back. An invitation. Gods, he wanted to take it, but she was hurting, had just bared the darkest part of her past and was vulnerable. He couldn’t take advantage of her like that.
No matter how desperately he wanted to kiss her.
He cursed the part of himself that had suddenly turned all noble. Just days ago he would have had her pinned to the wall and panting his name already, but now he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“Bleu,” she husked and gods, his name sounded too good when it fell from her lips like that, breathed on a passion-drenched sigh.
A sigh that stirred the images of his dreams in his mind, the wicked acts they had performed while tangled together, lost for a moment in each other.
Her eyes darkened, pupils gobbling up the white around the inside of her irises, leaving them more purple. She pushed her hands up his chest and looped her arms around his neck, and his breathing deepened as she pulled him down to her, closing the gap between their mouths.
He clutched her hips and felt her trembling beneath his hands. Or was that him? It was difficult to tell. Every inch of him felt as if it was shaking.
He tensed and she stopped with their lips a bare inch apart.
“Tell me you know what you are doing and that you want this… that this means something and you aren’t just scratching an itch or trying to make yourself forget things for a while…” He eased back and looked down into her eyes. “Tell me you are here with me, Taryn.”
She shifted her hands, caressing them up his neck to cup his cheeks, and held his gaze as she tilted his head down towards her, her gaze earnest and beautiful and her feelings steady.
“I am here with you, Bleu. I want this.”
She tiptoed, pressed her lips to his, and whispered.
“I want you.”
CHAPTER 25
Bleu seized her lips in a hard kiss, unable to hold back as her sweet taste flooded him and she pressed against him, her words ringing in his mind, stripping away his strength to resist. She wanted him.
Fuck, he wanted her too.
He had wanted her for so long now, had ached for her without ever knowing it, and now she would be his. Every single damned dream he’d had of her was about to become reality. His cock pressed uncomfortably against the lacing of his trousers, instantly hard. Painfully so.
Taryn only made things worse when she loosed a little moan, the wicked sound teasing his ears and sending him spiralling out of control.
His hunger for her took the reins and drove all sense into submission, until there was only a need to touch and taste her, to tease her to climax and hear her cry his name.
His mate.
He would satisfy her.
Her need ran through him, powerful and intense, a force that mastered him until all he could think about was pleasing her and satiating her need.
She needed.
Fuck, she needed and he did too.
He needed to give her everything she ached for, satisfying her until she had no energy left, was limp and spent in his arms.
He growled into her mouth and she stiffened.
Her hands tensed against his cheeks.
Bleu silently cursed himself and drew back, breaking the kiss. Even that was painful for him, took every drop of his will when all he wanted to do was keep kissing her.
He pressed his forehead to hers and breathed hard, struggling to steady himself and claw back some control. Her words rang around his head, ones about her past now, and he found the balance he had been seeking. He couldn’t frighten her. He had to be gentle with her, even when that felt impossible.
“Sorry,” he uttered and she shook her head.
“Do not be,” she whispered, sweet breath washing across his damp lips, teasing them until they tingled with a need to kiss her again. “It startled me… but dear gods, I want to growl too when you kiss me… it’s as if my whole body has come alive and I am overloading with sensation.”
He chuckled, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. As close as he could get her.
A smile tugged at his lips, one he felt right down in his soul. “You have a way with words that is only going to push me back over the edge, Little Dragon.”
She nudged her nose against his. “Little Dragon? You are the little dragon… with your horns.”
She pulled back and he didn’t like the frown she wore as she looked up at him.
“I am sorry your armour is lost.”
He wasn’t. Going to find it back in her brother’s stronghold would have placed them both in danger, because she would have had to help him, her knowledge of the castle key in locating it.
“Armour is replaceable.” He swept the backs of his fingers across her cheek and his eyes darted between hers as she gazed up at him. “You are not.”
A blush blazed up her cheeks, heating his fingers, and she looked away from him, but not before he caught the flicker of shyness in her eyes mingling with the desire he could feel in her.
Her palms drifted down to his shoulders and then his chest, and he couldn’t keep his eyes open. They slipped shut as the heat of her caress travelled through him, his skin tingling wherever she roamed, anticipation coiling in his gut as he rushed to imagine where she might go next. She skimmed her hands over his pectorals and downwards, her fingertips catching on his pebbled nipples, sending sparks skittering across his flesh.
“Growl,” she whispered in a low teasing voice that only heightened everything he was feeling, stirring his desire to painful levels. “I can feel you want to… I like it when you growl, Bleu.”
“Why?” Fuck, was that his voice? Strained and low, pulled tight by little more than a light caress? He shivered from head to toe when she traced the ridges of his abdomen with her fingers and he felt the searing heat o
f her gaze on his body.
Did she like what she saw?
Her thoughts back in the dungeon of her brother’s castle flooded his mind, answering that question for him. She had liked seeing his body and hearing him growl. It had turned her on.
“Because I like how little control you have when you are around me,” she murmured and dropped her head, pressed wet kisses along his collarbone.
He couldn’t contain the growl that rumbled through his chest as she tortured him.
She flicked her tongue across the line of scars on the left side of his throat.
“I like the way it tells me how much you want me.”
He grabbed her hips and dropped his mouth to her neck, and growled against it as he kissed her, alternating between nipping her flesh and sucking on it. His mouth watered, fangs punching long from his gums. He screwed his eyes closed further as he savoured her, teetered on the brink of taking things a step further and nicking her skin so he could steal a drop of her blood.
He pushed that thought out of his head and reined himself back in. It was more difficult this time and Taryn didn’t help when she moaned and angled her head away from him, giving him better access to her throat. She pressed blunt teeth into his shoulder, her breath hot and moist against his skin.
Bleu clutched her closer and licked her throat, felt the ragged marks under his tongue.
It was enough to ground him and purge the need to bite her.
He drew back and gazed down at the marks. Savage. Vicious. He had treated his mate poorly. She had tried to help him and he had repaid her by attempting to kill her.
He tensed when Taryn’s left hand caught his cheek and she drew him around to face her, dragging his eyes away from her neck.
For a moment, he thought she would say something as she had before, offering him forgiveness when he deserved none, but then she did something that unravelled him and tore down what little strength he had left, completely shattering the barriers around his heart.
She kissed him.
Softly.
Tenderly.
There was forgiveness and understanding in the soft brush of her mouth across his, in the tender way she stroked his cheeks with her thumbs and held him.
Heat and light flowed through him, and all he could do was press his fingers into her hips and hold on to her.
He would never let her go.
Bleu wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back, sweeping his tongue across the seam of her mouth. Her lips parted and he delved his tongue inside, loved it when she moaned and pressed closer, her tongue coming to tentatively stroke his. She gained confidence as he kissed her, duelling with him for dominance.
Gods, she had to know how that stoked him, made him burn hotter for her.
She had to feel how close he was to losing control when he was trying to retain it so he didn’t frighten her.
His little dragon lost control first.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, dragged him down to her and kissed him harder, loosing a growl into his mouth. The sound of it echoed around the cave, feral and wild, speaking to him of her need as it ran through his blood.
He growled right back at her, earning a moan as his reward, and then growled deeper and longer when she shirked the blanket. Her bare skin was warm and soft beneath his fingers as he ran his hands down her back, curled them over her bottom. It gave beneath his grip and he pressed his fingers in, clutching her against him.
The feel of her breasts against his chest, their bare skin rubbing as she tiptoed to kiss him deeper, was too much.
He groaned and gritted his teeth, breathed hard as a hunger to turn with her and pin her to the wall surged through him. He had to be gentle.
His little dragon was doing everything to drive that word out of his vocabulary.
He tensed when she dipped her head and kissed down the line of his throat, nipped at his collarbone and then continued a path across his chest. Her tongue flicked his right nipple and he growled, tipped his head back and prayed for strength. Gentle. He had to be gentle with her.
Fuck, he was going to lose his mind fighting this internal war.
Every part of him, from his mind to his soul, to his body, screamed at him to surrender to the hunger he had been holding back. It roared at him to give into it. He needed Taryn. She was the air in his lungs and the life in his veins. His very existence depended on her.
It felt as if it depended on this moment.
As if he would die if he didn’t surrender to his need.
She caressed his chest and then her hands drifted lower, over his sides before sweeping back in to brush his stomach. He shuddered and moaned with each torturous touch. His fangs lengthened and cock pulsed, both itching with a hunger to sink into her. He tensed and growled when she thumbed his nipples, lips peeling back off his fangs. His ears flared, growing pointier as desire took hold of him, hijacking control again.
Every sweep of her fingers or her lips was excruciatingly wonderful, so intensely pleasurable that it wound him tighter, cranked him higher.
He tried to keep still and let her explore him at her leisure, felt the need that ran through their link, but it was impossible.
She was making it impossible.
Her hands caressed his shoulders, fingers pressing in when she reached his deltoids, a brief flash of her strength that aroused him to the point of pain. The thought of touching her in return tore at the tiny sliver of control he was clinging to, tugging it through his grasp.
But it was the way she feathered her fingers up his throat and then over his earlobes and up to the point of his ears that ripped it from him.
He shuddered, couldn’t stop his hips from rocking, rubbing his cock against his trousers as pleasure so intense that it damn near blinded him bolted through him. He breathed hard, fought for control over his body, but she curled her fingers around to behind his ears and rubbed her thumbs up to the tips and his length pulsed so hard he almost came.
He growled, swept her up into his arms and kissed her fiercely, swallowing her gasp as his lips clashed with hers, teeth knocking together. She tensed but he didn’t let up, couldn’t. He plundered her mouth with his tongue, gathered her closer and bent her to his will. She moaned, the sweet sound driving him on, telling him that she enjoyed this wild side of him.
This side that showed her just how much he wanted her.
Needed her.
Fuck, he would die without her.
He turned and pinned her back to the wall, pressed his body to hers and caged her there. She tensed again but quickly relaxed this time, her short nails pressing into his shoulders as she kissed him back, mouth seeking to master his.
Not a damned chance.
She had pushed too far, shoved him over the edge and there was no coming back for him. Whatever control he’d had, she had shattered it and he couldn’t piece it back together. He needed her, couldn’t breathe or think, or do anything but feel.
Bleu caught her under her thighs and lifted her legs, made her wrap them around his waist and then cupped her backside.
Fuck.
He couldn’t breathe.
The feel of her heat so close to his fingertips would have been devastating enough, but she was wet with the need he could feel flowing through her.
He growled as he shifted his fingers closer to her groin, and she moaned and wriggled, the hunger that constantly ebbed and flowed through their connection turning into desperate need that he couldn’t ignore.
She needed him.
He pressed closer, moaned low in his throat when his rigid length met her body and she actually rocked against it.
Holy fuck.
He kissed her harder, broke away from her mouth and devoured the unmarked side of her throat, couldn’t stop himself as she rubbed her body against his. He took it back. She could master him still.
She stripped him of his control with little more than a flex of her body against his and he was a slave to her again, lost in sensation and his
spiralling need. Fuck, she could do whatever she wanted with him, as long as it felt that good.
He pressed his lips to her shoulder and gave himself over to it, all thought of moving fleeing as she rolled her hips, rubbing herself along him.
It was her dissatisfied mewl that made him move again, pulled him back to the moment and stirred his instincts as her fated male.
Her mate.
He obeyed her when she shoved at his hips, moving back a few inches but keeping a firm grip on her bottom so she didn’t fall. She leaned back and he groaned as she fumbled with the lacing on his trousers, her eyes dark with hunger that called to him.
“Bleu,” she uttered when the lacing knotted and threw him a desperate look that had him moving in an instant to help her.
He set her down on her feet and teleported his trousers away.
Her eyes darkened further, pupils devouring her irises as she raked her gaze over the taut ridges of his stomach, past his navel to the blunt tip of his cock. Her lips parted and gods, the things he wanted her to do with that mouth.
The thought he had picked up back in the cell when he had been healing her wound flooded him again, aroused him back to the point of pain, and his cock kicked against his stomach, jerking with approval as his mind raced forwards to fulfilling that desire she’d had.
That need to know how good his tongue would feel on her flesh.
She reached a trembling hand towards his shaft and frowned when he dropped to his knees. The rough black ground bit into them but he didn’t feel the stab of the pebbles as he gazed at her hips.
At the sweet neat thatch of violet curls at the apex of her thighs.
“Bleu,” she whispered, uncertainty lacing her voice, stirring his softer side and the part of him that wanted to be gentle with her.
He looked back up at her.
Fuck, she really was beautiful.
Possessed by a Dark Warrior Page 25
