Bloodlust Denied

by Phillips, Christina

  Once she had been a member of an ancient aristocracy, but had no intention of confessing such to him. “Obscure or not, I’ll be missed if you don’t return me.”

  “You may be missed.” He shrugged as if that was of no account. “But you’ll never be found.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Why was she asking? No one but Thanatos would miss her. No one but Thanatos would search for her.

  There was no question in her mind that he would find her. He had to find her. Neither could survive alone.

  But the duke didn’t know that. So how could he be so certain no one had seen them leave together? Had recognized his carriage? Just because he believed she was not related to the Lady Harriet didn’t mean she wasn’t.

  For all he knew, Lady Harriet’s men could even now be moments from staging a rescue.

  “Because,” he offered her a sardonic smile, “I’m the Duke of Havenshire and my word is law. You could be the Regent’s favorite mistress and still they wouldn’t find you.”

  Unease vibrated through her mind as she realized she believed him.

  “You’re very sure of yourself.” Her voice was husky. She couldn’t help it. No matter how his arrogance infuriated her, he still fascinated her and she wanted him more than anything she had ever wanted in her life before.

  “I’m sure of one thing.” His smoky voice licked around her senses, and she struggled against the sultry ripples of desire that tightened her belly. “Before this night is over you’ll writhe with ecstasy in my arms as you scream with mindless pleasure.”

  Her clitoris throbbed at the vision and she tensed her thigh muscles in the vain hope he wouldn’t smell the extent of her arousal. An impossible wish as her desire permeated the cursed bed and she could no sooner control her lust than she could control this maddening man.

  “Release me.” The words were barely articulate. “And I’ll more than fulfill your egotistical fantasies.”

  His dark head lowered and, without breaking eye contact, he lazily flicked his tongue over her swollen nipple. Damp tremors radiated from the tip of her breast to the center of her wet core and she fought against the overpowering urge to squirm…and lost.

  “You’ll fulfill all my fantasies, Morana.” His whisper was a dark caress that flayed her soul. “And you will fulfill them on my terms.”

  Chapter Eight

  Resentment flared, momentarily consuming everything but the knowledge he wouldn’t grant her this one small favor. She twisted her hips, attempting to throw him aside, but he merely grinned and again trailed the tip of his tongue across her treacherous nipple.

  “I’ll never scream my pleasure for you.” She’d bite off her tongue first.

  His eyes glittered in clear challenge.

  “Then let us have a wager, Miss Craven.” He raised his head and his infernal hair made him look like an irresistible fallen angel. Damn him. “If you survive this night without experiencing orgasmic pleasure at my hands, tongue or whatever else I may choose to use upon your body before I release you, then you’re free to go. I won’t stop you.” He looked down at her, demonic amusement evident in every aristocratic plane of his face.

  She glared up at him. He knew how aroused she was already, and he had scarcely started.

  “And if I fail this challenge?” She knew his terms. How could she not? But that wasn’t what made her brain thunder or her senses pound. It was the knowledge that she didn’t care if she lost, that she wanted to lose, because the thought of being tossed out of his life before another day dawned tortured the hollow center of her beating heart.

  “If you fail, you will remain here as my willing guest until I’ve enjoyed my fill of you.” Once again he lowered toward her and his lips brushed across hers, a fleeting caress, filled with arrogant promise.

  His words scalded. He would keep her until he tired of her. It was no revelation but to hear him so baldly state his terms roiled her stomach.

  She would never surrender. It was unthinkable.

  “I have my own terms.”

  His eyebrows jerked upward. He clearly hadn’t contemplated such a response. “I’m not open to negotiation, Morana. The wager stands or not.”

  She blinked so as not to become hypnotized by his alluring eyes and simply agree with every callous word he uttered. She allowed her lips to curl in what she hoped appeared a scornful sneer. “Should I resist your charms tonight, then whether I leave here or remain at my leisure will be my choice.” Another term occurred to her, and while he stared at her, in obvious astonishment, she added, “And I expect to be treated with respect.”

  An odd expression flickered across his features, as though he admired her stand but unwillingly. “Your first term intrigues me greatly. I’m almost sorry we won’t have the need to put it to the test.”

  “Do you agree?” She had to know. Although why she thought his word worth anything when he had already broken it once, she couldn’t say.

  “Why not? It appears I can’t lose.”

  It wasn’t enough. And yet she knew better than to insist because his values were warped, his honor deficient and all she could rely upon was that his fierce pride wouldn’t allow him to default on a wager.

  Because she had every intention of winning tonight. She had to, for the sake of her sanity.

  She locked her muscles into ridges of immobility as the duke trailed the tips of his fingers along her rib cage. A tantalizing, fleeting touch, which scarcely skimmed her sensitized skin and yet she could feel the caress weaving into her bloodstream, tangling around her senses and spinning through her quivering clitoris.

  “Your skin is as soft as the most exotic of Eastern silks.”

  “Be silent.” She ground the words between her teeth. It was hard enough to remain in control when he touched her. If he insisted on wrapping that wickedly sensual voice around her, she would be lost.

  Damp heat delved into her navel and she strangled a groan as his hair whispered across her belly.

  “You taste of honey.” His voice throbbed with desire. “I greatly anticipate consuming your cream.”

  Blood thundered in her temples and her thigh muscles trembled with exertion as she tried not to respond to his erotic promise. “Talking isn’t part of this wager.”

  She felt his lips curve into a smile against her trembling flesh. “I don’t recall you insisting on silence, my love.”

  That was because it hadn’t crossed her mind he would speak to her while attempting to seduce her into losing her mind. She screwed her eyes shut, tried to focus on anything but the duke’s tongue, anything but the sound of his deep, decadent voice. But all she could feel was his touch, and all she could hear was his voice and her erratically pounding heart.

  “I’m insisting now.” Begging. Pleading. Don’t stop. Gods, she hadn’t said that aloud, had she?

  “Too late.” His fingers traced the curve of her hips, slid into the valley of her tightly closed legs and delved through her curls. She dug her teeth into her lip and held her breath, but nothing could prevent the sharp arrows of raw lust from spearing through her quivering pussy.

  The duke shifted his weight and against her will, her eyes sprang open to watch him angle himself more comfortably in order to view her.

  “Spread your thighs for me. I want to see how wet you are.”

  With her last ounce of willpower, she managed to hook her ankles together. He glanced up at her, but instead of anger or impatience at her disobedience, he looked intrigued.

  “No.” She would not succumb. She would not allow him to win. She had to assert her rights, collect this wager and only then could she fully surrender herself to his demands.

  Instead of insisting, he pulled off his black leather boots before rising from the bed. Despite her best intentions, she couldn’t drag her gaze from his finely sculpted torso, or the sprinkling of dark hair that arrowed down his taut stomach and disappeared into his cream breeches.

  “Your eyes tell me what your mouth will not.” He tosse
d her an insolent smile before loosening his breeches and stripping them from his body.

  Her throat closed and her lungs stilled as her damn eyes drank in the magnificence of his erect cock while he stood there basking in her reluctant admiration.

  For endless hours, her dreams had taunted her with visions of how he would look naked. And now, in the flesh, her fantasies dissolved. Because the reality was breath stealing and wiped forever the sordid image of their hasty encounter in a squalid back alley.

  “Now you will open your legs for me.” He was so sure of his conquest.

  “No.” The word breathed through her lips, although she couldn’t think from where she found the strength.

  Without another word, the duke straddled her hips and she stared at his broad shoulders and corded back with mounting bemusement. And then her gaze dropped to his lean, tight buttocks and heat flooded through her, pooling between her thighs.

  His fingertips scraped along the soles of her feet and she yelped, jerking her legs, ankles springing apart. He continued to tickle her feet, and the agonizing tingles danced over her skin as she squirmed beneath his restraining weight.

  He turned, so swiftly she could scarcely believe it, and knelt between her open thighs. Her breath panted between parted lips.

  “Unfair.”

  “But not against the rules.” Again he shot her a smile forged from the deepest pit of purgatory. “There are no rules.”

  But there was a rule. The most important rule. Her legs trembled as he splayed his fingers against her thighs. She struggled to contain her emotions, to dampen her arousal because if she gave him her orgasm now, she stood no earthly chance of ever gaining his respect.

  “Tell me you want me.” His voice was hoarse as his thumbs caressed the swollen folds of her pussy. “And we can reach mutual satisfaction.”

  She wanted him. More than ever.

  “Untie me.” Her hips ground uselessly against the satin bed sheets, against his restraining hands.

  His dark head nestled between her thighs and his tongue flicked over her aroused bud. A shocking sensation of heat and wet and pressure. She bucked involuntarily, hating herself, hating him, but above all hating the thought that he might stop such wondrous torture.

  “Honey and cream.” His rumbling voice vibrated against her clitoris, ricocheted along her nerves, curled around her tight nipples. Unfair screamed through her mind, but she raised her hips anyway, silently begging for something she would never say aloud.

  His tongue invaded, licking her sensitized core as his hands slid up her writhing body and cupped her aching breasts. She bit her lip and closed her eyes, but the dark only enhanced every touch of his fingers and mouth.

  The tip of his tongue swirled around her bud with relentless dedication. His hot breath drifted across her wet slit, stirring the heavy ache that throbbed through her channel. She held her breath in a vain effort to dull her senses, but the erratic thud of her pulses only increased.

  She would not come. The thought pounded in her mind but when he squeezed her nipples and grazed her clitoris with his teeth, all sanity shattered. She bucked helplessly, loving the feel of his hair against the inside of her thighs, of his mouth eating her pussy.

  And then he was inside her, impaling his length into her welcoming sheath. She contracted around him, sucking him in, shuddering with need and want and mindless abandon. His naked flesh melded with hers, rough against smooth. No barrier between them.

  Just as she had endlessly imagined.

  Alexius raised himself onto his hands as he continued to pound into Morana. Her pussy was wet and tight. Her climax rippled along his cock in an endless wave, squeezing his rigid flesh. The expression of dazed ecstasy on her face transfixed him, reached deep inside and twisted something long dead and decayed.

  A strangled groan scraped along his throat; sweat slicked his skin and he clamped his jaw shut. Pressure thundered through him and his balls hardened and his cock jerked. Release exploded and he pumped his hot seed deep into her body, impaling her onto the bed. Crimson sheets, candlelight and the scent of musky sex filled his senses, blurred his vision. And still he needed more, fucking her the way he had dreamed of fucking her every night for the last three years. Only when Morana gasped and clenched his backside with her ankles did he finally collapse onto her soft body. His salvation.

  Her heart thundered, her blood pumped, the sweet scent of her completion drenched the air. Yet no desire to puncture her fragile skin assailed him. No clawing need to suck down her blood, to quench his ravening bloodlust tormented his mind. It was as if this coupling, this primal fucking, had sated him in ways he had never before imagined possible.

  Yet, despite how he had freed her hands in the moments before orgasm, she did not touch him.

  He would not demean himself to ask.

  Moments slid by, and he continued to listen to the hypnotic thud of her heart, the ecstatic rush of her blood through veins. But still she kept her arms above her head.

  Finally he rolled off her, an odd disquiet gnawing through his chest. In all his sexual encounters, he finished by tearing himself from the woman’s clinging arms, repulsed by the insistence on holding and caressing when he no longer hungered for the blood or the body.

  In this strange velvet silence, Morana’s blood no longer tempted him. But he craved her body and in a shameful, unnatural corner of his psyche he also craved to feel her arms around him, holding him. To feel her fingers caress his flesh and tangle through his hair.

  His lips twisted with self-disgust. What the fuck was he thinking? He didn’t want that kind of suffocation. It had been more than two thousand years since he’d wanted a woman to touch him in such a manner, and he had no intention of resurrecting derelict emotions that gained him nothing but impotent grief.

  Morana was different from the countless other women he’d taken over the centuries. That was the reason she was here in his bed, the reason he hadn’t already tossed her aside after slaking his twin lusts.

  The reason he denied himself her blood. Even if he no longer craved it. The hunger would return and he would resist because she intrigued him, fascinated him and it had been too long since another had so captivated his interest.

  That was all he felt for her.

  But fuck it, why hadn’t she held onto him as he’d climaxed within her? Was that her stubborn way of proving her independence, of showing him that despite being unable to deny her body’s response to his touch she still retained a modicum of control over her damn arms and hands?

  Even though he had released her bonds in the shimmering second before she had spilled her own shattering orgasm for him?

  A shudder rocked her body. He contemplated drawing the coverlet over her, then derided the thought. She could cover herself. He wasn’t her slave.

  He hooked the satin sheet between his toes and yanked the cursed thing over her legs. How much longer would she keep this silence up? Did she expect an explanation as to why he’d broken the wager? Or was she simply savoring her victory, waiting for him to admit that she had won?

  Forearm across forehead, he glowered at the intricately embroidered tester. He’d wanted her touch and had released her. And given her opportunity to both deny and disdain him.

  If she thought to collect, to leave here without a backward glance, she was sorely deluded. Fuck the wager. He wanted her to stay and there would be no discussion.

  So why the devil had he delivered the choice into her hands?

  Her breath escaped in a shaky gasp. “Do you intend to keep me tethered for the entire time I’m your captive?”

  His scowl deepened as he turned to look at her. She returned his scrutiny but there was no triumph in her eyes. It was a trick of the candlelight, could be nothing else, because for a moment he imagined he saw tears glimmering within those dark enigmatic depths.

  “Tethered?” What game did she now play? His glance traveled over her extended arms and perception shifted. He rose onto his elbow and stare
d into her flushed face. “I released you long ago, Morana.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Of course, he hadn’t physically loosened her bindings but at the time, he hadn’t imagined she would notice. He had thought she would simply realize she was free and assume he’d untied her as she writhed beneath him in mindless delight.

  When she still didn’t move, a thought occurred to him. She didn’t know she had won. Didn’t know he had, for a reason even he found incomprehensible, broken the wager.

  She thought he was the victor.

  A smile curved his lips at the knowledge she had no intention of leaving. Her honor wouldn’t allow it and he possessed none, so would never confide the tangled truth.

  It was better this way. Far less complicated. He trailed a finger across her collarbone and over her shoulder. “Touch me and see.”

  She hadn’t held him because she’d believed herself still enslaved. It was madness to find comfort in such but what the fuck.

  Morana remained motionless. “I can’t.”

  His comfort level jarred. “I won’t eat you.” At least, not tonight. Not until his hunger returned and she no longer enthralled him.

  She swallowed, as if her throat hurt, and his gaze hovered on her pale neck for a split-second longer than necessary. “I can’t feel my arms.”

  Chapter Nine

  Alexius frowned and reached for her arm. The unnatural chill penetrated through his hand and with a smothered curse, he leveled himself upright and gently maneuvered the deadened limb to her side.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He rescued her other arm and then gingerly rubbed his hands over her tautly defined biceps.

  “Why would you care?” She spoke through gritted teeth, as though his ministrations pained. He hesitated, unsure, and then sent a blast of heat from his mind to warm her chilled marrow. “I thought perhaps it was part of your plan for my shoulders to dislocate.”