by Bec McMaster
All fury, passion and rage.
And sometimes she needed it. Sometimes this was exactly what she desired.
Solveig bit his lower lip, her fists curling in his shirt collar. Goddess, but it was happening again, just like before. One touch, one kiss, and something within her ignited.
Sex had never felt like this. She’d found friendship and a moment of connection with a Danish princess, but they’d both been aware their affair had an expiration date. And she’d never found a male lover who truly satisfied her. There was always something missing. The submissive ones bored her, and the dominant ones were merely arrogant and controlling. One had called her as frigid as the glaciers to the north after she cast him from her bed, and in her heart of hearts, she’d begun to wonder if he was right.
And so she’d stopped looking for that missing spark. She’d thrown her heart into the warband and her father’s court, until she’d begun to wonder if there was any passion left within her.
Until Marduk had kissed her.
And then there was nothing glacial about her. She became a firestorm, a phoenix bursting into flame.
She lost herself when she was with him.
She couldn’t control herself or her passion, and there was a niggling little feeling itching through her that whispered that if she ever truly let herself search her heart, what she might find there would not be to her satisfaction.
Him. Always him.
From the moment she’d laid eyes upon him.
He was both threat and curse. Passion and oblivion.
And she knew—deep in her heart—that he was her ruin.
Marduk broke the kiss, his trembling hands cupping her face as he nuzzled at her cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
He tried to meet her eyes. “I can feel you fighting it.”
Stop… thinking….
Solveig reached up and claimed his mouth. Her tongue tangled with his, and she tore his shirt open at the throat. Marduk complied with a reckless groan, his kiss grazing her chin and then lower, edging down the smooth column of her throat—
She grabbed a fistful of his hair and tore his mouth from her skin with a breathless gasp. “Not out here.”
Marduk stared at her with bare restraint, his mouth wet and slack with desire. And then a burning intent lit a spark in his eyes. “Why not?” he whispered.
Solveig stilled, tension running through every single muscle in her body.
Marduk took her silence for assent.
Meeting her gaze with an insolent look, he tore the buttons off her shirt. The cool night air left her trembling. Beneath the shirt was the corset she wore to keep everything in its place, and his thumbs grazed the silk there as if he simply couldn’t help himself.
“Anyone could see,” she whispered as he nuzzled at her neck.
And despite herself, she arched her head back, her teeth sinking into her lip with a soft moan as he tugged her corset down and captured her taut nipple in his mouth. Goddess. She felt the pull of that all the way through her.
“Yes, they could,” he breathed, his tongue lashing against the aching bud.
Fuck.
She grabbed a fistful of his hair, but his mouth was doing wicked things to her body.
Anyone could walk around the corner and see them.
And from the blazing light in his eyes, he half wanted it.
“I’ve dreamed of this moment for years,” he said, tugging at the laces on her leather breeches. “I want to be inside you, Solveig. I want to feel you clench around me. I’m going to fuck you so hard I leave bruises.”
Desire jolted through her at the words. But she bit his shoulder. “This doesn’t seem like submission to me.”
“Are you complaining?”
Hard fingers drove inside her, finding slick purchase as his thumb narrowed in on her clit.
Solveig bit her lip and shook her head. Their eyes met, and it was all she could do not to moan.
Both at the situation, and the sensation.
Goddess, how does he undo me so well?
Marduk smiled dangerously, and then he was working his fingers inside her, first one and then two. “You’re so wet.”
Control. Control. She needed a moment.
She needed a decade or more to come to terms with this.
“Not here,” she whispered, because he had to stop touching her long enough for her to be able to think.
Marduk nipped at her mouth. “Fine. I want you in a bed anyway.”
Withdrawing his fingers, he licked her wetness from them.
And then he turned and strode toward their rooms, carrying her the whole way.
16
“Put me down,” Solveig insisted, the second they were inside their chambers.
He let her slide down his body until her feet touched the floor.
They stared at each other a little breathlessly, until he captured her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers.
Marduk kissed the way he did everything in life.
Intensely. As if it was a challenge to be conquered, a race to be won. And she could barely breathe again.
She shoved at him, pushing him back against the door.
And then she brushed the backs of her knuckles down his shirt.
“What do you want of me? This?” Marduk gave her a slow, heated smile, one that melted her insides. And then he went to his knees in front of her, his eyes gleaming like newly minted gold coins. “Do you want my surrender, Solveig? Because if you want me on my knees, you have it. And if you want me to beg, then maybe I will.” His lips quirked. “Or maybe I won’t. I guess that is a question that needs answering.”
To beg. Her eyelids lowered as she slid a hand through his hair. Fuck, he looked beautiful like this, on his knees.
"Part your thighs," he purred, sliding his hands up the inside of her knees.
"You’re evil," she breathed.
But she did as told, because her willpower was weak.
She wanted that golden head between her thighs. She wanted the promise of his tongue—that clever, teasing tongue—on her wet flesh.
But as he nuzzled into the vee of her thighs, breathing her in, she realized exactly what he was doing. Taking control. Distracting her. Doing exactly as he pleased.
And that wouldn’t do.
“Get up,” she said.
And he did, pushing to his feet, muscle flexing through those powerful thighs until he towered over her again. Light flashed in those wicked eyes. A certain sort of calculation, but she didn’t miss the hint of frustration she saw there.
He would yield because he knew it was what she wanted. But he didn’t like it.
“And now?” he demanded, his jaw obstinately firm.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. Solveig reached out, placing her palm against his chest. His heart kicked behind the thin cambric of his shirt, but it was his body she wanted as she slid her palm down his abdomen, her fingers trailing away from his belt just before a savage look came over his face.
“No,” she said, slamming her palm to his chest as he leaned down to kiss her again. If this was going to happen, then it was going to happen on her terms, and she had no intentions of losing control again.
His mouth was ruinous. Kissing him was dangerous.
There would be no more kissing.
“I’m in control,” she told him as frustration etched dark shadows into his face. “No kissing.” Pressing her fingertip to his lower lip, she reveled in the flash of insolence that burned through his gaze. “Not on the lips.”
He bit her finger, suckling it into the wet cavern of his mouth. It made a popping sound as he released her. “Then what does my queen want of me?”
“Strip.”
Turning, she strode toward her chair, trying to rein in her catapulting emotions. She slunk into it, hooking one leg over the other and enjoying the battle waged in his eyes. Marduk did not cede control easily.
And that was why she w
as enjoying taking the reins so much.
“As you wish.” There was no longer any hint of defiance in his face. His lips quirked—a faint apostrophe forming at the right side of his mouth.
Finding the buttons at his throat, he tugged them open insolently. His eyes were hot flame. A dare. And then he reached over his shoulder and hauled his shirt over his head, revealing the wide expanse of those shoulders and the rippled flex of his abdomen.
His shirt hit the floor in front of her—a proffering of peace.
And her mouth went dry.
There was no denying it. Marduk was a god carved of heated flesh. His ribs were sheathed in a fine layering of muscle, and darker tattoos covered the heavy slab of his right pectoral. A dreki breathing golden flames. It was beautiful artwork, inscribed in his skin by a master. Every inch of him was pure muscle, and from their brief encounters she knew he knew how to use it.
Solveig reclined back in her chair, reaching for the goblet of wine on the table beside her in order to still her hands. “More.”
Kicking off his boots and socks, he started working on the buttons of his trousers. Lamplight gilded each fine muscle. The chiseled cut of his hips dipped into the leather, hints of taut pelvic bones revealing themselves with each button. Desire imprinted itself fiercely against the leather, until she knew it was almost a relief for him to shed his constraints.
He was wearing nothing beneath.
And as he straightened, she couldn’t stop her gaze from dropping to the prominent jut of his erection. Her breath caught. He was enormous. Marduk captured it in his hand, his fist whitening as he strained to encircle his cock, but his attention was all on her even as he insolently traced the pad of his thumb over its weeping tip.
“Would that it was your lips,” he whispered.
There was a breathtaking moment where she was caught in memory—gasping beneath him as he thrust against her, the feel of that brutish weapon driving right between her thighs, even as barely two layers of material separated them—but Solveig shoved her way back out of the memory, her nostrils flaring.
“Kneel,” she whispered, running her wet finger around the rim of the goblet. The sound of it keened in the air, slicing through the swift kick of her heartbeat. Wetness slicked between her thighs, but she was not to be undone.
Not yet.
She would never be undone.
Marduk went to his knees at her feet, the powerful muscles in his thighs straining.
“Come to me.”
He smiled. “I don’t crawl for anyone, my queen. If you want further submission, then you must offer me more than a command.”
“And what do you think I would be willing to offer?”
His smile held all manner of sin. “I want you naked. I want to see every inch of you. I want to taste you.”
She set the heel of her boot against his chest, and he caught it there, eyes flashing. “Then unlace it.”
Still a command, even if she was conceding a small vulnerability to him.
Marduk found the tight laces that ran up the length of her shin, and then he was tugging them loose. “You like being in control.”
“Who doesn’t?”
He tugged her boot free, his hands locking around her calf as he moved to tug her thin stocking down. “I wonder… would you like it if you were the one under my thumb?”
She’d always been on top. No male had ever reversed the tables on her, and there’d been none of that with females.
But again, memory was intruding….
The way he’d held her down the day of their mating ceremony; the determination on his face as he kissed her and tugged her knife from his throat.
If his friends hadn’t interrupted, she’d have allowed him to seduce her on the floors of her chambers after their mating ceremony, and she wasn’t sure if she’d have had the presence of mind to demand his submission.
A shiver ran through her as he slid his hands up her calves, slowly tugging her boot down.
“I will never yield,” she told him, but she’d hesitated too long, and the glint in his eyes told her he’d noticed.
He tossed the boot behind him. “Another.”
Solveig replaced one foot with the other.
Inch by inch, he stripped her bare. Soft kisses painted themselves against her knees and thighs, until he yanked her breeches from around her ankles and threw them behind him.
“You’re so damned pretty,” he whispered as he kissed his way up her body and then began working on her shirt. Her corset went next, until she was as bare as he was.
“Pretty is such an insipid word,” she breathed into his mouth.
“You’re fucking glorious.”
That was better.
Marduk caught her hand, and she sensed the challenge within him. “Kiss me.”
“I thought you offered me your surrender.”
“And you have it, but the price is this: kiss me.”
Solveig stared into those implacable eyes.
This too—like everything else between them—was a challenge. The thought thrilled her. Submission, though tempting, was not the reason her body flexed with wet need. She wanted him undone. She wanted him to beg her. She wanted the challenge.
And she would win it.
Sliding her palm over the heavy ripple of muscle in his chest, she curled her hand behind his nape and drew him down to her.
The first time they’d kissed, it had been fierce with fury and desire.
She’d lost control. Badly. And only in her dreams did she allow herself to remember the way he’d taken her mouth, claiming it so roughly that her lips were branded with the sensation for hours later. She’d worn his bruises on her skin, and thwarted desire had left her feeling utterly wretched.
One taste was not enough.
But she would not lose herself this time.
Marduk’s breath ghosted over her lips as they brushed against each other. Thumbs stroked her cheeks where he held her face, and then his tongue was brushing against her own. Tempting her. Taunting her. Denying her the oblivion she craved.
Solveig growled deep in her throat, her hand fisting in the short golden hair at the back of his skull. “Kiss me. Damn you.”
“As you wish,” he breathed, and gods, he tasted delicious. His mouth worked over hers in languorous delight. A shiver worked through her as his tongue lashed against hers, wicked and teasing.
She broke away. “Get on the bed.”
He lay down, still working his cock and never taking his eyes off her. “And now?”
Solveig drained the rest of her wine and then prowled across the room. She slunk onto the bed, crawling between his thighs.
His breath caught as she kissed his knee, and his hand stilled on his erection. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Why?” she whispered, letting her hair cascade over her shoulder as she bent her head and bit his thigh. “Does it ache, Marduk?”
He arched his head backward, as if silently praying to some god. “Of course it aches. Do you not think I want you?” He met her gaze, baring his teeth. “It hurts to not touch you. It hurts to not have my mouth on you. There’s a thousand things I want to do to you, and yet I can’t, and it’s infuriating….”
“Good,” she purred as she crawled up his body, her tongue stirring the soft hairs on his shins and upper thighs.
Marduk captured his cock in one hand, an insolent look in his eye as he fisted it and began stroking.
It was a gorgeous thing; a pagan offering for her pleasure. Thick and sleek, with ripples of flushed veins along its length. The gleam of anxious seed glistened on the tip.
Solveig considered him, all stretched out on the bed like some sort of gift. And the idea of partaking of him like this—where she held all the power—appealed in a way she’d not anticipated.
Crawling further up his length, she skimmed her palms over his lightly haired thighs. His breath caught as her face lowered, and then she placed a kiss to the ripple of muscle in his abdom
en. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, for she could concede as much. “I want to eat you all up.”
Reaching out with her tongue, she captured a single glistening bead of cum with her tongue.
“Fuck. Fuck, Solveig.” Hands tangled in her hair, and she looked up the line of his body, finding taut need on his face.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” she whispered, curling her palm around the base of his shaft. “I have you at my mercy, my prince.”
A breathless laugh burst from him. “You’ve had me at your mercy for years.”
Not yet. Not truly.
But she would.
Solveig ducked her head and swallowed him whole. The sound he made was reward enough; a desperate, aching growl that tore from a reluctant throat. Though a submissive act, this was power. She owned him in this moment as she twisted her fist slowly and then pushed lower, taking him deep into her throat.
She let her teeth graze the length of him on the return and saw tension fill him as their eyes met.
That’s right. Never forget how dangerous I can be.
Pulling free with a wet pop, she licked the mix of saliva and precum from her fingers. “You’re delicious.”
He slammed his head back into the pillow, his body a bow of tension. A shudder went through him. “And you’re evil.”
Solveig laughed as she bent her head again. “Beg,” she whispered, licking the swollen head of him. “Beg me.”
“For anything.” The words exploded out of him on a breath as his fingers tangled in her hair. “But fair warning: I’m not going to last long.”
“Really?” she purred, squeezing him again and then working her mouth around the tip of him. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Really.” He thrust up into her mouth, gasping again. “Solveig. Goddess’s breath. You don’t have…. I’m going to….” His head slammed back against the pillow again. “Fuck.”
She dug her nails into his ass and swallowed the length of his cock again, half gagging as it jerked in her throat. Hot, salty seed flooded her mouth, and she swallowed it whole, still working him, determined to have him on his metaphorical knees before she’d finished.