CHAPTER 96: NINETY SIX

Valka

I obey, instinctively, the salt of my own skin sharp on my tongue, my jaw working around his fingers. He pulls them out, slick with my saliva, and returns his hand between my legs. While his mouth works magic on my clit, those cool, saliva-slicked fingers find my entrance again. This time, he pushes one deep, curling it inside me, pressing against that spot that makes my vision grey at the edges. I buck against his face, a sob tearing from my throat.

"Feel that?" he rasps, lifting his head for a second, his chin gleaming. The white of his irises are non-existent. "Feel how perfectly you take me? Made for this. Made for my fingers. My tongue." He sinks a second finger inside alongside the first, stretching me, filling me, his thumb finding my clit.

My mouth falls open on a silent cry as he begins a relentless rhythm--fingers pistoning deep, thumb circling hard, his mouth returning to suck my clit into the wet heat of his mouth, tongue flicking rapidly.

Pleasure, unbearable and electric, coils tighter and tighter in my belly. My hips rock frantically against his face, against his hand, beyond my control. And I forget completely about my vow not to plead. Or speak. I’m babbling, nonsensical pleas and curses tumbling from my lips. "Luke... please... gods... yes... don’t... more..."

He pulls his mouth away just as the coil snaps taut. "Not yet," he snarls, his fingers stilling deep inside me, his thumb a punishing pressure on my clit. The edge of the precipice yawns before me, and he wrenches me back. The denial is a physical agony, a scream lodged in my chest. I sob, raw and broken, my body trembling violently.

"Look at me," he demands, his voice a whip crack. I force my eyes open, blurred with unshed tears of frustration. I didn’t realize when I closed them. His gaze holds mine, ancient and merciless. "Who. Do. You. Belong. To?"

I shake my head, the walls of my pussy closing around his finger.

He makes a choked sound, momentarily distracted. "Tight," he murmurs, staring once more at my pussy. "Will you strangle my dick like this, too?"

"Only if you promise you won’t talk me to death like you currently are. Fuck me or get the fuck away from me," I moan, squeezing tight around him again, hands finding his hair to pull him back where I need him.

He shakes me off, retracting his finger from inside me. I whimper in refusal, unwilling to let it go. I’m so close... Almost... There...

"Who do you belong to?" he repeats, voice stern.

The need is a living thing, tearing me apart. My defiance is a shattered shield. "You!" The word rips from me, ragged and desperate. "I belong to you! Please! Lucien, please let me... I need..."

"Good girl."

Two words and I feel more like royalty than I ever have since he put that crown on my head. Two words and my legs part wider. Two words and I want it hard, fast, against this tree, on the floor, anyhow he wants it. Everywhere.

He buries his face between my legs and sucks hard on my clit, his fingers surging inside me. In. Out to the very tip. In. Out. Fucking me. Stretching me. Curling perfectly.

"Oh, gods..."

The orgasm detonates. It’s not a wave. It’s a supernova, blinding and all-consuming. My body arches off the tree as much as his grip allows. A raw, guttural scream tears from my throat, echoing in the silent forest. Pleasure, white-hot and shattering, erupts from my core. My inner walls clench rhythmically, violently around his fingers.

And then, a hot gush, uncontrolled and shocking, pulses out of me, soaking his chin. I feel it, the release, the utter loss of control, the mind-breaking intensity of it as he drinks me in, groaning against me, his tongue still working, prolonging the convulsions that wrack my body until I’m boneless, held up only by the tree and his iron grip.

He keeps his mouth there, licking me clean as tremors still shudder through me. He slowly withdraws his fingers, the glide effortless with my slickness, and even if I’d only just climaxed, I want to do it all over again, my body tightening again with desire.

Worsened when without breaking eye contact, he sucks me off his fingers. The possessiveness in that gesture, in the way he savors my taste, is absolute.

"Every last drop," he murmurs, his voice rough. He rises, his hand fisting in my hair, yanking my head back with a sharp tug that sends a jolt of pain and pleasure shooting down my spine. "Mine."

His mouth crushes down on mine, a collision of teeth and tongue and hunger so deep and vast, it steals my breath. I never should have fought it in the first place. Or him. The moment his tongue invades my mouth, hot and demanding, and I taste myself on his tongue, I give in to him. Wholly.

I accept.

I clutch at his shoulders, nails sinking into his arms as I draw him nearer, his mouth swallowing my moan. My tongue meets his in a furious lash and he groans into the kiss, a hand sliding down my body to grip my thigh and hitch it around his waist.

His hips rock forward, pressing his erection against me. He grunts and swears. "Fuck."

Engrossed in the jarring current between us, the blistering heat neither of us can escape, we don’t notice the subtle shift in the forest. The sudden silent. Or the faint displacement of the air.

It isn’t until Lucien’s head jerks back, eyes suddenly snapping wide, that the next sound registers a second too late. The sharp twang of a bowstring releasing cuts through the silence.

Lucien moves with impossible speed on pure instinct. One arm clamps around my waist as he twists us both violently from the bark, shielding my body with his in a desperate lurch.

We hit the ground, spinning as more arrows hit the earth beside us. Lucien is up on his feet, tossing his cloak at me to cover myself with, as he whirls, looking ahead at the trees. At the group emerging from the distance.

I don’t know where to look first. At the arrow sticking in his shoulder. The missed arrow head on the floor beside me painted in ash and silver, knowing the arrow stuck in him is poisoned. Or the knights of Silvermoor, all twenty four of them, closing in on us.