Veyka rocked back onto her heels.
Veyka’s face. Veyka’s eyes. Veyka’s pain. And I’d caused it.
She turned away, maneuvering her arms and legs around those Ancestors’-damned shackles with the same grace that she moved in battle. She presented me with her perfect, unmarred back—miles of pale smooth, pale skin that gave way to soft rolls around her waist and hips that I needed to get my hands on.
But her shoulder blades moved up and down her back. A breath shuddered through her.
“You are scared of me.”
She might as well have shoved one of her daggers through my heart. And I deserved it. She’d put as much space between us as she could, climbing all the way to the other side of the bed. But that was not nearly far enough to escape me. I slid behind her, one knee on each side of her hips. My cock pressed urgently into the small of her back, but I ignored that for the moment. I couldn’t stop the groan that escaped my mouth as I fitted myself against her, pressing my chest to her back.
“You’ve hardly touched me,” she whispered. But I was touching her now. Even my argumentative mate could not argue with that. I skimmed my hands up her arms, tucked my mouth into the curve of her neck and let my breath warm her skin.
“I was afraid, but not of you. Never of you. I was afraid for you. I was afraid I would break you. That you wouldn’t be able to maintain control.”It was a mistake,I growled down the bond. There she was at the end of it. I could sense the darkness, the succubus. It never fully receded. Maybe it never would.
I didn’t care.
I pressed a kiss to the soft skin beneath her ear, sparkling with amorite. “I am so sorry, Princess.”
She didn’t turn into my caress. But she didn’t pull away. I firmed my hold on her arms, massaging the tired muscles from her shoulders to the crease of her elbows. I cupped the curve of her stomach with one hand, the sharper angle of her chin with the other. Just enough so that I could look into her eyes.
“I could never be scared of you, Veyka,” I said. “And this is you. I understand that, even if you don’t want to. This darkness has always been inside of you. And I want all of it. I always have.”
Her chin trembled in my hand. I stopped it with a kiss. There was no part of Veyka that I did not want. Maybe that made me amonster, as well. Good—I’d lived three hundred years trying to cage my beast. I’d learned only recently that it was impossible; he was me, and I him. And we both loved Veyka more than this world and any other in creation.
“Let me unbind you,” I said gently, easing her back into the center of the bed.
She let me guide her down to her back, but she shook her head against the pillow. “No. Arran—if it was just the two of us, then yes. Always yes.” She closed her eyes. Not to stymie the succubus, but the pain in her heart. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears when she opened them again. “But there is an entire camp out there. Thousands of our subjects. Allies. You cannot risk unleashing me on them.”
“I can make love to you just like this,” I promised. I would happily spend the whole night doing it.
“Good. I was counting on it,” she said through the tears that leaked down her cheeks. I kissed them away, one by one.
I lifted her hands above her head, pinning them between the pillows. The view of her breasts was magnificent—lifted, heavy, panting. “Perhaps I should have restrained you earlier.”
She laughed. Ancestors, that sound. What it did to my cock, already pressing eagerly at her entrance. And her breasts, bouncing like a fucking invitation. But that was nothing to what she did to my heart. I’d feed all the humans in Eldermist to the succubus horde in exchange for one of those honest, glorious laughs.
I was unable to resist the temptation any longer. I leaned forward, licking down from the center of her clavicle all the way to her belly button and beyond, to the tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs. She writhed beneath me, moaning in pleasure and twisting away from the sensation at the same time. But she couldn’t get away. She was bound. And bastard though it mightmake me, I was going to take full advantage and worship her exactly as I pleased.
My tongue traced the sensitive soft flesh above her cunt, but didn’t dip inside of it. No, not with those long legs stretching out beneath me. I tasted the seam of her hip, slightly salty from a day of exertion and struggle. Then the inside of her thigh, the scent of her pussy flooding my senses. Still, I continued on. I kissed her ankles—soft, featherlight touches where the metal of the shackles pressed against her skin.
You do not scare me, I told her with the swirl of my tongue.
I adore every part of you, my kisses said as they brushed against her restraints.
By the time I worked my way back up her body, her eyes were glassy with need. She trembled from the force of it. My entire existence narrowed to giving her exactly what she needed.
I settled between her legs, bracing my weight on my forearms, tucked into the curve of space by her shoulders created by lifting her arms overhead.
In the next breath, I sank into her fully. She couldn’t open as wide for me, couldn’t wrap her legs around my waist, not with the ankle restraints. But that only made her tighter, the sensation pitching even higher for both of us.
I watched her eyes shift and change as I took her, savoring the little sounds she made as she squirmed against me, working to get every fraction of an inch. I kept my movements slow, savoring all the places our bodies touched. My cock sheathed within her, the hard buds of her nipples against mine, scraping over each other.
Our coupling was almost always hard and fast. But not tonight. I savored the way the walls of her pussy clung to me, the delicious sucking sound her wet cunt made as I pulled out. She reached for me, but her hands were bound. I gave her my mouthinstead, nibbling at her lower lip, sweeping my tongue inside in slow, languid perusal.
“You are torturing me,” she whimpered against my lips.
“I am worshipping you,” I corrected her.
