Page 172 of Eldritch
“Yes,” I breathed. “It’s two piercings?”
“Barely. I’ve suffered cruel torment, but nothing more vicious than imagining the day you take all of them at once.”
“How many…piercings are there?”
“Ten. The enchantment intensifies with each one.”
“Oh, god.” I couldn’t fathom the day when, oreven if, I would accommodate all ten. It didn’t seem physically possible. Every cell in my body had clenched the moment he’d introduced the second, the pressure so intense I wondered if it would split me down the middle.
“I’m okay with this,” I assured him.
Despite the uncertainty sketched on his face, he nodded, and once again, his hips rolled into me. He kept his face turned from mine, but I could see the veins popping out of his neck, the sweat beading across his skin. Like the gentle ebb and flow of a violent sea, he rocked into me only so far as that sacred boundary—the restraint of a vast ocean against a fragile keel. The world aroundme slowed in one long heartbeat. I pressed my gloved hand to his chest, watching the strange root-like veins pulse and flicker, the heat crawling up my arm and settling in my chest.
Zevander tipped his head back, the cords of tension bursting across his throat.
Desperate to feel that restraint burning inside of me, I lifted my head, ran my tongue across his veins,
A tortured groan vibrated in his neck, across my tongue, his body rigid and shaking.
I understand now.
The joining of bodies. Nothing between us but shallow breaths and the restless beat of our hearts. And the love. So much love, it brought tears to my eyes. The world could’ve burned and kingdoms fallen to ruins, but somehow this felt eternal and everlasting. A fusion of souls that transcended all else.
A clang of metal shattered my musings.
I turned to see the blade lying beside my head. Blood trickled down Zevander’s wrist, his arm trembling as he turned his palm up to reveal a deep gash across the surface.
I snapped my attention back to him, and my eyes must’ve reflected the distress pounding through me, the way he lowered his head, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“You couldn’t …” It was in that moment I realized how silly a notion it’d been, to imagine that I was capable of distracting him from decades of abuse and torment. How ridiculous to think that a man who’d suffered unfathomable pain could be healed in one intimate moment.
I loathed my ignorance. My naivete.
Brows tight, he pulled out of me on a wet glide and pushed himself away, as if to leave, but I swiped out for his arm.
“I told you. If it’s pain you require, I’ll give it to you.”
“No.”
“Yes, Zevander. And you will look at me. You will look at me, and you will know that it’s me. Us.”
“I can’t do this to you again.”
“You will.” I reached down, gripping his hard length with my clawed hand. It swelled in my grasp, eager and engorged with fresh blood. “I will give you what you need.” I lifted myself from the floor, urging him onto his back. My legs hardly straddled his massive body as I settled myself over his thighs, still gripping him.
Lips parted, he watched me with an anxious tension swirling in his eyes.
I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. What I imagined someone so inexperienced could give him. It didn’t matter, though. Neither of us held advantage over the other.
I scooted my way up his body, and when my bare sex dragged over the piercings, each smooth, steel bead caressing my sensitive flesh, he arched upward and let out a masculine sound of satisfaction that stirred something anew inside of me. Curious, I lowered myself over the underside of his cock and circled my hips. The low vibration scattered over the ball of nerves deep inside of me that had me jerking forward with a grunt. He hadn’t even penetrated me, and that delicious vibration sang across my tender flesh.
A pulsing at my knuckles yanked my focus to the veins on the glove that throbbed as before. I pressed my hand against his heart, digging my nails into his chest, and Zevander surged upward, his back bowed as a sound of pleasure and pain bellowed out of him.
Panic spiraled through me, and I drew my hand back, but he reached out. “No,” he rasped, placing it back in the same spot. “Please.”
Closing my eyes, I dug my fingers into him again and dragged my hips up and down his pierced length, painting my arousal across his skin.
