She wanted to keep him there for as long as possible…
Forever, came the reckless whisper from her heart. The thought of Sorin being in her life, part of her future, was something she could hardly imagine. So why did it chase a streak of elation into her veins—a sharp ray of hope—to picture herself with him as something more than just another conquest, a wager he’d won as easily as any other he set out to claim?
He’d given her no promises tonight. Only the one that he’d made good on—her, in his bed, begging for him to make love to her.
And despite the bliss of lying naked in his arms now as he pressed her down beneath him and rolled her into his strong embrace, Ashayla struggled to remind herself that all they had was the rest of this night.
In the morning she would be faced with returning to Chicago as the fool who’d not only failed in her promise to bring the pendant back home for Gran, but who’d also left her heart behind at the House of Ebarron too.
CHAPTER TEN
Sorin let her rest a while in his arms before his appetite overcame him again and he had to make love to Ashayla once more. He took things slowly this time, the edge of his need less sharp, yet just as deep and consuming.
More so, now that he’d had a taste of her.
His sweet, responsive, utterly intoxicating Asha.
The energy he’d drunk from her orgasms was still buzzing inside him, a living thing. Her power would sustain him for days. Yet he thirsted again.
Would always thirst for her, a fact that he could hardly begin to deny.
His blood electrified, infused with the carnal energy she’d given him, Sorin extricated himself from her languid embrace and made it his solemn mission to kiss every curve and swell and hollow of her beautiful body. She arched and flexed like a cat under his roving lips and tongue, sighing in pleasure, murmuring his name as he descended down the smooth length of her abdomen.
Pressing his mouth to her sex, he cleaved the wet seam of her * and lapped at the swollen bud nestled in her soft folds. She moved her hips shamelessly against him, and the wanton little moan she let out as she climaxed a moment later was the most erotic sound he’d ever heard.
He entered her more slowly than he thought possible, if only to savor the ripples of her orgasm that undulated around his cock as he seated himself, inch by painstaking inch. They came together a few moments later, their cries of release mingled, gazes locked and intimate, as naked and open to each other as two people could be.
Sorin gathered her close as he rolled his weight off her, content to hold her in silence as she drifted into a soft, spent doze in his arms. She was Heaven to him, or as close as a demon like him could ever hope to come to that lofty place. Yet even without the perfect fit of their bodies, without the perfect harmony of the passion they’d found tonight, Asha made his thoughts of any other woman before her fade to utter insignificance.
Where other females, human and Nephilim both, had served to feed him all his life, it was this woman who stoked all of his hungers now. There simply wouldn’t be another for him, not like this. Not like her.
How the fuck had he let it happen?
How had he let her get past his defenses? It shouldn’t have been her, this Nephilim who’d piqued his curiosity and his ire with her dauntless campaign to reclaim her grandmother’s pendant.
The defiant would-be thief who then infiltrated his domain to take her prize by force or cunning. Or by the vial of Nephilim witchery she’d tucked beneath the mattress, assuming he wouldn’t notice it was there.
He smirked at the thought. She wasn’t the only one with secrets. Sorin reflected on the terms of their deal—one Ashayla had stood no chance of winning, from the moment she’d agreed to stay behind at the roulette table after Korda Marakel was shown the door.
The Master of Ebarron had never been a cheat in anything he’d done in his life. But as he held Asha against him now, after having rocked into her silken heat, reveling at how she had purred with pleasure and sighed his name, he could feel no remorse for what he’d done.
The covert signal he’d given to his croupier at the roulette table.
The one that had ensured he’d have this night with Asha, no matter what.
She thought she was wagering on the pendant, when Sorin would have traded his entire treasury to have her for just one night.
He couldn’t hold her to their deal now. In truth, he hadn’t intended to hold her to it from the moment she confided in him about her life back home in Chicago, when he’d seen the pain her mother’s madness and addiction had caused Asha.
But he couldn’t feel sorry for the time he’d stolen with her tonight either.