Page 54 of Bloody Bargain
“Mine badrock.”
I thrust into her and she gasped, clutching at my shoulders. I widened my knees as the water sluiced away and sat up so I could look at her where she lay with her thighs draped over mine, my ters buried deep. She looked so pretty with her neck draped in my tail and my claw marks leaving red streaks across her pearly skin. The sheen of her body was different now, darker around the edges than when her blood had been red.
I gripped her waist in my large hands and claimed her slowly, committing this moment to my long and ancient memory.
“Yours,” I confirmed, echoing the clumsy vows I’d managed as I hung from iron chains, dying. “All that I am is yours. Forever.Longer,”I growled, picking up her hips and using her body to meet mine. “Give me what I want in return, Tessa, andfucking break for me.”
Her breath stuttered as I pistoned into her sheath with my overwhelming length. She was so tight and getting tighter. I focused on her womb, on rubbing my soft spikes through her channel while I licked my own throat with my split tongue, tasting my own veins now filled with her blood as each of the iron needles that had bound me dissolved and broke under the slightest pressure.
It was a miraculous feeling. Loose, well-oiled, free of pain. Her spirit sopped up the iron fragments that had wracked my body for centuries like it was a simple task.
Andoh,how Tessa sang. Her voice caught, the tendons in her neck strung as tight as a bow. She held onto my forearms with a searing grip as black streaked from her eyes and met the sea. She pleaded, nodding. “Yes, yes, yes. Please,oh god…”
Then her channel strangled my ters so violently that I saw stars. I was caught within her as she milked my spikes in a wave of vicious ecstasy that caused her to mew and seize. Her breasts shook and I pinched one point as I panted, watching down the length of my abdomen as her channel pulsated, swallowing me whole.
When I could move again, the path was smoother than before, slippery with her own spend. Her fragrance was intoxicating. I growled and the sea danced around us. Her eyes rolled back, and I thrust into her in earnest once more.
“That’s it,” Tessa managed between breathy moans. She pulled on a length of my hair, forcing my face close to hers. I caught my weight on my forearms as she wound her fingers through the strands and gave a demanding tug. “Come for me, D’abel.”
I bared my teeth and pushed her open wider, one hand gripping the back of her knee. I tried to lower my face to the warm and spicy scent of her neck, but she pulled on my hair again, forcing me to look in her eyes.
“No. I’m going to watch you come,” she declared and my cockheads flared. The nub of each spike swelled, blinding me as I leaned harder into her. I held my breath and it stuttered from my lungs as my pace grew erratic. She nodded, fitting her other hand around my throat.
I groaned, reaching my tongue out to caress either side of her chin. Hot seed erupted from my shafts as they pumped, one then the other, rubbing against each other and her walls. Tessa's breath hitched and her sex squeezed, inciting me to spill more.
Her fingers trembled as she let my throat go. I collapsed into the crook of her neck, abdomen constricting of its own accord as she accepted everything I gave her.
Myn chalis.My soulmate.
Mine forever.
Longer.
21
For the first time in weeks, I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the warmth of yellow sunlight. D’abel sat beside me, both of us naked upon the craggy rocks at the tip of the peninsula, undisturbed by the chilly weather. I hugged my knees, ankles crossed, as I squinted into the salt breeze. The sea fret was dissipating, and St. George’s Channel glistened like cold, dark diamonds.
Despite the majesty of the view, my eyes were far away. I stared back at memories of Boston. The inevitability of finding myself here, of what I’d done and would continue to do. The compulsion that had upended my life. No matter how hard I scoured my hands, I would never wash them clean, even if the elemental I was tied to gave me validation and support.
Love.
The word made my heart jump, blood sloshing through my ears. I didn’t have that feeling in me anymore. Surely D’abel understood that my insides were still too cold. Maybe they’d never warm up and this was the extent to which I’d ever feel complete. I’d kept myself from feeling anything warm for so long that the ache to be whole again felt wrong.
Especially with the strange way people were gathering along the edges of Morfa Nefyn. It had just been a couple of people earlier in the morning, but now it was more than a dozen. Like statues,watching us.Not a single soul walked along the paths towards Porthdinllaen, and Dafydd sat confused on the smooth rock wall behind the pub as he smoked a cigarette, ready for a lunch rush.
I held my hand up to the sunlight and flexed my fist, tracing my dark veins. D’abel and I hadn’t mentioned them yet, but we both knew that the night would bring danger.
“Does the iron still hurt?” I rasped, breaking the silence.
D’abel’s tail curled around my back and wove between my ankles.“Myn chalisworries for me,” he mused. “Such sweeping progress.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Worry? I… Yes, I worried for him. I’d come to trust D’abel, which was a steeper summit in my heart than any other form of affection. But the rest of me was stunted. I’d taken a hatchet to my own legs and cut my soul down until it walked on bloody stumps, convinced that it was numb to the pain.
“Tessa.”
I turned my face from the sun to look at D’abel.
There was a pink glow beneath his scales thanks to me. The blackened, purpled contours glowed with health in the sunlight now. He was as pretty as an opal, with flecks of gold, milky blue, and coral refracting across his scales. Even the space around him shimmered like a mirage in the desert, as if he were haloed in ghostly gold chimes.
