by Naima Simone
“Yes.” She clutched his upper arms and delighted in the bunch of muscle beneath her fingers. “I’m wet. My pussy’s wet.” She turned her head, sank her teeth into the tough flesh of his wrist. “For you,” she sent along their telepathic link.
Fire blazed hotter in his gaze. She caught the flash of fangs beneath his full upper lip. For several long, heated seconds he stared at her. Tension invaded his big frame, fairly vibrated in the muscles straining under his skin. Then in a burst of motion, he leaned back and her skirt and boots fell off her body in silken and leather tatters.
His breath rushed from his chest in loud bellows as he shoved the scraps of clothing from the mattress and dove between her spread thighs.
His mouth latched onto her sex, his tongue spearing between the folds into her clenching, empty core.
“Bastien,” she screamed, plucking at his shoulders, grasping his head.
Her body bucked as if fighting against the shocking, alien pleasure consuming her. Bastien firmed his grip on her inner thighs, keeping her open and vulnerable for his claiming.
“So sweet,” he rumbled against her. “So fucking sweet and tight.”
He lapped at her as if she was his favorite dish. His tongue licked a fiery path up her crease then swept across that place.
“Hmmm,” he murmured, sliding a finger through her slick slit and tucking it in the entrance of her pussy, gently penetrating and filling her. She bowed into the erotic invasion, craving it now that she knew what awaited her.
Again he stroked the top of her sex. “No wonder you’re hurting, sweetheart. Your clit is all swollen and hard.” He purred a hum of sympathy that didn’t sound at all sympathetic to Sinéad’s ears. It sounded more like a sensual threat. “Do you ever touch your clitoris, cruxim?”
Her heart hammered as she peered down her torso to meet his bright gaze. Touch her clitoris? Or clit, as he’d called it? Another name she latched onto. Before her exploration in the shower? Hell no, she thought breathlessly. She hadn’t known it existed—
His lips pursed and drew on the flesh. Need pierced her gut, drove the air from her lungs.
Ah. Yeah. That’s why. Though she doubted her finger could generate the pleasure his fingers and mouth did.
“Not before today,” she admitted, quivering as he tenderly shafted her core with his finger and watched her with inhuman eyes.
“Today?” he growled, the flames in his gaze leaping higher. “When?”
“Shower,” she said, breathless as he twisted his finger and crooked the tip, rubbing a place high in her sex.
“The shower.” A wicked smile curved his lips. “Is that why you were taking so long? You were touching your pussy for the first time?”
She nodded, bucked her hips, pleading for more of his evil—delectable—torture.
“Give me your hand.” He didn’t wait for her to agree or disagree, but plucked it off his shoulder and, curling all but one finger into a fist, guided the single digit to her clitoris. “Show me,” he whispered as he slid her fingertip over her mound for the first time.
Oh. She gasped. Her sex spasmed at the hard punch of desire. It was small—it still amazed her how something so small could contain so much pleasure. Slick, hard. She groaned. Her thighs tightened around Bastien’s shoulders as she circled the beaded flesh no bigger than a tiny button, demonstrating how she’d caressed herself.
“That’s it,” he praised, his voice adopting the low, sinful tone again. “Don’t stop.” Then he added his tongue and they danced an erotic duet over her flesh. And all the while he continued to plumb her pussy with increasingly hard thrusts of his finger.
Her skin tightened, tingled. Helpless cries spilled from her lips as she writhed to the sensual tune he played over and in her flesh. The devastating, delicious pressure built…built…
And exploded.
Dazed, she barely acknowledged Bastien leaving her, dimly heard the muted rip of something but was too shaken by the catastrophic event that had split her apart and somehow left her whole to investigate.
The whisper of calloused fingers across her abdomen, breasts and arms brought her back to reality. Bastien had returned to her. The torn black shirt no longer hung from his shoulders and a quick glance down revealed he’d rid himself of his remaining clothing as well.
That cleared the euphoric haze from her head.
Sweet Lady, he was beautiful. Hunger tightened the features of his lovely face, throwing the scars in stark relief. So fierce it made her sated flesh pulse in renewed need. His wide shoulders and warrior-marked chest, narrow hips and muscular thighs—gorgeous. And the thick, flare-capped column covered in clear latex. She huffed out a wavering breath. His cock hung between them, long, veined and…mine. All mine.
She didn’t recoil from the possession in the growled claim. At some point her soul had accepted he—male, hippogryph and the other—belonged to her. And with the admission came the moment that claiming happened with such startling clarity it echoed in her spirit like a gong. When he’d bitten Cyra and fed from her vein. The jealousy. The territorial urge to yank him away and demand she be the only one who nourished him.
Her eyes rose. The hippogryph had retreated from his stare, but the flames still leapt and flickered. She lifted her arms in entreaty. Maybe feeding him her blood was impossible, but she could give him what no other had ever known. Her.
Bastien sank into her embrace with a harsh groan. His elbows and forearms bracketed her head and his mouth captured hers in a rough, ravenous kiss. The same hunger raged through her.
He flexed his hips and the broad head of his cock nudged then pushed at her entrance. Fire sizzled up her spine as he pressed deeper, wedged more of his cock inside her pussy. Pleasure and pain mated, stealing her breath as he continued his erotic branding. And that’s what it was. She gasped, twisting under him. A branding. Every inch stroking into her sex stamped her as his. And no other would ever have her. She brought her knees up to cradle his hips and accept more of him.
“Sweetheart,” he rasped. “Fuck. Tight. So small and tight.” He growled. “Take me, Sinéad,” he ordered, implored. “I’m not stopping until you take every last fucking inch of me.”
With his vow echoing in her ears, he drew back until only the head remained inside, then lunged forward and embedded his cock in her core to the hilt. Pleasure gilded in the fiery bite of pain seared her nerve endings, crackled through her skin. He filled her.
Oh Lady. All this time, she’d believed herself complete, whole. But she hadn’t been. Not until this moment with him embedded deep in her pussy. She ran her palms over his damp back before cupping his tight ass and pressing her head to his shoulder. Sinéad sighed as need pulsed through her, quivered in her sex.
Tilting her head back, she peered into the face that had come to mean more to her than hunting, vampires and even being cruxim.
His lips were pulled back in a sensual grimace. The pointed tips of his too-long canines glinted in the hotel room’s dim light. An inferno burned in his eyes. They glowed bright with hunger.
“Get on with it, hippogryph,” she whispered, repeating her earlier order when she hadn’t known what she’d been asking for. Now she knew and she wanted more.
Amusement flickered across his sharp features.
Then he moved.
Sweet Lady. She took it back—she hadn’t known what she’d been requesting. Not by a long shot.
The hard, thick length of his cock tunneled through her flesh, dragging over places and nerves she hadn’t realized existed. Ecstasy followed every slow thrust, every hard grind over her clit. Each ridge in his cock rubbed her sex, refusing to neglect an inch of her.
She drowned in a gluttony of passion, dove into a need so raw—so primal—neither her human or immortal brain could have imagined its power. Bastien wasn’t gentle as he rode her. His hips slapped against hers in a silent demand to keep up, a demand she accept all he had to give her. Spreading her legs wide, Sinéad set her feet on the
mattress and tilted her pelvis higher, offering him everything. Her pussy, her body. Her soul.
He owned it all.
With a low roar akin to thunder rolling through the room, he reared back and clasped her hips. Kneeling, he towed her across the covers until her hips and ass perched on his hard thighs. With a grunt he plowed deeper, nudging a spot high inside her sheath that sent her spiraling near orgasm. A keening, wild cry clawed from her throat as he continued to pound against the place, shoving her closer and closer to the dark precipice of ecstasy.
“Bastien,” she pleaded. But not to stop. Never to stop. She begged him to take her there again.
One thrust. Two. Three more and she tumbled over the edge, head first, arms spread wide. Darkness closed over her and for a wrinkle in time she soared without wings.
How long she flew across the diamond-encrusted oblivion, she didn’t know. Maybe a second. Maybe an eternity. When she floated back down to the bed, Bastien’s head was tipped back, the echoes of a bellow ringing in the room. His chest rose and fell on the harsh breaths tearing from his throat.
After several long moments, he lowered his head and his lashes lifted. Emerald-green eyes met hers. Quiet settled over them, the only sounds the muted click and whir of the air conditioner and their labored breathing.
His gaze flicked to the handle of the dagger she’d hurled across the room earlier before returning to her.
“I’m not paying for that.”
Chapter Ten
Bastien opened his eyes. He was dreaming.
It wasn’t just the sharper-than-reality color and texture of his surroundings that tipped him off. Instead of the hazy, gauze-like quality some people experienced in their dreams, his were too vibrant, too tactile, just too.
The setting confirmed his suspicion. No longer did he lie curled around Sinéad’s body in a Boston hotel room perfumed with sex and skin. No longer did the muted noise from the never-truly-quiet streets below filter through the glass balcony doors.
Under REM sleep, his mind had transported him to a place he hadn’t seen in five months—a place he’d called home until the pain of rejection and lost love drove him across the Atlantic and into an old friend’s ambush.
Sunlight streamed through the skylight in the domed ceiling, bathing the main living area in golden warmth. With two long, low couches, several colorful rugs and the requisite man cave flat-screen television mounted onto the wall, the room was inviting, comfortable. Straight ahead, a cobbled patio and sparkling pool were surrounded by a stone wall that encircled the entire villa. And beyond…the unparalleled beauty of black sands, bottomless clear water and towering mountains.
In spite of the sorrow he’d experienced the last few weeks he’d been here, affection poured through him, warm and comforting like the cup of black tea with lemon his father always enjoyed in the evenings. The large, airy Greek-style villa had been his family’s property for thousands of years. Tradition in Patros, the hippogryph’s homeland and the seat of power where King Janus ruled, mandated the race’s young remained with their parents until they married and established a separate household of their own.
Alexander, Bastien’s father, had died many years ago and his mother, Thera, hundreds of years before her mate, leaving the ancestral home to Bastien. The villa high in the mountains had been a happy place to grow up.
Though his parents hadn’t been bondmates—his father had been a healer, his mother a psychometric, an object reader—they’d been happy together. They’d shared a life, home and son. Not once had Thera uttered regret over not being able to transform into a hippogryph. She’d loved Alexander and being with him as his mate had been enough.
Bastien had yearned for the mating his parents shared. One of affection, comfort and respect. At one time, he’d believed he’d found such a connection with Alesia. But after meeting and loving Sinéad, he understood taking Alesia as his mate would have cheated them both.
Passion, humor, unconditional acceptance—those were as important as companionship. His lack of noble blood and his station in society didn’t factor into how Sinéad measured his worth. She saw past the scarred, red-eyed, fanged exterior to the soul of the man and hippogryph. And she hadn’t rejected either of them.
With the admission, the last of his bitter resentment against Alesia melted away. And a burden the size of Sisyphus’ boulder rolled off his shoulders, leaving him freer than he’d been in five months.
“Bastien.”
He didn’t turn toward the voice behind him. Tucking his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, a wry smile curved his lips. “You could’ve just called, Nico.”
Just as he’d known he was dreaming, Bastien also acknowledged his best friend’s appearance was real. Nicolai was a dream walker. The ex-Dimios possessed the gift of entering another’s dreams, communicating with people, spying on their unconscious thoughts or even manipulating them. His gift had led him to Tamar, his bondmate, who shared the same psychic talent.
“Now where’s the fun in that?” Nicolai asked, coming beside him. “Besides, you could’ve hung up on me by phone. You can’t escape me here.”
Bastien glanced at his friend and met Nicolai’s frank lavender gaze. Though he smiled in greeting, hard determination darkened his eyes. This time Nicolai wouldn’t let him go without answers.
Good thing Bastien was finally ready to give them.
He sighed, dug his hands deeper in his pockets. “Where do I start?”
“The beginning’s as good a place as any.”
Bastien nodded. And spilled the truths he’d concealed from his friend. His love for Nicolai’s sister, their father’s decree she would marry a noble worthy of her station and Alesia’s capitulation to the king’s will. He revealed the details of meeting Sinéad and how she’d saved him with her blood, including the effects of the bloodlust and his addiction to cruxim blood. The only detail he eliminated from the tale was the intricate secrets regarding the custody of the Blood Cross, for those were told to him in confidence and not his to reveal.
Long moments of silence stretched between them after Bastien concluded his story.
“So the Blood Cross,” Nicolai finally said into the shocked quiet. “It really exists.”
“Yes. Believe me, I was as thrown as you are. But considering most humans believe we’re myths, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised,” Bastien said wryly.
“And this Sinéad thinks it can heal you? Change you back?”
Again, Bastien nodded. “I don’t know exactly how, but she’s adamant it can.”
“And what are your plans to get the cross? Just mosey on in the Cardei castel and demand its return?” Nicolai snapped. “That’s a fucking suicide mission and you know it!”
Dread pooled in Bastien’s gut. The odds of Sinéad and him succeeding sucked. But they were flying blind. Without having been in the Cardei hold before, their only choice was to wing it once they were granted entrance. If they could somehow separate the regina and Ryn, request a private meeting and force the pair to hand over the Blood Cross, the odds in his and Sinéad’s favor rose if even a little. No doubt, the plan had no-chance-in-hell stamped all over it, but the strategy was the only one they had.
“What other choice do we have, Nico?” Bastien asked softly. “Walk away and allow the Cardeis to keep the cruxim enslaved and bound to their greed? These are Sinéad’s sisters, the females she considers her own. I would fight the same for you, Lukas, Adon or Dorian,” he said, referring to the members of the elite fighting unit Nicolai used to lead as Dimios. “Besides, the Cardeis’ betrayal doesn’t just affect the cruxim. What if their regina turns her eye toward war on other immortals with the cruxim as her weapon? Or, as the cruxim myth about the cross suggests, the regina could turn her control on other immortal races. We could all be screwed. Not to mention thousands of humans would be collateral damage.”
“Fuck,” Nicolai swore, whirling on his heel and stalking across the room. Angry, heavy strides carried him back
to Bastien and he didn’t stop until they stood almost chest to chest. “Why in the hell didn’t you contact me? You know damn well I would have come to your aid. I don’t give a fuck if you drink blood or eat shit! You’re my friend and I won’t let you go into this on your own.”
He grabbed Bastien’s shoulder, his fingers digging into muscle, pressing against bone. “I thought I’d lost you once,” he rasped. “I’ll be damned if I go through that pain again. Even over your stupid, misplaced pride.”
“I considered it, Nico,” Bastien murmured. A hole burned in his chest, reminiscent of the searing pain Evander inflicted when he punched a fist through Bastien’s rib cage. “But you have Tamar. I couldn’t ask so huge a favor of you. And I couldn’t ask her to sacrifice you when she just found you.” He laughed, the bark abrupt, tight and devoid of humor. “Hell, if I could find a way to force Sinéad to let me go in by myself, I wouldn’t even take her with me.”
Tension hummed between them—a tension filed with anger, pain, sorrow. Love.
“You are my friend,” Nicolai said, voice low, fervent. “It would be my honor to stand beside you.” He released Bastien and scrubbed a palm over his face. “Shit, what a mess.” He paused, his purple gaze scrutinizing Bastien. “The cruxim…you love her, don’t you?”
Bastien thought of the female sleeping beside his corporeal form. Of the dagger embedded in the wall above the bed. He smiled, slow and delighted, warmth suffusing him in spite of the frigid ball of fear entrenched in his chest. “Yeah. I do.”
“Even though she did this,” Nicolai waved a hand toward Bastien’s face, “to you?”
“Not on purpose. She didn’t know how it would affect me. She was just trying to save my life.”
Nicolai studied him, his eyes solemn, lips a hard, straight line. Eventually he nodded. “You’ll fight for her.”
