Page 49 of Hell Sent

He reached for her, wrapping his arm around her to pull her against his body. He breathed deeply, inhaling the warmth and mortalness of her. The scent roused something from the depths of his soul—something that was starving.

Energy and life pounded through him, ravenous. All of it came at once—the need to feed, the relief at seeing his mortal, and the desire to hold and taste her. He burned from the iron, but something burned inside him, too, scorching him from the inside out.

Flesh called out to him. Blood begged to be spilled. Wounds wanted to be opened.

Regaining strength, he rolled over and pinned the mortal to the ground by the throat. He pressed his mouth to her shoulder, and he savored the explosion of fear and pain as he sank his teeth in.

She screamed. The sound was a knife cutting through his mind, and he froze.

He held her there like the predator he was, trapping her with his teeth. She had gone still.Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized he should have released her, but that thought was quickly lost in a spiral of hunger, and he lapped the blood from her skin.

Stars burst across his tongue. She tasted like fire, like bliss. He sucked at the wound, needing more of her. Her blood was sweet and ripe, her skin smooth and soft against his tongue, and he realized he had never truly eaten before now. The most meticulously cultivated fruit in the world would not compare to this.

He imagined he was licking between her legs. In his mind’s eye, he saw her moaning in pleasure, her body wrapped around his as he drank from her.

And then he realized that he wasn’t entirely imagining things. Her body was still strained against him, but now she was pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.

“Azreth, say something,” she begged.

For a second, he wondered who Azreth was. The world came into slightly sharper focus.

He dragged himself away from her throat to look down at her, and his blood pounded through his veins so hard that his vision shook. Raiya was looking up at him with wide, shimmering eyes. She arched against him, her hands balling into fists where he’d pinned them to the ground. He realized that he’d summoned a dozen hands to hold and touch her, without even meaning to.Through the hands, he could feel all of her at once—her soft hips, her gently angled jaw, her lightly muscled thighs and fine-boned wrists—and it was both too much and not nearly enough.

“I want you,” he said breathlessly, but those three small words could never convey the longing and desperation he felt in that moment.

He felt her desire intensify. An invisible thread seemed to form between them, and it pulled him, drawing him to her. She nodded urgently.

His need for her built into an overwhelming force, clouding his mind, and his body moved almost without thought. His summoned hands flipped her over, pulling her against him. He found the small, tight warmth between her legs, and suddenly there was nothing more important in the entire universe than being inside that warmth. Lust had never been in his nature, but now he ached with it.

Closing his eyes, he sank into her. Her body stretched to take him, but he heard her make a pained sound.He snapped to attention again, looking down at her. She was wincing with the effort of accommodating him.

He bent over her, hugging her to him as he covered her sex with his hand and spelled her, opening her body. She sighed with relief, sagging into his hands.

“Gods,”she murmured. “Gods,please.”

He pushed deeper into her, and she moaned in pleasure, a sound that might have been the most lovely thing he’d ever heard in his life. He felt the pressure of release building in her body as his hips rolled against hers in a mesmerizing beat. His hands closed around her thighs, pulling her against him until there were no gaps between them. When she cried out again, her climax soaked into him, thick and sweet. It drove him over the edge. Light exploded behind his eyes, blinding euphoria.

He hadn’t known it could be like this. He’d never known it was possible to feel this kind of joy. Was this what sex felt like for mortals? Was this what making love felt like?

The sounds of her rapture echoed through his mind. He was bewitched by those sounds, and he felt a strange sense of pride over being the one to cause them. He loved giving joy, he realized. He loved pushing her to the limits of pleasure and then pushing even further.

He could have lay beside her and inside of her for ages. He wanted that. He wanted this to be forever.

He dropped his face against the side of her neck, feeling her pulse beneath his lips. “You came back for me,” he said, disbelieving.

“Of course I did,” Raiya said simply, as if there had been no other possibility.

And then he smelled the fresh blood from where he’d bitten her. A chill went through him.

It was like a bucket of icy water thrown over him, sobering him instantly. Disgust sank through him, settling into the pit of his stomach.

He turned Raiya onto her back, setting her down in the grass. She looked up at him guardedly, her eyelids heavy. The bite beside her throat was shallow, but not shallow enough. It had not been deep enough to put her life in danger, but it would probably leave a scar. The thought made him ill.

He wove a spell over it, and it sealed over with new pink-brown skin. Only time would tell how much the marks would fade.

He knelt on the ground, pressing his forehead against the grass. “I lost myself. I did not mean to hurt you. I beg your forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” she asked, as if she didn’t know what he meant.

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