“Have no reason to trust a witch,” Tir said, his hand sweeping downward, over her belly to cup her mound.
His fingers delved into her slit. His palm rubbed over her stiffened clit. “Does it feel as though this body belongs to another?”
“No,” she said on a moan, grinding against him, the muscles of her sheath clenching hungrily on him. “No.”
In the mirror his face became taut, his eyes nearly as dark as hers. His mouth found the topmost scar on her back and his tongue traced its length, sending a lash of ecstasy to the soles of her feet. “Would a demon allow itself to be punished so severely?”
“I killed them in the end, the night I was branded.”
He sucked. Bit. Left his own mark on her. “If they still lived, they would meet the same fate at my hands.”
She whimpered in protest as his fingers left her channel. Closed her eyes as they plunged in again.
The sharp sting of his teeth preceded his command. “Watch.”
She watched. Her breath growing short with each fuck of his fingers into her sheath. Each rough caress of his palm against the tiny head of her clit.
Her hips jerked. Her skin grew slick with sweat.
“Please,” she whispered.
And he asked, “Would a demon beg?”
“No.” And as if to prove she was no demon, he made her beg repeatedly, taking her to the edge of release and backing away, tightening his grip on her to keep her a prisoner in front of the mirror until need was her only reality.
But even when he finally allowed her to orgasm, the need wasn’t satisfied. She turned in his arms and pressed her mouth to his, rubbing her passion-slick folds against his cock as she undid his braid so his hair cascaded down his back. “The sheets on the bed are clean. I want you inside me. Take me there.”
Tir cupped her cheek and the spider came to him. His cock bathed in her liquid desire. His buttocks clenched as he fought the temptation to lift her in his arms and carry her to the bed.
Her command was nearly impossible to disobey. He wanted to feel her underneath him, wanted nothing more than to slide into the heated paradise of her channel.
A glance at the waiting bed nearly undid him. Punishment can wait, his cock urged.
Tir touched his lips to hers. “I told you to remain here. There’s a price on your head. And despite the spider, you’re mortal. Human.” And I can’t lose you.
“I had to go.”
It was her lack of remorse that tipped the scales. His hands went to her sides, then pushed under the curtain of her hair.
She shivered when his fingers traced over the first of her scars. Fear spiked through her, but he knew it wasn’t memories of being whipped as a child that prompted it.
Her fear was erotic, the emotion generating it primal, dark, exquisitely feminine—and he felt the instant she controlled it, backed away from it. “Did you recover the Constellation?”
Tir laughed, both at her question and her mistaken notion he’d allow her to escape the hunger that mirrored his own.
“Of course. The vice lord guards your boat, though he was careful to limit his obligation. It begins and ends with protecting the Constellation from theft or damage. He’s not responsible for determining who has a right to board or for keeping its occupants safe.”
“That’s good enough.”
“Yes.” His hands caressed her back, his fingers hesitating over each scar ridge to count them.
“Fourteen,” he murmured when he reached her shoulders, his eyes settling on the pants she’d left draped over a chair, on the thin leather belt she wore. “No one will ever have the right to touch you this way again. Except me.”
“Tir—”
“Tell me you don’t want it. Tell me you don’t want to replace the memories of those whippings with the punishment I intend.”
She shivered. Her scent intensified, as did the desire surging back and forth between them, unchecked by any mental barrier.
A step, a quick tug, and he held the belt. “Put your hands on the mirror.”
Dark, dark eyes met his. Flashed with the brief consideration of defying him, then were hidden by her lashes before she turned and obeyed.
He stepped forward to push her hair over her shoulders and nearly came at the image of her in the mirror. She was the picture of submission with her head bowed. But she was also primal woman, the original seductress with her hair caressing the curves of her body, drawing his eyes downward to her glistening, swollen folds.
If he touched her again, he wouldn’t have the strength to resist taking her. Already the delay was costing him, punishing him with testicles pulled tightly against his body, with the threat of greater agony if he didn’t find his own release soon.
He stepped away from her. Lifted his arm and brought the belt down across her back, checking his strength so pain bled into pleasure for her.
“One,” he said, then struck again, continuing to count out her punishment with each rise and fall of his arm.
Her soft cries were a white-hot lash across his soul, the sight of her wet inner thighs and eager, trembling body a torment that turned it into a feat of endurance to reach the number he’d settled on.
With each strike, the past lost its power over Araña. Each of the lashes Tir administered was like a lick of flame, burning away her memories. Eradicating the pain and humiliation. The fear and overwhelming guilt of having her soul tainted.
Beatings given in chilly silence or ranted condemnation, done with a cold heart and unforgiving hand, were a nightmare replaced by fantasy.
Need spiked through her each time Tir brought the leather of the belt across her back, his harsh breathing echoing her own, telling her he was just as affected by the punishment as she was.
It was freeing. Equally enslaving. And as her nipples tightened to the point of pain and her channel spasmed, she could smile while thinking about something that had once terrified her. She could look forward to something that had once made her hang her head in shame.
From Tir, she would welcome punishment. Come to crave it.
“Fourteen,” Tir said, finally able to drop the leather belt.
His skin was slick with sweat, his chest rising and falling as quickly as hers. With a groan he pulled her against him, buried his face in the silky blackness of her hair and pressed kisses to her neck, her shoulders, the scars and heated flesh of her back.
Her shiver mimicked his. Her hunger was part of his.
“Please, Tir,” she whispered. “Don’t make me wait any longer. Come inside me.”
He carried her to the bed and followed her down onto it, rolled so she straddled him, the silky length of her hair against his thighs and stomach an erotic whip making his penis pulse and leak. Her fingers entwined with his, holding him to the mattress in sensual enslavement, and he allowed it.
She leaned forward and his mouth answered the silent summons of hers. Their tongues tangled in an ecstasy of reunion as she positioned her opening against his cock head. It was like being engulfed in flame, caught in a primordial force that could level mountains or create them. A thrust and they were joined, mindless to anything but the urgency to move, to lose themselves in each other, to become a single entity bound together in pleasure.
REBEKKA had paced the walkway on top of the inner wall for so long the lions no longer looked up as she passed their enclosures. She’d agonized and argued with herself—not just about Eston’s fate, but hers as well. She’d tortured herself with images of what would happen if the patriarch decided to turn her over to Father Ursu. Gifted or not, in the end The Iberá would do it if she didn’t accept his aid and his cause.
What was it about the prisoner that made him so important? Anton Barlowe’s interest she attributed to his desire to strike out at the Church and the Iberás, because between them, they’d clean up the guard and work toward revoking the sanctioned lawlessness of the red zone.