Once Upon a Forbidden Desire, page 14
But Alethas coaxed her mouth open, and the intimate graze of his tongue against hers scattered all her coherent thoughts. His hand settled at the nape of her neck, tilting her head at the perfect angle, while he guided her into a kiss so deep, it fed all her ravenous, unspoken imaginings.
When she remembered she needed to breathe, she realized she was still holding his face as if she feared he might change his mind. She let him go and pulled back with a gasp.
He looked down at her with glowing, dilated eyes. Her gaze dropped to his fangs, and she stared. So long. So sharp. Through all his charming smiles, she had never seen or imagined them like this.
He lowered his mouth to her neck, and she startled in his arms. But all he did was kiss her again. His lips trailed up her throat, across her jaw, back to her lips. Then down again, his tongue lingering in the sensitive place between her neck and shoulders.
They drifted, floating in each other’s arms, and explored each other in wordless tandem. She finally got to tease the dimple at the corner of his mouth with her tongue. She learned what it felt like to trail her fingers through his hair, over his scalp, and the sound he made in his throat when she did it. She discovered the texture of his earlobe as she sucked it gently, then found he liked it even better when she nipped.
His fingers trailed down her spine. “Come into the tower with me.”
She saw that they now floated near a high window in the ruins at the center of the island. Awaiting them inside was a broad mattress on the floor, draped in silks and tasseled pillows. Rose petals of every color lay scattered about, and the spell lights flickered like candles.
He spun her into the room and lowered her to her feet. A bout of nerves overtook her.
She swallowed. “I do hope I taste as good as you expect.”
He trailed his tongue over her upper lip. “Phoebe, I’ve been smelling you for eight years. I already know you’ll taste more delicious than the nectar of the gods.”
Well, at least her blood was not likely to disappoint him. She wasn’t so sure about the rest of her. Gods, she should have told him yes when she had still been young.
What a fool she was, agreeing to a romantic encounter with a perfect, ageless Hesperine prince.
Tonight would either bind them in each other’s spell for all time … or break it completely.
“Finally, I get to taste you.” His voice was low and gravelly with desire against her throat. But still his fangs did not prick her. “Where shall I begin? Tell me where you want my mouth first, my princess.”
She tensed. “Alethas, you know I’m not anything close to a royal and never was. That was a foolish ambition of my father’s. I’m just the worn-out daughter of a fading line.”
“A woman who can survive what you have endured, and do so with such grace, should be treated like a queen.”
He always showered her with flowery compliments, but the way he said this was different. He made her feel like she ruled the world—his world, at least.
“Have you not fantasized about this night, Phoebe?”
“So many times,” she confessed.
By day she might be a proper widow, but by night, her wild fantasies bore no resemblance to the dutiful reality of her long-ago marriage. Her husband had courteously exercised his marital rights and kept his passions for his concubine, leaving Phoebe to keep her passions to herself.
Until tonight.
“Where did you imagine my mouth, Your Highness?” Alethas asked.
Confidence infused her words. “I want you to kneel.”
He gave her a fanged smile as he sank to his knees before her. “I crave your permission to feast on you here, Your Highness.”
“Feast on my sheath,” she told him.
His hands slid up her legs, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. He gathered her skirt around her waist, the soft velvet crushing in his hold. He waited, his breath warm on her curls in the cool tower room.
She felt indecent, exposed, standing there with the most intimate part of her bared to a fanged heretic. It made heat pool between her legs and sent a thrill of power through her. “I imagine your tongue licking into me.”
“Your wish is my command.”
He nuzzled her curls, and she eased her thighs apart for him. She caught a glimpse of his fangs before he fitted his mouth to her.
The first stroke of his tongue dragged an undignified moan out of her.
“Mmm,” he said deep in his throat.
His tongue was as acrobatic as his dancing. Her hands landed on his shoulders, clutching at him for support. Sensation flooded her neglected body, and she gasped a deep breath.
She had not gone to her grave with her husband. She had not perished in that broken room during the siege. She had not worn away the last vestiges of herself to care for her sisters.
There was so much life left in her yet.
“I want you to suck,” she demanded.
He gripped her hips, kneading her into position against his mouth, and did as she asked.
She cried out, rocking into his rhythm. She tangled a hand in his golden hair, tugging at his scalp. “Harder.”
He let out a growl and deepened the pressure of his mouth.
His name slipped from her lips, and tears trailed down her cheeks. “I don’t want it to end.”
But her brittle need shattered with ease, breaking her to pieces in his hold. The long years sighed out of her as she shuddered into his lips.
But it didn’t end. While her sheath still pulsed, he kept flicking his tongue over the ravished, sensitive point of her pleasure, offering her anything.
“Yes,” she said. “Give me more.”
His tongue glided in flawless patterns over her wet bud, spinning her tighter inside. For long moments, he danced her near the edge of another release, a slow, worshipful ritual that left her boneless and quivering.
When he finally twirled her over the precipice, the rhythm took hold of her body in ways she had never known. She reveled in it, letting her head fall back, her vision a haze of his golden spells. The fragrance of roses seared on her senses like the friction of his mouth.
At last she breathed, and she became aware of the distant, wild music and him prying his fingers off her hips. He looked up at her, his fangs wet and gleaming.
She touched his head. “Now I relinquish my crown to you, my prince. It is your turn to demand what you will of me.”
“Do you trust me so, Phoebe?” His gaze was so earnest, she could see the question held deep importance to him.
“Your illusions always tell the truth.”
He framed her hips in his hands and placed a tender, lingering kiss low on her belly before rising to his feet. He let her gown fall back around her legs in tousled folds.
“Pull your hair over your shoulder,” he said.
Watching his face, she gathered the dark waves of her hair in one hand and let them fall as he had asked.
His gaze caressed her throat. “Unlace your gown for me.”
Self-consciousness stole over her again. But she had agreed to give him what he wanted. And he wanted her.
She undid her front laces slowly while he watched her. She pulled her gown off one shoulder, then the next, and at last pulled her bodice apart to reveal her breasts to him.
For the first time, he looked like a dangerous creature of the night who intended to devour her.
HIS PROPER PHOEBE stood before him like a pleasure goddess. The scent of her lust filled the chamber. He could still taste her on his tongue. And now he could look his fill of her bare skin.
There was a mole under her left collarbone he had never known was there. Her large nipples pebbled, as kissable as her rosy lips.
At last, he had gotten her out of her Tenebran laces. No mortal ties bound her tonight. She had placed him above her duties to her noble house.
“Come closer,” he said.
She took a step forward. “I’m not a young bride anymore …”
“I don’t want a girl like Amata. I want a woman like you who understands how bitter life can be … who knows how to find the sweetness in it with me.”
She stroked his shoulders, and the caring touch made his fangs throb as much as the tempting rounds of her breasts. Goddess, this woman had more power over him in her little finger than anyone he had ever known in his long existence.
“What bitterness has there been in your life?” she asked. “I know more about your comrades’ histories than your own. Will you ever tell me the reason for the grief I see in you?”
Reality intruded on their fantasy. His conscience whispered to him from his goddess’s shadows. “Yes. There are things about my past you deserve to know. But they’re not pretty things. I don’t want to spoil this night with any of it.”
“Tell me how I can make you forget, then.”
“Let me touch you.”
She guided his hands to her breasts, and he took the pendulous, soft weights in his palms. Her enjoyment was a warm musk in the Blood Union. He massaged her so he could inhale her scent and listen to the way her pulse pounded in her veins.
His very first dance with her had awoken a hunger that had drawn him back to her again and again against the laws of lords and mages. Regardless of the threat of Gift Collectors who would sever his head for breathing the same air as Phoebe.
He knew that after one sip of her blood, he would never be the same.
He had craved her company, her affection, her every laugh and smile. There was no doubt in his mind that he would have the Craving for her blood.
If anyone in the world was his Grace, the partner Hespera would bind him to for all time, it must surely be Phoebe. He was about to irrevocably addict himself to her.
He must give this seduction his best effort, then, so she would want to stay with him. Otherwise, he was in for a slow, painful death from withdrawal.
“You are worth the risk,” he breathed against her skin, “worth the wait.”
The Blood Union swelled with her emotions like a riverbank that had long been dry. “What have you waited for? Tell me what you’ve imagined.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to lie down on the bed.”
She walked away from him, her hips swaying, and stretched out on the black silk bedclothes.
“I’ve been waiting to see you like this,” he said, “laid out for me like a banquet. I’ve been waiting to have my fill of you all night.”
Her heart thundered, making his hunger pound through him. He paced toward her. “Part your legs.”
She slid her knees apart under her tangled skirts.
“Wider.”
She raised up on her elbows, splaying her legs with a teasing light in her eye.
“Now lift your skirts.”
She ran her hand along the inside of her thigh, once again revealing the mouthful he had enjoyed so much a moment ago. He scented how it excited her to feel his gaze on her.
Goddess, what a vision she was.
He joined her on the bed, and his preternatural speed made her gasp, her breath tickling his ear as he lowered his mouth to her throat.
“What do you command, my prince?” she asked.
“Tell me if you’re sure. Or if you want me to stop.”
She caressed his face. “After all these years … after what we just did … you’re asking one more time.”
“Of course.”
She held his gaze. “No one in my life has ever asked me what I wanted. Not even Laetitia, who thinks she knows what’s best for me.”
“Tell me what you want, Phoebe.”
“You. I want you so much that I fear I will do dangerous things if anyone tries to stand in our way.”
Yes. She felt it too. Her own Craving for him.
Her hands closed around his biceps. “That’s why I had to tell you no so many times before. Because I knew that as soon as I said yes one time, I would never be able to refuse you again.”
They were both past the point of no return.
“You will enjoy this so much,” he promised, “that you will never want to say no.”
“Tell me what you want, and I will keep saying yes.”
“When I bite you, I want you to tell me how it feels.”
A sense of reverence stole over him when the tips of his fangs touched her skin. She had just given him one of the most sacred gifts any mortal could offer a Hesperine.
But she was not any mortal. She was his Phoebe, and this was his first taste of her blood.
He sank in slowly, savoring the pressure on his fangs and the flavor of her skin. And then the first rivulet hit his tongue.
The past and the future disappeared. There was only this present when her essence filled his mouth and nourished all his once-withered hopes.
Her cry echoed around him, then another. “It’s too good. How … how can your fangs … do this …”
How could her blood taste like this? Nothing mattered anymore except the next swallow of her.
“It feels”—she panted—“like you’re already inside me. Like you’ve penetrated me. So deep. I feel … so close to you …”
He dragged on her vein, and her words dissolved into moans. She arched under him, finding his erection and rubbing against him through their clothes. He gritted his teeth, and the flavor of her pleasure grew sharper in her blood. He longed to taste that climax, needed to feel it around his cock.
With a growl of effort, he pulled his fangs out of her, licking at her open vein to seal it and claim every sweet drop of their first feast. When he raised his head, she rose up off the bed as if to chase his retreating fangs, but he pinned her down.
“I’m in command now, remember?”
She whimpered. He watched her blood drip from his chin onto her skin. He worked his way down her breast, leaving a bloody kiss on her nipple.
“Bite me again,” she begged.
“First you must do as I say.”
“Anything.”
“Undress me.” He released her hands and sat back.
She pounced on him and dragged his tunic over his head as if the finery meant nothing. Her hands roamed over his bare chest, tracing the contours of his muscles. “You’re not an illusion that will disappear.”
“No. This is real.” He would have shut his eyes with enjoyment when her nails glided through his chest hair, but he was too riveted by the expression of wonder and hunger on her face. She looked upon him as if she coveted him more than anything in the world.
“Unlace my trousers,” he urged.
Her hands descended to his aching erection straining against the silk. Her every tug to loosen the laces only tightened his need for her. When he sprang free into her waiting hands, he sucked in a gasp at the warm smoothness of her touch on his cock.
She explored his shaft with unpracticed, worshipful strokes. He grimaced, baring his fangs. Now she watched his mouth as she teased her thumb over the head of his cock, and his fangs strained.
“Take my hands,” he told her.
Her lips had never looked so pouty, but she did as he bade her and stopped her torturous, delicious fondling to press her palms to his. He wound their fingers together and carried her down to the bed, trapping her hands on either side of her face.
“We’ve waited years for this,” he said. “We’re going to make it last.”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Tell me how it feels to spend all night with my fangs opening your vein and my cock buried inside you. Tell me if you’ve ever felt anything better. Tell me if I’m what you want.”
He lowered his mouth to the other side of her throat. He sank his fangs and his cock into her slowly, drawing out the long glide into her wet heat and the smooth flow of her blood across his tongue.
She tossed her head back, baring her throat. Her thighs tightened around him as her channel resisted his entry. “Oh, Goddess. Alethas. You feel … so much better … than dreams I had about you. Those dreams made me weep.”
He thrust firmly, growling at the delectable pressure of her inner walls.
“You’re harder than I imagined,” she gasped. “I feel you stretching me to hold you. I want to hold all of you.”
He let go of her hands, and she twined her arms around him. He grasped her knees and parted her to ease his entry.
At last he was home, enfolded in her arms with her soft skin everywhere, her sheath gripping his cock from root to tip. Her blood warmed his every vein.
She whispered in his ear, “Nothing in the world feels better than you.”
They didn’t have to find a rhythm. They had it already, after years of learning each other with every dance. Her touch was so familiar, the roll of her hips beneath him so very Phoebe. He set the slow, hard pace he craved, and she followed his lead in perfect time.
Their rhythm became faster, hungrier, until she was wild under him, and he pounded into her. When her climax sang through her blood, he swallowed down mouthfuls of pure ecstasy. Her every tantalizing touch and agonizing refusal, all her gentle smiles and adoring glances, had built to this moment. Now the clutch of her sheath and the buck of her hips unleashed him as her blood fed him the most gratifying release of his life.
“I want you all night,” she mewed.
He lost track of minutes and hours. He lived by their tempo as they devoured each other in a luxurious tangle of bloodstained sheets. He sampled the different veins that had tempted him all these years. Watched her live out her fantasies on his cock. Turned her over for one last dance.
When they lay spooned together in the predawn hours, he just wanted to hear her say one more thing.
Then she did. “I want you.”
“Don’t ever let him lock you in that room again, Phoebe. Let me take you away.”
She rolled over to face him. “Tomorrow, after sundown, come to the room one last time. Everyone else will be at the wedding feasts. I’ll be ready to leave with you.”
He heaved a sigh and rested his face on her chest while she caressed his hair. “Thank you, Phoebe.”
“You’re thanking me?” she said with a wondering laugh.
“You have no idea how much I need you not to change your mind. How much I need you.”
