by Aja James
“Ishtar,” he breathed against her lips, her name a prayer and a vow.
“Ana Ishtar.”
Patiently she waited. Not moving against him. Simply breathing him in, gazing with wide open eyes into his face. Eyes that were black with desire, glowing within a ring of purple fire.
He saw it all.
She was his light in the darkness.
His lashes swept down like a lowered drawbridge as he finally closed his eyes and pressed his mouth against hers, tasting his tears and hers.
He saw her still in his mind’s eye. Heard her sigh of pleasure as she softened beneath him, opening against him.
He gently licked and plumped her lips with small soft kisses, and her patience began to unravel.
A throaty growl vibrated in the back of her throat, eliciting an answering chuckle from deep within his chest.
He could sense her desperation to hold him tightly, to climb his body and sink her elongated fangs into his veins, while taking his cock hard and thick and deep inside the neediest part of her.
But she didn’t give in to the desperation, to her need to dominate and take charge. Though she was tense as a washboard against him, and the predatory growl would have given any self-saving male pause, she let him take the lead, set the pace.
And truth be known, the primal breast she kept on a very short leash spiked his blood like the headiest of aphrodisiacs.
Awakening the primitive male within him.
Unable to continue the torture, he swept his tongue voluptuously into her pliant mouth.
They both groaned at the indescribable pleasure. But it was not nearly enough. It only made them mad for more.
Angling his head to kiss her deeper, he deftly pulled the short-sleeved shirt off of her and pushed down the elastic waistband of her pants.
She wore no underthings, just like him, and she was finally, gloriously naked against him.
His hands left her face to roam greedily but slowly over her skin. He saw her clearly in his mind’s eye through the sensitive pads of his fingers and palms.
Her form was the same as he remembered—long, lithe and toned. Her skin was just as baby soft as she’d been thousands of years ago, but her curves were fuller. Her breasts, her hips, her buttocks, fitting perfectly the sharp, unyielding angles of his tempered body.
She mewled encouragingly when his hand cupped one breast, his thumb brushing across her hardened nipple, swirling round and round the large areole as if to measure its size and shape. Test it for softness, teasing her to madness.
His other hand moved down her gracefully arched back to cup her bottom, squeezing it possessively as she’d done to his, pulling her crotch against the thick column of his erection through his clothes.
She ground herself against him eagerly, wetting him with her juices through the fabric, all the while continuing to tangle her tongue with his, sucking him deeply into her mouth.
He’d never touched her like this before, he realized with a pang. He’d only ever given of himself, received her touch, her taking.
He’d never taken in return.
Nothing had changed between them. Not on the surface.
He was still her Blood Slave; she could still command him against his will. He was still a Pure One, and she the forbidden Dark One, who might never give him the Sustenance he biologically required from his Mate to survive. And even if she could, he might not live to Nourish her at the end of this.
But in essence, fundamentally, everything had changed.
He was a male, yearning with all his heart and soul to love his female. He was a slave to her will, but it was his will too. And she, whose very nature was to take, demand, possess, had begged to belong to him, to love him, as if he were her equal, as if it would be her privilege to hold him.
She was offering all of herself like a sacrifice before his altar, silently inviting him to take everything he wanted, all she had to give. Whereas before, she focused unconsciously on taking her own pleasure, playing his body like an instrument to her will, she now concentrated on receiving the pleasure he gave her.
As if she were the slave and he the master.
Helplessly, totally, enraptured by him.
He took her offering slowly, savoring every morsel, every nibble. Heightening her pleasure and his, but frustrating both their bodies’ voracious demands.
He would give in to her soon, he knew. For in the end, he loved the way she Claimed him. Loved the way she couldn’t get enough of him.
Because he loved her.
Tal cupped one large hand behind her head as he took the kiss to a whole new level, unleashing the full force of his passion, taking everything he wanted.
Both her hands flattened against his chest, trapped between the tight press of their bodies, her fingers clawing into the fabric of his Henley, her neck arched backwards as she received his plundering, sucking his tongue and lips when he allowed her, tangling her own with his when she could.
His other hand moved from her firm, rounded backside down the seam of her peach to rub against her perineum, triggering an orgasm that took her unawares, making her gasp and moan with abandon into his mouth.
He brought his hand to her front then, and cupped her crotch fully in his calloused palm, his thumb unerringly pressing upon her swollen pearl, his long index finger thrusting into her tight, wet cunny.
“Tal,” she groaned, shaking as another orgasm seized her, her nails digging not only into his shirt but into the skin beneath, drawing blood.
He forcibly kissed her into silence, thrusting his tongue deeper into her mouth as he added his middle finger into her convulsing vagina at the same time.
She came again and again, bucking against his hand, rubbing against his body, sucking on his tongue as hard as she could, splintering apart in his arms.
Raw. Open. Vulnerable.
And he loved it.
He was drunk on his power over her. The ability to bring her such intense pleasure so easily. The way she clung to him like a broken raft at sea, barely keeping afloat under wave after tidal wave of ecstasy.
“Tal,” she purr-growled against his mouth.
“Please.”
He lifted her bodily against him, winding her legs around his hips, and carried her smoothly to the gigantic honeymoon bed.
He laid her naked on the satin covers and heard her quickly raise herself up on her elbows so that she could keep her eyes on him.
Slowly, holding her fiery purple eyes with his blind turquoise ones, he crossed his arms and grabbed hold of the bottom of his Henley, pulling it up his torso and over his head.
She sucked in a breath at the sight of him, and he knew from the deepening musk of her arousal that it wasn’t because she was repulsed by his scars, but because she wanted him.
As surely as if her passion ignited the air around her, he saw her clearly lick her lips with anticipation, then bite down hard enough on her lower lip to break the skin.
She wanted him badly.
“Come and take me, ana Ishtar,” he commanded, his voice deep and guttural.
Irrefutable.
She came forward on her hands and knees on the bed and pulled him closer, though he remained standing beside it.
With her hands clasped possessively on each of his buttocks, she sat on the bed and buried her face in the middle of his torso, nuzzling and rubbing against his heated skin.
But she didn’t immediately take what she wanted most, the most private, intimate part of him that pulsed with a life of its own between them, pushing past the waistband of his trousers toward his navel, the satiny plump crown weeping through its reddened eye.
As if she couldn’t believe she’d been awarded such an enormous gift, she looked up into his face and searched it for confirmation.
Might she truly have him now? Not because she commanded it, but because he granted it?
Whatever she saw in his expression made her lips spread with effervescent joy.
She lay back on her el
bows again and said back to him, “Come and take me first, etlu mine. Make me yours in every way.”
He grinned fully at her, baring his teeth in a dramatic growl of his own.
He hooked his thumbs inside the waistband of his pants and pushed them down his hips, then sank one knee and another onto the bed, prowling slowly toward her like a starving tiger toward fresh meat.
She screeched with laughter when he rubbed his buzzed head against her tummy, tickling her with the coarse stubble of his hair. He pinned her down by holding her hips and pushing his broad shoulders and torso between her open thighs.
But all laughter died when she felt him swipe his tongue slowly along the hairless seam of her vagina from bottom to top.
He pushed her thighs wide apart and stared down at her for long, long moments, until her heart practically broke her breastbone the way it palpitated with anticipation.
“I’ve never tasted you here,” he murmured as if to himself, stunned at his own neglect.
“You’re delicious, Ishtar.”
She couldn’t help writhing a little under his hold. The lips of her vagina opened eagerly under his perusal, showing him a tantalizing glimpse of her wet, pink core.
He inhaled her musk deeply as if it were a drug and, he, its addict. And lowered his lips to her sex, kissing her lower lips as he did her mouth, plumping them, nibbling gently with his teeth.
And finally, when she couldn’t take any more of this exquisite torture, he thrust his tongue inside.
Ishtar arched her back off the bed as he plundered her with his mouth. Her hands held his head to her core while his hands held her thighs against the bed.
“Oh please, Tal,” she begged mindlessly, not even knowing what it was she was begging for, “please, please, please.”
He replaced his tongue inside of her with two long fingers and lapped wetly, ceaselessly, her greedy little nub, until she came so hard and for so long she couldn’t catch her breath.
Only shuddering and quaking beneath him, her vagina clutching his hand like a vice, her fingers clawing desperately across his scalp.
While her body still convulsed in the throes of orgasm, he removed his fingers and rose up on his knees, hitching her legs around his back.
When his heavy sex slid long and hot through her weeping core, she immediately quieted, holding her breath in anticipation, though her body still quivered with release.
“Do you want me, Ishtar Anshar?” His voice was a husky, hypnotic baritone. Deep and possessive.
“Yes,” she answered clearly, staring into his strong, beautiful face.
“What happens when Light illuminates Darkness? When Darkness embraces Light? What happens when the conqueror is conquered? When weakness becomes might?”
—From the Ecliptic Prophesies, buried and forgotten
Chapter Fourteen
“I want you forever, Tal-Telal.”
He ground his erection a couple of inches into the mouth of her vagina, teasing her and stretching her mercilessly with its satiny steel, its incredible fullness.
They groaned in unison at the mind-numbing pleasure, and he lowered over her, his weight on his forearms beside her shoulders.
With his blind eyes he stared into hers as he held himself still, only the plump, tumescent head of him inside of her.
“Will you…”
He swallowed and clenched his jaw, squeezing the last tears of sadness from his eyes.
When he Claimed her, he wanted to give her only his joy.
And all of his love.
“Will you love me, Ishtar?” he rasped low, his breath hitching, his heart in his throat.
Her hands came to enfold his face, her thumbs gently wiping away his tears.
“Yes, ninigiku of my heart,” she replied solemnly.
“I will love you always.”
He pushed slowly into her on a long exhale, as if he was finally set free.
Finally home.
Her legs around his back clutched him tighter as he plowed painstakingly through her tight tunnel, her most sensitive tissues clinging to every naked, throbbing inch of him, until he was exactly where she wanted him, locked deep inside against the hardened core of her pleasure.
He stared unblinkingly down at her, his face contorted in a beautiful pain, nostrils flaring, lips slightly parted to reveal the edges of his teeth, letting her see what she did to him, how she slayed him, owned him. Even as he took her in turn, moving inside of her like a rolling wave, gathering force and speed in the hurricane of their passion.
She bit her lower lip to hold back her climax, riding the tidal wave higher and higher, enslaved by the incredible ecstasy, but too stubborn to let go. She wanted him to come with her. She wanted them to come apart together.
She looked just beyond him to the brightly illuminated mirror above them, reflecting his broad, leanly defined back and tapered, narrow waist. Every muscle cut to precision, stretching and contracting hypnotically underneath his scar-crossed skin.
The fundamentally masculine jut of his hip bones and the hard globes of his buttocks, flexing gloriously as he shortened his thrusts to small, powerful bursts against her G-spot, relentlessly building her pleasure to an almost unbearable pitch.
Here’s another modern invention she’d like to try out sometime—a video camera to record the sensuous, drool-worthy movements of his ass as he moved within her, then play it back on an endless loop in slow motion.
She came on a low vibration just imagining it.
As if he knew what held her mesmerized, a smile that was pure, triumphant male spread his generous lips.
“Like what you see?” he rasped, adding an erotic turn to his thrusts.
All she could reply was an incoherent grunt, half growl, half purr. Her fingers raked needy, desperate streaks down his back.
A deep, full-bodied laugh rumbled from his chest as the purest joy exploded within him.
He was a male. Claiming his female.
Giving her the keenest of pleasures no other could. Because they were made uniquely for each other.
Because they belonged to each other. Body, heart and soul.
He lowered more of his weight onto her as he took her mouth in a soul-searing kiss, thrusting his tongue inside her as he surged higher and deeper, faster and harder, pushing them both, finally, finally, past the point of no return.
They splintered apart in each other’s arms. He gave her everything he had to give. Endless waves of Nourishment, until she overflowed with his cream.
She held him tight through their crisis, kept him deeply embedded inside of her, her vagina milking him ravenously for more.
She would never have enough of him. She was drunk on the euphoria he wrought upon her. Addicted to the strength he infused in her.
“I love you, Tal,” she cried hoarsely into his mouth.
“Love you love you love you love you…”
He gave her all of his weight then, pressing her into the thick, fluffy mattress, locked inescapably in her embrace, all four of her limbs wrapped tightly around him.
His sex jerked and shuddered against her womb, as her vagina voraciously ate him up, squeezing and gulping, pulling at him rhythmically.
“Now you’re mine,” he whispered in her ear, his voice a breathless rumble.
“Yours and no one else’s,” she concurred, her hands wandering down to clutch his magnificent ass, kneading the hard globes like a large, satisfied, possessive cat, purring so hard her whole body vibrated beneath him.
Tal only had enough strength to grin, too replete to chuckle.
They’d just had ten minutes worth of explosive orgasms—still riding the crest of the last—and she was already greedy for more of him.
He could feel her blood singing, clamoring for his. Her scent concentrating into a fog of musk around them.
She was waiting impatiently to Claim him back as he’d just done to her.
His penis jerked hard at the surge of renewed lust that exploded through h
is body, firing up all of his veins, until they stood out from his skin begging for her penetration.
“My turn,” she growled when she sensed his readiness for her possession.
And then she made him huff a surprised breath when she effortlessly flipped their positions and began to ride him slow and deep, not even allowing him a minute to regroup.
“Yes, ana Ishtar,” he said languorously, holding her hips in his hands as she moved upon him voluptuously.
“Take all of me.”
She pulled back slightly and swooped down in a feline arch, rubbing her torso all along his, dragging her hardened nipples across his chest, then encircling his head with one arm as she stared down at him.
“I’m going to make you sore,” she promised savagely, relishing how thoroughly she’d use him.
“Yes,” he acquiesced, flexing his hips in time with her lazy, burning ride.
“I’m going to make you come so hard and so long you’ll see stars for days,” she boasted happily.
His laugh shook through his chest at her gloating ferocity, and his hands cupped her bottom and squeezed, the same as she’d done to him.
“Only days?” he teased, egging her on.
“Years,” she retorted darkly, grinding down on him with a breath-stealing twist.
Her other hand reached behind her to squeeze his scrotum gently, making him groan hoarsely as his seed exploded through the mouth of his sex and into her.
She kept the incredible, exquisite pressure on the root of him as she worked his tortured erection within her, making him come endlessly, true to her word.
It might have been minutes, it might have been hours. He orgasmed into her until his sex was so sore, so wrung out, pleasure became so acute it bordered on pain.
But the pain was so glorious he didn’t want it to end. He’d happily die of this rapturous torment.
Wordlessly, for he could no longer speak, slain by the ecstasy she wrought upon him, he turned his head slightly to the side, exposing the throbbing vein at his throat.
An inhaled hiss was his only warning before she struck hard, sinking her fangs deep into his neck.
