Make Her, page 20
“Yes,” I answered quickly. I did as I was told, going onto all fours, spreading my knees wide as he wound my hair around his hand. He reached between us to drag his cock up and down me, and even though I knew what was coming I still wasn’t prepared. “Rhaim,” I moaned, as he shoved himself inside me. I sank my head, or tried to, only he was pulling on my hair. “Oh, fuck,” I whispered.
“Such a tongue on you now, little moth,” he said, grabbing my hips and planting himself deep. “I’ll have to put my cock in your pretty mouth next, and see how much you can say when you’re choking on my cum. ”
I moaned again, bracing on the bed, and then walked my hands up until I was bracing on the wall. Rhaim made a sound of deep satisfaction at that.
“Keep yourself pinned there,” he said, letting go of my hair to spread me wide and watch himself rock in and out of me—before smacking my ass with the flat of his palm. I yelped but didn’t move. “Good moth,” he groaned. “Good, beautiful moth, who knows where she belongs,” he said, with a series of thrusts and more spanks, until he pulled himself out and leaned over to bite where he’d just hit me without piercing the skin. I cried out again, and he soothed his hands up and down me, before shoving his cock back home. “My moth, who I adore,” he said, leaning over me, covering one of my hands with his own, and reaching the other down between my legs to pull at my clit for me, as his hips sped up. “My moth, who needs to come for me, so I can knot her and fill her up,” he whispered low.
I made a whining sound, a sharp counterpoint to the messy wetness where we met between my legs where I was gushing. I could hear Rhaim’s heavy breathing behind me, feel his fur on my back as his hips rode mine—and then I felt him put his teeth where they’d been when he’d bitten me before, on my shoulder and neck, only this time I felt completely safe, and I knew that his beast had been wrong.
I didn’t need to be a tamer of beasts, as long as this one loved me.
“Rhaim, I’m going to—” I warned him, and heard him growl in response and shove himself deep as I came.
I howled, trapped between his teeth and his cock, my whole body pulled tight and breathless, my eyes seeing white, before I screamed again, riding him hard with each of my pulses, until I sagged and he caught me, moving his hand that’d been between my legs to hold my waist.
“Moth,” he groaned, thrusting wildly. “Stay still—oh fuck—stay still,” he implored, as he took us to the bed, meeting my hips with his. He gave a triumphant howl as his body covered mine, and even though I knew it was coming and I’d felt it before, I still squeaked as his knot stretched me wide, and kicked up my feet behind me with pointed toes in surprise.
“Rhaim,” I panted.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promised with a growl, as his knot took up all the space inside me, pulling everything inside me tight.
“How do you know?” I whispered.
He paused for a second, breathing hard by my ear. “Because you’re not hitting me. Also, maybe don’t be so literal when I’m trying to comfort you. ”
I looked back over my shoulder at him as I swallowed. “Lies aren’t comforting,” I said, but then I laughed, and he licked my shoulder and groaned, pulsing his hips against mine again.
“Fuck, Lisane—I feel like I’m still coming. ”
I could feel his cock twitch again inside me, as his knot jerked and pulled at my entrance. “Maybe you are,” I told him, and he made an anguished sound behind me, snarling and giving me another shove. His hands moved to clasp my hips and I could tell he was trying not to dig his claws into me.
“You just feel so fucking good,” he said, with another shudder.
I gave a sigh of pleasure and exhaustion, then reached back to hook a finger around one of his fangs and pulled his head to me. “Mine,” I said, like he liked to say to me.
He laughed, smacked one of my ass cheeks, then grabbed it to shake. “Yours,” he agreed.
Rhaim
I was soaring for minutes after knotting her, which made me even more glad I had never dared to do it on the road—but now—I picked her up and rearranged her, so it was almost like she was sitting on my lap, with her back against the bed, one of my arms beneath her head, and her legs kicked over mine so I could breathe into her hair and hold her to my chest.
I liked being this close to her, and I loved still being inside her—I didn’t have to see her face to know that she was smiling. I stroked the claws of my free hand through her hair and trailed them down her body. “That was good, Rhaim, but I’m going to be so sore,” she said.
“Some of the herbs I left in storage should still work. ”
She rolled her head back and made a sad sound. “No magic means no healing tub. ”
“Definitely not. In fact, after three months, it’s probably full of algae or flying fish. ”
She giggled. “I guess I can drink murky teas if it means more of this,” she said, squirming a little.
“I can be more careful,” I promised.
“Only sometimes,” she said, as she picked up my hand and pressed my palm to her heart.
I lifted my head a little. From here it was easy to see the mage-mark on her throat, and now I understood why she’d found mine so endlessly fascinating for a time. I slid my hand up to her neck and rested it there readily.
“When we were in the castle, how did you know not to kill me, Lisane?” I asked her, watching her eyes flutter open.
“I didn’t have any magic,” she said, with a lazy smile.
“Did you know, then? Did you even try?”
Her smile slid to a knowing one, as she reached up and ran her fingers along my cheek and up to rub against my ear. It would’ve been embarrassing to admit how much I liked it when she scratched me there. “I had a vision when I Ascended. Same as any other mage. ”
“Oh,” I said, and wondered quietly.
“Ask me and I’ll tell you what it was, like people who love one another are supposed to,” she teased.
I gave a moment’s thought to being strong, then knew my curiosity would get the best of me. “What was it?”
She scooted to look more at me, my knot tugging her entrance tight. “It was of you, like this, Rhaim. A beast, but with vast tracts of gray in your hair—and you were still with me. That’s how I knew. ” She licked her lips and beamed at me. “And even though I’m going to be able to read all your books now—I’m sure that’s the best vision anyone’s ever had. ”
The last true vision of the last true mage, and the only woman I’d ever loved. “I’ve already read all my books, and I’m sure too,” I told her, nuzzling my face into her hair.
Love the series, want the hardbacks?
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PS: Cassie here —
Not ready to give up reading about Rhaim and Lisane just yet?
Me either!
. . . so what if I told you you didn’t have to? Keep reading!
Take Her: The Moth and the Monster Book One is a completely new alternate universe story featuring Rhaim and Lisane in a contemporary setting. They’ll have the same dynamic you’re familiar with and many of the same tropes, but the overarching story will be a dark mafia billionaire age gap romance, with high drama, high angst, and buckets of debauchery.
I’ll be going all out—and you can read the very first chapter, all in Rhaim’s POV, if you just turn the page…
Take Her
The Moth and the Monster
The very first thing I noticed about her were her ankles—because the shiny catsuit she was in was an inch too short to cover them.
They were a stark white in the darkness of Vertigo’s debauched basement rooms where anything—and anyone, to some degree—could be bought.
I’d been sitting at the well-stocked bar sipping wildly overpriced whiskey and idly watching the door for company, because despite paying my membership fees, it’d been a long time since I’d bothered to come down here. The bouncer still remembered me, as did some of the other patrons, and I gotten more than one welcoming nod plus a few hopeful stares. But the people who still knew me knew what I liked best.
Being alone.
It wasn’t that I was a voyeur—on the contrary—but that I didn’t enjoy any of the burdens being a committedly good dom required. Building a relationship, trust, having a flair for public exhibitionism, a tolerance for aftercare—I was just as aware of my own flaws as I was of everyone else’s currently in this room.
Which was why when she came in, in her too-short shiny black catsuit and her strappy black heels, I would’ve bet a stack of hundreds that her fetish costume had come from the Halloween store.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t beautiful—she was; the catsuit left no doubt of her figure, which was just curvy enough to grab while being taut enough to bounce a quarter off of—but she was anxious, and I didn’t recognize her, so that meant that she was not for me.
I wanted a sure thing, with someone who already knew I was an asshole.
That didn’t stop her from trotting up to me at the bar, like a nervous yet still sexy-filly. Her long, dark brown hair was in a high ponytail, and it splashed in waves down around her shoulders, giving her a somewhat pony princess look.
All she would need to complete it would be a bit in her mouth, hoof-boots instead of heels, and a propensity for crawling.
“Hi,” she breathed, flashing me a smile.
I took a moment to stare her down before responding, hoping that it might quiet any further attempts at conversation. “Hello,” I said, and turned away from her, observing the rest of the room while shielding myself with my drink.
That didn’t stop her from tapping me on my shoulder.
“Is this seat taken?”
The music was loud enough I could pretend to ignore her. Or I could show her my true nature and just get up and walk away—I owed no one my time.
She tapped me again though, more insistently, not catching the hint. “Um, this seat—was someone else—” she asked.
I looked back with a sigh, caught her shifting slightly as she anxiously pulled down the sleeves of her suit, and I realized her predicament. Her store-bought catsuit was too tight—the only safe place she could get away from the torture of her heels was beside me, at the bar, with its higher stools she could lean on—because if she sat down in that get-up, there was a good chance it would rip.
“I suppose it’s free,” I said, gesturing to it with the drink in my hand.
Her smile—showing off the best teeth Daddy’s money could buy, I was certain—somehow turned even brighter. “It’s my first time here,” she confessed.
“I had guessed,” I said slowly, then remembered the club’s rules and narrowed my eyes a bit. “Where’s your minder?”
Only friends of friends could get into this place, and you had to sign off on whoever you brought, at least for the first time. It helped keep the community safe.
She fluttered a hand over her shoulder. “He went to talk to someone.”
“And abandoned you?” I questioned the man’s judgement at once.
She gave a soft laugh. “It’s not like there’s murderers down here.”
I cocked one eyebrow up at her. “How can you be so sure?” Her eyes widened, and it was my turn to laugh. “I apologize. That was a sorry attempt at a joke. Have a good night,” I said, standing and picking up my drink for a location change.
Her expression spun on a dime, looking a little stunned. “Would you like to know a secret?” she quickly asked, over the thumping base.
And apparently I had invited this on myself, by being kind. “Not really,” I said, begging off.
“I don’t have a minder,” she said, pressing quickly on.
“Well, then I’ll have to be speaking to Vertigo’s membership coordinator about that, because I’m not paying as much as I do to be having conversations here with casuals.” I took a step back, attempting to extract myself. She was pretty, but I had a suspicion the whiskey in my glass was older than she was.
“I just knew the password,” she said, and then added at a slightly louder volume. “Do you want to know what it was?”
“No,” I said simply, turning around to walk away.
“It was, ‘I’m gorgeous and I like to get spanked,’” she called after me, at a pitch where everyone at the bar could hear.
I paused at that. It was clear she wanted my attention.
And while I didn’t want to give it to her . . . she still had it.
“Ignore him,” said another man’s voice from behind me. “He doesn’t play well with others—but I can show you a good time.”
I slowly turned, and saw Clark—a trust-fund type, far closer to her in age—circling in on her like a shark. Her warm brown eyes were filled with panic, until she noticed me noticing, and then she kept her gaze on mine like I was her savior.
And I realized that was why she was here, and what she wanted—the same as most people in the place.
Saving.
And it’d been a long time since I’d been in a situation where I could save anyone.
“Oh, come on, Rhaim,” Clark complained, as I strode back. “Everyone here knows you’re rusty—”
“Fuck off, Clark,” I said, without taking my eyes off of the woman. “Daddy issues?” I guessed, and watched her cheeks flush even in the club’s dim light.
“Yes,” she admitted, the tip of her tongue furtively peeking out to give her full lips a nervous swipe.
“As long as you cop to them,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Uh—Lisa,” she said, after a moment’s panic more.
I knew what it was when she said it. “That’s your real name, isn’t it?” I asked her, mystified.
“Was it not supposed to be?” she asked.
Her password story might actually be real at this rate. “We usually leave our real names upstairs. For instance, the guy who sells weed on the back deck calls himself Madman23—and I’ve never met his older brothers one through twenty-two, or his younger brother, twenty-four.”
I was making conversation with her now, pretending to be personable, a little to piss off Clark, who was still watching, but more to calm her, and she gave me a slow smile in return.
“What should I call you, then?” she asked, swinging her mane of a ponytail over one shoulder provocatively.
I cast an appreciative eye over her entire body, before staring her down again. “You are gorgeous,” I agreed. “But did you mean what you said?”
She rose up on her toes and nodded hopefully, so I downed my drink and set the glass on the bar behind me, before offering her my arm. “In that case—you can call me sir.”
* * *
Lisa took it and we walked through the rest of the floor at a stately place. Vertigo had installations in certain rooms that they took pride in, sometimes holiday themed, others just represented common kinks, but they went to elaborate lengths to make them special for scenes, all the better to draw crowds in when a theme changed.
I’d already walked the premises earlier in the night out of curiosity, which was why I knew exactly where I was taking her, in her silly catsuit, and on her teetering heels: a throne room.
It was done up to look like it was from that ridiculous dragon show on television, and it contained someone’s massive, beautiful antique chair that’d they’d sacrificed at the altar of sexuality. It had all sorts of blunted swords artfully laced to the back of it, with winding layers of suspension rope wound around the front, a comfortably padded seat, and wide leatherbound arms—real leather, unlike the outfit she was in—with two women playing on board.
“Oh,” Lisa gasped as we entered, and I suspected from the way she’d been looking around en route, she hadn’t made it past the bar.
I should’ve wondered why—I was good looking; but not magnetically attractive. I’d kept myself up—for a long time I’d had nothing to do but work and work out—but I was well aware God hadn’t blessed me with the same charisma he had others. My boss liked to tell me that my gruffness was part of my charm, but if it was, he was the only one who thought so.
Nero Ferreo liked me because I was his living pit bull, both in person and on paper. He enjoyed having the plausible deniability that came from having someone else do all your dirty work, and I enjoyed pretending like it was all his fault that I had to do it, like I didn’t enjoy it in the least.
I’d started off with him twenty years ago, when we were both much younger men, on the cusp of our “industry” evolving, away from the docks and into finance. And when wetwork shifted to deskwork, I was one of the few men who worked for him capable of making that change. You’d think a bunch of bookies would be better at doing math, but no . . .
But I still sometimes I need more avenues to pursue my long denied baser nature, which was how I’d found out about Vertigo myself, years ago, first as someone else’s friend, and then as a member, once I could afford it.
I had no idea how she’d really gotten into this place, but since she was here, I was going to give her an evening to remember.
I waited for her to return her focus to me after surveying the room. The women on the throne weren’t wearing much more than electrical tape and glittering diamond chokers, riding something purple and silicone between them, with one of the club’s photographers nearby.
Lisa’s jaw dropped once she parsed that. “They take pictures here?” she said, gawking at me, before practically hiding behind my back.
“Yes, but you’d have to pay extra.” I chuckled, but gave her cover nonetheless. “Some people want to commemorate the occasion, and they may only get to come here once a year. Which is also why we’re patiently waiting our turn for them to finish.” She believed me enough to creep forward again, watching the couple on the throne before giving me a guilty look, which I waved away. “They wouldn’t be doing it in public if they didn’t want people to see, so go ahead. I’ll be right back,” I told her, briefly leaving her to negotiate with the other members who were watching the show in line.
