Chapter 57: Fifty Seven
Lucien
She comes to me like she always does at night.
Much as I wish it, much as I yearn for it, I know it isn’t my Erasthai. Only the thirsting dream of a mad man. Still, even the knowledge of it doesn’t make me want it any less.
She wears nothing, save for the silky, fiery mane tumbling down her shoulders. Skin pale as the moon and cold as death, beauty worthy of tunes even the bards sang only with reverence.
"Luke," she breathes, running those pale hands up my chest, trailing up my arm, and when she takes my wrist and brings it to her lips, I hiss sharply, feeling razor sharp fangs sink deeply into my vein. A slice sharp of agony amid bliss, the rush of desire amid grief, a pleasure darker than any sin of flesh.
Soon, too soon, her fangs leave my skin, leaving me aching and wanting.
"I miss you," she whispers, encircling my wrist with the bindings at the head of the bed. "I love you."
Her legs find either sides of my waist, straddling me, and she drops back her head, running those hands over her dizzying bare curves I know as well as my own, lips closing around my name as she squeezes her hardened nipples. "Lucien, please."
My hands snap against the bindings. "Release me," I say roughly, tears of sorrow running down my cheeks. "Let me touch you, Ilya. This once."
But I know what her response will be. She’s never said yes.
Her mouth falls against mine, urgent, and I taste blood. I taste jasmine. I taste death. I taste my ruin. The absence of a life stolen. And still, I fall deeper into the abyss, pleading for it to swallow me whole, if only I am able to keep her close like this.
Her body shivers as she leans harder into me, her fangs nipping my lips, my jaw, my neck. They sink in deeper, drawing blood from me, taking my essence, my will until they mold to hers and all I want is to be taken on the angel of death’s swift wings. To be with her. To perish with her.
Slowly, her kisses descend, delirious with hunger. Moaning softly, those bespelled fingers reach into my pants and tug me free. Pulsing, aching, hot in death-cold hands. I groan as she breathes against me, in and out, the cool air sifting across the tip until my hips begin bucking to the slightest breeze.
Holding me in those hands, jade green eyes darkened with thirst, she asks, with the slightest spark on anger flashing in her eyes, "Still mine?"
"Always," I whisper.
"Liar."
Then, those blood red lips part and take me into her hot mouth, and my back arches off the bed, wood groaning as I snap back against the bindings, needing to feel her supple skin in my hands. But it doesn’t matter how hard I pulled, I could never be free of her.
For all the power I possess, I am powerless.
Her hand stroke against me mercilessly, her lips, her tongue weaving a tale that spoke ownership and possessiveness in the wickedest of ways.
Her rage knocks into me and I take it, all of it, as she drags deeper into a fiery hell. Never was she this mad. Never was she this cruel. And I deserved it. Because I’d begun to forget. I’d begun to let an outsider make me forget.
She keeps at it until all I know is the feel of her mouth, the sound of her moans as she takes me deeper and deeper, until I cannot stop my fall. And then, I feel it again. Her fangs on my hip bones, sinking in until I quicken. On my thighs. And I roar, alive, in pain and thick pleasure when they pierce through the vein in my cock, cruelly.
It is... incendiary. It is bliss. An ending I would accept without much fight.
And I still reel over the every edge of it, until I feel her hands on my chest, her legs caging me once more. And when she sinks herself onto my length, the word narrows to a single focal point of the stretch of her around mine.
Her pounding pulse screams my name, my beast smashing himself against the bars of its cage. Wanted to know her, own her, devour her, ruin everything for one last year, one last month, minute, seconds.
The binds on my left wrist snaps and I seize her neck, knocking our lips together as she parts her legs even wider, taking in inch after inch of me, with agonizing slowness.
I snarl, impatient, and my fingers tightens around her delicate throat. "What have I said about teasing me?"
She sighs surrender against my mouth and my hips slam against hers at last, slow and hard and deep as I can go. Her entire body shudders and she bends lower, pebbled breasts running against my chest, her hips grinding against me with a filthy moan.
And I feel it then, the slight shift, the lengthening. And she cries against me, pleading for more. Pleading to go harder. I am lost in her heat, sinking deeper to the hilt with each stroke and trying not to lose myself utterly as she leaks down my thighs.
Little more than a raging beast now, I pull her back against me, over and over again, the sound of our flesh slapping as loud as her cries, loud as the cracks echoing in the bedframe, the walls.
Her skin shines with the beautiful sheen of sweat, toes curling, spine arching. And her eyes meet mine, glazed with heat and hate and love and anger, and she bares her teeth at me in an impervious snarl as she begins quivering against me.
And just because I’ve had enough of her torture, I bring my teeth to her chest. And bury my fangs into the spot above her heart.
She screams, thrashing hard. But the world was blood and fire and passion and all her want soaking through me, filling me to the brim.
I am lost in the rush of her. I do not know when it ends, the dream.
However, when my lashes flutter against the morning sun filtering in through my windows, I turn and freeze, realising I am not alone.
Someone stirs against my chest, nuzzling deeper into my neck and my breath catches violently at the sight of rose gold hair.
No.
I sit up so fast, she falls off me. And I’ve never felt such horror.
I do not know where to look at first. The bruises scattered across Valka’s naked skin. Or the blood running down her thighs, onto my sheets.