I scoff. “I told you not to be a gentleman.” My words come out breathless. “This isn’t about romance. It’s about fucking.”
His eyes fall to my mouth, and he runs his thumb over my bottom lip. That wicked grin returns to his face. “If you want to fuck my cock, then you’ll fuck my tongue too, however I want it.”
I nearly collapse at those words. The need burning in my core only grows, my thighs slick with it. “Fine.”
“Say it, love. Beg.”
I part my lips again. Lean forward an inch. “Please, Dominic.”
He crushes his mouth to mine.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Inana
His kiss is hard and insistent as he works his mouth against mine. This isn’t like the kiss we shared in my dream, where touch was only an imagined thing and friction was nonexistent. This is rough. Wet. And so fucking good. His beard scrapes against my chin and his tongue moves against mine, tangling with it. I’ve never had a kiss that felt so much like sex before any of our other parts came into play, but that’s exactly what this feels like. Fucking with our lips. Seducing each other with our sighs.
I fall back, guided down by Dominic until I’m lying on the bed. Dominic’s mouth leaves mine to drag kisses across my jaw, then down my neck. His hands explore me too, roving down my shoulders, my arms. Finally, one of his rough palms cups my breast, and I lean into it. He circles my nipple with his thumb, sending shock waves of pleasure through me. His mouth moves from my collarbone down to my other breast. He kisses all around it, teasing me. Then he looks up, eyes locked on mine, and lowers his tongue to my nipple without fully touching it, just like in my dream.
“How often have you dreamed of this, sinner?” he says, his breath caressing my skin.
“Not as much as you think, asshole,” I say, and arch my back, lifting my chest until he has no other choice but to taste me. He grins as hedoes, then swirls his tongue over my hardened peak. I whine, my cries pitching higher as he fully takes my nipple into his mouth and sucks. My apex burns hotter, and I rock my hips, hooking a leg around him to lower him farther down.
His cock grazes the inside of my thigh but he refuses to lower himself any closer. Instead, he glides a hand between us, over my stomach, down my side, and around the curve of my ass. “You’re so wet I can feel it all the way down here,” he says, slicking his fingers through the moisture between my inner thigh and ass crease.
I groan, and he silences it with another kiss. As he pulls away, our gazes lock, and I’m startled by the tender look in his eyes. There’s still a dark and heavy want in his expression, but there’s a gentleness too. One that has my heart thudding faster. Deeper. My legs spreading wider.
He leans in to kiss me again, slower, sweeter, and his hand leaves my ass to trail down my outer thigh, then to my knee, then up the inside of my leg. He’s finally close to where I want him to be, but there’s something about the slow caress of his mouth I can’t shake. The deepening emotions flooding my heart.
I pull back from the kiss, and his hand freezes on my thigh. “Blindfold me,” I say before I can reconsider.
He frowns down at me, and I can’t handle that expression. Such concern. Such care.
“Isn’t that part of your vows?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“You’ve already seen my scar. I don’t have to hide it from you.”
“Do it anyway,” I say. “I want you to.”
What I really want is to smother this terrifying tenderness that feels inseparable from the lust and need burning inside me. I don’t know which one of us is responsible for this feeling, and I don’t want to know. I don’t want this to be special. I want him to fuck me the way he’s fucked everyone else who came before. This can’t be anything more than that, and he knows it. I know it. I may understand him better than before, and I may want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone, but that doesn’t change what we are. He’s a Shadowbane on a dangerous path, one that will likely end in his death. I’m an outlaw with her heart fixed on freedom.
Now that I know the other lands aren’t damned by Shades like we’re led to believe, my hope for a future is brighter than ever. I have no place in whatever revolution he’s part of. I believe in his cause, but I’m a survivor. I could never risk my life the way he does, for a war that feels too daunting to fight. For a goal I might not live to see fulfilled.
Our relationship ends in less than six months.
This can’t be anything more than sex.
His eyes volley between mine, and I fear I’ve spoiled the moment. That I’ve lost him, lost this delicious euphoria we were only starting to stir.
Then his crooked smirk returns. “What do you say to get what you want?”
My trepidation melts away, crashing beneath a tidal wave of seduction. “Please.”
He pulls back, but there’s a tangible pressure that lingers, curving around my wrists and pulling them overhead. I watch his impressive backside as he strolls toward the fire, perplexed by what’s holding me down, when it dawns on me.
His Shades.
I can’t see them, but I can feel their phantom touch, as solid as it was the first time they held me down in the hall outside the Wretched Lair. A similar shock courses through me now, but it’s smoothed by my own intrigue. These shadows aren’t random monsters he collected and subdued like I first thought. They’re…pieces of his soul. They are separated yet still tethered. He can feel what they feel, direct them, control them. They are, by extension…him.
