She leaned forward, pressing her breasts to my chest, hands braced against my arms, and brought her lips to my throat.
First, she licked up what had dripped down my neck, starting at my clavicle and traveling up, ending with a little twinge of pain as her mouth pressed to the open wound.
And then she drank.
My breath was a little shaky, my fingers tightening into her flesh. My muscles tensed.
No one had ever fed from me since... since Neculai, or Simon and the other nobles he had loaned me out to. I’d never, ever allowed it since then, not even with consensual lovers long after. My skin didn’t scar as easily as Oraya’s did. Those fangs didn’t leave any marks on my throat. But centuries later, I still felt them. I’d never let anyone open those wounds ever again.
My body remembered that, tensing in anticipation, even if my mind knew differently.
But from the moment her mouth touched my skin, I knew right away it was different with her.
I thought she would make me remember, even briefly, those old wounds. Instead, every stroke of her tongue repainted them with something new.
This wasn’t Neculai or Simon or any other of the countless unwanted invasions to my body.
This was her. Oraya. My wife.
It was almost funny at first, how tentative she was. Her tongue lapped awkwardly against the wound like a kitten at milk, like she didn’t quite know how to drink. Still, my flesh seemed to open for her, as if I was intrinsically made to give her this.
“You don’t have to be gentle.” I couldn’t help it—a hint of amusement slipped into my voice. “You won’t hurt me.”
Alright, maybe the weight of her body against my wounds did hurt a little—but I wasn’t going to complain about those breasts against my chest.
She pushed deeper against my throat, taking my advice to heart. With a long, rough inhale, she drew in a mouthful of my blood, and swallowed.
Her exhale was a groan against my flesh.
Fuck, I echoed it.
I hadn’t known if Oraya had venom. I would have thought she didn’t, without the fangs. But this—this did something to me. Something very different than what the venom of other vampires had, drugging me in sickening ways.
I didn’t know if it was venom, or her tongue, or just the intoxication of having her naked body straddling mine. Suddenly, nothing in this world mattered except for her, and her mouth, and the scent of her desire, thickening with every passing second.
Her tongue rolled against my throat again, with a tiny sound of pleasure I didn’t think she realized she had made. My head tipped back, giving her better access. Her body had melted against mine. Her back arched, thighs opening.
I was so hard it was physically painful. The only thing I was conscious of other than her mouth and her exhales of pleasure was the fact that her slit was so fucking close to my cock, it would take barely a tilt of her hips to lower herself onto me.
She was drinking so fast that she choked a little, pulling away with a tiny spatter of coughs. I tilted my head just enough to look at her, and the pure lust on her face—eyes heavy-lidded, lips swollen and parted, a trickle of red-black smeared at the corner—left me vaguely dizzy.
“Good?” I murmured.
Instead of answering, she kissed me.
My blood tasted salty and iron-strong. Different than hers had—not nearly as good, but better for the fact that I was lapping it off her tongue. The kiss was demanding, not waiting for breath, her tongue slipping into my mouth as she forced my head back.
Her hips lowered. Her sex ground against my length in one long roll, making my fingernails dig into her skin, a low wordless sound rolling from my throat.
“So you have my blood,” I murmured. “What else do you want, princess?”
Another roll of her hips answered my question. Fuck. I had never known what it was to need someone before I met her. I had always thought that kind of talk was silly and overdramatic.
No. I needed Oraya. Needed her, like another bodily function.
I knew what she wanted. She knew what she wanted. But I knew she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. The final vestiges of our game, shaky gates still in place between us.
So she whispered, against another desire-drunk kiss, “Beg.”
It was so damned easy to beg for her.
I pushed down on her hips—just enough so that my tip sat at the slick of her, so sensitive that I felt it tighten at the presence of my cock.
“Let me in,” I rasped. “Let me inside you. Let me feel you come around me. Let me watch you. Please.”
She let out a strangled sigh, pressed her mouth against mine, and lowered herself onto me.
When I disappeared into her wet warmth, everything else fell away.
Immediately, a sound tore from her throat, a mangled moan, and Goddess, it was the most incredible sound I’d ever heard. I thought I’d made myself forget it, put it out of my mind forever.
Stupid of me to even try. And hell, why would I want to? I wanted to drown myself in her. Drown myself in her sounds, her breath, her body—her blood.
She moaned again as she lifted herself off me, lowering again, again, hips rolling, helping me hit where she wanted me. Goddess, I loved it—loved the way she used me. My body still hurt, uncooperative in letting me take her the way I wanted to, but she was more than willing to take what she needed.
My hands trailed her body, memorizing the shape of every muscle, every expanse of skin, from the taut shape of her waist to the full softness of her ass. I kissed her, hard, swallowing all those breathtaking sounds—offering her all of my own.
Our pace was frantic now. Neither of us had patience for this. I wanted everything, and I wanted it now. With every time she took me inside her, grinding against me, allowing me to reach the deepest parts of her, I only wanted more.
I wanted to brand her.
I wanted her to brand me.
My hunger for her was suddenly insatiable, driven to a frenzy by the sensation of her sex around me, the scent of her desire, the taste of my own blood on her lips and the tantalizing scent of hers beneath that sweat-slicked skin.
She broke our kiss, gasping a curse against my lips as I drew her down against me roughly in one particularly deep thrust, her body spasming—and fuck, I almost lost it right there.
“Raihn,” she whimpered.
“Take it,” I rasped out. Knowing, somehow, exactly what she wanted. “All of it. It’s yours.”
She let out a fractured sound between a sob and a sigh of relief, and lowered her mouth to my throat again, drinking deep as she rocked around me.
When she pulled away again, blood smearing her lips, I chased her, desperate to taste her again however I could. But instead, she lifted her chin—exposing the elegant column of her throat.
I paused, a sudden absence of movement that made her tighten around me in protest.
She couldn’t be offering—couldn’t be asking me to—
“Take it,” she said, throwing my words back at me.