Page 53 of Bloody Bargain
My hips grew tight as my ters tingled with ecstasy, close to spilling. I curled my tail around her thigh and pressed it against the nub between her legs. She lost control of her limbs, her knees battering my sides. Her walls fluttered weakly, then faded.
Mine Tessa’s head fell limp into the water, but I kept pulling and pulling. Her skin bruised around my mouth, and I stared at her beautiful curls with a vicious snarl, biting my claws into her skin where I held her. The shell of her ear was ashy grey as I swallowed her down with mounting desperation. My hips stilled as I focused, ters thumping with my heartbeat so strong, I thought it might break my ribs.
Strong enough for the both of us, I hoped, for Tessa’s heart beat no more.
Storm winds whipped my hair, and the rains belted my feverish scales like icy needles. I unlatched my mouth from Tessa’s neck and stared down at her bloodless, lifeless body. The blackened bruises and dozens of needle pricks in her shoulder and neck. The places where the skin had ripped between my fangs. The collapsed and grizzled paths of vessels near the surface of her pale skin.
Panting for desperate breath, I tensed my claws and tore open my own neck, pressing it into her slack lips. The collar that had kept me in check for centuries crumbled as I ripped at my scales to get to the veins hidden beneath. More blood than I’d ever dared give her flowed into her open mouth and trickled into her ears where the ocean washed it away in cold swirls.
“Iri ib,”I begged iner en Kemet,returning in my agony to the first human tongue I’d ever learned.“Ibib… ounn p?t ounn.tj? kher.e.”
Gently, gently—in the wails and howls of my own spirit’s storm—the tide covered us. It caressed the edges of Tessa’s mouth and eyes, as soft as a lover, slipping beneath her open lids. The sea spilled from her lips ineffectually, dribbling into the sand as I held her jaw closed.
She stared at the sky as I watched in agonizing anticipation. I brushed my thumb against a track of tears that had stained her temples. I could not cry tears like hers, but my storm thickened with thunder that shook the world. I held her face, holding my breath. Begging. Begging anything that would listen…
Water sluiced up my forearms and dismounted in the dip of her clavicle. The sea slipped into the gory rips of my teeth in her neck. Once it found its entrance, the water poured. I sat back, breathing hard, watching in awe as the tide washed over her face and retreated, swarming in a whirlpool over her wounds. I squeezed her limp thighs, brow tight with wonder and worry both as the waves battered my back.
My claw pricked her softened thigh from how tensely I held my breath, and the sea swarmed the dry slice instantly. I lifted my hands from her flesh as the water searched and roved listlessly across her body.
“Myn chalis,”I pleaded, brushing my hand up the too-thin expanse of her belly. With a hitch in my lungs, I tensed my claws and dragged them down her abdomen.
Her stomach split open without rupturing the slippery sac that encased her organs, and the tide swelled, threatening to wash us both away. I held her in place, tail cushioning the back of her head.
Tessa swallowed with water in her mouth, and the wounds in her throat shrank to pin pricks. She coughed and sputtered, gasping for painful air.
My eyes widened, jumping over her features in disbelief. I covered her, wrapping her in my arms. Arms that were warm thanks to her. My heart battered her sternum as I crushed her in my grip, and slowly our hearts synchronized.
My tail yearned to feel it too—the proof that she was alive and mine, wholly and forever. It wrapped around her throat, curled up her side, brushed against her thighs. My ters swelled within her as her heat roared to life and her legs sidled against my hips.
“Hot,” Tessa panted. “Too hot.”
Black blood oozed from her eyes, steaming as it met the chilly air. Veins that had collapsed were swelling, and her delicate, transparent skin no longer revealed green vessels slithering through her flesh but black ones that were filled with my lifeblood rather than hers.
I pressed my forehead against hers and pulled us both further into the surf until she sighed with relief. My palm slid down her breast and ribs, and I pressed my hips against her open legs.
“Mine beloved,” I said, tone hoarse and wanting as the waves crashed over my shoulders.
My beautiful hunter met my stare with raw and lonely wonder, fingertips exploring the planes of my back.
“Mine badrock,” she murmured.
Then the most astounding blessing.
Tessa smiled.
She smiled and the storm clouds parted.
Had they ever been mine, or had they always been hers?
Her eyes glistened and sparkled, her mouth curved like Cupid’s bow, and she bit her lower lip, stifling a bark of laughter.This.I wanted more of this. I might have loved her like a cat loved a mouse, but seeing her unguarded joy cut the knife of love deeper.
When I did not meet her smile but stared at her in somber rapture, her eyelids fluttered and she cleared her throat.
“I didn’t know what else to say,” she admitted unsteadily, trying to fit her glorious spirit back into its stony shell.
I pressed my hips more firmly into hers. My ters jumped and her channel squeezed in tandem. She gasped, clutching my sides harder with her knees as my tail tested its grip on her throat.
“Say it again,” I begged, rolling our hips together slowly. The moment she looked up at me with skepticism, I pulled my ters from her body and slid it home again, pressing against her womb as the heat massaged through her. “Again.”
