Page 31 of The Crimson Princess
It’s the first time he’s used my name all night, and I realize now that the title of “princess” creates a barrier between us he’s just removed. And I want it gone, just as I want what he has said to be truth, but we both know it’s a façade of escape. I’m just not sure we care right now.
“Just us,” I whisper, and as he strokes my hair from my face, the tenderness in the touch shivers through me and I pretty much melt for him standing in the foyer of a cottage neither of us knows as familiar.
He scoops me up and starts walking and for just a moment, I’m not the shadow of recent defending innocent lives or a princess defending her kingdom. I’m a female, in lust with the most incredible male I’ve ever met. And that’s who I want to be. For once in my life, that is who I need to be and maybe that makes me vulnerable to Toren, but I already know he senses my magic. We both have the ability to sense things about each other. Toren knows me in ways others do not, just as I know him. He’s fully aware that I can be dangerous, too.
Toren halts in the living area, in front a massive stone fireplace that goes from dark and cold, to flame-licked in a magical moment. He sets me on my feet and places my back to the fire, obviously trying to warm me. A moment without his kiss drugging me, and a sense of spinning out, reaching for control.
My hands find his chest and I give him a push, but I don’t even come close to taking him off guard. He catches my hips, and hits the couch, dragging me down with him. I end up straddling him, the hard bulge of his erection between my thighs. As if proving that me being on top does not give me control, he wraps my hair around his hand, a sweet tension in the way he drags me forward. Our mouths are close, and we breathe together, arousal curling in my belly, but we say nothing.
Seconds tick by and then our mouths collide, and he kisses the hell out of me, deep and seductive, and I think I might actually purr with the pleasure of him and all he does to me. His hand presses under my tee and drags my bra down, his fingers teasing my nipple, a moan of pleasuring sliding from my lips to his. I’m no longer in my own head, riding on purely primal instinct. My body wants. I take. I grind my hips against his erection, leaning forward, pressing into his. He catches my tee and drags it over my head, butI’m the one who unhooks my bra, while he all but tears it off my body.
Toren’s gaze is hot desire as it rakes over my naked breasts, his hand settling between my shoulder blades, molding me close. He eases me backward, so far backward I might fall, only he has me, he holds me, and his mouth is on my nipple, suckling, licking. My fingers dive into his thick, dark hair and he shifts us, lying me on the couch, my back sinking into the cushion I couldn’t describe if I was paid in blood and safe passage. But I could describe every fleck of amber heat in his eyes even if asked casually.
And as he spreads my legs and settles between them, the sweet, heavy weight of him pressed to me, I do believe that the day I die, no matter how many hundreds of years from now, I will remember this night.
The night the princess of Ravengale willingly surrendered to the king of vampires.
Chapter sixteen
Torenfillshishandswith my breasts, pressing them together, and licking, suckling, and plucking at my nipples to the point that I’m losing my mind. “Toren, please.” My plea is raspy, barely audible. “Stop proving you have willpower I do not.” I slide my hands under the cotton of his shirt, hot, taut skin as my reward.
“If I had any willpower where you’re concerned, princess, you wouldn’t be beneath me right now.” He reaches over his head to grab the tee.
“Satima,” I amend firmly, feeling the stab of the formal address. “I’m Satima. I know what headspace you’re in when you call me princess. And I don’t want you to be there right now.”
He cups my face and tilts my gaze to his. “Satima,” he says, a raspy quality to his voice, “but no matter what I call you, I’m still in the same headspace.”
“Which is where?”
“Here,” he says, and he kisses me, a rough, almost angry kiss, as if I’ve exposed something in him he didn’t want me to see. As if I see too much. It was a gift of my mother’s that she passed on to me. A gift I believe can make me a great queen. A gift I do not regret now with Toren.
I tangle fingers in his hair and I hate the way he tries to silence me with his kisses. I guess I’m not so submissive after all. With a rough tug, he drags his mouth from mine and stares down at me with unreadable intensity. “You think we shouldn’t be here.”
“We both know we shouldn’t be here, but I don’t give two flying fucks. And neither should you.”
“I don’t,” I assure him. “Not even one flying fuck.”
“And if your father finds out?”
I laugh bitterly, thinking of the marriage bargain he’s made for me. “I might be seeking asylum in San Francisco.”
“We won’t let him find out, but you can always come to me.”
“You barely know me to offer such a thing. I could betray you. Or you could betray me.”
“I’m not going to betray you.” He leans in close, his breath on my lips. “And I know more about you than you think. I know you liked the taste of blood.”
My hand flattens on his face. “Liar.” Only I think it’s me who’s the liar.
He nips my lips again and laves the wound before kissing me, and the taste, God the taste of him and me as one, has me moaning and holding the back of his head. He tears his mouth from mine, inches back to look at me, amusement in his eyes.
His lips curl back and he shows me his fangs sharp enough that with a tiny scrape of his lip, blood pools. He lowers his mouth and blood drops from him to me and I can’t seem to help it. I catch it with my tongue, the taste as amber as his smell, as addictive as everything about him. His tongue drags along mine in a seductive slide that has me moaning, my sex clenching and wet.
So very wet. I’m arching into him, every part of me on fire.
His mouth is on my neck, his teeth scraping there and some part of me fears I’ve been drugged with how much I want him to bite me, how much I need him to bite me. But he doesn’t. He drags his mouth down to my shoulder, kissing me there, and everywhere, his kisses finding my belly right above my pants.
And suddenly, they are gone. I’m naked. He’s naked,deliciouslynaked. “Was that me or you?”
