He licked one of her nipples with the flat of his tongue. His head moved so that he could repeat the decadent caress over the other. With a masculine, predatory growl he took her whole breast in his mouth and suckled mercilessly. The fingers of one hand pinched and tugged at her free nipple as he sucked her, so that it wouldn’t feel neglected, while his other hand held his weight up off of her with an effortless show of strength.
His mouth left her breast to glisten and cool in the air as he trailed wet, hot kisses to her ribcage and stomach. His tongue delved into her navel, sending jolts of heat into her with each flick of that devilish appendage. His hand trailed down between her thighs and teased the seam of her cunt until she parted her legs even wider to him. He chuckled triumphantly and nipped her navel in reward, licking and kissing and nibbling her until she keened with wild pleasure.
And those wicked, knowing fingers of his traced the swollen lips of her sex, toying with her labia piercing until she was certain her juices flooded down onto the mattress beneath her. She was so hot. So aroused. If he didn’t take her soon she was going to scream.
And wouldn’t that make him happy?
“Please,” she moaned.
“Please what?” He murmured the question into the swell of her tummy and it rumbled through her, the feel of his voice a caress all its own.
“Fuck me.” She strained upwards, pushing her wet sex towards him wantonly.
“I won’t fuck you, but I’ll make love to you,” he said, eyes playfully twinkling up from his position between her thighs.
“Make love to me then,” she commanded with a smile and bucked against him.
“You’re so wet,” he whispered, dipping one lone finger into her moisture.
She moaned and writhed again.
“How can you be so wet…like this…at a time like this?”
That indefinable and troubling something, which kept trying to intrude in on her dreaming thoughts, was there, naked, in his voice. She pushed it away, vowing that nothing would ruin this magical time with him. Here in his arms nothing mattered but that they love each other.
“I love you, Cin,” she breathed, feeling compelled to tell him.
“I love you too, baby,” he shocked her by replying.
His finger stroked her once more before he rose up between her legs and positioned his cock at her portal. He was unprotected, naked and velvety and dusky smooth without his condom. She wondered at that anomaly and for a moment unknowingly teetered on the brink of a frightening realization. But as Cinder smoothly entered her in one long thrust she cried out and let him take her into oblivion.
He stretched her. Moved into her like a storm of fire and flame. His thumb stroked and rolled her clit, smearing her wetness onto the swollen flesh so that it glided easily. Silkily. He thrust in and out of her, so tightly filling her that she thought perhaps they were well and truly one being in those moments when he reached for the very heart of her.
“Oh, Cinder,” she breathed and moaned in a litany.
“I would do anything for you. Do anything to keep you with me. I will always love you, Steffy. Always,” he whispered fervently into her mouth as he lowered himself slowly onto her and kissed her.
He was so hard inside of her. So thick and long and strong. But he moved so gently inside of her that she wept with the beauty of it all. With each down stroke he made Steffy clutch him to her with desperate, loving hands. She wrapped her legs around his waist, locked her ankles upon the pumping slope of his buttocks. His arms were braced on either side of her head, his hands holding her face as he deepened each kiss until there was no room for breath or words between them.
When her orgasm took her it was a gentle but all consuming one. She was swallowed by a warm swell of ecstasy until she was mindless to all but the pleasure. Time had no worth or meaning in that place of joy, and she lost all sense of self and consequence. She became light. She became love.
The hot flood of Cinder’s come filled her full to bursting, carrying her deeper into climax, into pleasure. His tears salted her mouth as he moaned against her lips, finding his own fulfillment.
His hips rocked gently in the cradle of hers, pumping every last bit of his release deep into her body. And as she came down from her endless time spent in the heavens she became aware of hands that were not hers or Cinder’s cupping her head. She looked down at the mirror that graced the wall beyond the foot of the bed and saw a dark, cloaked form towering over them. She gasped and froze as she became aware of the man that stood over their head, watching and guarding them in silence. She cried out in surprise, but choked on it as her breath froze to ice in her lungs.
She couldn’t breathe.
Cinder left her body and the cold spread from her lungs and on through her limbs. It consumed her. Swallowed her up completely. Until there was nothing but icy blackness waiting to claim her.
“Hold on, Steffy. Please just breathe. Breathe.” She heard Cinder’s voice but it seemed so far away to her now.
Another voice was taking her deep, riding with her the cold that raced through her veins.
“Stay with us, Steffy. Stay. Stay…”
Black eyes, deep and fathomless and filled with the shine of silver stars, flooded her vision. Endless eyes. Ageless.
“It’s cold,” she heard herself say in a whisper and knew that she was dying at last.
But would she live beyond that death? Would she cross that threshold and become something other than human? She heard Cinder cry out something but the words were lost in the ceaseless murmuring command of that other’s voice. And she knew that it didn’t matter what happened after…so long as she lived.
A flash of light blinded her. A doorway lay open before her, a doorway leading to a void in which pain and suffering and feeling were all but memories. She knew that if she stepped over the threshold of that doorway then she would never have to worry about anything ever again. It was calm and tranquil beyond that door.
Beyond that door lay death. And all of its eternal trappings.
The cold that permeated her body beat at her with the sting of a thousand icy knives. If she crossed through the doorway ahead that pain would leave. She knew it. And it would be so easy to let go.
The doorway loomed.
She moved to step through it. But something blocked her path. It was a woman, blonde and tall and lovely despite her crooked nose. A broken nose that Steffy knew the woman had received in a mock fight with her older tomboy of a sister.
“Raine.”
“Go back, Steffy. You must go back.” Her voice held just an echo of its former radiance.
“Oh Raine. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I know.” The woman’s smile was sad but full of the warm light of true and loving friendship. “I’ve been with you. And you’ve been with me in my dark place. I’ll always be with you, Steffy. But you must go back now. I won’t let you pass.”
“Steffy.” The Traveler’s voice called to her over the distance. He was at her back, coming after her.
“Go on, stupid. You don’t want to be here. Go back to your man.” Raine sounded so much like her old self that Steffy felt tears fall on her face.
“I love you, Raine,” she cried even as she turned back away from the light, into darkness. She hoped her friend heard, but was too far gone to wait around and find out.
Everything went black. Pain and heat engulfed her, welcoming her back to life. She opened her eyes to see Obsidian, Agate, and The Traveler looming over her, healing and protecting her broken body. She looked around for Cinder and winced at the bombardment of striking images that assailed her.
Seeing through a Shikar’s eyes was like nothing she could have imagined.
At once she felt Cinder’s hand, hot and strong in hers. And knew that she would never have to let it go if she didn’t want to.
And she never would.
Chapter Seventeen
“How can you concentrate with all that infernal racket going on?” Edge ro
ared over the music blaring from her stereo.
Steffy glared at him across the practice room and stuck her tongue out at him. She liked Edge, found him rather amusing at times despite his determined seriousness, but learning the foils under his tutelage was no picnic, or so she was discovering. “It helps me keep my rhythm.”
“By Grimm, but it’s giving me a pounding headache.”
“Get over it, you big baby. It’s not my fault you have absolutely no taste in music.”
“Let’s run through the routine once more and call it a day. I can’t take much more of this.”
Steffy and Edge faced off on opposite sides of the massive room. Steffy clenched her fists, flexed her muscles and felt the tingling of her foils as they shifted beneath her skin, deep within her Shikar bones. She braced her legs apart in a fighting stance and let the pounding rhythm of the music take her.
Weapon of Choice by Fat Boy Slim. How apropos for the moment, she thought with a grin. A simple flexing of her muscles and two long, sickle-shaped blades extended out of the top of her wrists, curving wickedly over her fists. She did so love the look of her blades like this.
Over the course of the past month she’d become a formidable member of the Foil Caste.
Poor Cinder had been so disappointed that she hadn’t shown Incinerator abilities as Cady had. He’d mistakenly assumed that all humans crossed over into Incinerator status when they left their humanity behind. She’d had to console him out of his black mood by wrapping her lips around his cock and sucking him dry.
Ahh, the duties of a Shikar wife were never done.
“Come at me, Steffy.” Edge’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
She felt the silly, lovesick grin she wore and immediately pursed her lips against it. The music beat at her and she lunged at her sparring partner with deadly intent.
Their blades met and sparked. Edge danced with endless speed and grace, motions so fast they blurred. Steffy followed suit, trying to match him move for move. It was difficult, but she held her own. They danced their deadly reel, twirling and lunging and retreating as the music played about them.
Steffy whirled and threw one of her foils at Edge with wicked precision. Edge halted in mid lunge, executed a stunningly dramatic back flip, and just barely avoided being sliced by the silvery-blue blade. The blade boomeranged and Edge kicked out at it with a long blade that shot out of the tip of his booted foot, splitting the sole of the boot wide as he did so.
No wonder the Shikar seamstresses were always complaining of their endless workload.
The blade ricocheted and flew at Steffy’s head. She held out her arm—the one that had originally thrown the blade—and tried not to wince as she waited. The foil returned to its mistress, settling into her arm with surprisingly painless ease.
“Quit flinching, woman! How many times do I have to tell you? The blades will return to you without injuring you. You cannot be harmed by your own foils,” he admonished her.
“Sorry,” she wailed for what was probably the hundredth time. “I can’t help it.” She danced a jig in time with the music, loosening up her tired muscles as best she could through the exercise.
“Can we please turn off that damn noise?”
“No. I need it.” Steffy had grown fond of torturing her teacher over the past few weeks. He was so funny to her when he was riled. It went against the slick, elegant exterior he wore like a shield.
Edge’s black trench coat fluttered about his ruined boot with his volatile movements.
“Did you ask if Agate was finished with my trench coat when you saw her earlier?” she asked, eyeing his coat with a lustful eye. Damn but she loved his coat. And she couldn’t wait to get her own.
“No. I was too busy getting my own clothing order filled.”
“Good grief. How many changes of clothes do you go through anyway?” she asked, noting the foil-sliced tatters of his black clothing.
“I used to only need new boots or coats.”
“What do you mean?”
“Before I began training you I used to fight in the nude under my coat. But Cinder will have none of that. He threatened to barby-Q me if I so much as left my arms bare in front of you,” he said testily. “Whatever the hell barby-Q means. No doubt something only an Incinerator would understand.”
Steffy roared with laughter. “In the nude? I don’t believe it—you? The staid and serious Edge? Oh that’s too precious.” She guffawed.
“I can assure you that ‘precious’ would be the last word in your mind if you were to see me nude,” he said blackly, eyes glittering dangerously in the face of her mirth.
“But we’ll never know that will we, Edge?”
Cinder’s voice never ceased to send pools of liquid hot desire flooding between her thighs.
Steffy grinned at her mate and launched herself into his arms. Cinder’s heat enveloped her as he swung her up in his arms and clutched her tight.
His eyes blazed a warning over her at Edge.
Edge rolled his eyes and held his hands up. “Don’t get bent out of shape. You can have her—and her damned music. I’ll save my charms for a more worthy partner. In fact, a worthy partner awaits me in Egypt as we speak. So if you’ll excuse me—”
“Not just now, Edge, I’m afraid. Tryton wants you in his chambers posthaste.”
Edge immediately sobered. “What about?”
“I didn’t ask.”
Without further words wasted between them, Edge left to meet with Tryton.
“Alone at last,” Cinder said and kissed her soundly on the lips.
“Not here. Anyone could come by and see.”
“So? Let them look. Maybe they’ll learn something new.”
“You’re crazy,” she laughed.
“Will you be happy here with a crazy Shikar for your mate?”
She smiled. “Of course I will. I expect you’ll see to it.”
“Do you mind giving up your life above?” Though his words were serious, his hands played teasingly over her body as he held her close.
“I’ll still be working Friday nights at the club, at least for a little while, so I won’t be giving up everything all at once.”
“I still don’t like the idea of you working—even if it’s only for one night every week.”
“Poor baby. But you’ll be with me to make sure I don’t get into any trouble.”
“You’d better believe it.” He smiled wickedly then, and a burning red foil shot out of one of his fingertips, cutting a scorching line through the shirt she wore. It fell away from her in the next breath and she gasped. “Remember last night when I introduced you to the Smyl?”
How could she forget that incredible experience? She nodded, feeling her excitement rise until she was practically giddy with it.
“Well I didn’t bring a Smyl. But I did bring something else.” He retrieved a set of small, round, iridescent patches.
“What are those?”
He reached out and popped her breasts free of the bra that encased them. Her nipples immediately peaked as his eyes burned over her. He placed the patches over her nipples, fingers playing her teasingly as he did so. The patches, feeling like wet, hot mouths sucked and pulled and bit at her nipples—so sensuous and erotic that she was immediately in thrall to a burning hot desire.
“Scheiße!”
“Mmm. Scheiße, indeed. And while those Nippers suck and lick your luscious nipples, my mouth will suck and lick your luscious pussy.” He bent before her, taking her pants to her ankles as he did so.
“Lay down and put your ankles around my neck,” he commanded wickedly.
“Oh my,” she said unsteadily and moved to do as he instructed.
His mouth settled without further preamble on the flesh of her cunt. He burrowed his face deep against her, using his tongue like a cock to fuck her with. His fingers entered her along with that tongue, gathering her wetness before it moved down and gently, slowly pierced her anus. Steffy moaned and bucked against him.
His teeth clicked repeatedly against her labia ring. The Nippers sucked her nipples until they were hard, pouting, aching. Her breasts bounced as she rode her husband’s face and her breath came in sobbing pants. Her fingers clutched desperately in his hair, seeking an anchor in the storm that swept over her and through her.
His finger thrust deeper into her ass, stroking some secret, magical place inside her with expert ease.
“Scheiße!” she cried again.
“Scream for me, Steffy. I won’t stop until you scream this time,” he growled into the mound of her pussy.
Steffy looked down and saw his eyes blazing their Shikar fire over his mouthful of wet sex. His mouthful of her sex.
“Make me,” she goaded with a smile, grinding her pussy against his face with shameless abandon.
His slurped her clit noisily into his mouth. He bit and sucked her until she swelled and trembled against him.
“Fuck,” she gasped.
“I’m trying to,” he said around her clit.
His finger thrust and thrust and thrust again. His tongue licked her over and over, drinking in her wetness. His lips pressed and nibbled against her mercilessly.
Just when she thought she would break, when she thought she would come, he pulled back.
“Not yet. You haven’t screamed for me yet.”
“Oh my god,” she wailed, knowing she was in for it now.
He sat back on his heels, jerked her roughly to him and grinned a devil’s grin. Steffy moaned. He lifted her up until only her shoulders, neck and head touched the floor. She was nearly standing on her head. With easy strength he pulled her hips up to his mouth and began licking her like she was an ice cream or lollipop.
She wrapped her legs around his neck and held on for dear life.
He rooted against her, moving his face back and forth against her like a dog with a bone. The enthusiastic movement shocked Steffy into a cry, even as his tongue delved deep into her channel. He filled her with his tongue, licking her deep inside with it. He tasted the very heart of her with an endless, insatiable hunger.
The Horde Wars II: Wanton Fire Page 14