Darkness Burning (17 page)

“Lie over me. I can take your weight. You’ll want to be free to handle me.”

Miki made a face, feeling awkward and frustrated, then something hot and moist stroked over her swollen clit. She gasped and bent over him, eager now to taste him, as he was tasting her. But there was so much of him.

“Lick your palms and slide them around me,” he said, his voice taut. “Don’t be afraid you’ll exert too much pressure. So long as you don’t try to wring me like a dishrag, I swear I’ll like it.”

Miki did as he suggested, wetting her palms, then reaching for the long, thick shaft thrusting from a nest of dark curls. How grotesque and oddly lovely it all was. Below his shaft lay the sac with two hard stones, so vulnerable, so suddenly appealing. She cupped the sac and leaned low to inhale his musk and feel the softness of his skin and hair against her cheek. She gave him an experimental lick and was rewarded with a husky groan.

Encouraged, she opened her lips and sucked one ball into her mouth.

Alex’s thighs widened and his hips lifted, his cock sliding under her chin as she mouthed him, laving his ball inside her mouth as tension shivered through his thighs. She let him go, then cupped his sac and opened her mouth wider to take both inside, gobbling them delicately with her teeth shielded behind her lips.

Again, Alex moaned, and a muffled, desperate laugh gusted against her moist flesh. Then he speared into her, lapping at the cream flowing in a trickle to greet his ravaging tongue.

Miki tilted her hips, scooting into his mouth, wanting him
deeper. Her pussy spasmed, caressing his tongue, and he murmured against her, the soft sound vibrating.

Knowing now how delicious sound felt, she let her own voice go, moaning freely as she tugged and licked at his balls, growing so excited herself that she had to taste the rest of him. She moved up to smooth her cheek along his shaft.

When she was looking down his length, she knew she could only take so much of him inside, but she didn’t want to disappoint. She knew instinctively that she had to warm every inch of his cock, like a moist, hot cunt swallowing him whole. So she wet her palms, set one hand atop the other, and sank her mouth over the tip, squeezing her hands up and down his satiny, veined shaft.

Alex’s legs shifted. He planted his feet firmly in the mattress and began to pump into her mouth, countering her downward glides to force himself deeper into her mouth. He glided along her tongue, butting the back of her throat as she twisted her hands and pumped them up and down.

So enthralled was she with her efforts that she almost missed the moment when his fingers entered her vagina, thickness filling her at last, hard knuckles twisting in her hot tissues, coaxing more liquid excitement from her depths as he pushed in and out, all the while giving her clit a wild lashing of his tongue.

Miki sobbed around him. His cock thrust into her and saliva built inside her mouth, until the urge to swallow couldn’t be ignored. She did so and discovered that the movement caressed his blunt crown. So she did it again and knew she pleased him when his thrusts quickened.

His strokes deepened, nearly gagging her, but she opened her throat, finding she could accommodate more of his length,
and she relaxed around him, suctioning her lips around his shaft as he did the work, fucking in and out of her mouth while she braced herself to hold still above him.

When the rhythm of his thrusts grew a little erratic, almost frantic, she knew he was close, so she reached beneath his cock and kneaded his balls, reveling in the wildness that tightened his whole body as he bucked beneath her.

Low, guttural grunts gusted against her sex as his mouth fell away from her pussy, his release making him selfish in those last moments.

Miki didn’t care; she held onto him, swallowing again to encourage him. Finally she felt the hot jets of his orgasm streaming into her throat.

She gulped it down, her breaths labored, choked, but she wouldn’t let him pull away as he tried to do. Instead, she squeezed his balls and drove her mouth downward, taking him, forcing him to completion.

When his thrusts finally slowed, she bobbed slowly over him, soothing him with her gliding tongue and lips, before coming slowly off his cock and dragging in deep, reviving breaths.

Alex shuddered beneath her, his hands stroking her bottom aimlessly. “
Goddamn.
”

Miki smiled, knowing how he felt. Completely wrung out. Boneless. She lifted her leg, ignoring his resistance, and climbed off him, rolling to the side to look up his body as she braced her head on one hand and caressed his cock with the other. “How’d I do?”

Alex speared her with an incredulous glare. “If it had been any better, I would have been incinerated.”

Miki gave him a cheeky grin. “You, however, fell down on
the job.”

His eyes narrowed and he rolled up to sit, pushing her hand from his cock. “An oversight I’ll take care of now.”

Miki squealed when he suddenly came to his knees and grabbed her thighs, jerking them apart. When he pushed two pillows beneath her hips, the blood rushed toward her brain, leaving her head swimming for a moment.

Sunlight gleamed brightly through the window and directly at her open pussy.

Alex’s thumbs spread her inner lips and he stared. “You have no idea how much I wish I could bury myself right here.”

“I’m wishing it too. Can’t we?”

Alex shook his head regretfully, then reached for the pot of aloe. He twisted off the lid, dipped two fingers inside, and painted her lips again. “When you’re recovered, I promise to fuck you raw again. Often.”

“Sounds like you plan to be around,” she said lightly, but hoping with all her heart it was true.

“Baby, I’m never letting you go.”

N
ico, stay a while with me,” Innana said, patting the plum-colored cushion of the love seat beside her.

Nicolas stiffened. Since the night his small army of
Revenants
had swarmed
Ardeal
, Inanna had remained distant, her communications with him brittle, her long gazes assessing and filled with distrust. He preferred it that way, not liking the fact that he and Chessa shared the same roof with the woman who’d been party to his turning, his blood-mate. He feared she would try to wield her power over him to force a tear in his deepening relationship with Chessa.

Did she know Chessa had escaped? His presence had been requested in Inanna’s bedroom suite. In the room he shared with Chessa, Nicolas left the bathroom door locked in case anyone checked.

“Pasqual,” Inanna said, without looking behind her. “Leave us.”

Pasqual’s already dour expression darkened as he shot a bitter glance Nicolas’s way, but he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Sit beside me. I don’t like it when you loom.”

Nicolas would have liked to use some excuse to escape. The look on Inanna’s face was one he knew too well. She wanted sex. His brand of sex.

Since Chessa had reentered his life, Inanna had seemed obsessed with having what he gave Chessa. Did she think that he would love her as much if she let him dominate her like Chessa preferred? Didn’t she know that the dynamics of his relationship with Chessa had been built on trust and an attraction that had grown despite a lack of supernatural blood-bonds?

“Inanna, I really should get back to the guests. We aren’t finished questioning them.”

Inanna’s dark gaze speared him. “You’ve found nothing.”

Nicolas nodded. “That’s true. Nothing that tells us who was the last person with Erika. The blood trail was destroyed, and her body wasn’t discovered until several minutes past the moment of her death. The killer had time to bathe away the blood.”

“He chose his victim well. So many scents contaminated her—all working to diffuse his. He’s very clever.”

“I’ve told my team to work in pairs and never let the other out of sight. It must be one of us. The
sabat
is clear of suspicions, so too the guests brought in for the party.”

“One of us,” she said, toying with her black choker. “Any of us. For all you know, it might be me.”

“I think The Devourer is a man.”

“Why are you sure?”

“Because Erika straddled him, fell off him backwards. I think if she’d been with a woman—”

“She would have knelt in front of her or vice versa. You’re right.” Her hand dropped from her necklace and her liquid brown eyes pleaded with him. “Nico, I’m afraid.”

Some of Nicolas’s wary caution bled away. He blew out a deep breath. “So am I.”

“This brings back all those memories. Of the last time he escaped. Of sweet Anaïs—and your brother.”

Preferring not to wallow in his own pain and remorse, he changed the subject. “Have you spoken with any of the council members since it happened?”

“They’ve taken to their rooms, preferring to keep to those they know. They think I’m completely incompetent.”

“What about the wolf?”

“She was shown her room earlier, and a guard was placed at her door. For her protection, of course.”

Nicolas snorted. “She didn’t seem the sort to need it.”

“She’s imposing, is she not?” Her gaze slid sideways, a calculating gleam in her eyes. “Did you find her beautiful?”

“She wasn’t to my taste,” he said carefully.

Inanna stretched her arms across the back of the love seat. The gesture plumped the tops of her breasts rising above the edge of her sari. “Am I…still to your taste?”

Nicolas felt a slight heaviness invade his cock and ruthlessly ignored it. “Inanna,” he said, tired of playing games, “what do you want?”

“You…like you’ve always been with me. I’ve missed you,” she said, her voice girlish and lilting. “I was angry with you, but I’m over it. I understand why you and your little army rose
up against me.” Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “I think I was even aroused by it.”

He shot her an incredulous stare. “You were aroused by my insurrection?”

“It took courage, and you know how I admire a fearless man.” She trailed a finger over the tops of her breasts, then scraped one nail downward, tugging the edge below her nipples. “I would have you love me now. I would know your heart is still mine.”

But I love Chessa!
he wanted to shout. Inanna knew it, but she still insisted on carving out a piece of his heart for her own—drawing him back with subtle threats and tugging at his emotions, reminding him of what they’d been to each other for centuries.

Knowing well that Inanna might take revenge on Chessa if he refused her, Nicolas was well and truly caught.

“Why are you still dressed?” he asked, lowering his voice to a growling rasp—due not to arousal but rather to his own frustration with the situation. Let her interpret his actions however she chose.

Inanna’s eyes widened; her nostrils flared. She rose quickly, unwinding her sari from around her body and letting it drop at her feet. She assumed a subservient posture with her head lowered and her hands cupping her sex.

Nicolas sighed. Her thighs were already slick, and yet he’d have to work up a hard-on to give her what she wanted. Strange, but this was the first time in their long lives together that he didn’t find her naked body attractive.

Her skin was too burnished—he much preferred Chessa’s pale, creamy color. Her dark, oval nipples with their long
stems weren’t the shy pink tips he loved to coax into spikes. Nothing about her body stirred him.

But he could never let Inanna guess. Her wrath would be deadly.

Nicolas stood and unbuttoned his shirt, shrugging out of it. He stripped away his shoes and trousers, then stood with his flaccid cock dangling, giving her a look that dared her to do something about it. “I think I’m bored, Inanna. Unless you can stir me, I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you what you wish.”

Inanna stared at his cock, her expression darkening, then suddenly growing detached—

“You cannot cast for me!” he bit out. “I forbid it.”

Her eyes blinked, and her gaze, when it met his, was anguished. “I never thought I’d need it,” she whispered. “Not with you.”

“Perhaps I’ve learned some control. You know how I love to be in control. I need persuasion.” He fisted his hands on his hips. “Wet persuasion. Your tongue and lips, servicing me.
Now.
”

Inanna’s shoulders straightened and her face tightened. Nicolas knew her first reaction was to balk, to fly at him for his insolence. She was the Born of this relationship, but her body began to tremble, and her nipples sprang taut and dimpled. Arousal flooded her body, heating the air around them, carrying the scent of her need wafting in the air.

She strode toward him, then slowly sank in front of him to rest on her knees with her head bent. “Tell me what pleases you,” she said softly in her musical voice.

Nicolas closed his eyes, remembering how they’d been together. Centuries of loving, centuries of her manipulating him
to her will. “Use only your mouth. Start with my balls. Make them ache.”

Inanna’s shoulders lifted, her mouth firmed, but she obeyed, lifting her face to nuzzle aside his penis and engulf one testicle with her wet mouth.

He braced his legs, widening them to provide her access. “Must I describe in detail what you have to do to arouse me?”

She murmured around him, laved his ball with her tongue, and tugged gently with her lips, suckling him.

Nicolas closed his eyes, drawing on his memories—of Inanna reaching for Chessa’s belly at the moment she discovered her pregnancy. Remembering the cold fear that held him frozen, he kept his cock from reacting to the sweet heat of her mouth. He opened his eyes and pinned her with a hard glare.

For several long moments she continued to suckle. Then she opened her mouth wide to suck the other testicle inside. Her gaze lifted to his and widened.

Did she read his rage? Did she know how he wished that any other woman knelt before him? That her mouth on his body no longer gave him pleasure?

Her teeth raked a testicle, drawing blood, but he wouldn’t allow himself to flinch. “How clumsy, Inanna,” he grated.

She opened her mouth, releasing him, and glanced away. “Forgive me.”

For what? Scraping his ball? Or was she apologizing for causing the rift that grew ever wider between them with each passing day?

“Perhaps you haven’t the expertise to pleasure a man. You have only to command him, to cast your allure, and he’ll do your bidding. You’ve become lazy.” He stepped back from her and her reaching hands.

Inanna’s eyes glittered and narrowed, then swept sideways as though to hide her true thoughts. “I’ll do whatever you wish. Show me how to please you.”

Nicolas leaned down and thrust his hand into her hair, pulling back her head so that she was forced to meet his glance. “I think I can only take from you. After all, you trained me.”

Her tongue wet her lips. Her eyelids dipped. “Take from me, then. Whatever you wish.”

He pushed her back. “Go to the bed and wrap your hands around the rail at the foot of the bed. Bend over so that I can see how much you want me.”

She rose slowly, awkwardly, for once. Her feet shuffled toward the large ebony bed, with its slender, scrolled bedposts and rich silk covering, as though her mind raced before her, wondering what he would do.

“Don’t look back. I won’t be pleased.”

He went to her closet, pulling gowns from hangers until he found one particularly beautiful silk gown with layers of scarves that floated from a banded waist. He ripped several of the scarves away and approached her from behind, reaching past her shoulders to tie her hands to the rail, then arranging her body to receive him.

Pressing between her shoulders, he forced her head beneath her stretched arms, then shoved apart her feet so that his view was unimpeded.

Her bare pussy glistened with moisture; her small dark hole glinted just above it. Looking at her bent, subjugated, willingly offering him anything he chose, Nicolas felt a stirring in his cock. He allowed it to rise at last, anticipating the clutch of her silken muscles all along his shaft as he hammered into her body.

Would he let her come? Could he control his own rising passion to prevent her from taking her pleasure? Nicolas wasn’t sure how deep the anger was that rode him now. He’d savaged her body once before. He’d hated himself for it afterward.

Still, the urge to punish her was hard to ignore. He glanced at the trousers he’d abandoned, his gaze narrowing on his leather belt. He strode toward it, pulled it slowly from the loops, placed the buckle in his palm, and wound the leather around his fist.

Inanna glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widening on what he held in his hand.

“Will you cry out?” he said tonelessly. “Will you call for Pasqual to rescue you?”

“Nico.
No!
” she pulled against the restraints, wriggling wildly as he approached.

Her distress was a lie. She was strong enough to break free, to rip the silk to shreds if she truly feared him. Instead, her body trembled with anticipation.

Nicolas’s lips pulled back from his teeth and he raised his arm, swinging downward to deliver the first stinging blow to her buttocks.

Inanna froze in shock.

Nicolas waited to see how she would react after she processed the fact that he’d actually struck her. Their centuries-long affair had taught him a lot about her desires. Only recently had he discovered her need to be dominated, her fascination with pain.

“Shall I give you everything you deserve,
Mistress
?” he said, snarling as he gave her the formal address she’d demanded when they’d been in company.

“Will you be ruthless?” she whispered.

“If that is what it takes to teach you, I will not be ruled.”

Inanna’s teeth bit into her lush, lower lip. “I have never taken instruction very well. As I am the one who should mold you.”

Nicolas whipped out his arm, stinging her with another slap of leather.

Her mouth gaped open, but her eyes slid shut. She paused as though savoring the lash.

“Why do you test my resolve? You have only to surrender to me,
Mistress
.”

Her gaze met his, her lips lifting in a strained smile. “If I am weak, you will not be impressed with my courage.”

“And you think that if you allow me to stripe your sweet ass that I will be impressed?”

“Won’t you?”

Nicolas wanted to wrap his hands around her neck and shake her. She’d forced him to do this, but now he wished she’d release him. Rage made his body tremble. “Perhaps I will be destroyed.”

“Because you have always been gentle?” she taunted.

“I will hate myself because being with you, whatever I do, will sully the memory of our love.” He didn’t specify whose love, but she knew.

“But you have no choices here, do you, Nico? If you do not love me, you risk my displeasure. And it is only my pleasure that keeps her alive.”

Nicolas shuddered, fighting the urge to tell the witch that Chessa was no longer hers to play against him, but he needed to delay that revelation for as long as possible. Until he’d found the monster and could clear the estate of the
sabat
.

If he was dutiful, duplicitous enough to fool her into be
lieving he still loved her, there might be a chance that he and Chessa could remain together. Long enough that Alex could wrest leadership of the coven from Inanna.

Nicolas knew now that Alex coming to power was their only chance at living in peace.

He pulled the strap tighter around his fist. He’d give her what she wanted. What she craved from him. Later, he would beg forgiveness from God for relishing the task so much.

A soft cloth swept between Miki’s legs, bringing her instantly awake.

“Like that, do you?” Alex murmured next to her ear.

The terry cloth gently abraded her flesh, a reminder of their sexy play. Embarrassed, Miki muttered and rolled to her stomach, burying her head in her pillow and pretending to sleep.