Page 24 of What Whispers in the Dark
But Alora pressed into him, as if his lips were her salvation, too. There was enough yearning in the movement that he instantly recognized why. As if she needed to know there were kind and gentle hands out there, hands not seeking pleasure from pain. That the corrupted hand of Elysian’s worst demon on her cheek and in her hair would not fall to slap it, would not mark her or make her bleed.
Yes, clever girl. Take what you need from me.Stars-knows she deserved it, considering her past experiences were cruel and uncaring and painful. Take his shattered pieces to carve out her own. Use them to form something new.Use me.
Garrik’s breath hitched. By some miracle, she did not notice.
Use him…like everyone else did.
But if she needed to…
ForAlora… he would willingly give it. A thousand times over. If she needed blood, he would tear into his veins and bleed.
Barely managing to pull from her lips, Garrik was primed to tell her when a hunger settled in her eyes. She extended a hand and brushed it against the rigid scars on his abdomen, then curled to his side, missing a concealed bruise by a hair.
Alora drew him back like she couldn’t have enough of him.
He knew the feeling.
Aided by torchlight, the sound of her little gasps and moans had him imagining falling to his knees and worshiping her like the Celestial she was against that tree. He let himself drown in those noises, wondering what other sounds his mouth could have her make.
Impossible to think past the way he would carry her to his bed—only after she would ask it of him. Eager to feel every part of her, his fingers would lightly glide over the soothing warmth of her shoulders and delicately peel her tunic down until he would drunkenly slip open every button, pooling the fabric on the floor. How he would, utterly awestruck that someone so unworthy might be deemed to serve before her crown, sink to his knees before her. Allow her to run her too-perfect fingers through his hair as he slid down, down, down her pants, watching her eyes for the moment she would change her mind.
And he would.
He would stop if she needed him to, despite his own desire. What he wanted never mattered.
But by the skies, if she let him continue… Trailing kisses over her flawless porcelain skin. He would watch her intoxicating sapphires ignite as his lips—his cursed tongue—would glide to the soft flesh between her core and thigh, and worship that, too. Until that tongue would flick across the wetness pooled there, finding her gleaming and swollen for him to have a taste. Throbbing and waiting for him before sinking into her, soaking in every moan as he licked and teased andfeasted.
Giving her the pleasure she deserved.
As if she could hear his mind, Alora gasped against his lips.
Edging insanity, he thanked the stars for the restraint he had. Desire had his blood roaring, cock stiffening. Weeping. Hard and straining against his pants by his own choice for the first time in decades.
Throat tight, he caught himself before conceding to that dire, primal male instinct, but it did nothing to stop him from the next foolish thing he did tonight; pressing his hips into her, pinning her to that tree.
The hand on her cheek traced down her jawline, reveling in every pebble of her skin. He took liberties in brushing down thecolumn of her delicate neck and over the captivating curves of her body until his palm found its home on her thigh.
She swayed toward him.
No. Stop me, clever girl.She should not be drawing closer. It was too dangerous.
For who? He was not entirely sure.
But everything sparking inside him wanted to surrender to her—neededto.
Unable to stop himself, he groaned against her; the sound reverberated from his chest to her lips. With gentle possessiveness, he swept his fingers along her thigh, trailing frigid cold in their wake. He squeezed and hungrily lifted her leg to wrap around him. Then came the heat of her body swallowing him.
She did not stop him.
Alora tightened her leg around him, forcing them to grind together and threatening to undo him entirely.
Fire scorched in her eyes as his body trembled at the contact. Bursts of blissful friction sent heat and cold rushing through him in equal measure as he yielded to her. Like lightning had struck him. Only this jolt was not of pain. It was something so much more.
Mesmerized by the shape of her lips and how her hips undulated into him, greedily indulging in him too, he barely noticed her fingers curling. Curling against the raised, rigid, abused flesh of his abdomen. Over the open, festering wounds he kept hidden.
That fast darkness stormed his vision.
That fast, perfectly rounded nails appeared as feathered, black, sharpened ones.
