“What are you doing?” she gasps, blown-out pupils staring at me.
“Giving you what you need.” My lips curl into a wicked smile as I lift one leg and throw it over my shoulder. I kiss the inside of her knee and position myself right in front of my glistening altar of worship. “Pátni.”
“I am not—” Gray eyes squeeze shut right as I swipe my tongue from entrance to clit and suck hard. I swirl my tongue and graze my teeth over her pulsing flesh.“Fucking stars, Dare!”
She comes with a strangled shriek, leg tightening and hips bucking into my mouth.
Gods, if her skin tasted sweet, her arousal is like the headiest, richest nectar, drenching my lips and sating my soul. Watching her come undone is like glimpsing a million shooting stars bursting across the heavens. A gift. A fucking marvel.
My cock releases as she writhes beneath my lips, offering me every drop of her pleasure. When her shudders lessen and cease, those brilliant, starlit eyes open and drag me down into their beautiful, dangerous depths.
“Are you mine now?” I ask, blowing on her soaked, tender folds.
“N... no.”
I grin madly, incensed and challenged by the rebelliousness in her stubborn stare. I stand, taking her with me as she squeals, balancing her body on one shoulder and with my right hand. The scent of her intimate flesh surrounds me, intoxicating me. Gently, I set her on a nearby armchair and drag her plump ass to the edge, inhaling my new favorite fragrance.
“Darrius, what are you doing?” she squeaks.
I lift a brow as if to say,This again,before sinking to my knees, a position as king that I am unfamiliar with but now completely dedicated to. “You know what I’m doing. Kneeling before my queen. Making her admit whom she belongs to by showing her thatIbelong toher.”
“I can’t come again,” she says, cheeks burning red as I position each of her legs lewdly over the armrests and admire my handiwork. I bite her inner thigh in punishment, her smothered whine rolling through me. Deep inside, the manticore purrs with approval and pride at the boneless, flushed state of our mate.
“You’ll do what you’re told. Now suck,” I growl, sending a blunted pillar of shadow into her shocked, parted mouth, giving her something to occupy that ungovernable tongue. Then I descend to feast.
She is chaos and certain ruin.
But she ismine.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Are you well, Sura?” Laleh asks me from her cushioned seat to my right.
Blushing, I blink repeatedly and stare at my best friend. “Yes, why?”
“You’re fidgeting, blinking like sand is in your eye, and your face is very red, like you’ve been stuck in a forge for hours hammering away at something. Do you have a fever?”
Lustfever, and I certainly want to be hammered by a sexy, vicious king who is much too good with his tongue. And his cursed shadows. I burn even hotter with mortification as I vehemently shake my head, banishing wicked visions of sucking off what had felt like a thick shadow-cock while he pleasured me to oblivion.
“I’m fine. It’s just hot.” Suddenly, a rotten stench wafts into my nose, and I cringe as it permeates the air. It reeks like the basilisk had. “Do you smell that?”
“Are you certain you’re all right?” Laleh shoots me a quizzical look. “I don’t smell anything, and it’s nowhere near as hot as Coban.”
She’s not wrong. It’s many degrees cooler than the desert at the height of midday, when you’re wishing you can burrow into the hot sand just for a reprieve. But that kind of external heat isn’t my problem; it’s the one inside that’s immolating me.
Pretending to be interested and paying attention to a grueling, highly competitive exhibition tournament for the sun god when I can still feel the king of Everlea devouring me between my legs has to be a new form of torture. I flush deeply for the thousandth time from my position of honor on a special dais and throne in the spectator stands, glad that no one around me, including my observant best friend, can sense my private thoughts.
You’re blushing again, pátni.
I scowl at the intrusion. Well, mostly private. I can’t see him, but he’s here somewhere.
I’m certain that Darrius is now calling me that name only to aggravate me, and it’s working. I don’t even deign to respond as I strengthen my mental walls and push his smug voice out. Though he has every reason to be smug—I’ve never come so many times in my life.
Much later on when I wasn’t splayed open and held in his thrall, he had explained that his manticore had demanded half of it. I suppose it’s a silver lining that he and his beast are at least of the same mind about something. That beingme. Heat climbs up my spine at the deliciously filthy memory of being bent over my footboard and wolfed down from behind.
I’m nearly certain that I’d felt claws digging into my thighs at one point.
In truth, I’d been marked from top to bottom by the time the king had finally relented and taken pity on my sobbing, satiated state. Eventually, my magic had healed all the bites, bruises, and claw marks. A part of me missed them, something deeply primal blooming at the rough evidence of his claim mapped all over my body.
