Diana's Hound: Bloodhounds, Book 4

by Moira Rogers

  If she started, she’d never stop. She knew it with a certainty that scared her for a split second, the half a heartbeat before his skilled touch drove away everything else.

  She would have screamed as the first wave drew tight and crashed over her, but she had no breath. Nothing but Nate inside her body, inside her blood.

  Inside her heart.

  He rode her orgasm with shallow thrusts, his voice washing over her in murmured encouragement, words she could barely understand edged with growling pleasure. When she opened her eyes, he was watching her, flashing a rough, feral smile. “So beautiful.”

  That smile crashed into and dissolved the first hints of Diana’s bloodhound hunger, sating the gnawing emptiness even as it kindled inside her. How do you satisfy someone who can only be satisfied by satisfying you? This was the secret, the elusive thing every hound sought with each dark moon, but so few found.

  She opened her mouth to tell him, but another thrust, this one quick and hard, drove all rational thought from her mind. She slipped into that darkness, animal and hot, and reached for him.

  Day drifted into night, which gave way to early morning, a progression of time marked only by the trays of food left discreetly by the door. Sunlight was a distant dream, held at bay by the thick curtains that left the room lit by soft, twinkling lights that had been designed to dance and sway in a sweet imitation of firelight.

  His mind puzzled over the trick while Diana slept. It wasn’t the sort of invention that would have appealed to Satira, whose logical mind fixated on the practical with brutal focus, but the delicacy and elegance appealed to Nate, even through the haze of his hunger. A bare bulb with a simple filament might serve a necessary function, but how could one not value the way a more diffuse glow gilded Diana’s skin, or the way the flickering light cast ever-changing shadows that begged to be traced with fingers and tongue?

  And trace he did, trace and touch and stroke and lick until she stirred sleepily and welcomed him into her body, and then there were no more thoughts of elegant design or clever filaments. Instead, he savored a darker sort of alchemy, the fevered need that sparked when her body clenched tight around his cock, as if the act of fucking created something new and powerful, a chemical reaction more dangerous than anything he’d created in his laboratory.

  Her nails pierced his lower back as she tipped over the edge again, the pain sharp but sweetened by her desperate noises and the way they quickened his blood, quickened his pace, quickened the lazy spinning of the world. He fell into her as pleasure spiked a warning up his spine—no, not just fell. He melted, the heat of her body turning the orderly state of his existence into chaos.

  He was molten, pouring into her, the parts of him that were bloodhound reveling in the primal marking. Possession, pure and simple, and he’d never been so pleased to be so barbaric.

  Diana pushed at his chest, rolled him and followed in a smooth, graceful motion that kept him inside her. She stared down at him, her hair wild around her shoulders, and growled as she began to slowly circle her hips. “Again.”

  She’d stolen the words from his lips, but how could he begrudge her the demand when she hovered above him, gorgeous and wild? “You haven’t had enough?” he teased, arching up into her.

  “Enough?” she echoed softly. “I barely know what that means anymore.”

  This wasn’t the warm, too-obliging lover of the past night. This was a bloodhound, eyes glazed and voice edged in darkness, and it thrilled him to imagine he was her chosen prey. “Let’s find out, love. Take what you want.”

  Her thighs flexed, lean muscle under smooth skin, as she rose over him in a gentle rock. “I want you. I want…” The words trailed away, and she closed her eyes.

  “What, Diana?” He released her hips, sliding his hands up to cup her breasts. “I’ll give you anything. I’ll take everything.”

  “Shh.” A frown creased her brow. She covered his hand with hers and pulled it over to the center of her chest, where her heart pounded, fast and hard. “It’s more than pleasure. I feel you here.”

  His own heart lurched as if it would break free of his chest. “What do you feel? Tell me.”

  She started to move, barely swaying at first and then harder, and finally she opened her eyes to meet his gaze. “That it’ll never be enough.”

  Nothing could be enough until the new moon released them from its grip. He was hard again—impossibly, illogically. Irrationally, given his age. But even as his body surged up to meet hers, he knew she wasn’t talking about the lust pounding in their blood.

  He spread his hand wide over her heart, his thumb nestled beneath her breast as his pinky brushed her collarbone. “Never enough.”

  She moved suddenly, a firm rock to meet his next thrust, and repeated her earlier command, this time in a low, husky lilt. “Again.”

  Her heart hammered beneath his hand, and he swore the beat of her heart set a tempo so commanding, his own matched it. Bracing his feet on the bed, he drove up hard enough to lift her knees from the blankets.

  Diana caught her breath in a gasp, then pitched forward, pressing her body to his. She gripped his hair and pulled, the harsh caress contrasting with the delicate trace of her tongue over his jaw. But ferocity pulsed inside her, a feral hunger that grew as his own mellowed. Perhaps this was how she’d felt before, hungry but clear-headed as she watched him devolve into growling, clutching madness.

  In her, growling madness was appealing. He freed both hands to clutch the swell of her ass and took control of her movements, setting a rough, grinding pace that would tease them both with sensation but not release. “Do you feel how much I need you?”

  “No.” She licked a path to the spot just below his ear and nipped him with her teeth.

  He arched his head back, silently inviting her to bite him. “Liar.”

  She pressed her open mouth to his throat and muffled a noise against his skin. “You want. You don’t need.”

  “I want and need.”

  She bit him. Not a nibble or a tease, but a hard bite that marked. A bite that demanded, and something primal surged up in response. Snarling, he caught her arms and rolled them, his preternatural strength lacking its usual awkwardness now that his entire being was focused on one thing. One person.

  Mate.

  Diana groaned and arched beneath him with a shudder. “Now you need.”

  He laughed and licked her pulse. “Do you?”

  She struggled against his restraining hands, but not hard enough to break free. “All the time. It’s all I do.”

  “Why?” He tightened his grip and pinned her wrists to the bed. “Why do you need me? Why me?”

  Another frown. “What?”

  She didn’t understand the question, maybe couldn’t understand it if her world had gone as hazy as his had been. There was no room for thought or consideration in the grip of madness, no room for I’m too old for you or You’re too good for me. There was skin and sweat, the tang of both on their tongues and the slowly building certainty that the same refrain beating in her veins also throbbed in his.

  Mine. Mate. More.

  “Never mind,” he growled, and kissed her.

  Diana strained into his touch with a shaky moan lost to his mouth. Her skin heated even more, something he wouldn’t have thought possible, and her hands flexed against the bed. He almost loosened his hold on her wrists, but something in the hungry arch of her body spoke to an instinct he couldn’t recall ever having felt before.

  Slowly, carefully, he clenched his fingers and pushed her hands higher, stretching her arms until her fingertips brushed the massive headboard. “Is this what you want?” he asked without lifting his lips from her own. “Is this what you like?”

  Another desperate, incoherent moan, and he had to find his answer in her glazed eyes, in the sudden, greedy clutch of her inner muscles around his cock. Growling—an act that seemed to come easily now—he rolled his hips and savored more of her choked noises. “I could do this all aft
ernoon.” Another rock, easing out and gliding back, just enough to keep her on edge. “Would you like that too? A taste of denial to make the reward that much sweeter?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “You think not?”

  She hissed in a breath. “Maybe you would. Hours and hours, no matter how much I begged.”

  “Nothing, Diana.” He licked her lower lip and rewarded her with another lazy thrust. “There is nothing I would not do if it gave you pleasure.”

  That focused her gaze. Sharpened it. “Would you give up your control?” she asked in a whisper. “Let go?”

  Not give control over to her, but give up his own. He shuddered at the thought, even as what was left of his brain reeled. “Who would be in control then?”

  Her chest rose in a single, shaky breath. “No one.”

  No one. No one to haul back on the reins if their lust raced out of control. No one to safeguard their bodies—though that thought was laughable. They were neither of them fragile humans with a tenuous grasp on life, to be harmed beyond healing by a little rough handling.

  No, the safeguards they truly needed were for their hearts, and those were already crumbling.

  Feeling feverish, Nate shifted his weight to his elbows and gathered himself for one sharp thrust. Diana cried out, and he shuddered again as the waning madness surged up, catching him in the grip of feral hunger. “No one,” he growled, driving into her again. “No control. Just this. Us.”

  “I trust you,” she whispered, already panting as she brushed her thumb over his lips.

  Yes, she did, which made her crazy and glorious—and perhaps made her his. She surely seemed all three as she met his wild thrusts, and the capacity for words slipped away, drowning in heat.

  In pleasure.

  In the sweet, maddening clasp of her body.

  In her.

  “Because you let me be both.”

  The words stirred Nate from a doze, and he reached instinctively for a body that wasn’t there. Rolling over, he found Diana curled in a chair by the window. The heavy curtains had been pushed wide, letting the delicate starlight silver skin left bare by a half-donned silk robe.

  Still groggy, he lifted himself to one elbow. “What was that?”

  She turned to meet his gaze. “You asked me a question.”

  A moment later, it came to him. Why do you need me? Though the answer was as cryptic as her expression. “I let you be both?”

  Diana rose and crossed the room with silent steps, but instead of sliding back onto the bed, she dropped to her knees beside it and regarded him solemnly. “Everyone else seems to need me to be simple. I’m either a bloodhound—a sexless fighter who’s good with a blade—or I’m a harmless woman who happens to spend three days a month horny as a bull with two dicks.”

  He choked a little at the comparison, but managed to keep his face serene. “You’re a woman, Diana. I’ve always seen that clearly. But no, not a harmless one.”

  “You don’t want me to be harmless. Helpless.” The robe slithered off her shoulders as she climbed up beside him. “You’re strong enough not to need me to be less.”

  A smart man would have accepted the credit without arguing, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “I don’t need you to be less, but I still need you to be safe, love. I don’t know if I can stop feeling that, even if I don’t try to hold you back.”

  “I know.” She smiled and lifted his hand, turned a kiss to his palm. “You’ll have to pardon me for feeling the same way.”

  Nate couldn’t stop an answering smile from curving his lips. “I’ve been protected by bloodhounds for most of my life, and none of them were half so pretty to look at. I imagine I’ll find a way to manage.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked softly.

  He’d lost track of the days and hours, but the new moon must have still held sway over him, because exhausted as he was, his body stirred. He wanted to be inside her, thrusting deep and listening to her scream as her nails raked his back and her orgasm throbbed around him. “I’m having trouble thinking beyond the most carnal possibilities.”

  “Mmm.” Diana peeled back the sheet and walked her fingers down his chest to his stomach, then hesitated and lifted her eyebrows. “Can I?”

  “Do you imagine there’s a world in which I would say no?”

  “I don’t like to take things for granted.” Her fingers slid lower, skating over his hipbone. “Especially things as delicious as this.”

  Nate tucked his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Wrap those fingers around my cock.”

  “No.” She shifted on the bed until she knelt over one of his thighs, but she kept her hands out to her sides, away from him. Instead, she bent to nuzzle her cheek against his erection.

  Good God.

  “Your lips.” He barely had enough breath to form the words. “I want your mouth.”

  “My tongue?” Just a whisper, the words as teasing as the slow, wet lick she circled around the head of his cock.

  Warmth spiked up his spine as he shifted a hand to tangle in her hair. The visual was better than any fantasy, but the feel… “More tongue.”

  Another slick rasp, this time all the way up his shaft. She did it again, moaning quietly as he fought—and lost to—the urge to tighten his fingers against the back of her head. “I like you like this.”

  “Like what?” he grated. “On edge?”

  “Open.” She just barely closed her lips around him in quick kiss. “Not hiding from me.”

  Yes, the moon had a way of stripping away pretext. The full of it revealed the beast inside the bloodhound, but new revealed the beast inside the man.

  Or woman.

  Nate sprawled back against the headboard and sank his free hand into the mass of curls spilling over her shoulder. “Are you sure you want to see all of my desires?”

  “I have to.” She leaned into his touch, finally closing her fist around the base of his cock.

  Not hollow words. They rang with truth; she needed his desires the way only a bloodhound could. And with her need came an echo in his chest, the bone-deep craving to give her everything.

  Bracing his feet, he pushed up into her touch. “I want to be in your mouth. I want to thrust my cock so deep, and I want you to love it.”

  Diana jerked against his touch and trembled when he held tight, pulling her hair. She licked her lips, her eyes glazed and hungry. “Take it.”

  So much naked, open trust. “Are you sure?”

  Her tongue grazed the crown of his cock again. “Yes.”

  He took her at her word and took her, groaning as he pressed up into her mouth. Not without control, not the first time, but her encouraging whimper drew him back for another.

  Welcoming warmth and the rasp of her tongue drove thought and reason from his being, and that was before he forced open his eyes and confronted the vision of Diana with her lips sliding down his shaft as he thrust deep.

  Suddenly, it wasn’t enough. Jerking at her hair, he hauled her head up. “Get up here,” he ground out. “Turn around.”

  Her nails dug into his thighs. “Make me.”

  So he did, lunging forward to catch her around the waist, sparing only a moment to marvel at his own speed. Every muscle in his body worked in concert as he spun her so that her back thudded against his chest.

  One jerk of her hips had her on her stomach, straddling his chest, her legs spread wide. He slapped the curve of her ass. “Bend down, or I’ll hold you just like this. No touching.”

  She shivered. “For how long?”

  “I could admire this view for hours. Your cunt, beautiful and wet and waiting for me.”

  Diana braced her hands on his legs and slowly bent forward. “Like this?”

  That only improved the view. Curling his fingers around her thighs, he hauled her higher, until she trembled just short of his mouth. “Suck me,” he whispered, letting his breath feather over slick, hungry flesh. “I want to be inside you in every way I can i
magine.”

  “So tell me about them. Not with words.” She fisted her hand around his shaft and stroked lazily. “Can you?”

  Using his thumbs, he parted her before slicking his tongue over her cunt. “You want me inside your mind, as well?”

  Her breath caught. When she answered, her voice had gone husky. “I want you in me too. Every way I can imagine.”

  Yes. A thought only meant for himself, but perhaps she heard it. He put more strength behind the next one, wrapping his thoughts around hers until her mind tangled with his. “Then take me in your mouth, and I’ll show you the rest.”

  Her hand tightened for a fraction of a second before her head descended. She enveloped him in wet heat, not stopping until she’d taken him deep, almost in her throat.

  The need to possess soared, and he drove his tongue into her before letting his thoughts drift across the surface of her mind again. “Nothing has ever felt as good as this.”

  Even when she jerked under his hands, even when she moaned around him, she didn’t stop. Slow at first and then faster, sucking him like she couldn’t get enough.

  Pleasure tightened around him, and the only thing to do was push harder, to tongue her clit before working two fingers into her, and then three, to drown her in filthy promises as he stroked and cajoled and used every trick he’d learned of her body to push her toward the release that threatened him.

  She came suddenly, her body tensing until she shuddered helplessly above him. Her choked cry vibrated around him, muffled but still loud, and she scratched his hips with her nails as she clutched him. Pulled him deep.

  Control unraveled. He thrust up, knowing she could handle his pleasure, his need, knowing she could handle him as he gave in to release with a hoarse shout.

  The world was ecstasy, a fire that subsided into gentle heat, dim and warm. Then Diana spoke, a whisper that drifted over his skin. “I think it’s almost morning.”

  He could barely draw in breath to laugh. “Which morning?”