Page 64 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

His groan was low, and he dragged my lips open with his thumb, though he didn’t encourage me to accept him further.

I taunted the head, licking along the ridge as I handled him.

He kept his hold light, giving me freedom to acquaint myself with the shape and taste of him without taking claim of my throat, raw from our ordeal.

I reveled in pleasuring him, the catch of his breath punctuated by an obscene instruction I obediently followed.

At length, his grip on me grew tighter, but before his composure fractured, he withdrew.

“Let me look at you,” he said, his tone coarse, guiding me to recline.

I rested my weight on my hands, chest arching.

He brushed his knuckles down the side of my ribs, instructing me to raise my hips so he could divest me of the last remaining item of fabric separating us, my linen underwear.

When I was bare, his gaze brushed like feathers across every soft slope, drinking me in .

As I’d already determined he appreciated, I brought one heel to the table, opening myself to his view, running my fingers from my abdomen, through the curls of my mound, shuddering as they slipped along the hill of nerves, already screaming for release.

He captured my hand in his, bending to replace my fingers with his mouth.

I cried out, the transition so sudden, I hadn’t anticipated the sensation.

As his tongue worked competently, the muscles and bones of his back shifted, shoulder blades momentarily jutting as his more ruinous soul rose.

He grasped my hips, pulling me further forward as he skillfully devastated me.

Tightening my fingers in his dark hair, I pressed him ever closer, entreating him to continue with greedy, insistent pleas.

Just as my end began to build, he ceased his ministrations, surging up to besiege my mouth, the taste of me on his lips.

But there was no room for complaint, because his insistent length rested against the tender flesh of my sex.

He purposefully avoided my wet slit, sliding his cock over the sensitive bud of my sex in slow, torturous strokes.

I couldn’t protest, my mouth too occupied with his, his magic coursing in punishing, rhythmic waves, like the pulse of bodies moving together.

At last, he positioned himself at my entrance. I grabbed hold of his sturdy shoulders, half in unhinged hunger and half in anxiety of what I was about to experience.

His body tremored, form oscillating. The divine pressure of him, so close to claiming me, receded.

“No! Don’t stop,” I implored.

“I can feel your uncertainty, Eleanora,” he murmured.

“It’s not uncertainty, Victor, for god’s sake.” I couldn’t explain my trepidation without seeming like a virginal twit.

“I need to be sure you understand what you’re risking,” he cautioned. “If you give yourself-it will be to all of me. ”

He was talking about the Drudge, the monstrous side of him surfacing, driven by lust. I’d already been held by that body. Yet as I looked into Victor’s face, I bore no apprehension.

“I give willingly,” I insisted. “Please don’t pull away. Not after everything that’s happened.”

“I could hurt you.”

“I don’t care,” I said recklessly, body throbbing, aching for him.

“Is this what you want?” In his voice, husky and strained, was anguish, a loathing for himself that I couldn’t bear. “To be defiled by a Drudge?”

My heart split open.

“There’s only you, Victor.” I passed my fingers along the scar on his cheek. “In whatever form, I crave you more than life.”

He lifted a hand to my face, brought his lips to mine.

“Then I yield to you, Eleanora,” he said, and in one smooth shift of his hips, he broke the barrier, thrusting into me.

In the gorgeous, blinding moment of shock, I moaned, clenching, strung so tight even this was almost enough.

My body spread to form to him, and he filled me so completely that there was barely room for breath in my body.

He unsheathed himself to the tip, driving forward again, setting a rhythm of harsh, shattering strokes.

My legs ached beautifully where he held me open to him, the vicious impacts rocking the sturdy table beneath me.

In the fire’s glow, a primal magic flickered across our skin, summoned by our fierce will to exist in a world where neither of us was welcome.

I gazed down to witness the shadowy merger of our bodies, and the sight sustained my ascent to an incredible height. The angle of my hips allowed him to stroke where I needed, the size of him promising the elusive place couldn’t be missed.

“Be a good girl, Eleanora,” he growled, sensing in our connection that my desire was coming to a crescendo. I was desperate for release while simultaneously yearning for the bliss to continue escalating forever.

“No,” I panted. “Not yet.”

He released a harsh breath, a laugh, never easing the rhythm.

“There’ll be another,” he promised darkly, and the corrupted magic that had remained latent emerged, its intensity snapped my will along with the purposeful circling of Victor’s thumb across my clit. Overcome by the onslaught, and with his name on my lips, I broke apart, the climax a salvation.

I arched, and Victor pulled me close, slowing his onslaught to savor the quake of my body while I clung to him, enduring the waves of euphoria.

His heartbeat drummed vigorously, and I pressed my face into his warm neck, kissing his throat.

He maneuvered me twice more along his shaft, lengthening my fading rapture, enjoying the final pulses of my orgasm around his arousal, which he hadn’t relieved.

This left me with a foggy sense of frustration.

“Victor, you didn’t...”

“We’re not done.”

Raising me off him, he changed our positions, flipping me so his length, still hard as steel, was pressed into my back.

He directed his hand between my breasts, fingers climbing to my throat, rocking me forward onto his arm until I bent at the waist, raising me from my feet to perch me backwards on his lap.

He sat me firmly onto him, sheathing deep.

The noise I made was cut short, not from the pressure upon my throat, but from the eruption of new desire.

Inspiring my enthusiasm was Victor’s terrible power, risen to gorge on my magic, the pain of this tugging no less erotic than that of Victor’s teeth on my breast.

I leaned forward to brace myself on his legs, and found them corded with muscle that undulated, growing.

He was changing, his body elongating beneath mine, the snap and cracking of bones deviating into new positions, startling me.

The obelisk of his manhood was not immune to the transformation, and I stretched to accommodate him, overfull.

I moaned, digging my fingers into the hard flesh of his legs, which had become thick and fluted as the trunks of hornbeams.

“Having second thoughts?” His phantasmal voice caressed my ear.

He was too much, but still I wanted him.

“No,” I breathed, “Let me have every part of you.”

He rumbled an approval as he drew me to his chest, resting me long against him, my thighs splayed wide over the width of his massive lap. The red mist of depraved magic coiled around us, nipping at my skin with cool touches, creating tideways of magic in all the most sensitive locations.

“Hold on to me, Curse Eater.”

I did as instructed, raising an arm behind me to grasp at the back of his neck, thick and knotted with sinew.

Saturated in my previous climax, he moved in me, the friction equal measures disorienting and ecstatic.

This side of Victor didn’t care for restraint; it claimed recklessly, and I could barely do more than cling to him as he plundered my cunt.

Despite this overwhelm, or perhaps because of it, pleasure built, my body sensitive from its previous rupture.

“I want to see your face,” I gasped.

“Another time.”

Ignoring his refusal, I attempted to turn my head, but the monstrous hand at my neck kept me fast in place.

“If you can’t be content with just my cock, Curse Eater,” he rumbled. “Take my magic. Let it know you.”

While he claimed me, his dark energy heightened its rhythmic pull, tumultuous and compelling, powerful but never cruel.

His fingers, sinuous and tapered, returned between my slick lips to stroke me.

I became a pillar of sensation, exclusively aware of the possessive drive of his unnatural body into mine, and the frenzied rise to my next orgasm.

“That’s right, Eleanora. Come apart on me.”

He cupped my chin in his palm, tilting my head until it rested beneath his chin, running the rough pad of his thumb over my bottom lip.

My tongue snaked along the pointed tip, and in response he groaned, the sound like the earth tremoring.

For the second time that night, I splintered, my cry rising above the crash of waves, echoing into the night from the open window.

With my release came a flood of magic, raising gooseflesh on my skin and pouring into Victor.

In three harsh thrusts, he finally met his ecstasy, his laudations shaking the timber of the dock house as he pulsed inside me, the sensation teasing my still quivering sex, extending the pleasure for a few blissful moments more.

His release relieved his beastliness, temporarily satisfying its cravings. It retreated, returning him to the form I knew best, a better fit against and inside me. He held me, my head resting on his chest, both of us breathless.

He kissed my bare shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” And it was true. Then, as an afterthought, “Will that happen every time?”

Victor’s laugh was genuine and unexpected, warming me through the way no sunbeam could dare hope to. I wanted to hear that sound more times than a hundred lifetimes would allow.

“I’ve never tested it,” he admitted, still chuckling. “Was it unpleasant?”

“I was unprepared,” I admitted. “But it was nowhere near unpleasant.”

He turned his face into my hair, knotted and wild from our activities, his fingers pressing into the soft swell of my belly, gentle.

I turned my head to look into his face, pausing as the low firelight gave me a glimpse at what our magic had unwittingly conjured.

Above us, a cloud of unwoven curses lulled in the air, pulled from our bodies through the bedlam of magic we’d produced together.

“Yours or mine?” I asked, delirious, unable to tell if the Drudge lingering among my ribs was reduced.

“Ours,” he answered, his lips finding mine.