Challenging me.
When I was at his side, I set my jaw as I slowly lowered to my knees. The terrace stones were warm through the blue silk of my dress, which tightened over my hips and thighs with the uncomfortable position.
“Is this what you want, husband?” I challenged, my voice low. Inside, I was struggling to keep my resentment bound in a tight, manageable ball. It took everything in me to show him my wrist, to reach up and present it to him. “Why don’t you just take what you really want? It’s what I’m here for, after all.”
His expression flickered.
It morphed from cool understanding to desire. Desire mixed with a sudden rage.
He wanted to drink from me again. He wanted it badly.
And that sudden realization was almost enough to make me want to snatch back my wrist and stumble away. It made me want to flee.
But I couldn’t. I had nowhere to go and I was trying to prove a point.
Only, as he shoved his chair back and slowly rose to his full height, casting me in shadow…I forgot what it was I was attempting to prove.
Fool, I thought, my mouth going dry, staring up at him as he towered over me.
I was the only one to blame for this. Me and my stupid, stupid pride.
Azur took my hand. I shivered as he ran his black claw down the green-colored vein in my wrist, his pupils flaring, his fangs elongating. His touch was electric, zapping tingles down my arm in its wake.
“Be careful what you offer me, wife,” Azur rumbled above me. His teeth flashed and he bent low. His hot breath spread over my delicate and sensitive inner wrist as he said, “Because I will take it. When it comes to you, I will take whatever I want.”
The first sharp prick of his fangs came, making me gasp.
Then I watched as they sank deep into my wrist.
Chapter 12
Azur
I’d prayed to Alaire that I’d been wrong.
That my human bride wasn’t my kyrana. My blood mate.
That she didn’t taste as mind-numbingly good as I’d believed.
That I wouldn’t feel wonderful relief and dizzying need and primal hunger crash into me as I took my first deep draw of her rich blood.
Vaan, I cursed silently as her taste registered, as my hand tightened around her wrist, holding her in place, as my wings flared with a violent snap behind me.
On Raazos…she tasted even better than I’d remembered last night. I’d dreamed of her blood. With the memory of her scent swarming my mind, I’d woken this morning with my fangs lodged into my own arm because I’d dreamed of her, waking with a throbbing cock and half held on the edge of release, grinding my hips into my bed.
The blood madness was already taking hold.
It would not be sated for quite some time. And even then, I would endure stretches of it when the moon winds were strong. Even when I sent her back to the Collis, back to her broken House.
My swallows were greedy as I held her widened gaze. A dusky red flush swarmed her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her lips parted. As surprised as she was unnerved. I could see her wild panic just as I saw the wild pleasure begin to spread. On a particularly deep suck, one that made my cheeks hollow, I watched her eyelids flutter.
In the back of my mind, I knew I’d already taken a lot of her blood last night. I could not take much more. This had been intended as a warning. I hadn’t been planning to feed from her again until I returned from the northern border, but she’d raised the challenge herself.
And if there was one thing she would come to discover about me, it was that I never backed down. She didn’t fear me enough. Perhaps that was my own mistake.
A desperate moan escaped her throat, and I felt that sound travel straight to my cock. I didn’t want to want her. I didn’t want this desire, this lust that came from feeding off a blood mate.
But the kyrana bond was powerful. It had been powerful for our ancestors, for the ancient warrior berserkers who’d sated themselves on their enemies’ blood after a victory and then taken out their lusts and the remainder of their rages on their mates in the aftermath.
The act of feeding itself was not sexual. Not usually.
For most, it was as impersonal as fueling ourselves with actual food from our lands. Pleasant but ultimately, a way to satisfy a necessity.
But this…
I’d never felt the act of feeding tied to my own sexual pleasure before.
Especially when the object and source of my pleasure was Gemma Hara.
My wife was gripping my wrist. Squeezing. Encouraging me? Or warning me?
It can be both, I decided, feeling my own maelstrom of emotions as they roved and swirled and pricked and soothed me.
When she swayed on her knees, I retracted my fangs in a rush, growling that I was denying myself, not nearly as sated as I needed to be on her blood. I wanted to gorge myself on it.
Swiping my tongue over my bottom lip, one last hit of her blood nearly making my eyes roll back, I looked down at her, still on her knees before me.
My cock was throbbing. The swell of my seal, my knot, at the base of my shaft was engorged. When I shifted, I nearly groaned as it rubbed against the smooth material of my pants.
For a brief moment…I allowed myself to imagine it. Seating myself so deep inside the daughter of my enemy that my seal rooted into place, keeping every last drop of my seed stoppered within her, as my fangs were imbedded in her neck, drinking deep as ecstasy exploded through me.
What would that even be like? I’d fucked and fed at the same time before with past lovers. But with my kyrana?
Not many could claim they’d experienced that.
Gemma was leaning to the side, holding herself in place by the leg of one of the chairs. Dazed.
Crouching low, I studied her face as the hit of strength from the brief feeding made me feel like I could fly to Koro and back. I could cross oceans with this strength.
Unbelievable, I thought to myself. No wonder the berserkers of old were said to be unparalleled in their rages. The mightiest of the berserkers had already found their kyranas, or so the histories claimed.
Now I believed those accounts.
Because this kind of strength was unfathomable until it was experienced. This kind of strength could win entire wars.
Taking Gemma’s wrist in my grip once more, I studied my bite. She didn’t move away from me. She didn’t even flinch at my touch. She met my gaze steadily, even though her eyes were still half-lidded with residual pleasure.
Stubborn female.
My wife would make me work harder that I’d thought I’d have to to make her submit.
Leaning forward, my tongue slithered out, and she froze as I lapped at the bite, dragging it up slowly, my venom stopping the bleeding, coagulating her blood, but I decided against healing the flesh.
My mouth watered as I got one last aching taste of her.
“When you look down at my mark today,” I murmured to her, reaching forward to tilt up her chin so she met my gaze, “I want you to remember your pride. I want you to remember how it shattered as you went down to your knees before me. And remember it well.”