Kiss of a Dragon (Fallen Immortals 1) - Paranormal Fairytale Romance (13 page)

He leaned in and brushed his lips across her cheek. Her body stiffened as he breathed her scent, drawing a line with the tip of his nose across the softness of her skin. “If I cannot have you for a mate,” he whispered against her temple, “then let me slake this thirst we each have for the other.”

He
felt
her gasp as much as he heard the sound, the surge of her taut-nippled breasts spanning the gap between them to touch his chest.

“I don’t… what about…” Her mind was struggling, resisting, but her body was already scenting as
ready.
She was aching with need for him, and it fired a heat low in his belly, a fire he’d been suppressing from the moment he saw her in that alleyway, strong and vibrant and troubled.

He dipped his head to nuzzle her neck. “It was always
you,
Arabella. Always you.” She responded by tilting her head a fraction of an inch to give him more access. It was almost an instinctual move, and it spoke to something deep inside him—
claim your treasure.
He skimmed his lips up her neck and along her jaw. Her breaths were rapid and short. “You want me,” he whispered. “I can taste it on you, my treasure. Your need. Don’t deny it.”

She let out a small whimper that ran through him like liquid heat. His heart was already pounding fit for heated, grappling sex, and he hadn’t even kissed her.
Another warning.
His mind clouded, ignoring it, focused only on the thrumming that pulsed everywhere he touched her.

He released her wrists, finally, sliding his hands where they ached to go—one at the back of her neck, lifting her away from the wall, the other to her waist, bringing her soft body hard against his.

“Let me pleasure you.” He was barely holding himself back, but he needed to hear it from her lips.

“Yes.”
It was so soft, it was more air than word.

But it blared through him. The roar rumbled inside his chest as he devoured her lips with his, using his hands to angle her head and her body so he could claim her with his mouth. She whimpered into him, and it fired even more heat straight to his cock. She tasted of berries and musk, sweet arousal and feminine skin. And that was merely his tongue plundering her mouth. His magical tasting of her, this intimately entwined, her hands clawing into his shoulders, spoke of hunger and electric tension, dark need and urgency. He pulled back to see her lips swollen from his bruising kiss. He reveled in the flush of heat in her cheeks, even as his hand skimmed up her body to grasp hold of her breast. It pushed a hardened nipple through the thin fabric of her shirt, and as he filled his hand with the weight of it, his cock throbbed in response. The feel of her was quickly making him drunk. Her hooded eyes fluttered open.
Those eyes.
Green crystals of beauty and brilliance, no gem could be more treasured or bewitching…

He tore his gaze from hers, squeezing his eyes shut for a pained moment.

Then he opened them and turned her to face the wall. “Put your hands up,” he whispered hoarsely, not waiting for her to understand, just grasping her wrists and planting her hands palm-flat on the cool stone wall of his lair. She didn’t resist, his cock hard against the tight curve of her bottom, making his arousal, his desire for her, insistently known. She kept her hands planted on the wall as he gathered her flowing hair in one hand, holding it tight and using it to open her neck to his tongue and his mouth. He gently nipped at her sweet flesh, pulling her t-shirt off her shoulder and exposing that to his ministrations as well, then he reached around to grab her luscious breast again, kneading it with his hungry hand. He was tasting her, scenting her sweetness as he pressed his body into hers. Her moans and the rhythmic movement of her backside against his cock, pushing against him as she braced herself against the wall… it was a dance so intense, so erotic, it was as if they were already coupled. His mouth ached with the thought of sheathing himself inside her, to feel the quiver of her body around him.

He pulled back from devouring her and conjured away his clothes—they were magic constructions, easily dealt with, but hers were physical items. He dragged his hand from her breast and shifted a single talon. He renewed his grip on her hair, holding her still, lest she move and he nicked even a bit of that delicious skin.

“I want you,” he breathed into her ear as he sliced her t-shirt from neck to sleeve. The fabric was shorn easily with the sharpness of his blade. She gasped, but he couldn’t tell if it was the words or the shirt falling loose. Her bra strap went next, exposing her breast as it fell. He shifted his hand back to human so he could grasp hold of that bare sweetness. “I’ll take you right here. Against the wall. Keep your hands where they are.” His words were ragged, but as he slipped his hand into the front of her pants, his fingertips finding the slickness of her sex, her breath became even more labored than his.

But through the heaviness of her breath, she hummed her assent, a kind of aching, pitched sound that sung to him—she
needed
this. He could taste it, feel it urging him on. It was clouded by his own need—it had been so long for him, impossibly long—but her desire sang through the haze, justifying this, validating all of it. The lies, the ruse, the secrets. At least he would give her
this,
a slaking of something long-needed and buried.

The roughness of her pants rubbed against the nakedness of his body. He pulled his hand free of her sex, ignoring her protest as he shifted a talon and hooked it at the waist of her tailored slacks.

“Hold still,” he commanded. Then he carefully sliced his way down, kneeling as he went, the fabric giving way like silk before a steel blade. His other hand pressed flat to her back, trailing down, then skimming the curve of her bared bottom. Her clothes fell away, revealing the smattering of freckles that patterned every inch of her.
So beautiful.
She stayed rigid, hands planted against the wall, shuddering deliciously as he traced his way back up with his lips.

When he stood behind her again, he wrapped himself around her, his cock slipping between her legs, but not yet inside, one hand on her breast, the other diving back into her wetness. His face buried in her hair, and he moved against her, skin on skin, that silent erotic dance that bewitched him before.

She muttered soft curses as he worked her sex, and he was tempted to make her come before taking her, but he wasn’t sure he could last. The pressure was building already, and he hadn’t even entered her. Instead, he stepped back and grabbed her hip with one hand, pulling it away from the wall. His other hand fisted in her hair and pressed her forward just enough until her entrance beckoned. With a roar that stayed contained inside him, he plunged his cock deep inside her.

Merciful magic,
she was tight. His roar rushed to the surface, arriving a split second after her shriek of pleasure. He held still for a moment, mind blotted by the intense pleasure of being buried to the hilt in the hotness of her body. She was gasping and cursing again, balling one fist against the wall and pushing back against him with her bottom. He understood what she wanted, and his urge to move was overwhelming as well. He gripped her hip tight, pulled back and slammed into her again, the pleasure whiting out his mind. Again and again, each stroke some kind of mind-altering drug that took him higher.

He was taken with lust, driven as he was driving into her. Her pleas for more and faster were fuel poured on his fire, and the hot wet smacking of their bodies would surely burn them both out. His own climax was rocketing toward him like an inferno.

“Come for me,” he panted, working his hand forward to find her nub and speed her release. “My treasure,
please,”
he pleaded.

She groaned, but in frustration.

He stroked her harder, both with his cock and his hand. She bucked against him, wild in it, but still no crying out, no quivering of feminine flesh finding the peak.

“Arabella.”
He couldn’t last much longer. It took everything to hold out.

She pounded the wall with her fist, crying out, but not in a good way—this was the sound of anger, not pleasure.

“I can’t.” The words were a whisper, and he almost didn’t hear them over the ragged breaths and breathy groans.

He sunk deep inside her and held still. “You can’t… what?”

“I can’t… I just don’t…” She was pulling away from him.

Every instinct in him ran cold. He pulled his cock from her body so he could turn her around. Her face was streaked with tears.
“Arabella.”
What had he done?

She was wiping at her face, looking everywhere but him, ignoring his attempts to bring her into his arms. “It’s okay. It’s fine. I’m sorry… I just can’t…”

“Did I hurt you?” Horror held him so still he couldn’t breathe.

That snapped her attention to his face.
“No!
God, no. It’s me. I’m… I just can’t…” She was back to staring at the ground and avoiding him.

His mind was flooded with a haze of lust and sex and the sweet wetness of her body still coating his fully erect cock, waving in the air between them.

He hadn’t hurt her.
That seeped in, quickly followed by,
But she’s still hurting.

He pulled her close, ignoring her protest and tucking her head against his chest, warming her with the heat of his body. His cock throbbed against her belly, but that couldn’t be helped.

“Tell me,” he commanded. His hand cupped her bottom and pressed her body against his. “Tell me what I can do.”

“Nothing,” she mumbled against his skin. But she wasn’t trying to move away. “You can’t do anything. I’m just… broken.”

He frowned.
Broken?
What in the name of magic did she mean? He pulled her back so he could peer down into those beautiful green eyes. “In what way?”

Her gaze averted, so he brought it back up, a finger under her chin. Then he kissed her, gently, on the lips. “I can’t taste what’s wrong, Arabella. There’s too much, too many conflicting things, all mixed together. You have to tell me.”

She swallowed, but held his gaze. “I… I can’t come.”

His scowl grew deeper. “This is how you’re…
broken?”

Red rushed her cheeks, more than the heat of their fervent coupling, and she averted her gaze again. “It’s not you. It’s me. I just can’t. Not with a man. Not since…” She stopped and the small hairs on her arms lifted.

Not since…
the darkness in her past. It was still haunting her. He had no idea what had happened, and he certainly wouldn’t press her to tell the story of it… but that remnant was like a demon that had invaded her body and taken possession of it, robbing her of the very thing that she owned by birthright. The pleasure of being a woman.

“This needs to be fixed.” He swept her up in his arms and carried her out of the hallway, across the great room, and toward the spiral stairs that led to the second floor. He was going to do what he should have done in the first place…

Take this treasure to his bed.

God, she was an idiot.

For some reason, Arabella thought sex with a man like Lucian would be different. He was the most insanely sexy man she had ever met, gorgeous across every inch of his muscle-rippling body, and the sexual tension between them had been killing her for days. If there were anyone who could plunge her into a lust-filled frenzy, it was
him.
But she was even more broken than she thought.

This is permanent. I’ll never be normal again.
That thought had brought the tears gushing down her face, even as Lucian was still trying to bring her to climax, doing all the things a man should do.
It was her.
It was the horror of that night—it had reached deep inside her, to a place that reason couldn’t touch. No amount of talk therapy or intellectual understanding could fix that primal part of her mind. It had shut down that one fateful, dark, horrible night… and it wasn’t ever coming back.

And now Lucian was carrying her up to his bedroom, cradling her so gently in his arms, the power of them so immense, so strong, that she didn’t feel awkward at all. In fact, the way he was holding her naked body solidly against his—not in a sexual way, just with complete tenderness and concern—made her feel safer than she’d ever been with a man.

It still wasn’t enough. His hotness wasn’t enough. His insanely erotic lovemaking wasn’t enough. She’d tried again and again with men, ever since that night, and it always ended the same—massive frustration on her part. Some men didn’t even care, they just did their business and were done. Some took it as some kind of personal affront that they couldn’t bring her to climax. But Lucian… he was whisking her away to try again, determined to fix this.

Only she knew it was hopeless.

She should tell him. The whole thing. Then maybe he’d understand and not put them both through the torment.

Lucian elbowed open the door and walked her inside his expansive, beautifully-appointed bedroom. He kissed her temple before climbing onto his enormous circular bed with the mirror on the ceiling and setting her gently on the comforter.
So sweet.
It threatened to spring tears out of her eyes again as he settled in next to her, his skin hot against hers where they touched. His cock was hard and heavy against her side—
God,
that had felt good inside her. He was so damn big, easily the largest man she’d ever had, and she thought that would make a difference.