Her ecstasy coursed through him, driving him up her belly, which he covered with kisses, her breasts, which he adored, her golden breasts, the peaks taut and straining in his mouth. He sucked them deep, used the edges of his teeth to make her moan. Her claws raked his back. Her mouth, hot on his, could never be satisfied.
Tear me to pieces.
He cradled her face, nipped her swollen lips, sucked her tongue, sent a hand down to caress the long lines of her back.
She hooked her leg over his hip and guided his cock to her center. He pressed inside, her hot, slick walls embracing him. Again her sensations blurred with his. He knew what it was like to be filled, stretched. They clung to each other, becoming one exquisitely joined body. Tighter, closer, there, don’t move, never leave…
Alyauskha.
He fingered her face, tracing her high-bridged nose, the arches of her brows. How wonderful to see her soft and open again, just like she’d been so long ago, under the willows.
They didn’t have to move much, not when each touch, each passing sensation reverberated between them. A hitch of the hips, a hand passing over a hip, another slow kiss. No need for more.
But she was so slick, so inviting, after a while he had to move, to strain deeper, to call up those fluttering responses inside her.
She rolled on top of him. Braced her hands on either side of his head and began to fuck him in a slow slide. He ran his hands around her waist, up her spine. She leaned over to kiss him, her black hair a curtain.
He fingered her clit. At his touch, she threw back her head and gave a long, throaty cry. She was so close––but she pushed his hand away.
“Up,” she said, hauling him up by his harness. As he sat up, she wrapped her legs around his hips. He leaned back, finding the perfect angle between them. But her face had turned troubled, and she studied him warily.
Sending out questioning thoughts, he stroked her cheek with his knuckles.
“I’m afraid to let you bite me.”
It cost her to make that confession. He knew how it mortified her to admit any fear at all. All he could do was pull her close. She rested her cheek on his shoulder while he stroked her hair. Their hearts slammed together. His cock pulsed inside her.
They were linked in so many ways, but he couldn’t say exactly what about biting frightened her. When he’d taken her blood at her house, he’d raped her. There was no sugar coating it. But he didn’t think that was the problem now.
This incomplete bond was a curious thing. He knew exactly how she needed to be touched, but had no idea what to say to her. Again he was on that very slender path. He could lose it so easily.
Maybe silence was what she needed, because he hesitated for so long she spoke aloud, her voice muffled and heartbreakingly young. “You’re not going to like what you see.”
“I’ve already tasted you.”
“Not deep. You haven’t seen much at all. You’re going to see everything.”
“I don’t scare easily.” He drew her hair over to one shoulder, baring the side of her neck. Her hands tightened on him. Nuzzling her ear, he murmured, “I promise.”
She made a small, despairing noise—but it wasn’t a no. If she meant no, she’d knee him in the balls. Instead, she hooked her hands through the ropes on his chest and braced herself.
This time he would take her blood the right way. He found her clit again. She questioned him with her eyes. With his free hand he caressed her throat until the questions faded away and her neck swayed under his touch. Her sweet spot was exactly one inch beneath her earlobe.
“I’m not biting.” He sent the assurance as he bent to that vulnerable spot, first tasting it with the tip of his tongue, then lavishing it with tiny nips and sucking kisses. A long shiver passed down her spine. At the same time he increased pressure on her clit, making her pant.
Her pulse beat faster and faster, the sound of it dragging him into insanity. He left the sweet spot, plundered her whole throat.
“Mikhail! What are you––? Oh!”
As she peaked, he sank his nails into her lush ass and held her tight against him, stilling her. She stiffened, breathless, suspended on the brink. He took her throat in his teeth.
“Don’t hate me—”
He broke her flesh and she came, jerking helplessly in his arms, her consciousness shattered, along with all her defenses.
Like a city after a long siege, she opened her gates. He walked in, unarmed.
And inside, all he found was the heart which he already knew as well as his own. There was nothing there that could not be forgiven.
“Don’t you know you’re the other half of my soul?”
“Filthy as I am?”
“Perfect, as you are.” Brave, fierce, strong, resilient, clever, passionate and tender. Yes, tender, beneath it all.
The stories of her life passed into him as he drank, one glimmering image after another. They rushed to fill up all those vacant spaces he’d held open for her all these years.
When he came back to himself, he found they’d fallen on their sides. For the first time in his life, he felt replete.
Alya lay limp in his arms, flushed and tousled and oddly shy. She touched his cheek.
“Mikhail?”
“Hmm?”
The corners of her mouth curled into a wicked smile as she slid off of him. “You can come now.” He’d forgotten his body entirely. “I don’t—” he began, but didn’t finish, because the orgasm was there, waiting, and at her command it hit him like a knockout punch.
“How do you feel?”
He’d stopped twitching, but his eyes still hadn’t focused.
“Deboned,” he croaked.
“And you like it?”
He rolled his head her direction and met her eyes. A slow, satisfied, unspeakably sexy smile spread across his face. He was happy. She wanted to keep him that way. She’d spend all her spare hours contriving ways to make him give her that smile.
He drew her to his chest. She felt safe there, pressed against his heart.
“I underestimated you. I’ve been such a bitch.”
When he didn’t rush to reassure her otherwise, she laughed. Mikhail was no flatterer.
“And what was I? Some asshole threatening you with a rope?” he said. “I’m no good at courting.”
“Courtship? Is that what this has been?”
“Isn’t this how other people do it?”
He was perfectly deadpan. The man did indeed have a sense of humor. Propping herself up on her elbow, she smoothed his hair out of his eyes. “This is for real, isn’t it?”
He caught her hand and kissed the palm. The warm lights in his eyes said believe.
“And the terms you named—you can live with them?”
“I wouldn’t have named them otherwise.”
“But a knyaz is expected to take a wife. To produce heirs.”
“I don’t need that to be happy.” Lazy, he circled her breast with his forefinger. “All I want is you. Exactly as we are now.”
“But your family will demand that we marry—”
“They will be told what they need to know. They’ll support whatever I choose.”
“Easy to say, but I remember your mother.”
Mikhail laughed aloud. He sounded like a consumptive seal. He needed more practice. She added another item to her to-do list.
“What are you going to do with Dominick?” he asked.
“Skin him alive.”
Mikhail grunted his disapproval. There was a definite man crush going on between those two.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she admitted. “Depends on why he did it, and I can’t know that until we get out of here. Do you want to try the door again?”