Page 73 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

I ran my hand over his bottom lip, remembering the way he had bitten me. Just the memory stoking the fire in my belly again. "And I will not say it again," I said, leaning forward and laying my lips against his chest. "You did not hurt me." I bit him—hard.

His hand came up to the back of my head, but he didn't jerk me away as I half expected. He pressed me to him as I tasted the faint sweetness of his blood.

"Point taken," he said, groaning.

I climbed over him, straddling his hips and letting the blanket fall away. I kissed him, and his hands came up to my hips. "Sera..." he warned.

I cut him off with a look. I knew he was ready to tell me all the reasons why we couldn’t be together—why it was wrong.

I reached up, cupping his face in my hands again, looking into sorrow-filled eyes that had returned to their familiar darkness.

The flames of his rage were gone, and I was not ashamed to admit I missed them.

"I know we shouldn't," I told him. "Gods, Io, I do know that. But I simply don’t give a damn.

I'll do my duty...and you'll do yours. But just for now, Io, please, just don’t give a damn with me. "

His dark laugh filled me with a joy that I now knew I did not deserve to feel. I let it wash over me anyway as his lips found mine again, and he kissed me.

"Now," I said, between his exquisite kisses. "Show me what you were about to do when I stopped you. Show me how badly you need me." I made my lips into a pout. "Please," I begged, sweetly.

He laughed again, shaking his head. But then he rose up and flipped me straight onto my back, positioning himself over me on the mattress, with my head at the footboard.

"Since you asked so sweetly," he said, grasping my hips and shoving one of his long fingers into me, gently at first, but then when I moaned and arched into him, he moved roughly, growling his satisfaction against my mouth.

It didn't hurt, but there was an edge to it, and a stark pleasure at the rough way he slid it in and out of me.

I bucked against his hand as the wet sound of my flesh on his finger filled my ears. His teeth grazed my neck, and I groaned, low in my throat.

“You like it this way, don’t you, you cruel, wicked creature.”

I smiled in answer. I did, quite unexpectedly. I had always been drawn to the darkness in him. When he was saying such deliciously wicked things, touching me with no concern for being gentle, that darkness was paramount.

His teeth came up to my ear—his hoarse whisper hot against my skin.

"I won’t pretend I haven't thought about fucking you hard, making you scream as I drive you into the mattress—or up against the wall—with my hands around that pretty throat, a million different times.

Just walking down the streets of your city, an image in my mind of me inside that tight little cunt of yours would make me so hard I thought about tearing the city down just to find you. "

I gasped as his words rolled over me with an unexpected pleasure all their own. He was unchecked and furious; shocking. It excited something inside me that craved the wildness.

I felt him undoing his pants and then his hot, rigid flesh against my thigh as his fingers still thrust in and out of me.

Finally withdrawing them, he shifted me roughly and poised himself at my opening. I felt his hand at the back of my neck. He pulled my head up so that I was forced to look in his eyes. "It's going to hurt this time, Sera."

The words sent chills down my spine. They were exactly what I wanted. Not for him to coddle me with this newfound virginity, or to be repulsed by it, but to undo it as violently as I knew he would undo the men who had done it to me.

He slid in—only a little, and fire erupted between my legs and in my chest. It burned, but I welcomed it. I welcomed him opening me.

"And I'm not even sorry for that." he said as he pushed in a little further. "Because I want you to feel me, stretching you, filling you—claiming you."

Need pulsed in me, bringing the fire to some promised peak of fulfillment.

"Because you are mine, Sera.” He slid into me, all the way, in one swift slide toward madness that tore a scream from me as pain lanced through me. “You belong to me,” he growled.

“No matter what happens...no matter if the whole fucking world burns for it, you will always be mine."

His words, the pain, the utter fulfillment—the claiming, blended into one jarring cataclysm that had me screaming with savage release.

The waves of pleasure rolled through me, each cresting with another furious thrust of his hips as his body pounded into mine, relentless and merciless.

I shattered around him again, moaning his name as ecstasy tore through me.

And then he found my lips and growled his own release against my mouth. "Mine, Sera," he said as he spilled himself inside me. “Mine,” he repeated, hips jerking a final thrust in time with the spasm of my body cradled around him.

I held his gaze as my heart pounded and my breaths were shallow and wild in my chest. "Mine," I whispered, so low I wasn't sure he even heard. "You are mine, Io. Only mine."

I slept with my head pillowed against his chest and when the dreams came, they were achingly sweet and beautiful.

I dreamed of frosty starlight and mountains covered in snow. Dragons wheeled through an endless night sky against a backdrop of colorful auroras that seemed to stream from heaven itself.

I dreamed of a life filled with dark-eyed children who called me mama, and of nights spent in a big fur covered bed, before an impossibly large hearth—the fire bright, wrapped in the protective warmth of his embrace.

My beautiful Eroa, for that was her name, carried me on pale, silvery-white wings as I flew across the Godsgrass Kingdom where I somehow knew that the king and queen—my parents—sat the throne.

It was a dream of peace—a beautiful, heartbreaking vision of the world unfolded before me.

And it felt real, so heartbreakingly real, as Io and I watched our children grow. We laughed as gray hair replaced that midnight dark on his head while mine still remained as white as it had ever been. And we cried as we watched our children marry and leave us behind.

We loved through what felt like hundreds of years of gods blessed time, while the world unfurled and grew around us like moonflower vines, covering everything they touched with their silvery leaves and pale white flowers.

But I had not been born into that world.

Suddenly, I watched the kingdom fall away around me—the figures of my children dissolving into smoky ash. The godsgrass blowing away like dust kicked up in the wind.

I knew I was dreaming when I felt my feet at the edge of a precipice and a cold, angry wind rising up at my back. Stones began crumbling under me as the world gave way beneath my feet.

I began to fall backward into the void below. Wings made of sunshine and fire unfurled behind me, arresting my fall, turning it into a slow, graceful descent. I almost hovered at the edge of the precipice.

Relief flooded through me. I had stopped myself from falling. I suddenly knew I could also stop the slow destruction of that world I had never been born into. I could save them all. I could stay there…if I could just...

The thoughts fled away from me as shadows appeared in front of me, midnight black and swirling. A figure stood at the heart of the churning maelstrom.

I knew him. The face and body were as achingly familiar as my own heartbeat.

But it was not Io who stood before me cloaked in darkness. It was some vengeful creature of shadows who looked down at me with dark, malicious eyes and a cruel mocking smile. I did not know him.

Wings made of living black fire and darkness unfurled at his back, rising and extending above him, blotting out the starlight and casting me in shadow.

"Blood opens the gate," he said as the shadows pierced my wings of sunshine and flame, disintegrating them until they swirled away like ashes on the wind.

I screamed as I fell, my hands vainly reaching for him. I knew that if I could somehow reach him, I would find only shadows and smoke beneath my fingers.

"Idrigard will burn."

I woke with a gasp.

Warm hands, with familiar rough calluses, slid across my cheek, cupping my face and cradling me to a solid chest. Half-lidded midnight eyes looked down at me.

"It was just a dream, my love," he whispered softly, in a voice hoarse from sleep. He kissed my forehead.

My love. I let the words wash over me. They drove away the memory of the dream as though it had never been. He loves me. Of course, I already knew that. I had probably known that somewhere deep down from the very start.

What that meant for the future didn't matter at all. All I knew was here and now and he loved me.

I pushed up and slid my leg across him until I was straddling him. I felt him harden beneath me in an instant as his eyes sparked, opening fully as he came awake.

Dawn was breaking on a world of still swirling snow, and the gray light cast a cool ethereal tint over his body beneath me.

I slid onto him as he rose up, bringing our faces close. I nearly cried out with relief as the feeling of him inside me again eased some deep, incessant ache.

But I stayed quiet, unwilling to break the silence that blanketed the world around us as I moved on him.

The only sounds in the chamber were our breaths coming together and our bodies moving.

I pressed my lips to his, but neither of us moved them.

We just held ourselves together while I rose and fell, his hands on my hips guiding me.

I climaxed with slow, shaking ecstasy, feeling myself tighten around him as I rode the waves of pleasure until I felt him stiffen beneath me, grabbing my hips and holding me onto him as he found his release in me.

"I love you," I whispered, finally moving my mouth gently against his, tasting his smooth lips.

He took my face in his hands. "I love you more than life itself, Sera."