Blood Solace (Blood Grace Book 2)

by Vela Roth

  She fisted her hands in the sheets, gazing up at him with boldness in her eyes that answered the fire in his veins. She was here at last, and it was clear she intended to enjoy it to the fullest.

  He twirled his finger in circles around that small, responsive spot. “Say it back to me.”

  She licked her lips and swallowed. “Kalux.”

  While he pleasured her there with his thumb and forefinger, he tried dipping his tongue between each of her toes. Her breasts rose and fell with her ever-swifter breaths. He proceeded to suck each of her toes in his mouth one by one.

  He finished with her smallest toe. “I love watching you. Just the sight of you makes me want to thrust inside you right now.”

  Her gaze lingered on his rhabdos. “Everything you want is right here. You don’t have to wait anymore.”

  He positioned his mouth upon the arch of her foot and sank his fangs into her with precision. She let out a sound of astonishment and came up off the bed, leveraging herself on his shoulder, her left foot curling against his neck.

  He worked his hand on her krana as he sucked her right foot in his mouth. Oh, yes, this had been a fine idea. The tender web of rich veins in her arch pleasured him, while his mouth upon such a sensitive place pleasured her. She panted harder, voicing her enjoyment with each breath, and rubbed herself against his touch in time with his caresses and swallows.

  He lifted his mouth from her to lap an escaping trail of blood from her heel. “I love listening to you.”

  “Ohhh. I don’t know what’s happened to me. I can’t—stop—ohhhh.”

  “Why should you stop? We’re alone behind my veils, with this whole tower to ourselves, hidden by the garden. No one can hear you.”

  She took deeper, steadier breaths as if to brace herself. “I can hear me.”

  “So can I.” He licked his lips before clamping his mouth on her foot again.

  She cried out this time, and the sound urged him on as surely as if she had touched him. With her foot secure in the grip of his teeth, he wrapped both hands around her hips. He lifted her and put her on his rhabdos, thrusting hard into her krana as he tugged her onto him. She called out his name. He growled against her foot as the head of his rhabdos lodged deep inside her and her buttocks met his groin.

  She stretched and bowed her body in a luxurious, torturous motion. “You can have…everything you want…as much as you want…as long as you want.”

  He took it. Gave it to her. He held her to him and worked his hips and back, thrusting as hard as he wanted, as deep as he needed. He nudged his face against her foot, working his tongue too, to open her up and slake himself. He tapped her until that moment came once more when she didn’t try to stop voicing her pleasure.

  He listened to her and watched her undulate on him. She scoured the sheets with her hands, leveraging her leg against his shoulder as she lifted herself off the bed, delivered herself into his hands and onto his rhabdos again and again.

  Pushing her away, he drew back, prying their bodies apart. The way her krana sucked at him made him grit his teeth on her foot still harder. With a groan, he let her slide onto his lap, then resettled his grip on her.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Again, just as hard—yes—”

  They both called out as they thrust their bodies together again. His shout turned into a groan as her tightest depths resisted his erection. They took it hard and slow, bringing themselves completely together once more in a single motion.

  He grasped at his self-control fast slipping away in the torrent of pleasure and her blood. The infusion of her into him made his pulse pound in his whole body. He throbbed where their bodies were joined, where her every motion moved him.

  She must see and feel how lost he was in her. He knew his fingers were digging into her hips, but she wanted more. She was moving faster, harder on him, her voice pitching up into a keen.

  Her cry echoed off the walls of his residence and resounded through her blood, and his whole body jerked. Her climax roared through his veins and dragged him into his own, freeing him from hunger, feeding him ecstasy. His body spasmed against her and drove him deep. The tremors in her krana worked him into satisfaction and ease.

  He lifted his mouth from her foot at last, letting his head fall back and the last swallow of her blood slide down his throat. The metallic tang and rich spice of her flavor. The power in his own body. The sensation of her legs relaxing against his shoulders and chest and her hips nestled in his lap where their bodies were still one.

  He glanced down to see her spread-eagled and catching her breath in a new blush of moonlight. She looked thoroughly pleasured and utterly shameless.

  She found her thoughts and her voice first. “I approve your solution to the dilemma.”

  Laughter rolled out of him, and no worry or regret was there to stop it.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and gave him her secret smile. But not secret from him. He was the one she had given a taste of all her secrets.

  “It may take some time to do justice to all our fantasies,” she mused, “but I think we now have a head start.”

  A head start on eternity and his plan to make it hers, one night at a time.

  The Endless Sky

  Only in Orthros could an unlikely seductress such as Cassia luxuriate for hours with someone like Lio in a silk bed under a stained glass window.

  She would soon learn to read the grand letters over their heads, but already the images spoke to her. Black wings beneath a double full moon and a deep, dark blue sky glittering with stars.

  She touched the hand that had wrought them. “What does this window say?”

  “‘He who feasts upon Cassia sips from the Goddess’s own cup.’”

  She elbowed him playfully under the covers. “It does not. I’m sure the Changing Queen was still a maiden when some wise mage of Hespera wrote whatever sacred teachings you have put there.”

  “The wisdom of martyred elders would dampen the mood over the bed, don’t you think?” Lio caught Cassia’s elbow in his hand and tweaked the most ticklish spot.

  Laughing, she squirmed until they were wrestling in the bedclothes.

  With unabashed Hesperine strength and agility, he came out on top. “I chose a quote from the Discourses on Love.”

  “That sounds philosophical.”

  “It is Orthros’s canon of erotic texts.”

  “Oh.”

  “This is a passage from the ‘Discourse on Sanctuary,’ in which the speaker invites her lover to experience the Goddess’s realm with her through acts of passion.”

  “You do have heretical incantations in here.”

  He touched his forehead to hers, and their hearts beat against one another as he recited:

  Awaken unto me,

  to my certain embrace

  under the wing of darkness,

  where together we find shelter.

  Against my heart,

  you shall find strength.

  With your heart against mine,

  I shall be strong.

  Oh light of my eyes,

  let us shine with joy

  beneath the endless sky,

  where we are free.

  What a strange moment for her tears to threaten. Cassia blinked them away, but not before he noticed. He must have seen the gleam in her eyes, for he kissed her eyelids.

  “I know,” he said. “After everything we’ve been through, suddenly this.”

  “Glass is not the rarest luxury in this room.”

  “No,” he agreed.

  “There are mornings in Tenebra,” she confessed, “when I’m not sure I’m going to make it out of bed. I don’t know what comes over me. I try and try, and my body simply lays there. I look ahead into the day, and it’s not even that I dread facing it. It’s not only that I am weary. It’s as if…the day is empty, and so am I.” Her voice lowered of its own accord, trying to keep the secret in, but she said it to him, anyway. “It’s unforgivable, Lio. Sometimes I don�
�t care anymore. I simply cannot bring myself to care.”

  “If it is unforgivable, then you and I are both condemned. Only two things have kept me on my feet these past months. The knowledge that Zoe needs me, and the hope of hearing news of you from Tenebra that will reassure me you’re safe.”

  “What if we keep feeling this way? What if it gets worse?”

  “Has it gotten worse since you came to Orthros?”

  “Of course not. I feel better than I have in…I don’t know how long.” Never. She had never felt this happy.

  “Is that so?” he asked, his body a gentle, irresistible weight upon her. “You wouldn’t find it difficult to get out of bed right now?”

  “Right now, I never want to move again. But that’s because I’m so happy where I am.”

  His smile told her he had another surprise for her. “There is one place I think I can persuade you to go at the moment.”

  “Surely nowhere could be more appealing than your bed.”

  “How about my bath?”

  She glanced over at the washbasin not far from the window seat. “I think I can make it there.”

  “I don’t mean the washbasin. I mean my bath downstairs, which is big enough for both of us to get in together.”

  A bathtub and Lio in the same thought. Cassia swallowed. “You have a tub all to yourself? Surely you don’t ever miss an opportunity to use it instead of a washstand.”

  “I am often too busy to do more than just clean up here, and you are often too busy saving the kingdom for me to attend you at your basin. Tonight you get to enjoy a real bath, and I get to enjoy it with you from start to finish.”

  They floundered out of the cushions and covers and made it to their feet. Lio summoned his veil hours robe to hand and wrapped it around Cassia.

  “The stairs can be drafty,” he explained. “Besides, I seem to remember you complaining about me getting to see more of you than you get to see of me.”

  “Consider the scales of justice balanced.” Cassia wrapped his robe close around her, enjoying the intimacy of wearing it. And him wearing nothing, so at ease with himself and her gaze upon him.

  The night they had met, the sight of him clothed from head to toe in black silk and darkness had bewitched her. Now his attire of only stubble and moonlight wove the spell ever more irresistibly around her, even as it probed the ache in her heart. His color and his smile might have returned to his face, but he was still gaunt everywhere else.

  And yet, it was not only his lack of sustenance that had sharpened his edges. His long runner’s legs had always been strong, but there was a hint of new definition in his body everywhere else, too.

  “Have you been lifting more than a quill these past months, Sir Scholar?”

  He gave her a half-smile. “I’ve let Mak and Lyros knock me around the training ring on a nightly basis.”

  She laughed in surprise. “My diplomat has become a warrior?”

  “I have made an attempt. I still regard my fists as a last resort, but I deem it wise to know how to use them. My lady might need me to defend her from monsters with more than words.”

  “No monsters here. You need only slay hunger.”

  He took her hand and coaxed her around to the other side of his dressing screen. Only when he opened a discreet door did she notice it was there. He pulled her through it into a stairwell.

  “A hidden passageway?” she jested. “Where are you leading me, mind mage?”

  “Still more secrets lurk in the depths of my tower.” He led her all the way down to the bottom of the stairs and opened another door for her.

  Cassia stepped into damp, fragrant warmth. Soft spell light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. She gasped in the steamy air. The bath was in fact a deep pool the breadth of the room, tiled in geometric patterns of blue-black, cerulean and pale blue. Except for the walls. Those were covered in enormous mirrors. They showed her every glorious angle of Lio.

  Cassia met his gaze in the glass. “And you said you’d neglected your glassmaking craft.”

  “I’ve only worked on private projects.” He slid his robe off of her slowly.

  She watched it slide down her skin and pile at her bloodstained feet. “Just standing in this room, I feel more wanton than I ever have in my life.”

  Lio framed her hips in his hands and licked her shoulder. “Hedon has nothing on Hespera. Shall we turn this night into one of the darkest tales mortals tell of Hesperine seduction?”

  “Let us hold a blood ritual in the bath. I want to watch you feast on me.”

  “Take a deep breath,” he said against her vein.

  He picked her up in his arms and levitated right past the steps that led down into the bath. He sank them together into the pool, taking them all the way under. The deliciously, intensely warm water made pleasure bloom all over her body. As Lio let them surface, she gasped a breath and found the bottom of the bath with her feet.

  He stood before her, water dripping from his hair and trickling along the chiseled features of his face, over his shoulders and down his chest. She let her hands follow the rivulets of water. Slowly she traced every part of him. His proud brow and long, straight nose. His exquisite lips. The line of his stubbled jaw, which tightened at her touch.

  She slid both her hands down his neck and out to his shoulders, then together again upon his chest. Flattening her palms, she rubbed the new contours and tautness in his body all the way down under the surface of the water to his navel. She felt and learned how his body had changed while they’d been apart, trying to show him with her touch how handsome he had always been to her, then as now. How she desired him, always, in fasting and in plenty, at war or at peace.

  He tangled his hands in her wet hair, pulling her mouth to his. Slowly he pleasured her in return with his mouth, thrusting with his tongue. She melted against him, trembling between her legs.

  He let her come up for air from their kiss, only to duck into the water. She thought to follow him under, but he took her hips in his hands. When she felt his mouth on her krana, she grasped at his shoulders to steady herself on her feet. After four languid strokes of his tongue, it occurred to her he didn’t need to breathe, and he was not going to stop.

  Her blood would not be the first course of his feast. She leaned on him to keep her knees from buckling.

  He kneaded her buttocks, tilting and parting her hips. He devoured her with long, slow motions of his mouth. His tongue probed and laved her as he sucked at the pinpoint of her pleasure.

  There was no sound in the bath but the water lapping her body and her breathing echoing around her. Waves of pleasure rippled around and through her, warm water on her skin and his hot mouth on her krana. She relaxed into his kisses and let him pleasure her. It felt wonderful to relax, to open herself to him. To revel in the sensation and the sight of the bodies together in the water.

  In the mirrors she saw herself wearing nothing but her dark, wet hair that clung about her body. The looking glasses revealed him beneath the surface of the water with his mouth fastened to her. The bath rippled softly with the motions of his head. The last time she had beheld such a sight was on the floor of their shrine by moonlight and this same spell light. That moment, that night—that place—was not lost.

  He glanced up at her, his eyes glowing at her from under the water. Their gazes locked. She looked into his eyes as he heightened her pleasure to an unbearable edge and held her there. He teased her in brief flicks of his tongue, keeping the tide of her pleasure high without letting it break.

  She didn’t plead, didn’t try. She let him draw it out and make this moment last.

  When the tears coursed down her cheeks, he took her fully in his mouth again. With three consuming kisses, he dragged her over the edge.

  Her climax came at last, hard and harrowing. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, watching her hips convulse against his mouth. He sucked at the raw edge of her pleasure in time to each spasm, until the sensation was so intense the v
ision before her faded to a steamy blur.

  Finally he surfaced with a gasp. She drifted boneless in the water and gazed up at his dilated eyes and unsheathed fangs. His feast had only just begun.

  He wrapped an arm around her, supporting her under her backside with one hand, and drew her up close to him. The glass behind him presented her with a view of his broad shoulders, slender waist and trim buttocks.

  There was a mirror reflected within the mirror that showed her the back of her hair and his arm holding her. With his free hand, Lio slid her hair aside, giving her a clear view of her throat.

  She watched him lower his head and open his mouth upon her throat. Saw the tip of his fangs come to rest on her. His tongue darted out and flicked over her skin as if her vein also needed foreplay to be ready for him. She stared in fascination. Any moment now, he would bite her. She would get to see his fangs sink into her.

  Once more he met her gaze, this time in the reflection of their reflection. She swam in an otherworld of water and light and his gaze all around her. Within the space of one heartbeat, the tips of his fangs pricked her a thousand times over in the endless reflections around them. She watched his ivory lengths sink slowly into her flesh and saw her own jaw drop at the pleasure that drove down through her body.

  Lio’s lashes dipped, even as his pupils enlarged still more. He let out a long, low moan, grimacing as if in his passion, his eyes rolling back as if in ecstasy. She saw his jaw flex, and she felt his bite tighten.

  Twin trails of blood spilled from where he penetrated her, slid down over her shoulder, and caressed her back. Crimson bloomed in the water and drifted in little tendrils and clouds around her hips. The bloodstained bath stirred with the motion of his hands as he took hold of her hips once more, bracing her and holding her closer.

  She clutched at his shoulders again and let him guide her krana to his rhabdos. Her gaze went to his hands on her, then to his hips. She watched his buttocks clench, saw his hips flex. Hard, thick flesh thrust into her. His back muscles rippled as her krana filled with him.

  “Lio. You are…”