by Nadine Mutas
And that was all the answer he needed. He grasped the strands more firmly, began to direct her movements—having picked from her thoughts, from the way she chose this type of intimacy first, that it was another thing untainted by her experience. With all the acts of violence that demon had committed against her, forcing her to take him in her mouth hadn’t been among them.
The part of him that hungered for control less vicious now he could guide her, he drank in the erotic sight of her lips around his cock, her head bobbing as she sucked him. Pressure building in his balls, he directed her to go faster, and she complied with a spark in her eye that did him in.
Lightning bolts of pleasure shot down his spine, through his groin, made him buck against her. His head fell back on the mattress as he came, the night sky above a tapestry of silver bursts and shooting stars, his power rolling out to fill every corner of the room.
Maeve kept sucking him until he was spent, and let go of his cock with a wet kiss and a lingering caress. He watched, riveted, as she crawled up his body, her breasts swinging with the movement.
His fingers closed around one of her nipples before she stopped above him, and he circled the tight nub, tweaked it just a little. She inhaled sharply, and he paused to check her expression.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”
“Good.” Even to his own ears, his voice was drenched in pleasure, a sated rumble. “Because I have plans for these.” He cupped both of her breasts, an erotic weight in his palms.
She arched into his touch, no sign of shyness or shame about the scars visible on her skin—which were symbols of strength, of survival—and a deep sense of pride flowed through him. She was conquering her demons, one by one.
With one of her nipples lightly pinched between his fingers, he tugged at her to move forward, until her chest was level with his face. She braced her arms on either side of his head, her breath coming fast as he ran his hands over her breasts, massaged and caressed in alternating strokes of feather lightness and increasing, targeted pressure.
“No biting.” Her voice was but a rasp, echoes of pain behind her words.
And his mind short-circuited at the thought of how much she had been mistreated to fear something that should be an exquisite pleasure between lovers.
“In that case,” he said on an intimate murmur, “I will have to lick you twice as thoroughly to feast on you.”
She shuddered in his hold, the amber of her eyes molten with lust. That was when he rose up, sucked a nipple into his mouth and swirled his tongue around it.
Her hips rocked against his abdomen, a choked sound of pleasure tumbling from her throat. He worked her left breast with his lips and tongue while flicking the hardened nipple of the other one with his thumb. She undulated above him, her breathing turning ragged.
“Still with me, Wildfire?”
Her response was to tunnel her fingers through his hair, caress him with light, affectionate strokes.
He played his fill with the supple curves of her breasts, making sure she was writhing with excitement, her scent a consuming perfume in the air, before he moved his hands down her sides, to her waist.
“Come here.” He applied enough pressure on her hips to make her scoot forward. “I want to taste you.” He ran a careful finger over her thigh toward the red triangle that glistened wet with her desire. Watched her expression with utmost attention as he grazed that finger over her curls, over skin swollen with need. “Here.”
She jolted, her breath unsteady, her muscles visibly tightening.
“Safe or not?” His finger lingered.
Voice shaky, she said, “He…did that.”
He waited, taking his cue from the fact she hadn’t pulled away.
“But,” she went on, “I want to overwrite that memory. With you.”
Nodding, he slid his finger in lazy circles around the center of her pleasure. “Courage should be rewarded.”
Her skin was slick with her arousal, and he used her wetness to glide over her intimate flesh, make her quiver with need. Her thigh muscles trembled with the effort it obviously took for her to keep hovering over him, too much tension in her small, lithe body.
That wouldn’t do.
“Place your hands behind you, on my chest,” he ordered.
She complied without hesitation, and he grabbed her tight with both hands on her ass, brought her directly over his face. He held most of her weight like this, his strength such that he didn’t even feel strained. Her hands on his chest merely served for extra balance—and the angle of this position meant she was opened even more for his pleasure.
“Relax your thighs.”
After a moment she did, and most of the tension drained out of her body with that small surrender. Better. Though not enough to satisfy his own need to see her drown in sexual bliss. He would make her go boneless yet.
She jerked at the first touch of his mouth to her slick folds, and he deliberately tugged at the bond, to remind her, to ground her.
I’m okay, she thought at him.
He rewarded her with a leisurely lick up to her clit, though not touching it directly. Instead, he used his lips and the flat of his tongue to apply wide pressure to the mound above it in a slow rhythm designed to make desire fire up her nerves and pool in her intimate flesh.
Her fingers digging into his chest and her breathing turning choppy were the sweetest praise of his effort.
When she was shaking with lust, he finally licked down, gave her deep, thorough kisses on her wet folds, teasing her entrance with touches of his tongue, though careful not to push in.
“You taste like fire,” he murmured against her hot, wet skin. “Power wrapped in flames.”
Her response was a strangled moan.
“I want to see you come apart again.” He touched his mouth to her clit. “Burn for me.”
He sucked, and her back bowed, her hips jerking against him as she shattered with a husky moan. Her scent, her taste, her power, filled his senses, the ghost of flames bursting forth from her, caressing him in turn.
He wasn’t done yet.
Relentlessly, he kept going, drove her over the edge again and again. She gasped for air, her arms shaking as she tried to keep herself propped up, her head thrown back in ecstasy. He dared lightly licking into her slick opening, a teasing hint of erotic intrusion—and it pushed her to another shuddering climax.
She collapsed completely, her arms giving in, and he let go of her with a kiss to her swollen folds, watched her virtually flow off him to lie in a molten tangle on the mattress beside him.
“Now this,” he said, stroking her with his power, “is how I want to render you limp.”
Chapter 32
When Maeve finally recovered her ability to speak, her muscles still loose, her bones fluid, she rasped, “I didn’t know how much I needed this.”
Dark power caressed her senses, the heat of Arawn’s hand like a brand as it rested on her thigh. It was a familiar touch by now, her nerves no longer alarmed by it. Arawn, a knowing assurance whispered inside her. Safe.
For the first time since her rescue, she felt completely at ease, all tension drained out of her. Relaxed and satisfied, floating on the high of sexual bliss.
“I’ve missed this,” she whispered.
“You got it back.”
Always distilled things to their most salient point, didn’t he? Helping her move forward instead of getting stuck looking back.
“Speaking of moving forward,” he said, his hand stroking with lazy intent up her thigh.
“Plucking thoughts again?”
“Catching them,” he corrected, a sly smile in his voice.
She might have tossed him a thought that started with Catch this, and his laughter rippled through her like a kiss to her senses.
“Come back here.” A rumbling murmur of silken seduction she was powerless to resist.
She let him pull her on top of him again, shivered with delight as he wrapped his
arms around her. The steady thump of his heart a beacon to her soul, she buried her face in his neck, breathed him in.
“You didn’t even break a sweat.” A grumbling complaint, her own skin slicked with the evidence of her exertion.
“Is that your way of asking for more?” His hand gliding over her butt, squeezing the curves in sinuous moves, clearly said he was up for it.
Was she?
She pondered that for a minute, her lips pressed to his neck. As sated as she was, as mind-blowing as her orgasms had been, a sense of…emptiness pulsed within her. When she’d come, her inner muscles had clenched around nothing, and—another first since her rescue—she’d craved to be filled.
Still craved it, judging by that steady throb of longing between her legs.
And yet, the thought of penetration sent fear slithering down her spine.
Which was exactly the reason she should do it. No more running from her fears. She’d keep spitting in the face of her demons, would spit on that demon’s non-existent grave and rob him of his legacy.
“I have no idea,” Arawn said in a near whisper, “why anyone would think you fragile. You are far stronger than they all give you credit for.” Such pride in his voice, deep appreciation in the caress of his dark power.
“You see me.” A tender kiss to his jaw. “You’ve always seen me.”
“That is”—his hand slid over her back with loving possessiveness—“because you are a sight to behold.”
He made her heart ache with love. She sought his mouth, kissed him long and deep, framing his face with her hands. It stirred the simmering need inside her to a boil again, until it was her core that ached—for him.
His one hand shaping her butt, his other cradling the back of her head, he sat up…and the change in position placed her directly on his hard cock. Not sliding down it, the angle not quite right, but the length of it pressed against her sensitized skin sent a shock wave through her body.
She stiffened, her heart stumbling. Fear clawed at her.
Arawn broke the kiss, but held her face close to his. “Just breathe.”
She waited, went through the exercises Tashia had taught her to calm her nerves, to root herself in the present. Breathing in a pattern, she noted the details of her surroundings, reminded herself that this was her choice. And held on to Arawn for dear life, her hands gripping his nape.
The drumbeat of panic subsided, giving way again to the desire curling in her core. She moved, tentatively, and rubbed along his hard length with tiny thrusts, getting used to feeling him like this before she took him in.
A thought flitted into her mind, and she paused. “Um. I’m not on birth control.”
“And you do not have to be.” Some dark echo in his voice. “I cannot procreate.”
“You can’t have children?”
“No.” That twist behind his words intensified. “Few gods have the gift of fertility. Creating life is not one of my powers.”
She blinked, drew back enough so she could look at his face. And what she saw in those harsh lines pierced her heart. “You want that, though,” she whispered. “Children. A family.”
The fact he allowed her even a glimpse of what had to be a deeply hidden hurt touched on tender parts of her soul. This, right here, letting her see this vulnerability of his, this sadness…it was the utmost trust.
“Even I,” he said without concealing the raw pain behind his statement, “do not get everything I want.”
Remembering how much he disliked being pitied—and understanding that particular feeling thanks to her own twisted experience—she gave him the hint of a smile. “Well, there’s this one thing you want that you’re about to get.”
And she underscored her teasing words by rocking her hips against him. She was so wet, from her arousal, from the way he’d pleasured her with his mouth, that she slid along his erection with erotic smoothness.
His expression tightened with lust, and the hand he still had on her butt flexed, grabbed her harder. “Whenever you are ready.”
His chest hair rasped over her hardened, sensitive nipples, and her core clenched in response. She was as ready as she could be.
“I want this.” A whisper, a reminder, a pledge.
“Then take it.”
She rose a bit, took one hand off his neck to grab his cock, position it right. The tip nudged her entrance, and she paused, breathed past the flicker of instinctive fear. Knowing he wasn’t pushing, wouldn’t move before she told him to, and would stop if she asked him—or even just thought about it—helped ease the budding panic.
Safe, she repeated to herself. I am safe.
With that reminder, that assurance, she began lowering herself onto him. Inch by inch, her breath fast and shallow, her pulse racing. He held her gaze, kept her bound to him, to his presence, to the feel of him so it would drown out the whisper of her nightmares, keep their shadows from reaching for her.
“Take your time.” For all the gentleness of his words, his voice was edged with searing hunger.
“You’re stretching me…” She gasped, but it came out as half a moan. “Oh, gods. ”
His smile was wicked and incredibly arrogant. “Arawn will do from now on.”
She laughed, short and quick, but it was enough to relax the tight curl in her belly, to let her breathe more freely. After a moment of getting used to the size of him, she moved farther down, until he was sheathed in her up to the hilt. She paused, relished the pleasure laced with pain of the erotic intrusion.
A brush of his energy over her clit, sparking more lust in her core. She clenched around him, and—oh, damn, it felt incredible.
“Arawn.” A whispered prayer.
That glint in his eyes was positively roguish. Kissing her, he stroked the back of his hand over her breast—and pinched her nipple between his fingers.
Her inner muscles tightened again, and she could move, gave in to the need to feel the friction of him sliding in and out. Holding on to his shoulders, she rocked up and down, slow at first, building momentum and pleasure.
Prickles of anticipation burst along her nerves, and she rode him faster, harder. His hands came to rest on her hips, squeezed…with the hint of a question.
“Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “Move. I want to feel you.”
He kissed her with a touch of teeth, raw and hungry, and she felt the moment he loosened one of the shackles he’d been keeping on his consuming power, the wildness of his nature. It shuddered through her via the bond, a full-body earthquake that left her breathless for a few seconds.
And then he moved.
Gripping her hips, he thrust up while his magic twined around her, licked over her skin with pulsing zings of finest pleasure. Her breath caught, her heart skipped a beat, but she held on to the pure joy of feeling him this way, and left no room for horror to invade where it should never be endured.
She met his thrusts, let her body take over, gave herself fully to those instincts that were honed before the attempt to break her. Hot, ravenous kisses, her fingers digging into his shoulders, his hands grasping her hips tight, making her ride him in a primal rhythm that shattered and dissolved some of the ugliness that had taken root in her mind.
A pinch of his power on her clit—and she flew apart.
He swallowed her moan with a devouring kiss, followed her over the edge a moment later. Rocking out both of their orgasms together, they clung to each other.
And the night sky rained stars above them.
Chapter 33
Merle stared at the note in her hands, reading it for the second time and not comprehending it any better than the first.
“She what?” Lily snapped.
“She rejected the prisoner exchange,” Hazel said, her voice calm, though her brown eyes glittered hard.
Crumpling the note up into a ball, Merle ground her teeth. “That fucking bitch.”
Two days. Juneau sat on the offer for an exchange of Lydia Novak for Rhun for two whole days, onl
y to send a curtly worded rejection now. What the fuck was she thinking?
“She’s batshit insane.” Lily crossed her arms. “Seriously, there’s no reason left in that woman.”
“Or in the rest of the Draconians.” Merle threw the note in the trash. “I mean, how can the others not even step up and talk some sense into her? This was a good proposal. It made sense. It would have saved lives.”
“Well,” Hazel said, “now we know that’s not what any of them care about anymore.”
Anger a sizzle in her veins, Merle turned to the hall. “I’m going to pay a little visit to our guest.” Time to start interrogating Lydia for real. So far the captured Elder witch had refused to discuss anything.
“I’ll join you.” Hazel started toward the door as well but stopped, turned to the open French doors leading from the kitchen into the dark backyard.
Merle followed her glance. Rose stood on the back porch, Isa near her, and cleared her throat.
“Talk?” Rose asked Hazel, her Fae accent still strong. She was picking up English words here and there, making an effort to learn the language of her birth family.
And she slowly, hesitatingly, made moves to get to know Hazel, her real mother, whom she only met recently. Hazel, who’d been restraining her instincts to pounce on her lost-and-found child and hug her breathless in favor of giving Rose time, and allowing to her seek contact on her own terms.
So of course when Rose now wanted to talk to her—with the help of Isa as Fae interpreter—Hazel threw Merle an apologetic glance.
“Go,” Merle said with a smile. “I’ll handle Lydia.”
Hazel nodded and joined her daughter, who looked at her twin sister Lily with wide indigo eyes and waved her over as well. Merle’s best friend, so assured in most everything else and always taking life in stride, still battled speechlessness when it came to her newly returned real twin, and walked to the back porch in uncharacteristic silence.
Merle made her way down to the basement and opened Lydia’s cell, but didn’t step inside. Leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, she glared at the Elder.
