Page 23

I grabbed at his trousers as he fucked me with his fingers, kissing him, our bodies tangling up against that door in a mess of rumpled clothing and sweaty skin and hot, panting breath. Some of his buttons came loose permanently in my hurry to free his bulging erection, and I didn’t care about that, either. The scorching satin of his cock in my palm was enough to obliterate the last shreds of the practical, sensible, dutiful unbound mage I’d tried to be – what need did I have for duty if I could havehim?

We were too far gone for beds, now. Too far gone for chairs or desks. He tore off my underwear as I leaned back against the door and lifted one leg, wrapping it around his hip to give him better access to every blissfully sensitive, almost-sore spot his fingers could reach. Not enough, not even close to enough …

‘Creon.’ His name tasted like a vulgar plea on my tongue, as sinful as the musky fragrance of his skin. ‘More.’

He curled two fingers inside of me, and if not for his other hand around my waist, my melting bones would have sent me collapsing at his feet. I wrapped both my hands around his throbbing cock, milking him at the rhythm of his thrusts until he was hard enough to hurt. His breath came in struggling gasps against my mouth, the strokes of his fingers mercilessly deep.

‘More,’ I moaned.

He slid his fingers out of me, flipped me around like a trained dancer, and dragged my hips back towards him, bending me over. Planting both hands against the door was all I could do to stay on my feet as he bunched up my skirt and buried himself inside me with a single powerful stroke, filling me so thoroughly, so perfectly, that my eyes rolled back at the impact of it.

Yes.

This.

Again he slammed into me, driving so deep it felt like he might hit my midriff, taking me until there was no room left in my body for air or thoughts or silence. Some primal part of me was crying out his name,sobbinghis name. My nails dug into the wood under my fingers. I registered nothing of it, nothing but his rock-hard girth moving inside me, claiming me and everything I was, thrust by glorious thrust.

‘Gods,’ I was moaning, ‘gods,Creon,’ and then suddenly everything changed and I was lying in his arms, unsure of how I’d gotten there, unsure of anything except that he was no longer inside me and I needed himnow.I clawed at him and found his corded shoulders taut under my fingers, movement rolling through his muscles as his wings flared out in response.

Soft linen brushed my back as he lowered me down – his bed. He’d carried me to his bed. With quick movements, he settled me in his blankets, my legs dangling over the edge of his mattress, and released me to pull my dress over my head. I breathed a curse as he stepped away from me. My body seemed naked and empty without his touch, my sight blurry with lust.

It took a moment for the shapes of his signs to come through.Getting prickly, cactus?

I reached for his cock, which stood straight from his torn trousers like a warrior triumphant, the dark bronze gleaming shamelessly in the dusky faelight. Creon moved out of my reach with catlike ease, shrugging his unbuttoned shirt off his torso. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his ink-marred skin, emphasising every honed edge of his body, emphasising every movement as he slowly and meticulously stripped off his boots and trousers.

‘This,’ I breathed, coming up onto my elbows, ‘is torture.’

He gave me a wolfish grin through the strands of long hair falling over his face, flicking his clothes aside.My specialty.

Fully naked, he was somehow even more magnificent than in menacing black, every inch of his body shaped for battle and glory. My mouth went dry as he closed in on me again; my legs parted all by themselves as he knelt before me, not a shred of resistance left in my limbs.

‘Perhaps …’ My voice was a husky whisper. ‘Perhaps I can see why Agenor is concerned about my good sense.’

His grin grew sharper.I’m afraid Agenor knows exactly what I’m capable of.

My fogged mind needed a moment – because my father had known Creon before the Alliance captured him, before Lyn, in a time when he’d still taken lovers and probably did so with all the lack of discretion I’d known from the Crimson Court … And then Creon’s fingers brushed over that tender bundle of nerves between my thighs, and that vague and irrelevant train of thought dissolved into the far bigger realisation that I was about to find out what he was capable of in the most immediate and pleasurable way.

His touches were so feathery as he worshipped the drenched lines of my body, nothing like the rough way he’d pinned me to the door and had his way with me. Gossamer caresses, over and over again, teasing over every sensitive spot, calling an entirely new agony from the burning fire below my skin. Far too soon, he had me pleading and writhing again, every fibre in my body chasing after that promise of bone-shattering pleasure he held just out of reach.

When he finally set me free, I was so close it took nothing but a single well-aimed pinch of his fingers. Release barrelled through me with avalanche force, leaving me shivering and gasping for breath and …

Pleading for mercy.

Because he buried his head between my thighs before the trembles of my climax died away, dragging his tongue over the same spots he’d driven to insanity twice already.

Pleasure turned raw, a savage sensation dancing so close to pain that the lines between them blurred entirely. His lips worked my tender flesh gently, kissing and nuzzling until the last waves of my release subsided. Then somehow the next eruption was already rising from some place deeper inside me than anything I’d ever imagined – lured to the surface by the clever strokes of his tongue as he found every delicate spot all over again. A lingering kiss. A series of short little licks that had me crying out his name, until I was close,soclose, and he circled away from that core of my pleasure, exploring the lines of my lips again …

I informed him, or tried to inform him in between my gasps for air, that I would tragically perish on the spot if he didn’t end this torment immediately.

He sheathed his tongue inside me in response, drinking deep and greedy, and I came again.

There was no breath left in my lungs. No blood in my brain. But I clung to his hard shoulders instinctively as he finally moved over me and lowered himself between my thighs, and I welcomed his first stroke into my drenched tightness with an oddly detached sensation of both delirious bliss and mortal fear. I might just die if he made me come again, might just crumble to a point beyond repair – but gods, it would be a glorious way to go.

And somehow my body wasn’t yet spent. Somehow the delicious friction of his cock entering me – so much more intense now that every inch of me throbbed with the torment of these last orgasms – woke some slumbering fire in my limbs, a primal instinct that recognised his rhythm before I remembered my own name. He thrust into me, and I arched towards him. He slid back, and I set my nails into his shoulders, clawing down. He breathed out hard and drove himself back into me, faster now, and the wondrous pressure of it made my toes curl tight with anticipation …

Again?

Again.