Page 55 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

The agony of my desire grew. I’d never grow tired of it.

“Yes.” It was a demand, a low growl as undone as the rest of me, and I caught his bottom lip in my teeth just enough to sting.

The result was immediate, his monstrous magic lunging to claim mine.

I trembled as it held, throbbing with an energy that traveled to the damp horizon between my legs.

In another vicious move, he tucked his hand into the collar of my blouse, popping the buttons to my sternum, exposing the cream silk brassiere.

He wasted no time freeing my breast from it, running his thumb over the crest of my nipple, hardening it.

Any sounds I might have made were caught in his mouth, as he encouraged another thread of magic from me.

He continued this rhythm, caressing and pinching, supping on me until I no longer knew where my magic ended and his began. I was at his mercy, quivering, my pleasure cresting, a wave ready to break upon the cliffs.

The waist of his trousers was already loose, the button missing from the violence of his transformation, and there was nothing to impede me when I trailed my fingers down the hard plane of his stomach, surveying a battlefield of scars, slipping beneath to take hold of his rigid erection.

His groan encouraged me, and I freed it, running my palm along the magnificent length of him, wrapping my fingers around the girth while imagining the obscene, burning stretch I’d enjoy if he were sheathed in me.

“You’re courting trouble,” he warned, his limitations abused, strung too tight.

“I’m a Blackwicket,” I said, enjoying my temporary power. “Trouble and I know each other well.”

In response, his large hand enveloped mine, guiding the rhythm.

“But have you ever knelt for it,” he murmured, continuing the strokes, running my hand from head to the thicket of black curls at the base and back. The eroticism of touching Inspector Harrow, a man who I’d believed was out for my blood, shattered me in innumerable ways.

His question was whiskey poured on an open flame. The intensity of my yearning became reckless, bewildering hunger.

With my eyes raised to his challenging, unwavering gaze, I lowered myself to my knees amidst the rootstocks and vines that had grown ever further near us in answer to the outpouring of magic, blackberry vines rustling as they reached toward us, plump fruit heavy on their stems.

The Inspector released his hold of my hand, allowing me freedom to touch him as I pleased, and though he curled my hair around his fingers, he didn’t force my movement, but held me as I drew my lips along the silky head of his shaft.

His skin was hot, and I laved my tongue across the engorged tip, and his magic sank further into mine, caressing otherwise unreachable, intimate places.

With no patience left for teasing, I took his cock in my mouth, sliding him as deep as I dared.

I couldn’t accommodate all of him, so I kept my fingers curled around the thick plinth, glorifying in the texture of him sliding along my tongue.

When I reached the end, I closed my lips.

“My fucking god, Eleanora.” The near-reverent exclamation was a reward, worship, and he divested himself of his initial gentleness, hand tightening as he drove in.

Despite his intensity, he abstained from choking me, though I’d have been eager for it.

There was nothing Victor could do that would temper this growing, brutal need.

As I pleasured him, his manipulation of my magic turned me liquid, and I reached under my skirt, tucking my finger into silk, stroking frantically.

Victor had positioned his other hand beneath my chin, keeping my head angled at the perfect pitch as he took my mouth in measured, controlled thrusts.

I stroked myself in time, awareness of the physical world growing hazy, and released his length to grab hold of the muscular flesh of his thigh, moaning in the onslaught.

The vibration of noise ruptured something in Victor, and on his next thrust, he disposed of caution and buried himself in me to the hilt.

My throat opened for him, and though for a moment I couldn’t breathe, my body didn’t reject the invasion.

He didn’t remain, pulling himself free of my mouth before scooping me up, and flipping me roughly even as I protested the interruption.

“So impatient.” The depth of his voice had dipped into a thunderous reverberation of erotic appetite, and he lifted me so I was on my toes, losing balance, forced to lean forward and place my palms on the bare wall, so near the portal which hummed and convulsed with the capricious energy we were feeding it.

He ground himself against my backside, my skirt still an agonizing barrier.

He freed the breast still encased in the brassiere, so my chest was bare in the cool of the room, and rolled the summit between his fingers.

“This is torture,” I cried, trying to gain traction to press closer, my toes barely reaching the ground.

“Minutes ago, you were asking me to kill you,” he crooned. “What’s a bit of torture?”

But at long last he showed mercy, abandoning my breasts to lift the front of my skirt.

Making no efforts to tease, he glided two fingers into my wet heat, pressing his thumb across the aching swell of my clit.

His caressing of me, inside and out, remained consistent, coaxing me to the precipice.

He didn’t venture to please himself further, keeping me at a well-controlled angle so I couldn’t do it for him.

Panting, I raised my head, attempting to look over my shoulder at him, longing to watch his face as he claimed me with his hand.

“Eyes down,” he barked, and the timbre of his voice was unusual, guttural.

I was too lost in the building power of my oncoming climax to be disobedient.

The blackberries had flourished, drawing high and close like a cage, blocking the last of the sun from the window, trembling, the curses in each of them begging to be washed in the electric power of our passion.

The house was holding its breath as I did, lungs pleading for oxygen, which I denied them in favor of at last tumbling from the zenith.

“Fracture for me,” he enticed, drawing his fingers up to bear acute focus on the taut hill of my clitoris. “You beautiful, wicked creature.”

I pitched into orgasm, the cry I elicited nearly a sob.

Unlike the wail of anguish, this cry was jolting in its release.

The rapture unexpectedly triggered my base instincts, and I parted my lips, inhaling, calling to the curses swarming among blackberry vines.

The fruits began to burst, their sullied magic sweeping into the gravitational pull of mine, made inescapable by passion.

The curses dissolved, emerging as misty white scrolls.

For the second time, Victor had brought me to climax and denied himself. As I was descending from the highest point of my ecstasy, I became aware of the sordid weight of Victor’s magic, obscured by the Drudge infixed within him.

He removed his hand, touch slick with my lust falling between my still exposed breasts, rising to my throat as he gathered my body against his without lowering my feet completely to the ground, the still turgid pillar of his desire pressing into the center of my back.

But it wasn’t Victor’s muscle-corded arm holding my waist, nor his steady, capable fingers at my neck, holding my head against his chest.

“That was very good,” he grated, and his voice rumbled too low, overtones of whispers lingering like wind in the trees.

The curses I’d called forth from the baneful Blackberry vines continued to rise, wringing the plant dry of life, until one by one they collapsed in twisted, brown husks. The same force that pulled them in enticed my magic as well.

The new soughing lilt of the Inspector’s voice encouraged gooseflesh to rise across my skin.

“Now it’s my turn to give you the truth, Curse Eater,” he said.