“Did I do it wrong?” she frowned, and he smirked, his eyes alight with laughter. “I have never tasted anything like it. It’s…different.” She picked up a cherry and plucked the stem from it, biting into it. “Ouch,” she said around a mouthful of fruit. She pulled the pit out and eyed it before looking around for a trash bin. “These are not right.”
“You’re supposed to suck the fruit from the pit,” he said, covering his mouth as she watched him. He observed her as she picked up a banana. “Here, like so,” he grabbed for it, taking it before she could bite into it with the peel still on. He handed it back to her and watched as those sweet red lips wrapped around it. “I think you should eat the meat, it might be safer for my sanity.”
She smirked, watching his eyes as she took more of the banana between her lips. She chewed it as his eyes burned with heat. “It’s good. I like my mouth full,” she shrugged, and his lips opened and closed before he shook his head.
“That’s naughty,” he muttered as he stepped closer, pulling her body against his. She was tiny compared to him, almost childlike in structure and full hot-blooded woman, with sass to her that he rather enjoyed. He wrapped his hands around her thin waist. “I’d like your mouth full too.”
“I’m not sure that would be safe,” she said lifting her face to stare up at him. “I see food but no wine?”
“I didn’t think after today you’d want to stay up long enough to indulge in it,” he shrugged as he nodded towards a cupboard. “To get it, I’d have to let you go, and I really don’t fucking want to yet,” he admitted as he lowered his mouth to hers, gently nudging her lips apart as he captured her tongue in a dance of chaotic need. His hand slowly snaked up her back, pulling her hair back hard as he claimed her mouth. The moan that escaped them both filled the room as he lifted her, allowing her legs to wrap around his waist as he released her hair, moving them towards the cupboard. Small hands splayed on his neck, holding him to her as her body pressed against his hard muscles.
He set her on the counter, lifting the skirt of her dress to expose her thighs, which he squeezed as he pulled his mouth away from hers begrudgingly. He reached above her head and brought down two glasses, setting them beside her before he kicked open the cooler, bending to grab the wine. She bent down with him, grabbing the hem of his shirt, pulling it up as he rose to stand. Hesitantly, she tried to lift it up over his head but failed. He set the bottle down and pulled the shirt off, tossing it to the floor.
Lilith’s shaking fingers touched the hard, sinewy muscles that begged to be touched, kissed. She bent her head, trailing her fingers over his abs before her tongue followed the same path. His fingers brushed her hair, pushing it from her face as he watched her. His body straightened, and then he brought her mouth up to his, forgetting the wine as he kissed her drunk with just his mouth.
His hands moved between them, lifting her as he reached for the thin wisp of material that barred him from what was his. He pulled his mouth away, resting his forehead against hers as she gasped for air, pulling it deep into her lungs.
“I won’t be able to stop in a moment, so decide,” he demanded huskily as she pulled back, placing her hand against his cheek, cupping it as she wiggled her pussy against his knuckles, which were grazing her flesh. “If we do this, you’re mine. I won’t give you up. Not now, not in a fucking year. Do you understand me, Lilith? I don’t crave women, nor have I ever slept with one more than once. Ever. You, I fucking crave you, and it drives me insane. Your flesh, your taste, the shadows that escape when you find your release,” he growled thickly.
“Fine, just make this ache stop, Asrian. Now,” she snarled as she reached for his hair, pulling his mouth flush against hers with urgency. “Make me feel you.”
Her clothes vanished with his, and before she could register what he’d done, he lifted her up and pushed into the sheath of her body, filling her until she cried out with the fullness of him. His hands used her hips, lifting and settling her until she was coming unraveled, murmuring his name as passion took precedence, and desire consumed her.
She was so fucking tight, her body clenching against his again and again until he growled from the constant feeling of her. He walked with her to the bed, lifting her and tossing her down to bounce on the mattress as the orgasm continued to rock through her. Asrian knelt in front of her, lifting her up to position her on her arms and knees as he nudged her legs apart.
The moment he pushed inside, she bucked against him. He felt every fucking inch of her as he filled her body, marking her as his as his brands began to swirl. Her own pulsed, subtle as the shadows that clung to her enveloped parts of her in a sort of mist of darkness that seeped from within her. She murmured his name over and over, begging him for more as his body slammed into her tight pussy. She was delicate and yet she was wild with need. He didn’t care that she’d be marked come sunrise, because neither did she as she slammed backwards, taking all he had to give until her body trembled and her head lifted, screams of pleasure filling the room.
“Gods,” he snapped as she sent him over the edge taking her with him as her body clenched and milked his, leaving him trembling from the force of his own release. “You’re so mine,” he uttered as he turned on his side, not removing his cock from her body before he lifted her leg, slowly working her clit as he prepared for round two. “I’m going to make you sore, so fucking sore that every time you flinch tomorrow, I’ll know you are thinking of me and remembering tonight.”
“You can try, heathen, but I find I enjoy this part of being married to you.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Did it work to goad you into more?” she asked huskily.
“Fuck yes,” he chuckled.
“Then yes, it was.”
Chapter 15
It was three days before they emerged from the bedroom, and no one dared interrupt them either. Time passed and yet held no meaning as they learned one another, discovering things the other had never told anyone else. On the third day, her mother knocked, and she knew her time of avoiding her while learning how to pleasure and understand this man she’d found herself tied to for an entire year could only work for so long.
“She isn’t going to keep going away for much longer,” Asrian muttered as he absently stroked her hip. He leaned over, trailing his lips over the curve of it and down thigh before he lifted his hand and brought it down hard on her ass.
“Ouch!” she growled before she rolled them until she straddled him, staring down with a wide grin. “She will hear us.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone in this place who didn’t hear us, Lilith. In fact, they may be singing my praise back in Faery with the portals open; they probably have heard you screaming about how fantastic my cock was there too.”
“I wasn’t that loud.”
“Um, okay. If that’s what you want to go with. Remember, I tried to leave the bed twice, and you kept begging me for more.”
“Is that how we’re playing this?” she laughed as she pushed her flesh against his cock. “You are the one who keeps getting hard.”
“That’s never been an issue,” he laughed as he watched her, her pain slowly escaping as she tried to ignore it, but failed. He’d fed from it gluttonously as she’d hidden in the room with him. She’d known he fed from her, and she hadn’t cared. Instead, she’d let him take the pain from her. Not many cared for demons or even half demons taking from them, and she’d watched him feed with a mixture of wonder. Lilith had openly watched him, curious to see and feel what happened when he did it. Then the little minx did the last thing he’d expected: she’d pushed more of her emotions into the bond, giving it to him. “We’re being summoned,” he grumbled as he rolled them and pushed into her body. Her scream was captured by his mouth, and his throaty laughter was addicting. “The king wishes us to get the fuck out of bed and get downstairs so your mother stops pacing and calling me a fucking heathen.”
“She really is my mother,” she laughed. “Tell the ki
ng we will be down when we’re done fucking. Unless he wants us down there, like this,” she purred.
“I’d rather not see you like this,” Ryder grumbled from the far corner of the room, where he faced the wall. Asrian chuckled and pulled the covers over them, staring down at her. “Your mother is very…impatient to assure Asrian didn’t kill you, or worse,” he muttered gruffly.
“Tell her I’m coming,” she said.
“Apparently, we’re all very aware of that fact,” he said with a straight face. “There’s also the fact that we’ve been made aware of an assassination attempt on the King of the Night Court. He’s been gravely wounded and has called his heir home. We travel to the Night Court within the hour, be ready.”
“Wait, we? As in you’re coming with us?”
“The Horde has managed and protected the lower caste since the pact went into effect. An attempt on his life in his own court is against the laws, and I will have no choice but to reinforce them. The tithe is due because of the pact, and I will uphold my end of it. Especially considering who you lay beneath, and the fact that something cannot be undone,” he pointed out with a sad look. “I will not have them denying your claim on the throne now that you are as you say, soiled. They may have signed the pact, but they forgot my end of the arrangement.”
“Which was?” she asked carefully.
“Horde children were to be brought to us, to live freely without being harmed or mistreated. If what you say is true, and I assume it is with your willingness to hand your birthright over to Lara, then they need to be reminded of the deal. If they choose to ignore it afterwards, they can grace my dungeons and become my vellum. I find I’m short of it since abolishing the law and freeing those creatures my father kept to harvest flesh to create it from.”
“That was true? Your father signed his laws with the vellum created from the flesh of his enemies?” She swallowed hard.
“Whatever you heard of him, he did worse. A lot worse, which I cannot even begin to atone for, nor will I try. What I will and can do is be better than he was. I can be just and lead the Horde through strength. That is the only promise I can make you, Lilith. It is the same one I have made to your mother. I do not accept you rescinding your court. Later, when your mother is tired of ruling, we will revisit it. I assure you, as my sister and yours, she will be more than fucking protected. She will be loved by all of us and accepted, and those who don’t can leave Faery as a whole or die there. That choice will be given to them by me and her brethren.”
“You’d do that for her?” she queried.
“Absolutely, and any other bastard-born children my father sired, which I am sure is many. He wasn’t kind, and I’m sure as we move deeper into repairing the damages, we’ll discover many other children he sired and abandoned. But this is now, not the past. Whatever happened back then, it was then, and we are not there anymore. We are the future, and we decide what happens now.”
“And my child, if we create one and I decide not to remain with him past one year and a day as I have vowed?” Her words were hesitant, partly because her mind wasn’t made up yet. She was unsure what she wanted, and while she enjoyed being with Asrian as they had been, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure she wanted more from him. Not to mention, her child would be unable to ascend to her throne if he left, or if the Horde didn’t back them with their strength.
“Lilith?” Asrian growled.
“I don’t know what the future holds, but if we are to create a child, I need to know it is protected from those who wouldn’t accept him as king.”
“They’ll accept him, or they will die,” he sneered.
“I will make him king, and any who don’t respect it will be the given the same option I already listed.” Ryder’s tone carried finality, the confidence of the king backing his own words. “Now, get dressed; we waste time, and your father has to decree you his heir before he leaves this plane for the next. I don’t want to have to rack fucking heads together to make my point.”
Ryder vanished from the room, and Asrian sat up, naked still. He turned his angry glare towards her, hurt mirroring in them. “Get dressed,” he ordered, not bothering to use his glamour to assist her.
“You’re angry?” she demanded as she stood naked, uncaring of the welts and bruises his hands had created over the time they’d shared in bed.
“You’re damn right I’m fucking angry! I told you three days ago, if we do this, you’re mine. Yet the first fucking chance you get, you plan to leave me. You ask my brother to accept our son should we have one because why, Lilith? Because you don’t want my child sitting on your throne? He wouldn’t be good enough for you? You’ve met us, you’ve met the king, and yet you’re so fucking stuck in your ways and your beliefs that we’re nothing but monsters that you’d throw any child we had away at the first chance!”
“That isn’t what…”
“Get dressed!” he shouted, slamming the door closed in her face as he stormed out of the room, his hurt and anger flooding it until pain shot through her, as if he was feeding her every ounce of pain back he’d stolen all at once.
Her knees hit the floor, and she sat there, uncertain what the hell was happening as her heart raced and she felt nauseated. Tears burned her eyes, blurring her vision. A soft sob escaped her lips before she squelched it with the back of her hand. What the hell was wrong with her? Why had his anger and rejection felt like she was dying? She struggled back up to her feet, holding her chest as it tightened.
With effort, she dressed and slowly exited the room with one last glance at the crumpled sheets, leaving whatever had been forming between them in the room. She made it into the hallways before Synthia was there; the Queen of the Horde took one look at Lilith and her smile vanished.
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” she muttered as she took in the crumpled riding dress and mussed hair. A breeze of soothing air brushed over Lilith, and she paused, looking down at the dress that was black and silky, a wealth of material that seemed as if it had been plucked from the shadows to create a masterpiece. Her hair was twisted and turned, and then a few loose curls were hanging from a braid that sat tight, yet comfortable on her head. “Much better,” she muttered to herself before smiling, and the heavy weight of weapons were felt on her back and sides. “Do try not to stab or shoot my husband with them, I’m very partial to him. He doesn’t get to get off that easy, not after giving me three babes at once.”
“Okay,” Lilith agreed as she stared at the Queen of the Horde, who looked almost human in her features. “Rumor has it you tried to kill him a few times?”
“Lilith, first rule about me is I don’t try to do anything. I just do it.”
“And the throat you ripped out?”
“Tasted like shit, but it drove the point home,” she shrugged.
“It’s not easy to forget the past.”
“No, it’s not supposed to be either. You lived it, but you survived. You’re stronger for it, are you not?”
“I am.”
“Then stop worrying about the past and look to the future. I understand your court was hit the hardest, but that wasn’t by the king who now holds the Horde. Just as you are not responsible for what your people have suffered under your father’s rule. That is why there are rules to the hierarchy. It’s why there are heirs in place in the lesser Fae courts, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Then why do you blame him?”
“He was there,” Lilith pointed out. “They were all there.”
“They didn’t want to be there, and from what I have heard, they were busy getting people out and risking their own lives to do so. I’ve watched him suffer endlessly for what his monster of a father ordered him to do. They’re all fucked up for it, and yet that is the way of the Horde. They are the strongest caste in the entire world of Faery not because they played by the rules, but because they created them. They’ve worked tirelessly alone to save Faery. Everyone else pretended it wasn’t dying, and yet these men fought to c
ure and fix it. That should speak of their character alone. You don’t know them yet, but you will, Lilith. You’re our family now, you are one of us.”
“I don’t think I will be past the year and day, Queen of the Horde.”
“My name is Synthia, Goddess of the Fae. Meaning, all of the Fae, Lilith, even the lesser courts. I’m guessing you two had a fight, but what I have heard for the past few days wasn’t fighting. It was the beginning of something good, something pure. Find it again.”
“We’re ready to ride, Syn,” a tall blonde said as he strode to stand beside them.
“Thank you, Lachlan,” she acknowledged.
“No problem, I came to peek at the dame who has Asrian in a rage. Pretty sure he just destroyed a few demons outside because of it.”
“A few? Must not be that angry.”
“Thousand. A few thousand demons which have been gathering out front of here for a couple of days. Erie is out being his cheerleader, although I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice her. She is pretty, isn’t she?” he murmured as he reached out and touched one of the black curls that trailed down her back. “Exquisite, really. And here father seemed so put out when they offered their daughters to pay the tithe. Idiot, his loss,” he said absently.
“Don’t worry, we chose a bride for you as well, Lachlan.”
“I’ve been warned,” he chuckled. His tri-colored eyes reminded her of the seas as he watched her. “I’m almost intrigued to meet mine. Almost, but not enough to do so,” he smirked as he let his hand drop and turned to smile at Synthia. “I’ll be outside to escort you to Ryder when you’re ready.”
“He doesn’t address you as his queen?”
“No, we’re not formal here, not unless we’re in front of the courts. Sometimes even then we’re not. It’s our court; we tend to run it like we want to.”
Lilith stared at Synthia’s back as they headed down the hallway. She thought of what Asrian said, and what she thought. It hadn’t been that she wouldn’t want her son or theirs to be king; the people wouldn’t, and she had needed to hear his brother say he’d protect them. She’d needed to know her child and his claim would be backed and that he’d be safe.
A Demon's Plaything: The Elite Guards Page 9