Of all the serryns he’d encountered, ironically this fledgling was the most lethal. Those fingers tracing uncertain paths were enrapturing. Her unpredictability enticing. The desire to show her how to please him was overwhelming, but he revelled in her finding her own way. She wasn’t just touching him; she was exploring him. And instead of feeling impatience, he simply watched her – her downturned eyes, the tremble in those long, delicate fingers he could imagine wrapping tightly around his already straining erection; those sensual lips wrapped around the tip, her tongue working him to climax before he thrust deep into the wet warmth of her mouth.
Unbuttoning his jeans would tell him just how far she was willing to go, just how deep into the game. Besides, the strain was uncomfortable, and he’d have to release himself no matter what.
As her fingers trailed along the top of his jeans, he lowered one of his hands from beside her head to unfasten them.
She still couldn’t look at him – that step in the level of intimacy too much.
Or she feared him seeing her deceit.
Right then, he didn’t care which it was. He was going to get her to hold him. He wanted, needed, to see what she’d do.
But the quiver in her breathing as he pulled his shorts down a little to half expose himself told him minor panic was setting in despite her arousal.
Taking her hand he guided it to him, and for a moment he saw she had closed her eyes. This wasn’t playing, she was genuinely nervous. He guided her fingers to wrap them around his length, placing his hand over the top to guide her pressure, nudged her thumb to the tip, guiding her to circle his circumcised head.
She kept her eyes shut, and from the tension in her free hand clenched at her side, he had absorbed her in the moment, could hear her breathing escalating in the silence of the room.
He gripped her hand tighter, guiding her to slide her hand along his length and she didn’t fight, she didn’t protest.
He released her hand to place his back beside her head, wanting her to go it alone.
He expected her to drop her hand away but she didn’t. Her grip loosened, she moved her thumb from his already seeping tip, but she didn’t withdraw. A second later, she tightened her grip again, ran her thumb under the ridge, sliding it up to the tip again and back down in a slow, sensual and exploratory act that made him scrape his fingers against the books. He lowered his head to hers, breathing in her scent mingling with that of his own building arousal.
❄ ❄ ❄
She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bring herself to look into those beautiful green eyes. She couldn’t afford to feel more of the stirring deep inside her. And she couldn’t handle the deception.
As the silence enveloped them, as she explored him in the most intimate way, she almost forgot what she was trying to do. It was about lowering his guard. It was about calling the shots. Instead she wasn’t sure who she was anymore. And certainly not when he lowered his lips enough to almost kiss her.
She turned her head away. She couldn’t allow that. She couldn’t allow herself to feel like that. But she did force herself to look at him, to see the thickness of desire in his eyes. And the fact that she had that effect stunned her.
‘A little close to the edge, don’t you think?’ she asked softly.
‘You’re the one who can’t reciprocate; you tell me.’
She squeezed him a little tighter, stupidly taunting him, his arousal inciting hers.
His eyes flared slightly but brimmed with something between amusement and a dangerously dark craving. ‘Don’t push your luck,’ he whispered in her ear.
She needed to get her head straight. She needed to focus. But instead the low and enticing challenge in his words had her struggling to keep her thoughts on track, plunging her deeper into the moment.
Because right then, she wanted to push it. She wanted to see what he’d do. She wanted to get him to that point. Damn it, she wanted to see and feel him come in her hand.
She leaned forward and kissed his chest, so invitingly laid bare to her. Kissed along the length of the scorpion’s tail that curled up around his neck as she picked up the pace and pressure of her hand. He tasted so cool, so refreshing beneath her lips. The temptation to lick him was overwhelming.
‘Maybe I want to,’ she whispered in his ear before nipping his lobe like he had with hers on more than one occasion. ‘Maybe I’m liking things near the edge.’
She kissed gently down his chest, lowering down the bookcase in an easy and surprisingly graceful slide considering how much her thighs trembled.
She had no idea where the courage came from but knew, in part, it was fuelled not only by a need for survival but by sheer unadulterated desire as she lowered her lips down onto him. The taste of him was divine, the silkiness of his skin beneath her tongue as enticing as the sheer masculine scent of him. It had never felt so easy or so natural as she swept her tongue slowly full circle around him as she simultaneously squeezed a little tighter.
She thought she heard him curse under his breath as he tensed. In turn, she opened her hand to lick down then back up the full length of his erection before tentatively taking him more fully in her mouth.
But as he entwined his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck, as he tugged slightly to cause her a tiny amount of pain, she wondered if she had indeed taken that one step too far.
❄ ❄ ❄
It took everything not to force himself fully into the wet heat of her mouth. Those trembling lips encompassed him so provocatively, her slow, steady tongue dangerously lingering. She may have been anxious but her indulgence was painfully arousing. Tightening his grip on her hair, he clawed the books, pressed his forehead against them.
He could so easily make her take more of him, push deeper, stop holding back.
She was working him with perfection. Or the serryn in her was. The clearly deadly serryn based on that sensuality. He needed to stop her. He needed to retract. He needed to withdraw, leave her there on her knees.
But he kept wanting more. Just like the static that had held him to her wrists the first time, his body wouldn’t listen to him. His body needed release and relief. His body wanted her.
He needed to leave her and get down to the club. Take a female into the VIP area. Have his pleasure, be it as hard, fast and cruel as he liked, but he didn’t want some other female. He knew he couldn’t get the satisfaction he needed right then screwing some stranger. He needed Leila. She was the one he needed to dominate and consume, but right now she was the one playing the upper hand.
He withdrew himself from her mouth. Taking her by the upper arms, he pulled her to her feet, pinned her back against the wall as he stared deep into her eyes.
She looked at him bewildered but he also knew he saw a glimmer of disappointment. She’d wanted to keep going. She almost looked panicked he’d stopped her.
❄ ❄ ❄
She wasn’t any good. It was the first thought that crossed her mind. He’d stopped her because she wasn’t good enough.
Or she was too good and he wanted to reclaim control again.
She was back where she started, staring into eyes that had almost seemed to harden slightly.
‘As enticing as your mouth is, I need deeper.’
Her stomach flipped at his bluntness, a stirring deep in her abdomen telling her she wasn’t as unnerved by it as she thought she should be. ‘Once was a mistake,’ she said. ‘Twice is unforgiveable.’
He slid his hands up under her dress and tugged down her knickers, making her stomach somersault as he leaned into her neck. ‘Then don’t forgive me,’ he said, his kiss hard and hungry against her sensitive flesh, his hand coiling tight around the nape of her neck.
She swallowed hard. ‘I don’t intend to.’
And she wouldn’t. And if she didn’t act now it would be unforgiveable. Because she knew she was on the brink of succumbing to him again – despite all her promises to herself, all her vehement denial, whatever it was that Caleb did her, her
reaction to him was instinctive.
She had to overcome the agonising sinking feeling in her heart, screaming at her not to do it. She had to let her head win. She had to believe there was no other way.
After fumbling behind her as discreetly as she could, she slipped the syringe from the book, grasping it as steadily as her trembling hands would allow.
As soon as it saw air, she knew she needed to act. She pressed her thumb on the plunger, drew back her hand ready to stab him with it when, despite his seeming distraction, he grabbed her wrist with precision.
She flinched but froze.
He pulled back, his eyes a mixture of annoyance and amusement – anything but surprise.
Eyes that screamed of more entrapment.
Her heart pounded.
He stretched out her arm to expose the developing bruising as he stared deep into her eyes. ‘One tip, serryn. If you’re going to extract your own blood, try not to leave a bruise to give it away.’
Chapter Seventeen
Caleb squeezed her wrist. ‘Drop it.’
She glowered back at him and clenched the syringe tighter. She had not come that far to give up. Not now.
‘I said, drop it,’ he repeated, his tone unnervingly calm.
Still Leila wouldn’t.
He tugged her away from the bookcase, turned her away from him, pinned her against him, her syringe-holding hand held away from them both as he all but carried her across the room to the fireplace. He kicked the fireguard aside and forced her to her knees, his chest forming a solid wall behind her as he stretched her hand out towards the dying flames, his vice-like grip unrelenting on the wrist of her syringe-holding hand.
‘Defy me all you want,’ he warned in her ear as he edged her hand closer to the flames. ‘You will drop it.’
The heat immediately encompassed her, but despite clutching on to the syringe for sheer belligerence, her brain forced her reflexes to respond to the heat. She dropped it into the flames, the syringe, her blood contents, simmering and crackling in protest.
He pulled her back from the heat, Leila almost in tears from the anger, the fear.
‘Just when I started to believe you might be different,’ he said as he held her back against him, ‘you go and prove yourself to be just as devious as the rest of your kind.’
‘I had no choice.’
He rose to his feet, pulling her up with him. He wrapped her arms around her waist, holding her back against him as he carried her across to the threshold.
Leila kicked at his shins to no avail. ‘Let me go!’ she warned. But with both her arms trapped, struggling was futile.
Crossing the bedroom, he carried her over to the chair by the en-suite door. He cast the shirt on it aside and opened the syringe wrap.
He turned her around to face him and pinned her against the wall, her wrists either side of her head. ‘Tell me where the other one is.’
‘Scared I’ll catch you off guard?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Or what? You’ll torture me like the others? That’s so your style, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t tempt me.’
‘No, because you’re not quite as good at avoiding temptation as you thought you were, are you?’
‘Neither are you apparently,’ he said, his eyes sparkling darkly. ‘So that could be a problem for us both if this escalates. Especially if I’ve decided it’s time I unleash that serryn in you once and for all.’
‘No,’ she said, trying to buck against him to no avail.
He pinned her harder against the wall, his body holding her there with ease. ‘Then tell me where the other syringe is.’
‘You like games,’ she said with a glower. ‘You go find it.’
❄ ❄ ❄
Leila stared at him with such defiance in her eyes that he felt something snap.
He released her wrists to lift her with ease, parting her thighs around him, pressing her against the wall. ‘Tell me,’ he hissed.
She gasped, but kept her glare locked on his, her lips sealed.
Pulling her from the wall, he carried her to the bed and slammed her down onto it as he braced himself over her.
He pinned her wrists to the bed and looked deep into her hazel eyes. The lethal combination of anxiety and yearning stunned him, incited him, her nubile body pinned beneath him vulnerably exposed to his desires and needs, igniting the vampire inside him.
‘Don’t push me,’ he warned.
‘Why?’ she asked, her tone laced with belligerence. ‘What are you going to do?’
He looked at the soft, upward mounds of her breasts still contained in their clothing, up to her exposed collarbone, to the soft, warm flesh of her penetrable neck.
He’d find out just how hot and sweet and delicious her blood was; that was what he’d do. He’d push deep inside her whilst his incisors pierced deep into her exposed throat. And he’d come as he drank, as she spilled into him, he’d spill into her.
He tightened his grip on her wrists, lowered his head to calm himself. But all he could hear was her pulse racing, the thump of her heart, her shallow breaths, her arousal clearly pressing her own self-destruct button as well as his.
Retract.
He had to retract.
She wasn’t serryn enough – nowhere near serryn enough to take that kind of onslaught.
‘You’re skirting too close to the edge, serryn,’ he warned, his lust-filled gaze snapping back to hers.
She almost smiled. Behind the anger and indignation in her eyes, she was goading him. She was daring to goad him. ‘I’m not the one who’s at risk of falling, vampire.’
He exhaled curtly. Damn her potential. Damn that she had saved Jake’s life. If not he might have been tempted to end hers then before he ended his own. No serryn had forced him to that point. No serryn had unleashed that suicidal darkness.
He couldn’t bite her. Fuck her, but not bite. Take her. Consume her. But keep the most instinctive part of him deep inside, just like she kept the serryn deep inside herself. If she could do it, then so could he. She was not stronger than him. She was not in more control than him. He was in charge, not her.
He knew only too well that with how he was feeling then, the only way he could contain his need to feed and sate himself in the sexual act alone was by upping the force, the pace, the intensity.
He released her wrists for fear of breaking them, ripped open the buttons on her dress to expose the soft flesh of the upward curves of her firm breasts that he could so easily pierce. He slid his hand down to grab her hip, to press his thumb into her hip bone, to keep her firmly in place.
He looked back into her eyes. ‘Tell me to stop,’ he said.
‘You stop yourself,’ she said.
But the look in her eyes, her swollen lips, her flushed cheeks were telling him anything but.
She didn’t know what she was asking, he was convinced of it. But those eyes echoed a different message. Eyes that locked squarely on his.
‘Is this how you want it?’ he asked.
‘Is it how you want it?’
She was messing with his head. Daring to toy with him. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t risk her hypnotising him with those fatal eyes.
He couldn’t face the feelings she was stirring inside him.
He flipped her onto her front and kneed her legs apart before yanking down his trousers and shorts. He didn’t hesitate as he found the heat of her sex, pushed his way deep inside her, wrapping himself in liquid fire he knew could so easily drown him.
He snarled under his breath and dug his nails into the duvet at the sensation that enveloped him.
She gasped, clutched the duvet too, her body rising against his.
He felt her shudder, clearly feeling the sensation of the new position as much as he did. As soon as her body relented, he picked up the pace in his penetration, her short, sharp gasps only inciting him further.
He interlaced his fingers with hers as he clutched the back of her right hand.
He slid his free hand through her hair to expose the side of her face, tightening his grip on her hair as he maintained his weight on his elbow.
‘You’re toxic, you know that?’ he said in her ear. ‘What you do to me.’
He closed his eyes and thrust harder, losing himself in the sensation, in the heat of her body. He felt his excitement peak, his whole body aching.
He was feeling pleasure. He was actually feeling pleasure. But not from the force of the act – from the intimacy. Because in those moments, it was as if they’d shared an understanding.
For one moment, it felt like she’d actually let him in.
He opened his eyes to look at her. Was stunned to see a tear trickle from the corner of her eye. His heart inexplicably hitched.
He stopped.
He waited a moment, composing himself before gently withdrawing, turning her over to face him.
She rubbed her tear away in irritation, but she avoided looking at him until he forced her to do so with the pressure and direction of his thumb under her chin.
He wiped the tears from her cheek with his thumb, placing it in his mouth to taste their saltiness.
‘You’re the one that’s toxic,’ she said, her eyes brimming with resentment.
He’d been right. She wasn’t serryn enough for this. The fact her tears were real proved that.
He’d never seen a serryn cry, even during their dying breath, no matter what he put them through, they’d never shed a tear.
But those weren’t tears of fear or pain. He knew the difference. Those were tears of confusion. Frustration.
And he did the last thing he knew he should have. He should have been just sex. He knew that. He also knew he had slipped too deep for it to be that simple.
‘As toxic as they come,’ he said, lowering his mouth to hers.
She fought at first, her hands slamming to his chest, but as he pushed them aside, she eventually relented. Reciprocated. Those same hands that had tried to forge some distance between them now sliding up his chest to his neck, one clutching his arm, her nails digging deep as she accepted his kiss, her warm mouth absorbing his tongue with the ease of familiar lovers.
02 Blood Roses - Blackthorn Page 18