Damien (20 page)

He could never hurt her. Not physically, not psychically, not emotionally. Not even when she had so clearly hurt him in all three ways. In spite of his roughness, his coarse words, and his raging, nothing he had done had hurt her.

Now she had to make up for not being as gentle with him.

She fought him for the first time, twisting her wrist free with lightning speed while she wrapped her leg around his left knee. She straightened her leg hard, collapsing the structure of the brace of his legs. He fell to the desired side, and she made sure she followed him down.

Damien’s backside hit the floor, and then, as her falling weight struck him, his shoulders went down onto the polished wood. As he moved to brace his feet, her bottom settled across his hips, and her hand went to his throat. She successfully pinned him in place with remarkable skill and strength. Even in his weakened state, it was quite an accomplishment to best him in such a way.

Before he could say a word, before he could move a muscle to attempt to throw her off him, she pushed his face aside and leaned forward across his chest. It exposed his neck to the strike of her mouth.

She had learned well, he realized as the warmth and dampness of her mouth closed over him in the most stimulating place available in that erogenous zone. It was a shock to his cold systems, all that warmth, but not as much of a surprise as the bite of her teeth that followed.

Damien fought the answering response of his body with the entirety of his will. He would not fall for this trick twice. He would not allow her to manipulate him whenever she wanted to, only to change her mind again later and leave him reeling and hurting. She already had too much power over him, and he would not allow her to have any more.

He reached up and grabbed her by almost the whole of her hair, squeezing his fist around the tendrils, which immediately began to squirm for escape. She gasped, breaking off her contact with his throat to lean her head back.

Only he had expected her to sit up away from him in the process. Instead, the arch brought her entire torso flush to his and caused her long throat to flash its pulse at him with tempting flirtation. It was different this time because it had not been by her design. The truth of the matter was he could not shut himself off from the effect she had on him.

Angry, with himself as well as her, he pried her clingy body off his, literally throwing her across the polished floor. She skidded nearly the entire length of the room, the friction burning her skin at several points. She sat up, trying to shake her head on straight as he scrambled to his feet.

“Stop making a fool of yourself, Syreena! You are a princess, for the love of—!”

“Oh, now all of a sudden that is important?” she barked back at him, gaining her feet and stalking right back over to him. Her approach was so volatile and aggressive that Damien was afraid she would find a way to touch him again. He did not know if he could bear much more of that, so he backed up in the path of her advance.

Until he hit the wall, at least.

The minute she had him cornered, she reached to thrust insistent fingers into the hair at the back of his head, and as she pulled him down, she thrust her body up against his.

She was able to capture his mouth.

Syreena did not kiss him for long, just with a hard seriousness that was sure to invade his senses and his memory in the quickest way possible. She broke away from him, placed her fingertips on his chest, and raked her nails down his bare skin with barely repressed violence.

He roared in outrage and pain, and then found himself glued to her mouth once more. She worked the kiss hard and hot and with unbelievable aggression. Damien’s entire world began to reel as he was assaulted by all the stimuli she was using to bombard him. He quickly found himself struggling along the border of those sides of himself which were civilized, and those which were not.

For a minute, he could not remember that he had taught her how to kiss. She was working on an instinct that had nothing to do with what they had learned together. It was wild and intoxicating, raping him of his will and his resistance just as she knew it would. She pulled him by his hair to break him away from her mouth, and he made a strangled sound that crossed between regret for her suddenly absent lips and fury for her assertive abuse.

Then she slapped him so hard that his head almost turned completely backward on his neck.

This time, when he sprang back to look at her, it was with a roar, a violent flash of aggressive fangs and raging attitude. He grabbed her with an animalistic snarl, flipping their positions against the wall with a slam of their connected bodies. She made a sound as the air rushed from her lungs, but it was clearly one of satisfaction and not protest.

She had pushed him where she had wanted him.

Too far.

Beyond thought, beyond pain, beyond the ability to do anything but act on the instincts he so heavily depended on. It was the only way she figured to make any progress with him. She needed the naked emotions and reactions. It was the only way to cut through the stubborn anger he was shielding himself with.

She witnessed her overwhelming success when he nearly wrenched her head off her neck in his blind bid to expose her vulnerable pulse.

His teeth were in and out of her skin in a flash, her blood pulsing hotly over his lips and tongue. The minute the feeding began, she knew he would not stop until he made up for the starvation he had suffered the past three days. He was beyond coherent thought, she knew, and nothing could change that once her potent blood began to fill his needs.

She reached for his clenched hands and put them on her body, bearing the bracing chill of them as she dragged them over her warm skin. She led him to her breasts, gasping raggedly as the cold contacted her nipples, making them contract in immediate response.

The feel of her hot skin, and then the sudden fullness of her breasts pressing into his hands, penetrated the haze of his hunger with a sharp, spearing intensity. It combined with the erotic narcotic of her chemistry sweeping over his tongue, wrenching his body into a new awareness and a brutal form of arousal that started from the inside and exploded outward. As his hands flowed over the flesh she had boldly invited him to, she groaned on a hitching breath near his ear.

As he was swept up in the spinning awareness that swirled through him, his hands split direction over her wonderfully soft skin. One hand remained at her left breast, feeling the weight and warmth of her, understanding that he had wanted to cradle her in this way for so long it seemed like he had been born with the craving. The other hand skimmed her breastbone and defined abdomen, sweeping wide around her ribs until he was coasting down over her hip, her sweetly rounded backside, and down to a slender, powerful thigh. He traced the line back, but on a totally different path, the feel of her bleeding sensation into him like sound vibrations that tripped across every nerve.

As his hand roamed her body in bold sweeping motions, she felt it warming and then superheating in temperature. She slinked against him, clinging to both his hands and his body in every way she could manage. All the while, the persistent sucking of his mouth was making her wild with shivers of delight and liquid with heat that could not be bled from her no matter how deeply he drank. Syreena reached to stroke her hands up his chest, her nails safely retracted this time because she just wanted him to feel her touching him as thoroughly as possible. His skin was smooth and incredibly firm, the coolness of it fading in increments with every searching stroke she visited against it.

It was an amazing experience in contrasts to feel him go from empty chill, to blushing warmth, to flowering heat. Better yet, her entire bare body was sharing in the swirling changes in temperature as it slid against him like poured water. Her fingers and palms heavily traced the etching of his musculature, starting on his chest and working out in wide, sweeping circles. His body was incredibly fit, firm and smooth, and the more she touched him, the more she craved him. The Lycanthrope Princess made it clear that she could not get enough of touching her Prince. When she had covered his bare skin twice, her hands slid down his spine and over the waistband of his slacks. Her fingertips traced the taut curve of his backside and the flex of his tightly braced thighs as far as she could without breaking the contact of his mouth drawing on her throat.

Damien felt as though she had lit him on fire. Between the work of his mouth and the work of her eager hands, he was consumed in flame. Her hands flowed forward, bracketing his hips, and then her fervent fingers slid deeply into the pockets of his pants, her palms turned toward his body. The moment she touched him through the thin fabric, he lurched into her light little body and sank his teeth into her a second time.

Syreena gasped as a familiar burn flowed through her neck, and an unfamiliar heat penetrated to her curious hands. He was massively aroused, a bold and thrusting hardness that begged for her touch. She slipped free of the confining pockets and, drawing back the waistband of his pants by a belt loop, she slipped an ambitious hand down the softly furred path of his lower belly.

Damien finally lifted his mouth from her, his head snapping back into an arch as he groaned with the magnitude of pleasure that her touch closing around him delivered. It was as if her touch were sweet venom, and this time she was the one who had struck quickly. An answering pulse of fresh heat and arousal pumped through him, and his hand closed with convulsive intensity on her squirming body. Between the explorations and the feeding, they were both lost in a heady high of sensation.

Damien and Syreena suddenly slid down the wall, landing in a twisted combination of hands and bodies. Syreena snaked herself around him in every way she could manage, and it was almost all Damien could manage just to help her by holding on to her.

He had craved her for too long, wanted her so much. Now she was invading him both inside and out, working a wicked feminine magic that could never have a measure. Damien reached to free himself from his clothing, finding her hands helping him as he slid free of the restrictive slacks, eventually allowing him to kick them away.

She was on her back, beneath his weight, and welcoming him to lie heavily against her. She slid her legs around him, pulling him down onto the center of her body, scraping her fingers through his beard as she reached to caress his ears and neck and back. She reached for him with her mouth, finding him more than eager to comply with her demand for a kiss. He was burning up with heat now, all of it hers in one form or another, and he was reeling with the sear of it. He felt her with every inch of his being as he scorched her in return with a violently passionate kiss. She was gasping for air in breathless little bursts that hummed down his spine.

He let her breathe, sliding down her sinful form until his mouth was coasting over every inch of her lavender-scented skin. He laved shoulders and neck, the insides of both wrists and elbows, and a path across her delicious belly. He briefly nipped at her hips on each side, then traveled a voracious track back up her rolling stomach and the ledge of her rapidly heaving rib cage. He suddenly shot out to catch her nipple between his teeth, sucking her with a deep, new hunger that made her squirm in shocking delight.

His work at her breast bordered on savage. She felt the telltale scrape of super-sharp fangs, the swirl of his tongue teasing her against the exposed canines in an astoundingly sensual stroke. She cried out, her hands gripping his shoulders as she moved in wild response.

Hmm, someone’s a little on the kinky side.

The thought flitting through her mind in his deep, speculative voice made her laugh in blind joy.

“Damien,” she uttered hoarsely. “Forgive me. Please…”

Damien closed his eyes briefly, then kissed her breastbone up to the little hollow in her throat. He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes. They were a combination of great passion and great anxiety. He could smell the adrenaline on her, the scent heady under the lavender.

“And if I do not forgive you, Syreena?”

“Then just make love to me,” she whispered, half in pain, half in pleading. “Even if it will ever be just this once. I don’t care anymore. I just know what I want, and I want you.”

“What part of me, sweetling?” he asked as he shifted forward against her, pushing so that he slid hot and hard through the slippery moisture just outside of the sanctuary that so impatiently awaited him. “This part?”

“Damien!” she gasped, the upward arch of her questing body returning his naughty caress measure for measure.

Damien clenched his teeth shut on a deep groan that shuddered violently out of him. He braced a hand on the floor, grasped her thigh firmly, and did the complete opposite of his intentions.

He meant to settle her down away from him, to give himself the space to hear the answers she still had not clarified for him. But he found that he could not do so. He could not leave her or remain outside of her any longer. He surged forward suddenly, sliding through a torrent of moisture and heat, pushing into devastating tightness of muscle made tighter by the unexpectedness of his breach of her body as she reacted to him. Syreena’s neck arched wildly, her shoulders half lifting from the floor as he made his remarkable invasion. She realized how little she had known or imagined about the reality of this moment. There was no describing such a thing, now or ever.

For a man with no true circulation, it was amazing how he seemed to pulse inside her. He was crafted as if to suit her needs, making their fit together a stunning lesson in the truth of fate and being two halves of a perfect whole.

“Sweet Goddess, I must have been mad,” she gasped as she writhed beneath him in blatantly honest pleasure.

Damien smiled at that, understanding the sentiment perfectly. She was precious and perfect for him, and nothing he did or felt would ever succeed in changing that.

He pushed a bit deeper into her, thrilling in both the way she felt and the way she reacted. The joining of their bodies was a bliss of perfection, and he almost could not bear to change it from exactly what it was.