With a sound bordering on a growl, he leaned down and moved his lips over my cheek, making me shiver despite the hot water. “I’m in charge now. Your pleasure is mine. That little bite of pain, you like that? You just came, didn’t you, mate?”
Gone was the gentle lover. Well, he’d never been gentle, but he’d also never been like this. Dark, controlling, maybe a little bit of the Doms I’d read about in romance books coming off him.
But that bite of pain had been delicious and I wanted more. I widened my stance in the hopes of him giving me another stinging swat with that deliciously large hand. On my ass. Making me burn. Then he could lift me, fill me from behind. Fuck me again.
I didn’t ask. Didn’t say a word. Speaking those kinds of thoughts out loud was completely different from thinking them. Telling him what I wanted made me too… vulnerable. I couldn’t go there with him. I couldn’t give in.
He pulled back, that free hand of his roaming up and down my spine with a touch so gentle it made me shake.
“Nix,” I said, sobbing his name, needing more but unable to ask.
“Do you know why I got you all cleaned up?” he asked.
I didn’t care, but he kept talking anyway.
“So I can get you filthy dirty again.” He slipped his arm around my hips and lifted me, his knees coming between mine from behind. Opening my legs. Lifting my ass. He filled me in one smooth stroke, pinned me to the wall of the shower as he pumped into my body over and over again. “Later, we will find your mother. Fuck, we will save the fucking planet. But right now, I will save you. From yourself.”
I cried out his name again, needing this, needing everything he’d give me. Everything he’d take. I didn’t have to think, didn’t have to do anything but feel.
It was liberating. Freeing. For the first time since I’d arrived on Alera, I was free. Protected. Safe.
And later, when he finally, finally, laid me down in the bed and fucked me, slowly, kissing me, watching my face as I came apart in his arms, I let him have me. I hid nothing. I took him deep and clung and kissed and whimpered when he pulled out, separating us. My body needed his in a way I’d never even imagined. The pleasure of pulling his essence into myself as he came inside me made my eyes roll into my head like I was taking a hit of the deadliest, most seductive drug. I couldn’t stop touching him. Wanting more energy. More touching. More. Just more. Needing him.
And he gave himself to me. He thrust and groaned and worked his body to the verge of collapse. I watched his muscles shake with fatigue and his veins strain with exertion. I stared at his face as he came inside me, his expression—as I drained his strength and his seed—a mixture of pleasure and pain. Agony and triumph. And I couldn’t stop. My body had a will of its own. A hunger unlike anything I’d ever imagined.
He didn’t try to stop me. Didn’t ask me to stop. I took and took and took. And he gave.
When we both finally collapsed, unable to move, I knew I was in big trouble.
When I snuggled into his embrace and pressed every inch of my skin to his warmth? When I pulled his arm tightly around me and cuddled into him like he was mine? When he covered us both with a blanket and I trusted him enough to fall asleep in his arms?
Trouble.
Really big trouble.
7
Nix
I was on my feet blocking the ion blasters pointed at my mate before the door to Destiny’s room flew open and hit the wall. Or at least, I thought I was.
I expected to find her snuggled in the blankets behind me, still warm from our slumber. Sated. Looking at me with the sleepy eyes of a well-fucked female in the pre-dawn light. Like I was her world. Like she cared. Wanted me. Was happy that it was me in her bed and not some other male.
In
stead, my deadly mate was crouched on the end of her bed, naked and beautiful, her own weapon pointed at the intruders. I’d had no idea she even had a blaster. “Get out of my room.”
Three clerics stood there, scowling, ion pistols pointed right at me. They ignored her, apparently assuming she was no threat. Idiots.
“Get out. You have violated the sanctity of these grounds with your fornication and broken the initiate’s oath. You are henceforth banished from theses premises.”
The grin spreading on my face was impossible to contain. The young guard looked like he was about to piss himself. But the male behind him was ogling my mate, and that was not acceptable. “I am not an initiate,” I said.
“Not you,” he countered and pointed. “Her.”
Clearly these were not guards Elder Amandine had sent. They knew nothing of her meeting with the elder. Someone on the floor must have heard us and complained. These guys were the morals police.
“That her you are referring to is my mate. If you do not stop eyeing my mate, I will pluck your eyes from your skull and make you choke on them. Show her some respect.”