by Imogen Sera
"You didn't mark me," I say, frowning at him.
He leans in to my shoulder, pressing a kiss there before scraping his fangs very softly over my skin. "I didn't," he agrees.
I don't really think he changed his mind, but his easy agreement has me on edge. "Why not?"
"Because I love you," he says against my shoulder. "Because it can't be taken back, and because you were desperate and horny when you asked me to do it."
I laugh and move my arms around his neck, my fingers curling into his hair. "I certainly was. But I mean it, Az. I love you. I want to be here with you always. I know it's fast, but nothing has ever felt this right to me."
"You're mine," he says. "I knew it before I met you. I told you right away, Eve. You've always been mine."
No part of me wants to disagree, so I squeeze my arms around him and shut my eyes.
Chapter 29
Az'ralon
Eve is finally back where she belongs. There isn't anything in the world that could make me leave this bed right now.
I'm curved around her from behind, and her sweet little breaths are the only thing I can hear. Her chest moves against my arm, and her hair smells like honey, and everything about her here with me is so right.
She makes a small, satisfied sound in her throat, and I'm drawn there like I have been since the moment I saw her. I lift her hair from her neck and move it aside, and press my face into the thin skin there. I can hear her pulse, hear her blood rushing through her veins, the makeup of it so fragile. She begged me to be marked and her blood is begging for my venom, and I can't deny her.
I lick along the column of her neck and can feel her pulse rising. I can't mark her until we're entirely connected, until I can change her just slightly, just enough that my venom can work to make her mine.
"Az," she murmurs, her voice thick with sleep. My name in her mouth is the best thing I've ever heard. She pushes back against me, rubbing the cleft of her ass over my cock, and it's all I can do to not adjust her hips, push into her, and fuck her hard until I can bite her sweet neck and taste her sweet blood. "I want you," she murmurs.
With a low growl, I press my face back into her neck as I find her nipples between my fingertips. She lets out a breathy gasp and arches against me, and I move my tongue and lips along the length of her neck until I've licked and sucked on every inch of it. Her hips are moving, looking for friction, so I move my fingers down the soft, smooth length of her stomach to the apex of her thighs.
"Baby," she says as my fingers move over her clit. She's wordless as I slip one finger and then two inside of her, but she lets out a long, low moan.
"You're mine," I remind her, my mouth against her ear. I hold her tightly against me, and rock my cock against her backside. "You're my Eve. Always."
She whimpers something that I take as an agreement just before she clenches around my finger and cries out for me. Her body spasming in my arms is blissful.
She reaches back for my cock, but I don't let her, pushing more firmly against her. Her whimper is lovely, and the way that her hair spills across my arm and the limp weight of her against me makes me wonder if she's finished.
"I really need you to fill me up," she says, her ass pressing back against me. I chuckle against her neck and put a hand on her hips, tilting them back to give me access from behind. "Oh, yes," she says as I move the head of my cock over her entrance, gathering wetness there.
Eve is still as I push into her, and I freeze inside of her, waiting for her to relax. I know my size can be uncomfortable for her, and I feel slightly selfish as I savor the tight, silken heat of her surrounding me. When her walls unclench and the muscles in her legs relax slightly, I move again, and before long I'm fully seated in her.
I move my thumb across her clit and run my other hand over her nipple as I thrust slowly. My mouth is against her ear still, and I'm so lost in her body and reactions that I'm only scarcely aware of the things that I'm murmuring to her. "My Eve... Mine forever... I love you, darling."
She comes with a cry, tensing in my arms. The way she clenches around my cock is too much for me, and I release inside of her. I move my thumb quickly over her clit, trying to prolong her orgasm, as my cock latches on to the entrance of her womb.
"I love you, Eve," I say, as my release pumps in to her, swelling my cock and making it twitch violently. I know it's time, and I lick at her softly, just where her shoulder meets her neck. "Sorry, love," I murmur.
And then I sink my fangs into her flesh. Her blood is sweet in my mouth, and her cunt is sweet around my cock, and my fangs burn with the venom that will make her mine forever. I can feel it leaving me, moving in to her as my cock moves in her, and the knowledge of what it means fills me with a pleasurable contentment that I don't think will ever subside.
When the venom is fully spilled, and I come back to myself, I can feel how stiff Eve is in my arms. I lick at the wound I made and whisper apologies to her, and she finally relaxes against me. She turns around to face me and pulls my face down to hers for a hard kiss.
"I'm yours," she says, her eyes sparkling with delight. "That was..." she trails off and winds her hands around the back of my neck. "That was amazing. I'm really yours."
I crush her against me and breathe deeply. "You always have been."
Chapter 30
Eve
There's an oval of fang marks just above my collarbone. The sight of it makes me grin at myself in the mirror, and I'm struck for a moment by how happy I look. I can't put my finger on what exactly has changed in my face, but looking at myself, I just know I'm content.
"Is this going to scar?" I ask, running my fingers over it and turning to where Az is getting dressed.
He comes over and pulls me against him. "There's a reason it's called being marked," he says.
"Good." I glance at the two of us in the mirror. His dusky purple skin is so deep against my peachy color, his frame dwarfing mine to the point that I barely even come up to his nipples. His tail is wrapped around my calf, just as he likes it, and his wings have curved around to the front to embrace me, too.
He's so otherworldly but he's so mine. It's hard to remember that he's not just human sometimes, because everything between us is so right that I don't know how it could be like this.
"What are we doing today?" he asks me, and I look up at him with a little smile.
"Well, you are going to find my best friend's sister, and I am going to find my best friend to make sure she's not regretting what she did last night."
He grins down at me. "Or we could stay in bed all day."
"That sounds nice," I say with a little sigh. "How about this? You find Petra, and then we can just stay in bed for a month straight."
He kisses the top of my head. "I like it."
"When that month comes," I say, thinking out loud, "could we be back in the little house? It's so nice there."
"We could," he says, after a minute. "But there are two other regions that I oversee, and we'll need to schedule some time so that I can show you off in those places, too."
I laugh a little against him. It's so strange to think that yeah, he totally wants to show me off, and there's nothing insincere about it. He just likes me that much, and it makes me feel warm all over.
"Besides," he continues, "I think it's time for another home. And I know just the person to find one with me."
I hug him tightly.
He brushes my hair back from my eyes and bends to kiss me, his fingers lingering over my newly marked skin. "I love you, you know."
"Yeah," I say. "And I love you."
And I do. I really, really do.
Captive Allure
Petra
I'm so bored. It's a weird place to be when I've been kidnapped by some creepy smoke cloud and locked in a teeny tiny underground cabin, but I've been here for weeks and there's nothing to do and I'm more miserable now that I was when I was first taken.
There's a bed, a bathtub, a toilet, and a fireplace, and tha
t's it. The most important thing about it is that Allie isn't here with me, and all I can think is that she's somewhere like this alone. I don't think she would cope well.
Allie's the one who does everything with feeling, and it scares me to think of my impetuous little sister being all alone. I'm practical; she's passionate.
Like when Mom got cancer. Allie quit her job and immediately jumped into full time nursing mode, while I picked up more hours at work and researched how to get Mom added to my health insurance policy.
And even though I'm the one locked up by an actual cloud, it's her I'm worried about. Because I don't know where she is, and I don't know if she's also been taken by this thing, but I do know that she's pretty much incapable of patiently waiting things out.
I'm usually good at that sort of thing, being patient and all, but I'm finding myself pretty done right about now.
I know the stupid black cloud will be back in a few hours, because there's a window at the top of the stairs and the sun is beginning to set. I know that it will bring me food and more water, and I know that it won't say anything or explain anything or let me go because it's just a stupid cloud.
But I'm done quietly taking this. I screamed at it at first, every morning and every night for a few days. I cried and begged and pleaded for it to let me go. It was so unresponsive that I have to wonder if it's sentient, or just some kind of tool. Maybe it's just some super advanced robot servant or something.
So I know that yelling and crying and throwing things won't work. I've tried talking to it, calmly and rationally, and there's no response there, either. I've thought about trying to write things down, and even pulled a burned log from the little fireplace to scratch charcoal on to the wall and see if it would communicate that way. I laughed at it and I sang to it and I even managed to hut myself trying to do a cartwheel in front if it.
I have an idea, though, and it makes me blush. I'm kind of at the point of what the hell else can I try, and I need to get out of here because I need to make sure that Allie is alright.
But that knowledge doesn't make it any less weird when I pull off my clothes, or when I lie on the bed and put my hand between my legs. Even if this doesn't work, at least I'm getting something out of it, because I've been hornier than I've ever been in my life locked in this stupid little cabin. I guess it's because I'm bored out of my mind.
I'm not bored right now. It's a pretty half-hearted attempt at masturbating, but maybe this will shock the cloud thing into--something. Anything. Anything but this purgatory of nothing, without an end in sight. And that thought makes my heart pound with anticipation.
I'm thinking about giving up when I smell the strange sulfurous and cooked meat smell that signifies the cloud's arrival. Which means it's too late to give, because I'm naked and my legs are spread wide and my fingers are moving quickly between them. But all I can think about is what's next to try after this doesn't work, what else I can hit the door with to try to get the fuck out of here, what in the world will free me from this stupid little room.
I find myself watching the stairs, waiting to see what will happen. It's usually here for just a minute or so, and when it's gone, there's a plate of food and several cups of water. I don't know how it carries those things, because I never see them until it disappears.
It hovers on the stairs, several feet above the floor. It's relatively small right now, about the size of a refrigerator, but I've seen it expand to fill almost the entire room before.
It doesn't have eyes and I haven't been sure that it's even capable of sight, but right now--oh god, I can feel how I'm being watched. My hand stills between my legs and my heart pounds in my head, and I'm not sure if what I'm seeing is real as all of the light in the room is drawn toward the cloud thing and sucked into its darkness.
I don't think it's happy. I've wondered what the hell it is, but I can feel the fury permeating every inch of the room. I stand from the bed on the far side from the stairs and pull my clothes on as quickly as I possibly can, all while little jets of light are sucked toward the thing and a low humming noise fills the room.
"I'm sorry," I say, even though I'm not. Not really. Something is happening, which is what I wanted, right?
And then somehow there's...something on the stairs. It's human shaped but not human in any other way, and it's like something out of my worst nightmares. It's like a charred corpse, but alive and animated, and I can see from where I stand that it's burning from within.
"Leave this place," it says. Its voice is low and commanding, and when I don't move from where I stand, it speaks again. "Now. Before I follow."
A flick of the monster's hand makes the door swing open, but it's still on the stairs and I really don't want to get closer to it to leave.
"Now," it says again, and I know I'm shaking watching it. I take a deep breath and hold it, the sulfur-burned-meat smell that makes more sense now trapped in my lungs, and I lunge across the room, up the stairs and out the door. I brush against the monster on the narrow stairs, and I hear myself let out a terrified little whimper when its burning arm brushes mine.
But it doesn't try to stop me, and once I'm out in the night, I run and run and run. I jump over tree roots and scramble up short, rocky hills, and when my arms are torn up and my feet hurt and I've put at least an hour between the monster and me, I sit at the base of a tree and try to catch my breath.
As I sit here, there are only three things I know for sure about the monster: it's the scariest thing I've ever seen, it's indisputably male, and it seems more than a little prudish.
End notes
I hope you had as much fun reading Dark Allure as I did writing it! As you can probably guess, the next book in the series will be about Petra, Allie's missing sister, and is titled Captive Allure. I expect it to be out in late November or early December. For updates about it, join my Facebook group or mailing list.
If you haven't read my Dragongrove series, you can find it here
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Thanks for reading!
