Born of Ashes (Guardians of Ascension #4)(50)
Author: Caris Roane

“I like the fresh air,” she said. She leaned down and licked his left nipple. Once more he put his hand on her nape, rubbing and stroking, guiding. She licked and licked.

She knew she could release potions from her fangs so she planted her hand on the mattress, between his rib cage and his arm, to steady herself. She hesitated.

“Just do what feels right,” he said. “Trust yourself.”

She looked up at him. Your fangs are beautiful, chérie.

She held his gaze for a long moment, then looked back at the thick muscles of his chest. Desire once more drove through her and she struck.

A heavy grunt left his throat and his back arched. “Oh, mon Dieu,” he whispered.

She thought the thought and when he cried out, she knew she’d done what she’d never done before. She withdrew her fangs and touched the little wounds. She rubbed back and forth.

His back arched all over again. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Fiona. It’s never felt like that before. It must be you, the way you affect me. The potion is like fire.”

She rubbed his pec and thumbed his nipple. He writhed back and forth.

“What does it feel like, Jean-Pierre? Tell me.”

He met her gaze. “A terrible burn. A wonderful burn. An ache that goes deeper and deeper.” He took her hand and used her fingers to rub him.

She leaned down and without warning, sank her fangs into his right pec, just above the nipple. He started panting and his eyes glazed over. She shifted away from him and saw that his c**k was rigid. He was close.

That he was so close again made her own back arch. Her fangs now throbbed, begging for more. She threw a leg over his hip and eased her body down on him. Using her fingers, she guided him to her opening and inch by inch swallowed him.

He tossed his head back and forth. He panted. “The potion, mon Dieu.” He rattled off a string of French words that she couldn’t understand. He twitched within her.

She didn’t have much time. She leaned over him and pressed his head to the side with her arm. She held him in place. She dipped low and licked his neck until what she needed rose. She didn’t overthink the moment; she just shifted her head sideways and struck to a depth that felt right. Then she began to draw into her mouth an elixir like nothing she had ever known before.

Oh. God.

His blood tasted like he tasted and like he smelled, a kind of rich, heady wine, but with a bitter coffee edge, all blended and erotic as hell.

But it was more than just the flavor of him. It was also his power. She drank down his power and as his blood hit her stomach, she felt wonderful explosions begin to erupt within her veins, one after the other, which only made her draw deeper. The well of her was wet, so wet, and began to grip him, tugging on him. Oh, how she needed him, all of him, moving within her.

She felt his hands on her waist. And before she could prepare, he began to pump into her, hard thrusts because he was ramrod-stiff and so ready. He was grunting and growling, more beast than man, and she loved it.

She sucked harder at his neck, holding him in place with her arm. Her body started moving in powerful waves, meeting his thrusts in answering jerks of her hips. He went faster. She followed suit.

His blood hit her bloodstream and she pulled out of his neck, planting her hands on either side of his head and working her hips over his cock, pulling and tugging until rapture burst like an enormous firework through her brain, through her body, and deep, so deep that pleasure streaked through her, up and up, over and over.

She heard screaming but it was his voice then hers and back and forth, as he came and she came, riding him hard, his hips pumping and meeting her downward-pounding gallops.

“Fiona, hold on. I am coming again.”

Again. Oh, God.

Once more he shouted to the heavens and once more pleasure gripped her and streaked through her body until she was shouting with him, sending his name flying into the stars, flying and flying, until at last she was spent, and he was spent and she collapsed on top of him.

How do you carry the past into the future?

The question was first asked when Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden.

There still isn’t a sufficient answer.

—Memoirs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 11

“Don’t you have anything to say about this?” Endelle stood in her office, in front of her desk. She planted her hands on her hips and rubbed her fingers over the stiff boar’s hide of her awesome skirt. It was closing in on one in the morning, she had darkening work to get to, and she felt her scowl drawing all her loveliness into a weird-ass knot.

Thorne shrugged but didn’t exactly meet her gaze. Ten kinds of ruined. He always looked like ten kinds of ruined. Maybe eleven right now. Aw, hell, maybe a hundred.

Thorne was a handsome man, hair light brown and permanently sun-streaked. His eyes had every shade possible, wedges of brown and gray, blue and green, a perfect hazel, but that seemed like an inadequate description.

She might have gone for him at one time, like a couple of millennia ago, but from the first he just felt more like a brother than someone she could ride. He was built, oh, dammit-to-hell,the man was built. He had perfect proportions, from his awesome shoulder width to his narrow hips. His thighs were a dream. And he was stallion-big when it came to what men were all about.

But for the last hundred years he’d been proclaiming his celibacy and all the while he’d been shagging that little devil-child in the Creator’s Convent.

Which brought her right back to her original question. “Dammit, Thorne, you have to say something. You can’t just defer to me, not on this.”

He looked up at her. The man was a beautiful six-five, the same height as her, but she always wore her black stilettos, for obvious purposes. If you planned to order around seven or eight of the toughest hombres on the planet, then you’d better give yourself a few artificial advantages.

“You want me to say something? You want me to f**king say something? What? What should I say?” There, a little sarcasm. That was better.

“I don’t know, ass**le, you tell me?”

“All right. Here’s what I have to say. I hate this f**king war and you’re the last person on earth who should have ever been allowed to f**king rule.” His face was ruddy now—a good match for his red-rimmed eyes.

Her turn to shrug. “That’s why I brought Marcus on board as HA of Desert Southwest Two. So tell me something I don’t know or don’t agree with. I didn’t want this gig, but I’ve got it. And I know you never wanted to be my second-in-command, so the f**k what?”