Page 50 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)
I should be fighting this, I told myself.
I should be screaming, fighting him, something.
I most definitely should not be rubbing myself over his cock, but gods this man made me feel incredible.
My arms strained against his unforgiving shadow bonds the secured my wrists and wrapped around my forearms, even as the ones that gripped my ankles pulled my legs further apart for him.
The thick, blunt head of him nudged against my entrance, slick with my own desire.
Every instinct screamed at me to fight, to clamp my legs shut, but the shadows held me open for him, and even if they hadn’t, I knew in my heart I would not have begged him to stop. Quite the opposite.
He looked down at me, his wide white eyes gleaming in the darkness with a lust so profound it was terrifying. I saw the battle in them, a flicker of something human warring with the predator that had hunted me through the night. For a heart-stopping second, I thought he might pull back.
But the predator won.
With a guttural groan that was more animal than man, he drove into me with a single, brutal thrust, tearing a cry from my throat that was equal parts pain and pleasure.
He was huge, filling me, stretching me past my limits, and every inch of him inside me was a violation and at the same time a feeling of completion so intense I could hardly bear it.
He paused, buried deep inside me, his powerful body trembling with the effort of holding back. His forehead pressed against mine, his breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps. The shadows squeezed my limbs tighter, as if sharing in his possessive triumph.
The shadows that held me seemed to tighten in response to his pleasure, locking me in place as he began to move.
His rhythm was merciless, a savage, driving pace that was meant to break me, to erase every thought from my mind except for him.
He was a force of nature, a storm I was trapped in the eye of, and all I could do was endure.
But it was more than endurance. With every powerful thrust, a dark, coiling heat built low in my belly, a pleasure so intense it was agonizing.
He watched my face, his strange eyes burning with a possessive fire, and I knew he could see it.
He could see me coming undone for him. And he smiled.
It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a predator that had finally cornered its prey.
It wasn’t lovemaking. It was an invasion, a conquest. Each piston-like stroke was a word in a language my body understood even as my mind rebelled.
Mine. Mine. Mine. His hands gripped my hips, fingers digging into my flesh as he set a punishing, frantic rhythm.
I was nothing but sensation, pinned between the unyielding bark of the tree and the hard, driving force of my captor.
The world narrowed to the feel of him inside me, the sound of our ragged breaths, and the sight of his face, a mask of savage concentration as he drove us both toward a precipice I was terrified to reach.
My hips bucked against his, a rhythm of their own that I couldn’t control, chasing a release I was ashamed to want.
He grunted, a sound of guttural approval, and his pace quickened, becoming a frantic, desperate pounding that was aimed at my very soul.
A sob broke from my lips as the pleasure coiled too tight, too fast, becoming indistinguishable from pain.
He bent his head, his mouth claiming mine in a savage kiss that stole what little breath I had left.
He drank my moans, his tongue tangling with mine as his hips hammered into me, faster, deeper.
The coiling heat in my belly tightened into an unbearable knot.
My vision swam, the dark shapes of the trees blurring into a single, swirling vortex with his face at its centre.
I was breaking, splintering into a thousand pieces under his relentless assault.
A sob tore from my throat, a sound of utter surrender.
That was all the encouragement he needed.
With a final, brutal thrust that felt like it touched my very soul, he pushed me over the edge.
My orgasm was a violent, consuming fire, ripping through me with a force that made my back arch and a scream tear from my lips, muffled against his mouth.
The shadows holding me pulsed, tightening almost painfully as my body convulsed around him.
He roared into my mouth, a sound of pure, triumphant possession, and I felt the hot flood of his release deep inside me, a final, undeniable brand.
For a long moment, he stayed buried within me, his body shuddering with the aftershocks of his climax.
He buried his face in my hair, his warm breath on my skin.
The only sound was the rasp of our breathing in the sudden, ringing silence of the forest. The shadow bonds loosened, not releasing me, but slumping like tired serpents, and my body sagged against the tree, boneless and utterly spent.
He had taken everything. And the most terrifying part was that I had given it all to him willingly.
He pulled out of me slowly, and pressed his lips to mine in a kiss that left me gasping.
He knelt before me once again, and like last time, he held me gently as his tongue roamed over my skin, cleaning up the evidence of his release on my thighs, then my own.
It wasn’t long before I was coming again, but this wasn't the wild torrent like before but an intense almost soothing heat that spread though my body and left me trembling.
He stood, licking his lips, and began to dress me.
Once I was fully clothed, I felt the dark tendrils release me and without the support of the magic, I collapsed, my legs giving way as I slid down the rough trunk of the tree to land in a heap on the cold ground.
I was shaking and broken. He stood over me, his chest heaving, his strange eyes unreadable in the moonlight.
Grabbing a branch, I tried to pull myself up, but then his arms were under me and he was lifting me.
“I don't need you to carry me, I can walk,” I insisted, though both of us knew I was lying. He pulled me in close against his chest, and started back the way we’d come, back to the camp I’d left him in.
My mind felt as exhausted as my body, and I had no fight left in me tonight.
I laid my head against the warmth of his bare chest and let the rhythm of his smooth stride lull me to sleep.
The rain had been falling for three days straight, turning the mountain paths into treacherous rivers of mud and loose stone. Each step was a careful negotiation between my boots and the slick ground, and more than once I'd felt my captor's steadying hand on my arm when I started to slip.
We'd settled into a strange rhythm over the past two weeks, he and I.
Each morning I woke in his arms, my body still humming from his thorough attention the night before.
Each day we walked in companionable silence, the leather cord around my throat a constant reminder of my captivity even as it felt less and less like imprisonment.
Each evening he would find us shelter—a cave, an overhang, once even the ruins of what might have been a shepherd's hut—and we would share our simple meal before he claimed me again with gentle, devastating certainty.
I should have hated it. Should have fought him, plotted escape, maintained the fury that had driven me into the forest that night.
Instead, I was beginning to crave his touch, to anticipate the nights with a hunger that shamed me.
This man was my enemy, a monster who had stolen me from my mates, from my life.
Yet, in the dark, when his body was pressed against mine, he was the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved into chaos.
"Sythara falls from veridian," he said now, gesturing at the rain with one tattooed hand. His Common was improving daily, though he still struggled with complex phrases.
"Yes," I agreed. "Water falls from the sky. We say 'it is raining.'"
"Rain-ing," he repeated carefully, the unfamiliar syllable clumsy on his tongue. "This rain-ing makes walking... bad?"
"Dangerous," I corrected. "The rain makes walking dangerous."
"Dan-ger-ous." He tested the word, then nodded with satisfaction. "Yes. Dangerous."
Our conversations had become a daily lesson in language exchange, though I'd noticed he was far quicker to pick up Common words than I was with Talfen ones.
Sometimes I caught him using phrases that were too complex for someone supposedly learning from scratch, but when I questioned him about it, he would give me that unreadable look and change the subject.
There were so many things he wouldn't talk about.
Where we were going, why he'd taken me, what his plans were for when we arrived.
Any question that touched on his past or his intentions was met with silence or a distraction—usually of the physical variety that left me too breathless to remember what I'd asked.
But in the small things, the daily exchanges that made up our strange journey, he was becoming almost..
. companionable. He would point out interesting plants and teach me their names.
When I stumbled, he would catch me with gentle hands and a soft word of reassurance.
At night, when he held me close, I could feel some tension leave his powerful frame, as if my presence brought him the same strange peace it was beginning to bring me.