“Don’t tell me you’re disappointed.”
“Sweet creature.” He grinned, and his lips glided over mine with each word. “We’ve barely scraped the surface of all the many ways I wish to corrupt you forevermore.”
Wings spread within my chest, fluttering. I swallowed all of him with my eyes fastened on his and a moan washing over his lips.
His lashes lowered and lifted when I splayed my hands over the tattoo covering his hair-dusted chest and leaned back. “Feel good?”
“Yes.” He was so deep, it hurt. But I was so full, I’d never felt so good.
“Roll your hips.” He watched my body move over his with his lip between his teeth. “Now tilt them back.” He groaned as if being tortured, his eyes lightening to a bright blue once more. Then he rose and wrapped my legs around him. His fingers dug into my hair, his other arm banding tight around my waist to grip my hip.
I rocked over his length, my gaze fused to his, and said, “I want your mouth.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
He smirked. “Would you like me to kiss you?”
“Yes,” I breathed, the word a plea.
Softer than I’d expected, his lips meshed to mine.
He parted them. Unhurried, he devoured me with relish, and nipped my lips when I tried to do the same to him. His tongue skimmed under my upper lip, then dragged over my teeth.
“Where next?” he whispered, sucking my lower lip into his mouth and releasing it with a scrape of his teeth. I moaned, an orgasm unfurling, as he said, “Here, precious pet?” and pressed his mouth to my throat.
I mumbled something incoherent, my hips jerking.
His hold firmed, my breasts squashed against his chest, as waves of pleasure shook me. “You’re going to be the end of me,” he said, hoarse, then stole my mouth and lifted me from the bed.
Books fell to the floor as I was carried to the wall near the ice-sealed doors, still shaking from release.
He gripped my rear and thigh and chased his own release. I held tight to his broad back and shoulders while, over and over, he drove into me.
His teeth captured the delicate skin at my neck, but though I half hoped he would, he didn’t break it. He sucked as his rhythm slowed. Pressing deep, he emptied inside me with a gravelly groan against my pulse.
I clutched the back of his head. My fingers rubbed and swam through the thick softness of his long hair. Needing more already, I tightened my hold, all the while wondering if this heat I’d dreaded would become something I might wish would stay.
For I could get far too accustomed to this—his bruising hands and soft mouth and the aggressive hunger that matched my own.
Sooner than I’d have liked, Florian set me upon the bed, and I smirked into the sheets as he collected the fallen books and placed them back. He entered the bathing room, and though I itched for him to return and douse the building need inside me again, my eyes closed.
They opened what might have been only minutes later, his scent and nearing heat heady to my ripened senses.
Florian picked me up as though I weighed nothing and carried me to the waiting bathing pool. Still holding me, he climbed in and set me upon a rock-hewn ledge within the water.
I blinked at him in surprise and confusion, unsure what he had planned for me now.
Reaching behind him into a basket, he plucked a caramel-scented soap and lathered it within his hands. “Come to me.”
I dropped into the water and swam to him.
“Wet your hair.”
The pool was as deep as I imagined, my knees only bending slightly as I did as requested. When I emerged and smoothed my hair back, his lips parted. I brushed water from my eyes and tucked myself between his knees.
He twirled his finger with a smirk, and I sat upon the rocky step between his legs and stared at the steamed window that spanned the length of the pool.
“Are you sore?” he asked, his talented hands running through my hair to spread the soap.
“A little, but not enough to care.”
He was quiet for a minute, and I grew more aroused with every gentle rub of his fingers over my scalp. Ridiculous, I thought, yet I knew, even without the heat to blame, it would still be so.
“What does it feel like?” he asked.
“The heat?” Shocked not only by his curiosity but by the gentle hands cleansing my hair, it took me a moment to answer. “Hollow. Just so…” There was no better way to describe it other than, “Uncomfortably empty.”
“Does it hurt?”
I shook my head. “It makes me feel sick when ignored for too long.”
Florian hummed. “And how do you feel now?”
“Better,” I said as his fingers massaged my scalp a touch harder. As if he were waiting on a more detailed answer. “But I still want more. I still…”
“Still what?” he asked, voice rougher.
“Ache to be filled.”
His hands paused, and he hardened completely against my back. “I would pay good coin to hear you say that to me again and again.”
I laughed and dunked my head underwater to rinse the soap.
When I emerged once more, Florian’s hungry gaze warned me of his intentions. My stomach still lurched with anticipation as he pulled me over his lap.
“Put me inside you.” After fumbling for only a moment, I did, and he whispered to my jaw, “Kiss me.”
Delighted to finally be granted permission, I explored his mouth. I kissed each corner of his lips, licked the full shape of each, and bit him when he tried to kiss me back. He laughed, quiet and soft, and I ate as much of the delicious sound as I could.
My mouth traveled over his jaw, my tongue rubbing the sharp edge and the bristle. I ventured to his neck, found his pulse, and flattened my tongue to drag over it. He chuckled when I did the same to his Adam’s apple, and I admitted a touch breathlessly, “I’ve been wanting to do that.”
He stared, time dripping away and unaccounted for, as I luxuriated in the absence of his typically stoic features. He stared at me as if both in deep thought and lost to the way my breaths came faster through my kiss-swollen lips.
Then he kissed me, urgent and rough, before tilting my head back with his hand in my hair to torment my breasts.
I rolled my hips to make his cock press exactly where I needed it. It didn’t matter that I’d already climaxed numerous times. The heat wasn’t done. I was far from done with enjoying this king I should loathe and reject with every corner of my soul.
Though I knew with a certainty that should have shamed that even if I weren’t drowning in the need to mate until this heat ended, my body still wouldn’t care a thing for right and wrong and logic.
It would still refuse to obey me whenever he was near.
Release arrived swiftly, and on the cusp of welcoming it, Florian clasped my face. His mouth grazed mine. “Watching you come is a fucking addiction.”
This unfeeling yet passionate king was an addiction. One I knew I would never crawl free from.
And as I was delivered in a sleepy haze back to his bed, I realized it wasn’t the end of the heat that I feared.
I feared what it would cement between us long before it did.
I woke aching in strong arms.
Florian slept soundly, holding my thigh over his hip and my head at his throat. I didn’t have the heart to wake him. I’d already done so twice since we’d left the bathing pool a mere few hours ago. So I tried to sleep some more.