Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 (25 page)

“You’ve never done this before,” Dorian said, his voice strained. It was not a question.

“No,” I said. I stopped, suddenly overcome with self-doubt. “It isn’t bad, is it?”

He gave a ragged kind of laugh. “I promise, Cora, with you, bad is an impossibility.”

Impossible for him as it was for me? That was a revelation.

I wondered what I could do to him, if I could fill up his world with nothing but pleasure and his awareness of me, the way he could to me. That thought made me suddenly greedy. I wanted him to give me every bit as much of himself as he took from me.

Eagerly now, I began to move my hand up and down again, sliding the skin over the shaft and head. His fingers closed over mine for a moment, urging a firmer grip, so I did. Up and down I stroked him, biting my lip, my eyes fixed on the wetness that began to glisten at the tip. I wanted to see his need in his face, but I couldn’t look away from it.

I felt a small shudder go through his frame, and my own breathing sped up. I felt heat bloom between my legs, and I kept my eyes on my hands and his hard cock.

I stopped, let go.

“Sit down,” I ordered. I ordered him—Dorian. The rush of it went to my head and down between my legs.

Dorian pulled off his shoes and pushed his pants the rest of the way off, leaving them on a pile on the floor so that he was naked from the waist down. Then he took two steps back to the chair he had left and sat, turning it to face me.

I looked up then, and my heart and stomach jumped at what I saw in his face, a need so intense that it looked like pain. He needed me. I’d done that to him. And I was going to do more.

I knelt slowly between his knees. His erection—no, not his erection, it was too earthy and vital a thing for such a word—his dick, his cock—it was just inches away now. I felt a kind of giddy, reckless excitement rush through me.

My hands encircled the girth of him again, holding it steady. I bent down and took the head into my mouth. I saw his thigh muscles flex, go rigid as I surrounded it. It was smooth against my tongue, salty and slightly musky. And I loved the taste of him even as I loved the tightening of his legs and the way his hands went rigid on the arms of the chair.

I cushioned my teeth with my lips. Slowly, I slid it deeper, farther into my mouth, and then I began working up and down, stroking him with my tongue, sucking against the rounded head.

I could hear his breath hissing through his teeth, and I knew I was doing to him what he had done to me so many times before. I was filling his brain with it, with his desire for me, until there wasn’t room for anything else. I watched him as I worked him, up and down. His head was thrown back, the Adam’s apple of his throat standing out against the taut muscles of his strong neck. He was so beautiful like that, so perfect even in the throes of his pleasure, and it was me making his whole body go stiff and his throat move as he struggled to even swallow as his breath grew louder in my ears, small, deep noises at the catching start of every breath.

“Cora—” he said, and there was a warning in his voice.

But I didn’t stop, I didn’t slow, even as one of his hands found my hair and tightened in it. I knew what was going to happen, and I wouldn’t be satisfied until it did—until I’d taken that from him, as he’d taken it from me so many times. My jaw was aching slightly from accommodating him, but even that gave me a strange thrill. Up and down I moved, breathing with it, sucking him, my hands and mouth working together.

Suddenly, he let out a deep groan, and as he did, the tip of his erection exploded into my mouth, pulsing. As the taste of him filled me, I took it as my victory. Then I pulled away and, rather inelegantly, wiped it onto the tail of my shirt.

Dorian laughed, a little breathlessly. “Bad?”

“No,” I said, and I thought,
Mine.
He was mine, his pleasure was mine, his orgasm was mine, even his cum—yes, that, even in its crudest word, that was mine, too. I met his gaze boldly. “How was it for you?”

I knew how it was. Every line of his body had told me. But I wanted to hear his words—I wanted to make them mine, too.

“Very good,” he said, his voice rough with reaction. “Very, very good, indeed.” His eyes glinted with a light that made my breath hitch. “And now, I believe I owe you.”

I
laughed, lightheaded. “I think the debt is still in your favor at the moment.”

“Be that as it may, even though I’m an agnate, I am not up for another go quite yet,” Dorian said, his eyes hooded even as he smiled down at me. “But you... Women—of all races—are different. For you, there is no arbitrary limit.”

“Limit?” I asked as I rocked back on my heels, pretending coyness even as my heart began to thrum in my ears. “What do you mean by that?”

He leaned down, bringing his face close to mine. “If I keep you right at the edge, I could keep you coming all night long.”

“How?” I demanded, a little amazed at my own audacity because I knew I was challenging him, and I didn’t doubt that he could do exactly what he said.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

“I don’t know that I should,” I said.

He gave me a slow, languorous smile that liquefied my insides.

“But I think I’d like to try,” I added, giving into recklessness again.

He stood and looked down at me. “Then the first order of business is to get you out of those clothes.”

Oh, yes,
I agreed silently.
Let’s do that.

Dorian stood and pulled me to my feet to meet him, his arms coming around me as his mouth found mine. His kiss was slow, methodical, and complete, plundering my mouth with dizzying deftness as he stroked me with his tongue.

He drove me back toward the bed. I offered no resistance—because I chose not to, not because I couldn’t. This was the game right now, and I wanted to play it. I felt the mattress against the back of my thighs, and then his hands were under my rear, and he broke the kiss as he boosted me up and tossed me lightly onto my back into the center of the bedspread.

I giggled despite myself and began wiggling to turn parallel to the headboard, but he said, “Don’t move.”

I froze, and he lay down next to me, resuming the kiss as my head flooded with hot need and my center began to send little throbs down between my legs.

Dorian lifted my shirt a mere inch and moved down to kiss my stomach where it was exposed. It should have tickled, but instead, it drove another shivering spike through me. He moved up slowly, his mouth staking claim to every inch that his hands exposed until the shirt was at my neck. He pulled it off then, tossing it to the ground, and moved to my bra.

This time, he didn’t unhook it, instead kissing along the arc formed by the underwire as he pushed it up, millimeter by millimeter, over my breasts. I was shaking by the time his mouth began working against my areola, shamelessly rocking my hips into his hard thigh. I felt the underwire pull up against my hard nipples, stretching them fractionally as his lips and teeth teased the lower edge...then they pulled free, and I moaned as his mouth found them, still blocked by the edge of the bra from forming the suction I craved. And up the bra went, up a little more, and then he was fully over them, his mouth and hands stroking, pulling, teasing them until I was mad with it all.

“Please,” I begged squirming against him, “please.”

The suckling suddenly turned into a sharp bite, and I gasped, feeling it all the way down into my clit. Oh, it hurt, hurt so good, as only Dorian could make me feel....

He released me, and then he was pulling off my bra, over my head. I lifted my arms to free them, then slid one hand brazenly down into my pants, finding the hard, swollen nub of my clitoris—

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Dorian said, capturing my hand. “Not tonight.”

He let go of me and pulled away abruptly. I sat up, dazed, just in time to see him disappear through the door that led to his dressing room.

“Dorian?” I called. Had I offended him somehow? I was baffled, dazed, throbbing with unfulfilled need—

Just as I was about to roll off the bed to find him, he reappeared in the doorway holding a gold silk cord. I recognized it as the tie to his smoking jacket.

My heart sped up. “I’m not so sure—” I began.

“Did you like it when you wore the corset and I made you come so hard you couldn’t breathe?” he asked bluntly.

Wordlessly, I nodded.

“This is much the same idea.” He reached the bed. “A loss of control.”

“I never feel in control with you,” I said shakily.

His smile was predatory. “Good. Now, wrists.”

There was no compulsion in those words, no more than the ordinary force of will that he wore around him like a dark cloak, but I held out my hands, wrists together. He bound them together, the silk cutting a little into my skin.

“And up,” he said, and he scooped me up and deposited me closer to the head of the bed.

I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, he was pushing me back into the pillows as he lifted my hands over my head. I tilted my head back and watched him tie the ends of the cords to the closest bedpost, so that I was stretched out on the bed with my breasts bare and vulnerable to him.

“And now it’s my turn,” he said, lowering himself between my legs.

He turned his attention to the flesh that he had already bared, moving over my mouth, my neck, my breasts, my belly, sucking them, nipping them, then kissing away the tiny bee-stings of pain. I whimpered, trying to bring my hands down, to cling to him or guide him or shield my body from the dizzying onslaught, I didn’t know, but the bindings only cut harder into my skin.

Then he moved to the button of my jeans, and I braced myself, knowing what was coming next. He twisted it open, then kissed it for a long moment, his fingers digging into my butt, before he slid the zipper down, a fraction of an inch at a time, his fingers hooked in my underwear and drawing them with it.

When he reached the end of the zipper, he lingered there, his mouth in my curls, so close to my aching clitoris that I bit my lip against my pleas until I tasted a tang of blood.

His hands slipped under my waistband and pulled, slowly, too slowly, until the top of my pants was bunched below my hips. And then, only then, did his mouth find the tight, aching place, coming full against my clitoris and tearing a grateful cry from my throat.

Sensation swirled up through me as I jerked down against the cords that held me tight, and I came against his mouth, rocking my hips into it, needing even more even as the orgasm shook through me.

“That is only the beginning,” he said, and he pulled my pants lower still, to my knees, so that he could kiss and nip the insides of my thighs—and then, oh yes, then, he licked me hard from the base of my entrance all the way to my clitoris. And then, somehow, he was pressing against it, rocking it even as his tongue pushed between the folds at the top of my opening, and one of his hands slid up from cradling my butt to slide into my entrance just behind it and pull down, stretching me as I clenched hard against him.

I was still at the edge, and that tipped me over again, into the heat that buzzed through my body. My clit throbbed, my nipples, my lips, my anus—everything buzzed and crackled with it, and when it dissipated, I was left breathless, raw, and whimpering.

“I have something for you.” It was Dorian’s voice, a velvety, dangerous caress. “Do you think you’re ready?”

I shook my head, then nodded, afraid of what he could mean but craving it, nevertheless.

He extended his body over mine, leaning over to the bedside table. He pulled open a drawer, then extracted a small case, which he opened.

I could make no sense of what lay on the silk-lined interior. They looked rather like three alligator clips, except that they were shorter and had no teeth, and they were joined together with a Y-shaped chain.

“You like how it feels when my mouth is on your nipples, your clit,” he said. It was not a question.

“Oh,” I said, my eyes widening instinctively as I understood what these were for.

“Yes,” he agreed, looking down at me with a glittering gaze.

My breath came fast as I realized that I couldn’t stop him from using those on me even if I wanted to, not with my arms tied helplessly above my head. I shook my head, trying to decide, among my warring feelings, which was the strongest—which the uppermost. I couldn’t.

“Tell me no, Cora,” Dorian said. “Tell me no, and I’ll put them away.”

I could hear the tension in his voice—how much he wanted to use these on me. And I wanted it, too, though I was more than half afraid that it was another step into the darkness from which I would never return.

“When?” I asked, not looking away from them. “When did you get these?”

“Christmas Eve,” he said.

After the first time we’d slept together. He’d gotten them for me. I should be horrified. I should be horrified and disgusted and afraid....

But I wasn’t.

“I want you to do it.” I barely recognized my own voice, strained and high. “Do it.”

“First, I must make you ready again,” he said, and his mouth found mine.

The kiss started slowly, but then it grew harder, almost frantic. He tongue all but attacked me, his teeth nipping at my lip. I gasped under the onslaught, staggered. When he pulled away, he was shaking.

“Oh, God, Cora, blood,” he said. “What are you trying to do to me?”

“I—I don’t know,” I said, yearning for him and frightened at the same time.

His eyes burned. “I will not go too far,” he said, and for a moment, I wondered if he was trying to convince himself or me.

But I had no time to think about that, because then he was kissing me again, on the throat, the collarbone, across the top curve of my breast until he found one nipple and teased it, hard, until I cried out with the throbbing ripples that it sent through my body. His mouth lifted, and then something cold and hard slipped around it and squeezed so that echoes of the pleasure continued to reverberate through my body.

I shuddered, hardly noticing that his mouth was moving on until it closed over my other breast, and he repeated the action. This time, the reaction was intensified by the unrelenting pressure on my other breast, and I moaned and writhed against him until he pulled away, slipping the other clamp over the nipple as his mouth left it.