“Doll,” he breathed, rubbing slow, gentle circles and watching her cheeks flush, “do you want me to make you come?”
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything, I think.” She answered in that peculiar, frank way of hers and it had absolutely no right being as sexy as it was. He loved that. There was something so genuine about her, so honest and confident. Carmine didn’t hedge her answers or dance around self-consciously. She was just as likely to say something he wouldn’t like as she was to tell him yes, shedidwant him to make her see stars.
Atticus had never been so turned on in his life, and he’d certainly nevergrinnedas he played with a woman’s cunt before, but there he was. He was scum, but fuck it, he was the happiest scum on Burden’s Earth.
“You tell me to stop if you’re uncomfortable. The second you hesitate, this ends. No questions. No hard feelings. Got it?”
Carmine nodded impatiently.
“Confirmation, doll,” he pressed, stilling his hand.
Her hips bucked. Panting, she muttered, “Confirmation. Stop. Uncomfortable. Got it. Yes.Pleasemove your fingers.”
And because he was apparently an asshole as well as scum, he asked, “Why? You like my fingers on your perfect pussy, doll?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately, devastating any shreds of his willpower that remained. “I like your fingers. I like your mouth. Your face. I love your tattoos and your voice and when I smell you, my fangsache.”
He lost his head. That was why he snapped. Kissing her was the only sensible thing to do at that moment. Cupping the back of her neck with his free hand, Atticus crushed their mouths together.
Carmine yelped, but she didn’t pull away. Her fingers slid into his hair and held fast as he tasted his blood on her tongue, tastedher.She was clumsy, a little shy, but the longer he stroked her cunt, the more her confidence grew. Her hips rocked and her nails curled into his scalp. Soon enough she was angling her head for more.
She started making noise. That was a surprise. Carmine was so quiet normally that he didn’t expect her to gasp and moan and make soft little kitten sounds when he slid a finger inside her and stroked her g-spot while the heel of his palm ground down on her clitoris.
Atticus had tasted the best alcoholic synth in the world. He knew what it was to be intoxicated. Watching Carmine ride his hand as she licked his blood from her lips was better, headier, than that.
When she broke their kiss to toss her head back andscream,her arms banded around him so tightly that her shoulders shook, Atticus met the gods for the first time in his life.
Half-feral and not anywhere close to done with her, he wrapped the fingers of his free hand around her throat and extracted his other hand from her panties. Her scent, cherry and musk and sweet cunt, exploded in his mouth when he sucked his fingers clean.
Carmine sat in his lap, limp and heavy-lidded, her arms draped over his shoulders. Her thighs shook around his hips.She looked like she had been kissed to within an inch of her life. He loved that look on her. He wanted to see it fixed there permanently.
And then she reached for the button of his pants and in her pretty, sated voice asked, “Are you going to defile me now?”
Chapter Twelve
Atticus was mad at her.Really mad.
He wouldn’t talk to her. She didn’t think she’d miss it, seeing as she was used to silence, but at some point she’d acclimated to his chatter.
Carmine sat in the passenger’s seat, her hands flat on her knees, and stared out at the road. They’d passed out of the desert and had begun to wind through mountains. They took strange, twisty roads where they almost never passed another vehicle. She wasn’t sure why, but she guessed it had something to do with avoiding cities or authorities.
They never said it in the crypt, but it didn’t take a genius to understand that something about her situation was illegal. The authorities wouldn’t have shown up at their door otherwise, and the priests wouldn’t have scrambled to sell their brides so quickly if they didn’t worry about what would happen if they were caught.
I wonder if they gave a discount on me.
She didn’t want to be a blood bride, so what did she care that she was the last to go? They always said she was too tall. That she should have tried harder at her music lessons, her budgeting classes, her childcare scores. Everything that might have madeher a more desirable bride had either been out of her reach due to lack of natural skill or simply uninteresting to her.
It wasn’t that the other brides flew out the door regularly. No one wanted a bride that was too young, since the likelihood of conception increased dramatically after thirty. Like her, most of the brides were there for decades, often from the time before they could properly talk. They had to fill their time with something, and the matron encouraged pursuits that would make them more desirable.
The thought that she was perhaps the least desirable of the lot had always cheered her up. Not now.
Now, sitting in tense silence after experiencing the best night of her life, she couldn’t help but think of all those deficiencies, the parts of her that might make a man like Atticus choose someone more suitable.
Carmine dared to sneak a look at him. He sat like a statue in the driver’s seat, his jaw clenched and his eyes unreadable. He hadn’t spoken to her since she fed from him. No pushing bottles of synth her way. No explaining the route they were on.
No offers to let her drink again.
Her eyes inevitably drifted to the puncture wounds on his neck and the bloom of bruises around it. Her heart rate skyrocketed every time she saw it.
