She was now the prisoner and he the captor. But the look on his face indicated she held all the power.
“Kiss my breast,” she whispered, arching toward his mouth. “Touch me as I long to touch you.”
“With pleasure.”
He bent his head to her breast. The knuckles of one hand brushed against the plump curve, then slid to her side, her hip, the inside of her thigh. Once again, her insides clenched with need as he stroked closer and closer to her core, never quite touching the center where she ached for him.
His other hand left her cheek. He splayed both across her thighs, as if preparing to force them apart. No need. Ellie was beyond ready. If he didn’t give them both release soon, she was going to scream.
He trapped her nipple with his teeth, biting lightly. Ellie’s head jerked upright as she gasped, unsure whether she should push his head away or beg him to do it again.
As if reading her mind, he performed the same sweet torture on the other breast, suckling the nipple to diamond hardness and scraping ever so gently with his teeth as he pulled his mouth away. She nearly flew off the bed.
His hips rising, he bent lower and lower, pressing a trail of hot, slow kisses from the valley between her breasts to the sensitive skin just beneath. He continued lower, along her stomach, over to the swell of her hip, down the impossibly tense muscle of her thighs.
Keeping his fangs at bay, he began to lick. First the quivering flesh of her inner thigh, then just a little higher, and a little higher still, until finally, finally, his tongue reached where his fingers had not.
Her hands shot out to grab fistfuls of his hair, holding him in place. His tongue drew endless lazy circles, as if he had all the time in the world to torture her until she fractured from the inside out. She slid one hand from his hair, gliding her palm up her stomach to hover just above her breast, as if wanting to touch it, to touch herself, but daring not. Her nipple tightened, and the aching tip brushed against the edge of her palm.
As if he sensed what she was doing and sought to tempt her even more, Cain dragged his thumb over her wet core, circling, pressing, until the pad slipped within her as his mouth and tongue returned their attentions to her nub.
Ellie cried out, arching into his face, into his finger, her head tossed backward as her hands found her breasts, rolled her nipples beneath her fingers as she writhed against the climbing pressure in her core.
“C-Cain.” The word came out an incomprehensible moan. “I?—”
Then his mouth was on hers, drinking every gasp as his shaft filled her. Her fingernails dug into his back as she lifted her legs higher, wrapped him tighter, forced him deeper, faster, faster.
He ducked his head to her shoulder and pressed his open mouth to her skin. As the first contraction of her climax hit, she lifted her head until his shoulder was close enough to taste. With the tip of her tongue, she traced the hard, salty curve. Her inner muscles squeezed tighter with every thrust.
As he gave a shudder indicating his own imminent surrender, the pressure of his kiss increased against her skin. She kissed his neck, his chest, ran her tongue along the bare strength of his shoulder. Their bodies joined faster. He moaned against her skin as another shudder wracked his body. Her release was instantaneous. Twin points painlessly punctured her skin, doubling her pleasure.
Instinctively, she bit down and did the same.
Chapter 12
“Liar,” Cain choked out, retracting both fangs and shaft from the woman writhing deliciously beneath him as soon as his passion-drunk brain registered the twin points piercing the sensitive skin of his shoulder in exactly the same way his own fangs had fastened upon hers.
He was furious. At her, for having deceived him. At himself, for having let down his guard. At fate, for having given him the greatest pleasure of his life with a lass he couldn’t help but love and want to protect—only for every facet to have been a lie.
She was no innocent human girl in want of a warrior’s compassion or protection. She wasn’t innocent—or human—at all.
Had she known who and what he was from the beginning? Been mocking him, managing him, from the first step of their dance?
Cain flung himself from the warmth of her naked body and off the bed. His every limb trembled in rage. His face twisting, he backed steadily away, even as Ellie’s arms reached out to him.
A puzzled frown marred the contentedness of Ellie’s expression. A soft, fang-tipped smile marred the humanity of her face. “What is it?”
He turned his head. Despite his fury at having been cozened, despite his self-disgust at having been too distracted to discern the truth on his own, he longed to lick the red smear from her lips while taking her again and again and again. Ignoring the yearning of his traitorous body, Cain refocused on the inescapable evidence before him: The innocent human was actually a vampire.
“Don’t try to play the ingénue,” he growled. “Not with my blood still fresh upon your tongue.”
Guilt flashed across Ellie’s face before she dropped her gaze. “I?—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His hands curled into fists at his sides. He had never felt so foolish, so exposed. So vengeful.
Ellie’s glare was defiant. “Why do you suppose?”
“Och, lass,” he said as he fastened a button. “Perhaps because you’re a duplicitous manipulator?”
