Page 21 of The Crimson Princess (The Ravengale Chronicles #1)

Chapter sixteen

T oren fills his hands with my breasts, pressing them together, and licking, suckling, and plucking at my nipples to the point that I’m losing my mind.

“Toren, please.” My plea is raspy, barely audible.

“Stop proving you have willpower I do not.” I slide my hands under the cotton of his shirt, hot, taut skin as my reward.

“If I had any willpower where you’re concerned, princess, you wouldn’t be beneath me right now.” He reaches over his head to grab the tee.

“Satima,” I amend firmly, feeling the stab of the formal address. “I’m Satima. I know what headspace you’re in when you call me princess. And I don’t want you to be there right now.”

He cups my face and tilts my gaze to his. “Satima,” he says, a raspy quality to his voice, “but no matter what I call you, I’m still in the same headspace.”

“Which is where?”

“Here,” he says, and he kisses me, a rough, almost angry kiss, as if I’ve exposed something in him he didn’t want me to see. As if I see too much. It was a gift of my mother’s that she passed on to me. A gift I believe can make me a great queen. A gift I do not regret now with Toren.

I tangle fingers in his hair and I hate the way he tries to silence me with his kisses. I guess I’m not so submissive after all. With a rough tug, he drags his mouth from mine and stares down at me with unreadable intensity. “You think we shouldn’t be here. ”

“We both know we shouldn’t be here, but I don’t give two flying fucks. And neither should you.”

“I don’t,” I assure him. “Not even one flying fuck.”

“And if your father finds out?”

I laugh bitterly, thinking of the marriage bargain he’s made for me. “I might be seeking asylum in San Francisco.”

“We won’t let him find out, but you can always come to me.”

“You barely know me to offer such a thing. I could betray you. Or you could betray me.”

“I’m not going to betray you.” He leans in close, his breath on my lips. “And I know more about you than you think. I know you liked the taste of blood.”

My hand flattens on his face. “Liar.” Only I think it’s me who’s the liar.

He nips my lips again and laves the wound before kissing me, and the taste, God the taste of him and me as one, has me moaning and holding the back of his head. He tears his mouth from mine, inches back to look at me, amusement in his eyes.

His lips curl back and he shows me his fangs sharp enough that with a tiny scrape of his lip, blood pools.

He lowers his mouth and blood drops from him to me and I can’t seem to help it.

I catch it with my tongue, the taste as amber as his smell, as addictive as everything about him.

His tongue drags along mine in a seductive slide that has me moaning, my sex clenching and wet.

So very wet. I’m arching into him, every part of me on fire.

His mouth is on my neck, his teeth scraping there and some part of me fears I’ve been drugged with how much I want him to bite me, how much I need him to bite me.

But he doesn’t. He drags his mouth down to my shoulder, kissing me there, and everywhere, his kisses finding my belly right above my pants.

And suddenly, they are gone. I’m naked. He’s naked, deliciously naked. “Was that me or you?”

He laughs, another of those low, deep, masculine laughs that manages to be as dark as it is alluring, and he settles between my thighs, his broad shoulders spreading me wide.

“It could have been me, but it was you.” He presses his lips to my belly and I quiver beneath his mouth.

“I see you came into your powers and still don’t know what they are.

Let me show you one of mine.” He eases downward and his breath is hot, so very hot, just above my sex, and I pant and squirm, arching upward and he doesn’t deny me.

His tongue licks at my clit, once, twice, and then he’s suckling, and I can barely breathe for the pleasure overtaking every part of me.

My head falls backward, my fingers curling around his hair, and if I thought he was a master at teasing my nipples, he’s just plain devious, teasing and pleasing my clit.

As if he knows exactly when I need more, his fingers slide inside me, and my hips are shamelessly pumping against him.

All the while his mouth is driving me over the edge.

A suckle. A lick. Another suckle and I’m shattering in a way I didn’t know I could shatter.

Every molecule of my existence feels the moment, and I tremble with such force I think I might break, but even that would feel good.

It’s only when I collapse in utter sated bliss, that he shifts my legs and our bodies, joining me, his back to the couch, me to his front.

His thick erection between my thighs and I’m no longer sated at all.

I haven’t even come close to sated. My hand settles on his shoulder, and I’m remotely aware of the tattoo there, his royal crest I cannot fully make out, and it’s not what is on my mind now.

“Now I know what your superpower is,” I murmur, and this moment is the most intimate we’ve shared, even over him between my legs. We’re both naked, our bodies fully aligned and I can feel him everywhere.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he says, but when he leans in to kiss me, my fingers press to his lips.

“You’re not cut. There’s no mark or blood.”

“Neither are you. We both healed.”

“That’s a vampire thing.”

“Yes. That’s a vampire thing.” He catches my fingers and settles my hands on his chest, even as he kisses me.

Wildly, roughly, a hunger in him that devours me.

And I meet him stroke for stroke, just as hungry for him as he is me, my body raging for what I have not had.

Him inside me . There is nothing gentle in the way he touches me, the way he drags my leg over his hip.

He’s in fuck mode, and this is exactly what I wanted from him.

He’s acting on instinct, not the will of his crown.

I want it. I want him. All of him, not the controlled version of the vampire king. I want none of his restraint.

I reach between us, and wrap my hand around his cock, I have not had the opportunity to fully appreciate and he does not disappoint.

He’s big, incredibly big, in fact, and hard as steel.

He groans with my touch, and I’m empowered by how easily I do this to him.

I press him along the slick seam of my body, and arch into him.

He growls low in his throat, and reaches down, covering my hand with his, and presses inside me.

I gasp with the feel of him, hard and thick, and a moment later, he drives deep.

I’m panting when he cups my head and kisses me, my fingernails digging into his shoulder.

He scoops my backside, and rocks with me this time, and there’s nothing but heat and desire between us, to the point I think we might explode.

It’s Toren who slows us down, settling into a sexy, seductive dance, our bodies swaying together. His hand strokes my hair, my breast, my waist. My fingers run over the outline of the seven stars on his shoulder that represent so much more than his kingdom to me. They are him and he is them.

“You’re beautiful, Satima,” he murmurs, his fingers curling around a long strand of my brown hair.

And just as he’d said to me, I turn things around on him. “I don’t scare you at all, do I?”

“You scare the hell out of me, but in the best of ways.”

Before I can press for what that means, he dips his mouth to my neck, kissing me there but I can feel the scrape of his teeth again, can feel the hunger for blood in him, maybe in me, too.

I cup his head, silently offering no resistance, but another growl rumbles from him and he shifts me to my back, his powerful body settling over mine.

And he is beautifully male, his muscles flexing with the pump of his body into mine.

Pleasure rips through with the thrust of his cock, but I try to keep my eyes open, desperate to watch his expression, the flex of his jaw, the flash of his teeth, the complete, utter, abandon of anything but what he feels with me.

But it’s a hard-fought battle, and my eyes flutter shut, every pump of him inside me, sending me further over the edge until I’m shattering all over again, squeezing his cock, and pulling him with me.

I hear the guttural sound that rips from his throat a moment before his face is buried in my neck, as his body quakes on top of mine.

For a few beats we just breathe together, until he whispers, “You okay, princess?”

Satima , I think in my mind, but I accept the barrier that is perhaps necessary. We shouldn’t be here. We just— are . “If you’re asking if the regrets have kicked in, the answer is no. What about you?”

He’s still a moment, and then he rolls to his side, shifting me with him, his back to the couch again and me facing him. “No regrets,” he assures me.

My hand lands on his tattoo, and my gaze follows, and I’m instantly spellbound by the ink on his shoulder.

It’s a crescent moon almost curiously not so unlike that of our village, with seven stars resting in the curve.

I trace the design and when my eyes lift and meet his I say what I’d thought earlier, “It’s a royal crest of your family. ”

“It’s more than that to me. It’s my kingdom, that both my mother and father died protecting. That I will protect with all that I am, including my life.”

There are whispers about what happened to his mother, too many varied stories to know what is truth and what is lies but I have this sense I shouldn’t ask.

Instead, I feel a tiny divide between us, and the reason I’m here crashes upon me.

“As I will protect mine with all that I am, including my life.”

He must sense the change in me, as he brushes my hair from my face, and drags my gaze to his. “Why did you come? ”

“You probably don’t want to talk about this while we lie here naked.”

“Maybe naked is exactly the way we need to talk.”

“No. No .” My fingers curl on his chest. “It’s late and my father warned me not to leave the castle. I need to get back.”

He presses his forehead to mine. “If that’s what you want.”

“You know it’s not what I want. It’s…necessary. I think you know that, too.”

“Unfortunately, I do.” And just like that, we’re dressed. “Yes,” he says, confirming whose magic dressed us. “That was me.” He eases us upward, but doesn’t move away. We sit side by side on the couch and dread fills me at what I have to tell him.

Because I know the next few minutes have the potential to place our worlds at war.