As they turned away, Phury had a feeling they weren’t going to go far, but Cormia didn’t need protection. Bonded males were mortally dangerous to everyone but their mates. He was out of control, yes, but she held his remote.
And he suspected she knew this.
Cormia reached up and wrung out her hair calmly. “Why do you want me inside?”
“Are you walking on your own or being carried?”
“I asked you why.”
“Because you are going to my bedroom.” The words were pushed out of his mouth by his sawing breath.
“Your bedroom? Don’t you mean mine? Because you told me to get out of yours five months ago.”
His cock was the seat of his beast, straining to be let out so it could let out into her. And the arousal was undeniable: His train was on the tracks. His ticket was punched. The journey had already started.
For Cormia as well.
Phury stepped up close to her. Her body was roaring with so much heat, he could feel it against his own skin, and her jasmine scent was as thick as his blood.
He flashed her his fangs and hissed like a cat. “We’re going to my room.”
“But I have no reason to go to your bedroom.”
“Yes. You do.”
She casually tossed her thick twist of hair over her shoulder. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
With that, she turned her back on him and strolled into the house.
He tracked her like prey, following on her heels through the library, up the grand staircase, and to her room.
She opened the door a fraction and slipped inside.
Before she could shut him out, he slapped his palm around the wooden panel and pushed his way in. He was the one who shut the door. And locked it.
“Take your robe off.”
“Why?”
“Because if I do it, I’m going to shred it.”
Her chin lifted and her lids dropped, so that even though she had to look up to meet his eyes, she was still staring down her nose at him. “Why do I need to disrobe?”
With every territorial bone in his body, he growled, “I’m going to mark you.”
“Are you? You realize that would be for no reason.”
“It is for every reason.”
“You didn’t want me before.”
“The hell I didn’t.”
“You compared me to the other female you tried to be with, but ultimately couldn’t.”
“And you didn’t let me finish. She was a whore I bought for the sole purpose of getting rid of my virginity. Not a female I wanted. Not you.” He inhaled her scent and let it out on a purr. “She was not you.”
“And yet you accepted Layla, did you not?” When he didn’t answer, she sauntered into her bathroom and turned the shower on. “Yes, you did. As First Mate.”
“This is not about her,” he said from the doorway.
“How can it not be? The Chosen are a whole and I am still one among them.” Cormia turned, faced him, and dropped her robe. “Am I not.”
Phury’s cock slammed against the backside of his zipper. Her body positively glowed under the recessed lights of the ceiling, her breasts tight and peaked, her thighs slightly parted.
She got into the shower, and he watched as she arched her back and washed her hair. With every move she made, he lost more of what little was left of his civilized side. On some dim lower shelf in his brain, he knew he should leave, because he was about to make a complicated situation downright untenable. But his body had found the food it needed to survive.
And the instant she stepped free of that fucking shower he was going to eat her alive.
Chapter Thirty-eight
YES, she was going to let him.
As Cormia rinsed the suds from her hair, she knew the moment she left the shower, she was going to end up under the Primale.
She was going to let him take her. And in the process she was going to take him.
Enough with the almosts and the nearlys and the are they or aren’t theys. Enough with the twisted destiny they were both caught in. Enough with doing what she’d been told she had to.
She wanted him. She was going to have him.
To hell with her sisters. He was hers.
Although only for tonight, an inner voice pointed out.
“Fuck you,” she said to the marble wall.
She slammed the spigot to the left and threw open the door. As the rush of water was cut off short, she confronted the Primale.
He was naked. Erect. Fully fanged.
The roar he let out was that of a lion, and as the sound reverberated off all the marble in the bathroom, she got even wetter between her legs.
He came at her, and she didn’t fight him as he grabbed her around the waist and popped her off her feet. He wasn’t gentle, but she didn’t want gentle-and to make sure he knew it she bit him in the shoulder as they came into the bedroom.
He roared again and dumped her on her bed, her body bouncing once. Twice. She flipped onto her stomach and started to scramble away just to make him to work for it. She had no thought of saying no, but damn it, he was going to have to chase her-
The Primale leaped onto her back and pinned her hands up over her head. As she tried to twist around under him, he kneed her legs apart and held her in place with his hips. His arousal slipped down and probed at her, making her arch up.
He gave her just enough slack in her arms so she could turn her shoulders and look at him.
He kissed her. Deep and long. And she held her own, finished with being trapped in the Chosen’s yielding tradition.
With a sudden shift, he pulled back, moved a little, and…
Cormia moaned as he penetrated her body in one smooth stroke. And then there was no time for talking or thinking or lingering on what pain there was as his hips became a driving force. It felt so good, so right, the whole thing, from the smell of his dark spices and the weight of him to the way his hair fell down into her face to the gasps that left both of their parted mouths.
As his strokes deepened, she moved her legs even farther apart and echoed his rhythm in her own hips.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she didn’t think twice about them as his relentless momentum carried her away, a knot of fire taking hold where he was pumping in and out of her until she thought she would be burned alive-and didn’t find that a bad thing in the slightest.
They both seized up at the same time, and in the midst of her own climax she caught a vision of him from over her shoulder, his head rearing back, his jaw clenching, the great muscles in his arms standing out against his smooth skin. But then she was too lost to see anything at all as her own body corded and released, corded and released, the greedy pulls on his sex making him moan and twitch as she drew the marking out of him.
And then it was done.
In the aftermath, she thought of the summer thunder-storms that swept over the mansion from time to time. When they receded, the quiet was all the more dense for the fury they’d wrought. This was the same. With their bodies stilled and their breath easing and their hearts slowing, it was hard to recall the vivid urgency that had propelled them here to this now-resonant moment of silence.
She watched as dismay, then abject shock, took the place of his single-minded marking urge.
What had she expected? That this dance of bodies was going to make him renounce his Primale status, forsake his vow, and declare her his one and only shellan? That he would be overjoyed that right before her departure they had done on a passionate impulse what they should have completed with reverence and forethought all those months ago?
“Please get out of me,” she said in a choked voice.
Phury could not comprehend what he had done, and yet the proof was there. Cormia’s slender body was under his heavy one, her cheeks were wet with tears, and there were bruises on her wrists.
He had taken her virginity from behind, like she was a dog. Held her down and made her submit because he was stronger. Plowed into her without regard for the pain she definitely had felt.