Page 111 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

Thirty-Eight

When we reached the Palace, he released me and stalked to the bed chamber. He opened the door and held it aside, saying, "Come, Sera," in that cold voice.

I followed him—if only because I didn't know what else to do. My chest felt close to cracking again as it had before—after the betrothal contract—when I had been in so much pain I could hardly bear it.

I sat on the edge of the bed while he stripped off his coat, throwing it to the side as he watched me.

He was a near stranger with those dark features and that intense, angry shape of his narrowed eyes.

He began to pull at the hem of his tunic, lifting it over his head. A thrill of heat rushed through me at the sharply defined torso revealed. Despite it all, my body began to ache for him. Something about the darkness, the danger, had always called to me.

My fingers itched to trace the lines of that broad chest I knew so well. I wanted to rake my nails across his flesh and spread my palms over the thick muscles of his arms. I was desperate for the feeling of him to erase all this despair inside me.

"Io..."

"Take your clothes off, Sera." He roughly pulled open the button of his breeches. "Or I will tear them off you."

Of course, he had felt my desire. He knew it was what I wanted before the thought finished forming in my own mind.

"No." Some wicked part of me had always liked playing with this sharp-eyed, dangerous beast...a bit too much.

His answering snarl went through me as fiercely as though he had stroked a finger over my center. That familiar tight ache spun in my belly. I wanted him so badly I was already wet.

Leaving his breeches to hang low on his hips, he kicked off his boots and stalked across the room, stopping just in front of me.

I looked away.

"I said—" He reached one black fire-wreathed hand to my chin to force my eyes up to his. "Take your fucking clothes off." His fingertips were shockingly cold.

"I said no," I repeated, daring him with my eyes to make good on his threat.

With another growl low in his chest, he did. Gripping the front of my coat where the long line of buttons secured it, he wrenched the lapels apart. Buttons scattered across the floor as he did the same with my shirt beneath.

His eyes devoured the sight of my breasts beneath the material of my chemise, but half a heartbeat had it shredded along with the rest, and then the torn layers hung loose at my sides.

He reached behind me and tossed the furs aside from the bed before he pushed me roughly to the sheets. The silk was cool on my back as I watched him trail a finger down my chest and across my nipple. A thin stream of shadows trailed in its wake as he continued down and across my stomach.

When he reached my pants, something sharp grazed the skin just above my waistband. I looked down to find shadowy claws protruding from the tips of his fingers.

He let his other hand, tipped in the same sharp claws, join the first, and then he shredded the fine, spider silk breeches into so many pieces they littered the floor around us.

I was burning for him by then. My palms had gone warm with the beginnings of my own fire.

The worry that I might burst into flame and catch the bed on fire had me jerking them up and away from the sheets. I sat up to place them on his chest, letting the edge of my power bleed off into him.

"Good girl," he said, voice low and husky. "You're learning. But you can’t burn the bed, Sera. It’s spider silk.”

I looked down at the sheets, surprised and relieved. I should have known, though. A man who burned in his dreams would have a fire-proof bed.

He brought my hand down to his cock where it lay straining against the fabric of his pants.

I moaned a little, involuntarily, as he slid my fingers down his length and I felt how rigid he was.

"Speaking of learning," he said, continuing to guide my hand over him.

"You once said you wanted to know how to please me. "

I looked up at him. I had said that—what felt like a lifetime ago. “I did…I do."

"Open that pretty mouth, and I'll show you," he said, sliding his thumb between my lips, coaxing them apart.

My mouth curved into a smile as I closed my lips around his thumb and sucked.

He groaned as he used his other hand to open his breeches.

And then he was sliding into my mouth. I closed my lips tight around him as I felt the ridges of his flesh, tasted the faint saltiness on my tongue.

His breath hissed out as he pushed himself in, all the way to the back of my throat. "Yes, Sera. Just like that."

He took my hand and clasped it around the length, wrapping his fingers around mine to show me what to do.

With one hand at the back of my head, he used his other to guide mine down his length following my mouth. I took him in and out, and then back in as deeply as I could.

Even as he hit the back of my throat and I nearly gagged, I pushed further. He made a deep rumble of pleasure in his chest as I worked. "Fuck, Sera," he groaned.

His pleasure—at my mercy—gave me such a cruel, intoxicating feeling of raw power. It had me reaching and pushing, trying to take him deeper, trying to feel him not just at the back of my throat, but in it.

I burned for him, feeling the wet, heat of my desire between my legs. I wanted all of him. I wanted to give him what he so often gave me. I moved faster, pushing further at the same time his hand on the back of my head coaxed me on, his fingers tangled in my hair.

At some point he released his grip on my hand, and my fingers fell away in place of my throat working to take all of him. It wasn't even close—he was much too long, but I thought it was enough as he groaned and thrust his hips into my mouth, filling me in a way that I had not even known I wanted.

Abruptly, he slid out, tipping my head back. His eyes were liquid black, his features seeming wreathed in shadows so that they stood out more sharply—more defined—his gorgeous, wicked face in better detail.

I looked up at him in question. "Why did you stop me?"

"Your mouth feels so good, Sera darling. But inside your tight cunt is the best place in the fucking world.” His voice had lost much of its cold, angry edge, and his sinful eyes were alight with mischief.

He was toying with me and enjoying it thoroughly.

Just as I was. He knew how much I liked it when he said such shocking things to me.

“Now spread your legs for me."

A command from him—one that I knew he would never—in a million lifetimes give to me if he knew I didn't want to obey it...it pleased me in a way that was hard to describe.

I knew that doing this for him, being his plaything, was a power in itself. Because he liked it too—and dear fates, when he made that low sound of pleasure in his throat—pleasure he got from my body, from the things I did to him—it entirely undid me.

So I obeyed my shadow lord. I shrugged off my tattered shirt and jacket and tossed them aside, leaving me in only the silky halves of my chemise that hung from my shoulders. I laid back on the bed and spread my legs, baring myself to him.

The reaction was gratifying. His eyes danced with gold fire, momentarily lighting the shadows writhing in the depths as he devoured the sight of me open, waiting for him.

He slid his hand up my chest, pinching the tight bud of my nipple as he grazed over it, and then his mouth was on the other peak, his tongue flicking over the sensitive point before his teeth came against it, biting and sucking by turns.

I moaned, arching my back and then my hips against his, begging him to fill that ache in me. "Please, Io. I need you inside me."

"For you, Sera...anything." He kissed me, plunging his tongue into my mouth as he slid himself inside me.

I groaned a guttural sound of relief as he pulled out and thrust into me again, and then again.

He slowed, running his hand up my body, over my neck, softly roaming.

"Tell me, Sera. How do you want it? Slow and.

..sweet?" He illustrated with his hands, cherishing me as he trailed his fingertips over my skin…

and with his body as he slid in and out of me, slow and deliberate.

His hands almost warmed a little as they roamed across my body in that sweet, seductive touch.

But then, abruptly, he sank into me with force, jostling the bed, making the headboard strike the wall.

His hand went to my throat, wrapping around it and tightening.

The cold seeped through his skin, making chills rise along my flesh where he touched me.

"Or do you want it like this?" he growled and pushed into me harder, punishingly, with one hand splayed on the bed beside my head and the other still wrapped tightly around my throat.

There was no choice. Not then, at least, as the need for him to take me roughly—to dominate me, use me—overwhelmed everything else.

His deep, hard thrust had stoked the fires inside me, sending my muscles winding tight and my body shuddering, crying out for release beneath him. "Yes...like that. Please," I begged.

His dark chuckle sent my pulse racing, and when I met his eyes, I saw the thing that had scared everyone around him—the dark, merciless beast with those sinfully wicked black eyes, mouth curved in a smile of pure, male satisfaction.

He slid into me, shaking the bed again as it struck the wall. And again, seating himself so deeply inside me I cried out with a mix of pain and pleasure. Again and again, he took me so that I could hardly catch a breath as he pounded into me with fury.

Those fingers pressing into my neck were some delicious danger that only spurred me on. It would take less than a thought to break me—entirely shatter my body beneath him, and yet, I craved it as my mind comprehended the fact that this man would tear his own heart out before he harmed me.

I climaxed with a scream that tore free from my chest wildly as fire wreathed my hands, my arms, racing up and over my body.