Memnon gets to my side and turns around to face the lycanthrope. Though the shifter is deliberately baiting him, there’s no longer any rage in Memnon’s eyes. Instead, he flashes the shifter an amused look.
“Like foreplay, pup.”
CHAPTER 18
We walk for several minutes in silence, the only noises the crunch of our feet over leaves and the harsh sound of my breath.
Behind us, a howl goes up, the sound mournful. I rub my eyes, a sob stuck in my throat.
Never meant to hurt him. Love sucks. Witch’s brew sucks. This situation sucks.
I’m still drunk and so, so aroused, and it makes everything that much worse.
“How much of that with me and Kane did you see?” I ask.
I feel Memnon glance over at me, his bourbon eyes flicking to my mouth. “Enough.”
I run my hand over my face. Goddess, but this evening has gone tits up.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Memnon admits.
“Do what?” I say, my fingers finding their way to the low neckline of my dress. I’m absently starting to tug on it.
“Fight for the right to be yours.”
I glance over at him just as he looks up toward the shrouded sky, and my eyes trace the line of his jaw.
“Before, when you were Roxi, you were mine and mine alone. I never needed to prove my worth to you.” He stops and faces me. “And now that I must, I feel my own inadequacies rising to the surface. I can fight and kill for you, but I cannot be whatever that man is.” He gestures in the direction we last saw Kane.
Even in the darkness, I can see there’s still a bit of swelling on Memnon’s face. Neither of our powers fully healed him.
I step up to my mate and place a hand against his cheek, letting my magic sink into his skin. I don’t utter a spell, but my power understands my intention, and it goes about healing his remaining wounds.
“I’m still so angry at you,” I admit. “So angry it’s hard to breathe through it.” If I had spoken these words days ago, they would’ve rang true. Right now, however, the heat of my hate has banked. “But tonight, I called out for you. I wanted you.”
I still want you.
Another wave of desire punctuates my confession, and under the force of it, I close the last of the space between us. For once this evening, my desire doesn’t feel like the enemy, like something working against me. It feels…if not natural then at least magical. Wondrous. Something to be celebrated.
My hand slips from Memnon’s cheek and moves to his chest, my fingers digging in at the solid feel of him beneath my palm. I want more. Need more.
“I am yours to command, my queen,” he says in Sarmatian. “So if you want me to please you, command it.”
The two of us stare at each other, the moment taut with tension.
I drop my gaze to his chest and deliberately place both my hands on his pecs. My pulse is pounding between my ears, my blood is roaring in my veins, and an evening’s worth of want is gathered up in me.
I push him gently. Memnon is as immovable as a mountain, but he lets me force him back, back, back until he bumps against a tree trunk.
My eyes rise to his throat, where I can just make out the panther tattoo that peeks out from the collar of his shirt.
Rising onto tiptoes, I wrap a hand around his neck and pull him to me. Gently, I graze my lips over the inked animal. Long ago, he got the tattoo in honor of Ferox, my familiar. My heart squeezes at the memory.
Memnon’s hand comes up, holding my face to his skin, like he wants to keep me there forever.
“Est amage,” he says softly, reverently, his free hand lightly stroking up and down my bare arm.
“I don’t want to command you,” I whisper into his ear. That’s what he wants. I want him to be at my mercy in an entirely different way.
So when I pull away, my hands slip to his pants, and I undo the button at the top.
“Selene,” he says, his voice roughened with surprise. He captures my wrists, trying to stop me. He can have my wrists. I don’t need them for what I’m about to do.
My magic rolls out of me, unzipping his pants and tugging them and what he wears beneath down his legs.
“When was the last time someone bowed to you, est xsaya?” My king.
Memnon goes preternaturally still, and when I meet his eyes, his expression is feral.
“Selene,” he says again, and his voice holds a dangerous edge.
He wants control? He wants strategy? He won’t get any of it right now.
I drop to my knees, my wrists still caught in his grip. The throb in my core has reached a fever pitch. I don’t know if it’s possible to come from arousal alone, but apparently I want to find out.
The sorcerer’s erection juts out proudly, a bead of precum glistening in the darkness. I have countless memories of taking him in my mouth, yet I’ve technically never experienced it in this life. That strange contrast only sharpens my desire.
I lean forward, wrapping my lips around the head of his cock. Memnon hisses in a breath. I draw my tongue up his slit, the taste of him nearly sending me. Shit, I might actually come this way.
“Selene,” he groans, his hips jerking forward of their own accord.
I take him deeper into my mouth.
Better than memory. So much better.
He still holds my arms captive, and honestly, it’s doing nothing but heightening my own arousal.
I pull away from his cock long enough to say, “If you don’t want this, release me.”
I stare up at him, waiting. His hands flex on my wrists but don’t let go. “Selene, you are the one who needs—”
“I need this,” I interrupt. “I need you.”
With that, I lean in, taking Memnon’s cock as deep in my mouth as I can.
“Gods, Empress,” he curses as his hips begin to move in tandem with my mouth, “Feels like heaven. I’d almost forgotten.”
I smile around him, pleased by his reaction—pleased by him.
Slowly, I retreat from his cock until only the head of him remains in my mouth. Then I move back up his shaft, enjoying the feel of him against my tongue. I fall into a rhythm, one that has my own core throbbing harder and harder. The longer I work him, the more my jaw burns with the effort. Even that ache is familiar. And somehow, the memory of it is breaking my heart and filling it up all at once.
Through our bond, I sense his knees growing weak. My desire roars in my veins, but through our connection, I also catch wisps of the pleasure I’m giving him. My breasts feel too heavy, and the ache between my thighs pounds harder than ever.
Memnon finally releases my wrists so he can dig his fingers into my hair. “My queen, my mate, this is rapture…cannot last much longer.”
I can sense it too. Goddess, I can. It’s stoking the heat inside me, ratcheting it up and up.
I should leave you unfinished like this, I tell him, running my hands up his thick thighs. Feels so damn good. Just as you left me so many nights.
He’d sent me so many sex dreams, edging me without release night after night.
You’d be justified doing so. Memnon groans, thrusting a bit deeper into my mouth. I enjoyed cruelly teasing you.