“Should I stop?” Rhazien growled. It was an unnecessary yet considerate question. He could hear my heartbeat. He could feel the pull from his blood. He knew.
“Please.” Disappointment skittered across his features before I breathed, “Don’t stop.”
His pupils blew out the green in his eyes with a desire so fierce, it could burn me to ashes. His full lips crashed into mine, like the waves against a steadfast shore, and I melted into his arms. My hands sought something—anything—to hold, and found a home at the nape of his neck.
Our passion built from one breath to the next. From considerate lips as we savored the first taste of each other, to exploring tongues and nipping teeth.
I didn’t need air, or food, or water, or sun. All I needed was him, kissing me, forever.
His dress clothes scratched at my bare skin, it wasn’t fair that he was still fully dressed. I slid my hands beneath his jacket and he rolled his shoulders to let it join my dress on the floor.
Rhazien growled my name like it was a sin as his hands sank beneath the decorative fabric of my undergarments. I let out a small sound of delight as he cupped my bottom and lifted me off the floor. Every inch of my being was alight with hypersensitivity from the blood. My legs hooked around his waist as he carried me into my bedchamber.
I lifted his crown away from his brown tresses and threaded my fingers in the strands. An approving groan reverberated against my skin as he buried his face into my neck and a delicious heat radiated from where we touched.
Fabric met the bare skin of my back as Rhazien laid me down, sinking to his knees at the end of my bed.
“The blood showed this to me,” he snarled, becoming more animal than a man with each passing second. My legs gave way to his considerate press, sending my knees willingly in opposite directions.“That night in the carriage.”
I gasped as his fingers traced the lace decorating my upper thighs. My center began to throb.
“And ever since then,” he guided my leg over his shoulder, “I’ve thought of little else.”
My heart thundered and I whined at his torturous pace.
“Tell me you want this.” He rubbed his stubble against the inside of my knee before kissing the skin there. His blood compounded my impatience with each passing moment.
“Your Majesty, I’m no maid. You can’t ruin me.” I leaned confidently, elbows propped on the duvet.
A fang-filled grin spread underneath his beard. “Say it anyway.”
He planted a trail of tormentous kisses from inside my knee and up, up, up…
I let my head fall back with a breathy moan of admission. “I want this.”
“Good.” He breathed over my wetness, “Now say you’re mine.”
“Majesty…” I slapped the mattress and whined.
“Say it, Reyva,” he breathed, kissing the most sensitive parts of me atop the ridiculously thin fabric. Teasing me. Like lighting a fuse only to snuff it out again.
“Must I, Majesty? Isn’t being here compromise enough?” I asked in jest, rolling my head forward to meet his lusty gaze.
Teeth captured the fragile undergarment, pulling it inches from my skin before releasing it. I yelped as it snapped back into place. Hisblood ricocheted away before swarming my center again. “Say. You’re. Mine.”
In truth, I would belong to anyone if it would make me feel more of this. This yearning. This fire. It consumed me. But I was happy, out of all people, mortal or immortal, that it was him. He’d been cordial, respectable, kind. Now I wanted to see the primal side of him, the dark and dangerous nature at the center of what it meant to be a vampire.
The blood clawed at my throat to let out the words he wanted—needed—to hear.
I licked the corner of my mouth and whispered, “I’m yours.”
He shredded the sheer lace from my hips. But despite the disregard for elegant lingerie, he didn’t feast on me the way I’d expected.
No. His tongue met the sensitive bundle of nerves like he had all the time in the world. Like a tactful leader. Like a scholar of the body. And I believed in that moment, that the blood had shown him exactly how I wanted to be held and tasted.
The excruciating pleasure from the first lick drove away the numbing darkness. Every natural and unnatural element of pleasure collided, shooting through my bloodstream and bringing me back to life.
Every color was amplified around me. Every smell heightened. Every sensation magnified.
