The night seized Dal’coler again, carving another hour into its stone flesh. Lorian didn’t know which, his fingers gripping the crimson linen beneath him like sharp claws. The spasms slowly subsided, clinging to his nerves like parasites to the bark of a tree.
He was so used to it.
To almost an uncanny pleasure in his pain, to almost a familiar, well-known rite. He knew, though, that his face now reflected only agony, something he couldn’t show outside, but now, as night fell, he could stop controlling the one aspect of his life he never fully controlled.
This was delightfully wrong.
His nerves pulsed, throbbing with the aftermath of pain. Again, day blurred with night and suffering with rapture.
He remembered how the same pain had left him a quivering mess, crawling on the floor. When no one was watching, of course, still a humiliating fact. In places where he could hide his agony from the ever-watching eyes of the court.
The Fae could never see him like this. But that didn’t mean the pain didn’t reduce him to something he’d rather not be. Long ago… when he was a different Fae.
It was an old time. But never forgotten. A lesson he would have to learn. A part of his life he couldn’t just leave behind. A reminder and a warning.
He felt a hand on his arm. Its golden curls brushed against his skin.
Another spasm, the last.
And relaxing nothingness where the only feeling was her fingers caressing him. Her breasts heaved with a breath, round and full, touched by the immortality that always made them look like the day he captured them.
“Lorian… again?”
Her features offered him no concern. Why should she be worried? She was almost Fae, free of human impulses. And she knew that if he was ever going to die… it wouldn’t be soon.
“The only feeling that will always come, with certainty,” he chuckled lightly. He could see his own black eyes reflected in her own intensely pale blue.
How does it feel to know that she knows? How does it feel to know that the two women you want to drown in know your greatest weakness?
If he were younger, more foolish, he might fear it. But since he had lived for over a thousand years, some things had become more acceptable. He might not like it, but he did not fear it. But one thing he would never accept was failure. Nor would he accept the knowledge that all this pain, this cruel ordeal, would have been for nothing.
She said nothing more, but she moved, rose to her knees. Her body lifted, the light of the candles flickering over her curves. Her pale skin glowed with his aura. Dark tendrils, rooted so deep into her skin. Buried in her like a lover, spreading her with his presence.
A smile. But not joyful, not jubilant. She was nothing like Areltha, who always beamed when he took her. A foolish creature, even if unseelie. Leira did not only want his pleasure. She wanted to dig deeper and draw out all that was in him. A visceral affection, a predatory one. So similar to his own.
Her hand closed over him, right between his legs. She was always hungry. That was what bound them together, this thirst for sensual sensations. She wanted him the way trees wanted water after a drought, and he found it intensely arousing.
And she wanted him even though he knew she would never forgive him. He didn’t want her forgiveness. She wanted him despite what he had done. And that was even more exciting.
She spread herself out in front of him, her fingers slowly caressing his tip as she looked straight into his eyes. Teasingly. She was carnal in her desire and in her darkness. He buried his nails in her hair and pressed against her, her tongue out, tracing a path across his skin.
She was perhaps the same human woman he had taken for the first time, when she still remembered the dark, dying eyes of her human lover; unwilling, hating, but surrendering to him, of her own choice. But now she was stronger and her soul glittered with dark crystals. Cutting with their edges. Sharp and piercing. The way she spied, betrayed and denounced – to him – was making her so attractive. She had no remorse, no pity. She brought him their heads on a plate, presented them to him with all the gruesome details.
She took him in her throat, her muffled moans rubbing against his ever yearning side. Her lips were soft, full, and the touch of them was a torment in itself.
“Deeper,” he whispered, leaning over her, his finger on her cheek. “Swallow me.”
Her mind raced with lust as she took him further and his shadowy tendril slipped between her legs, pressing hard. He could feel she was very wet. He wanted her to be wetter. Her neck muscles tensed, but soon relaxed to allow him to go as deep as they both wanted.
She let him go to get some air. Her lips shone in the dim light.
“So hard… my lord. Such a treat,” and again. And again.
And again.
Her smile as she released him, and the play of light over her throat as he entered… impeccable.
He felt a vicious throbbing, almost a climax, rush through his loins. But he could control his release with shadows. It was not time yet. Her throat took him right to the base, he could feel it, how tight it was, how hungrily it closed over him…
When she let him go again, his desire grew bigger, more painful.
He pushed her onto the bed, pinning her down with his weight, and she immediately spread her legs, pulling him to her. Her hands gripped him in a possessive gesture. The wetness of her desire glistened against him, pooling between her thighs.
“You are such a ravenous slave, Leira.”
“Always.”
She wasn’t a slave anymore. Not in the true sense of the word.
But she was a slave to her desire, her hunger and their mutual pain. The one he caused her and the one he felt. They fed on it as on the rarest of delicacies. On the darkness that now bound them, no longer separated them.
“Fuck me, my lord… make me bleed…”
He buried himself inside her with a particularly powerful thrust. Her mind screamed, but she opened her legs even wider, wanting it. She was so like him.
Filled with a sickening urge.
She wanted to melt beneath him, to take his heated shadows as if they were a spoonful of sweet dessert. And he wanted her to squeeze them out of him, to take his pain and turn it into… something more.
Her fingers traced a path down his back, closing in desperately, wanting him closer, more intensely. As his shadows slipped through her lips, her eyes opened wider, but only for a small, insignificant second.
She swallowed them with a desperate moan. Shivering with pleasure, choking on the night. Her thoughts latched to his mind, fevered, growling in her head, like a caged animal. Frantic and disconnected, a wave of sensations and ideas, dreams and fantasies.
Image of him, with blood dripping from his body. His skin covered with crimson.
His shadows creeping into veins of his victim, growing with thorns, causing suffering.
You like it.
Very.
Leira…
He was taking her, knowing she wanted swift fulfillment, quick and sharp as lightning. He could give her that. A hurried fuck painted in red.
Her walls closed over him, twitching with pleasure, fast nd inevitable. Her skin glistened with sweat as heat circulated through her body, both her own and that of his shadows. The heat most would not take, but she came to his touch.
Twisted.
Beautiful.
He needed her.
She came with a muffled moan and he joined her, driven by her quivering insides. He could never get enough of it. Her eyes dug into him like daggers. Her legs wrapped around his waist, small drops of blood dripping from her, drawn by his power.
“Desire me like this, always,” a soft, quick murmur.
He will.
Oh, he will.
Every second, every moment, tugging at her never-satisfied soul, lingering in her marrow, filling her bones.
She hated him, she wanted him and she loved him.
And he would show her what it meant.