I reach down, untying her ankles as Mateo seems to thrash against the door now, and flip her onto her back.
She’s completely flushed, staring up at me with rounded eyes, and I wait a beat for her to pull away. To stop giving me everything I want, the worst things I crave, as if she gets off on pleasing me.
That notion is fucking dangerous.
When she spreads her legs wider, glancing down at theKI’ve etched into her, she smiles.
It’s delirious, something she’ll regret tomorrow I’m sure, but I'll take it.
Bending down, I swipe two fingers over the wound, coating my fingerprints before laving my tongue over the sight. The fingers come down on her clit, smearing the blood there with a few circular motions, and my mouth follows the path, trailing up to her throat.
When I settle over her, she hooks her calves over my hips, and I work my dick free from my pants. Bloody kisses pepper her skin—around her navel, around both nipples, dotting her collarbone. She’s a fucking work of art, and I’m a greedy collector who doesn’t ever want this night to end.
“I didn’t know you were a vampire,” she whispers, the pounding on the door having ceased for now. Reaching between us, she takes my cock in her hand, shifting her hips so she can drag the crown through her cut.
Fisting the bedspread on either side of her head, I try to stave off the release teasing the base of my spine. “I’m so much worse, little one. You should think about that the next time you make a deal with the man they call Death.”
Positioning me at her entrance, she gives me a tiny shake of her head. “You’re not as bad as you want everyone to think.”
You don’t even know the half of it.
“Maybe you’re not as good as they say,” I challenge, pushing her hand away and shoving myself inside her tight, wet heat. Bottoming out, I take a deep breath, willing control into my veins even as she spasms around me. “Maybe we were made for each other.”
Her eyes glisten as I rock my hips, beginning a slow fuck that has both of us grunting and groaning, as if we have all the time in the world.
“But you can’t keep me,” she says, hands coming up to clutch at my biceps through my jacket.
“Doesn’t matter,” I tell her, my thrusts growing brutal, my pelvis crashing into hers as I chase our collective release. “You’re mine, my little Persephone. If not in this life, then at least right here and right now.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t you dare deny me, you little slut.”
My hand snakes up, groping her breast as it ascends, wrapping around her throat. I squeeze lightly, nostrils flaring as her gaze sparkles, and the sounds of our skin slapping together reaches an obscene volume.
Sweat drips from my forehead onto her chest, slipping down to mix with the blood there, and I feel myself unraveling.
White-hot ecstasy pools in my gut, and I redouble my efforts, pressing my cock against that spot that steals the words from her lips.
“Come with me,” I command, fucking her so hard that the mattress squeals in protest. My fingers tighten around her, but somehow it feels as though I’m the one being strangled. “Soak my cock so I can dump my fucking cum in your sweet little pussy.”
And JesusChrist, she does. She clamps down around me so tight that it feels like she’s trying to sever my dick from my body, and I see stars as my orgasm barrels through me, shooting up my spine as she digs her nails into my arms.
We’re a panting, disgusting mess of sweaty limbs when we’ve come down, and I collapse on top of her for a moment.
My brain seems to short-circuit, and it isn’t until I feel myself leak out of her that I roll away, withdrawing from her.
We don’t speak, we just stare at the ceiling in silence as the Christmas music from downstairs drifts beneath her locked door. After a few moments, I rake a hand through my hair and get to my feet, walking to the bathroom to clean myself up.
When I return, she’s fast asleep, her hair fanning out in a halo shape, her abused body on display for me to catalog and memorize.
I perch on the edge of the bed, dragging a warm washcloth between her thighs and then up over her stomach, erasing the evidence of our night together.
Applying a bit of salve to the letter on her thigh, I smooth a small bandage over the cut and reach for the notebook on her nightstand.
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing when I jot down the poem. Don’t know why I feel like I owe her more than I promised, and yet even when the ink hits the page, it still doesn’t feel like enough.
Something niggles in the back of my mind as I slip from the room and out a back entrance of the Ricci home, escaping detection as people gather in the courtyard for a toast.