“But I didn’t.” Davon stood, taking off his right gauntlet -- which, like the left, was thoroughly drained. “Because we drilled that move over and over again until I knew it like one of those Elizabethan dances you’re so fond of.”
“I know, I remember, but…”
His dark gaze met hers. “I still wouldn’t have been able to keep my balance on that dragon’s back if you hadn’t spent the last decade trying to turn me into a combination Olympic gymnast, fencer, and track star.” Davon smiled slightly. “Damn good thing you did, or I never would have made it through today alive.”
He looked into her face, and for a dizzy moment she saw herself through his eyes. Why, I’m beautiful. She’d never thought of herself in those terms. In a world filled with the likes of Morgana Le Fay, Guinevere, and assorted other fair-skinned beauties, she’d never really considered that a possibility.
“Bullshit,” he told her. “You more than hold your own.” Reaching down, he hooked a hand behind her neck, bending low for a kiss. His hand felt warm as it cupped her head, his lips astonishingly soft and pliant as they molded to hers.
With a low moan, Alys opened her mouth for his tongue. The slick stroke of it sent a shiver of arousal through her.
A joyous thought flashed through her mind. We are alive! We survived! Her aching exhaustion vanished, drowned in an abrupt wave of crazed survivors’ lust.
Alys grabbed his chest plate, which released under her magical touch. She tossed it aside and let herself admire the stark sculpted beauty of him. He looked like carved obsidian, hard and dark and beautiful.
Davon snorted at the comparison. “Carved obsidian that probably smells like a horse.”
“I don’t give a damn. Come here.” She made a quick, inpatient gesture, and the rest of armor swirled away to his room in a flurry of sparks, leaving Davon looking tall and delicious and very naked. Wrapping both hands around his brawny shoulders, she pulled.
With a huff of laughter, Davon slid a knee onto the mattress and followed her down. When he started to stretch out over her, she gave him a little push onto his back. He rolled over, seeing what she wanted in the Truebond.
Alys pounced, licking and kissing her way from his knife-blade jaw, tasting the salt and smoke of his skin mixed with that exotic musk of vampire.
Davon groaned as she stretched full length along his body. He dropped a hand to the curve of her ass as the other tangled in her thick corkscrew curls, drawing her head down for another hungry kiss. She felt the length of his fangs against her lips as his cock pressed hot and fully erect against her belly.
Alys moaned, remembering the many times she’d imagined this, craved it, knowing she didn’t dare take what she wanted so badly.
All of that was done now. They were Truebonded. There would be no more lonely nightmares for her.
“Or if there are,” he murmured against her mouth, “I’ll kiss you awake.”
“God, yes,” she breathed, her eyes sliding closed as she imagined all the peace he’d bring her. Imagined how her life would be a little less lonely.
He cupped her breast, one thumb playing back and forth over her nipple. She threw her head back with a gasp at the hot rise of pleasure, and he echoed the sound with a groan. As pleasure fed lust, they stroked and squeezed and caressed each other, reveling in the shared sensation, pleasure piling on pleasure.
Davon tumbled her onto her back, reared over her, and began kissing his way down the length of her body. Alys reached down and found his impressive width, all velvet skin and rigid heat, weeping a sweet bead of arousal from the tip. She groaned as their joined lust burned fiercer. Make me forget. Forget the pain, forget the terror and confusion and despair. Leave no room for anything but you.
“Yes!” He surged to his feet, wrapping strong hands around her hips and lifting her lower body into the air, leaving her head and shoulders braced on the mattress.
Alys gave a startled yip as he pulled her legs up and draped both them over his shoulders. Cupping her ass cheeks, he lifted her until he could feast between her thighs while she hung upside down, only her head supported. She flung out both arms to steady herself as he subjected her to a long, slick lick.
“Jesus, Davon!” she gasped, as he started eating her like a peach, his tongue playing up and down between her pussy lips, stabbing deep into her, then retreating again before swirling upward to catch her clit. Each lick, each flaming stroke poured honeyed delight the length of her body right into her brain.
Hunger boiled through his consciousness, with his enjoyment of holding her so helpless in his arms. Because he knew just how much it aroused her.
“Let me…” she gasped, only to feel his instant refusal to free her. “But I want to make love to you too!”
Darling, you don’t have to do anything but feel, he told her in the Truebond. Feel my mouth. Feel my cock. Feel my hands. His long fingers tightened on her hips right to the edge of bruising as his tongue circled her clit again, then lapping down to slide deep into her. He hummed with pleasure. Delicious. Like candy. Then he sealed his lips around her clit and pulled in hard, ruthless sucks that made her eyes fly wide and her helpless hands grope for his muscled thighs.
She cried out in a strangled squeal, but he went right on licking, dragging more and more pleasure from her quivering nervous system until it seemed her brain lit up inside her skull. As the pleasure whipped through her, Alys writhed, arching into his mouth.
An image flashed through her mind -- Davon’s view of her breasts, topped with stiff, eager nipples. She could smell her own arousal through his keen vampire senses, taste it on his tongue, intoxicating and erotic. He savored the sight, the sound of her moans, the flavor and the scent of her as she went mad for him. Until he sucked the first bright, scarlet ribbon of orgasm right out of her body. It lashed through her, more whip than ribbon, until she shrieked.
Something stung her thighs, a sharp pain.
No, not her thighs. His. Her nails were digging into his skin hard enough to draw blood. She started to relax her hold…
Don’t you dare. His order shot through her head.
She cried out, impossibly aroused. Which was when he saw what she wanted. What she absolutely had to have.
Davon lowered her ass off his shoulders, parted her legs, and drove the entire length of his cock hard into her body in a single driving lunge. Her voice spiraled into a cry of delight and lust.
He wrapped one hand around her ankle and lowered the other leg, draping it over a hip. His gaze hot and predatory on her face, he began to stroke. Hard, driving deep. Pumping in and out as his free hand delved between her thighs for the hard pearl of her clit. As he fucked her, he strummed her with his thumb, seeking exactly the right rhythm, zeroing in on the motion that created the strongest sensation. And banged her in pounding strokes that massaged her juicing flesh into a searing ecstasy on the edge of pain. Knowing exactly what she found most arousing, plucking it right out of her mind and using it to give her the most intense orgasm she’d ever had.
Alys came, howling, bucking against his big body as he watched her with possessive eyes, until the frenzy of her pleasure combined with the tight grip of her cunt to drag him to his own climax. Pleasure fed pleasure, a twisting, twitching, mad cataclysm of rapture that left them both sprawled in a sweaty, delighted heap.
* * *
Davon gathered Alys in tight as she wrapped her arms around him and they both quivered in every muscle from the aftermath. “God,” he groaned against her hair. “Sweet Jesus, I love you.”
She smiled, feeling just how completely he meant those words. Every bit as much as she did. “And I love you. Just as I’ll love you until the day I die.”
She felt his cheeks move against hers as he grinned in happy delight. “God, yes.” He hesitated a moment, then asked the question even though he was well aware of the answer. “Marry me.”
“I think I already have.”
“Yes.” The words sounded a little smug. “But le
t’s make it official.”
“God, yes.”
For a long, delicious moment, they curled into one another, floating in dazed, sated pleasure. Finally she spoke. “It’s going to get damned messy now that the mortals know we exist.”
“Yeah,” he admitted, a smile curling his lips anyway. “But we can handle it. After today, we can handle anything.”
She opened one eye to give him a sly look. “Even a wedding?”
“You bet your pretty ass.” He laughed, his deep voice ringing. “We fucking earned it.”
Dedication
One of the secrets of my success as a romance novelist is my friends. These wonderful women have always been willing to read early drafts of my books and give me honest critiques of my work. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve saved me from some embarrassing mistake or error in logic.
Once again, Stephanie “Flashy Cat” Burke, Joey W. Hill, and LaVerne Thompson took valuable time from their own writing to help me make this book richer and stronger. They helped me with all kinds of technical and logical details, as well as helped me strengthen the emotional impact of the romance. My only hope is that I’m as big a help to them as they are to me.
And of course, I want to thank my editor, Margaret Riley, AKA Shelby Morgen, whose endless patience and keen eye have helped make my writing stronger.
But most of all, I would like to thank you, my reader. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re still following the adventures of the Magekind after all these years.
Sincerely,
Angela Knight
Angela Knight
New York Times best-selling author Angela Knight’s first book was written in pencil and illustrated in crayon; she was nine years old at the time. A few years later, she read The Wolf and the Dove and fell in love with romance. In addition to her fiction work, Angela’s publishing career includes a stint as a comic book writer and ten years as a newspaper reporter. Several of her stories have won South Carolina Press Association awards. Angela lives in South Carolina with her husband, Michael, a detective with the Spartanburg PD.
Angela at Changeling: changelingpress.com/angela-knight-a-26
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