Page 27 of Shadows and Flames
My fingers tightened on the counter. Hadn’t we been in this position before?
“I’m not running.” Wasn’t I? But that was only recently. My argument, that the past three years were filled with wanting him more thanalmostanything, died before it even made its way to my tongue.
He did not consider my refusal. “No more running. No more denying this.”
I swallowed and shifted in his hold. I moved against him, not quite struggling but pushing against him all the same. “Elián, there’s nothing to talk about. You’d better get back out there unless you want to give us the upper hand.” I chuckled darkly at the thought of winning this contract. That was something I could cling to.
My laughter immediately died as Elián snarled, bringing his fangs, his heat, and thoseeyescloser. He used his hand on my throat to lift me in the air, and I let him. He didn’t release me when I plopped onto the counter, nor did he when he hiked my skirts up so that he could stand between my parted thighs.
I let him.
My darkness, the slithering Death, wound up my arm all the way to my throat, where Elián’s fire touch was. It remained on my skin, not yet reaching out, but the contact was enough.
He bent to growl in my ear, “No. More.”
Ah, yes. Wehadbeen here before. When Elián was still my Shadow and had silenced my tantrum in Rhaestras by commanding me onto a table and tasting me.
Unlike then, I moved my fingers from gripping the surface he hoisted me onto and fisted the front of his jacket. Felt his heart hammering against his chest.
Elián’s soft hair brushed against my cheek while his words were rough. His grip tightened on my throat, and my Death rejoiced. “You are not going to run. You arenotgoing to run from me.” Air whistled in and out of my nose like a fierce wind. “Do you know why?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but it shut with a click at the first bite of Elián’s fangs.
His hand on my throat shifted just before the pain, enough to leave room for him to close his mouth over my flesh. My eyes rolled back in my head, and my legs opened wider for him to settle between them. His chest vibrated under my fingers.
Elián didn’t drink from me, but after he released his fangs, he dragged his tongue through my blood. It was erotically presumptuous, giving me such a claiming bite.
I craned my neck as much as I could.
Hot breath at my ear, he licked my lobe. “I am yours. And you aremyqueen.Mine.” He reached under my skirts, finding the undergarment—expensive aeran silk, might I add—and tore it away.
The moan that’d been building within me, like the churning of dark clouds, finally escaped. And again with the telltale clink of a belt. The rustling of fabric.
“I will not leave, and neither will you. We will talk. We will listen. And you will not. Run.” The words out of his mouth cut like stained glass, and they looped with an accent. The lilts of his Zonoran tongue that left me nodding.
Nodding while he descended into grumbling words in a language I couldn’t translate but understood anyway. That he was taking the decision out of my broken hands. That with the press of his cock at my entrance, that he would accept nothing less than me yielding to him.
Goddess, it was enough to bring sweet tears to my eyes.
I pulled at his jacket, back arching as a whimper tore through my lips. Elián’s hand moved to hold the back of my neck, his other to my hip.
And my body welcomed him, stretched for him. He was no longer choking me, but it was now when I felt as though I could barely breathe. My heart fluttered, my skin electrified, and I twined my arms around his shoulders while he thrust into me. Took me.
Elián hovered his lips over mine, halting his descent to whisper, “We belong to each other, and no distance, no amount of time will change that.” And his hips pushed him the last fewinches into me. I groaned in his face, wordlessly begging for him to keep moving. But he didn’t. “Do you understand, Meline?”
I glared, facing the swimming fire in his eyes.
“Do,” thrust, “you,” thrust, “understand?” Was he still speaking in his native tongue? Or was I imagining that?
Either way, I nodded frantically, clamping my legs around his waist and crossing my ankles over the small of his back.
He still wasn’t unleashing. I knew it, felt it. “Say it,” he demanded.
At this point, how could I deny him? Despite my past actions, I never wanted to hurt him. There was enough pain in both of our immortal lives.
“I…I’m yours. I—fuck—no more running. No leaving you. Ever.” He hadn’t said that part, but the assertion left my mouth anyway.
And he growled in triumph as he bit the other side of my throat and came for my soul.
