Never again would he unleash the honed blade of cruelty on her. She knew that to the depths of her soul, had heard it in the cadence of his voice, felt it in that moment when he knelt before her, this man of power and pride, the moment that had been the dividing line between the past and the future.
So this was about pleasure.
The assault had been about pain.
“Are you ready, Honor?”
Yes. But she didn’t have the chance to answer, because that was when he put his mouth on her through the damp fabric of her panties. “Dmitri.”
Half of Dmitri wanted to tear off the last flimsy scrap of Honor’s clothing and plow into her in a single deep thrust, claiming her in that most elemental of ways. The other half of him wanted to use every bit of the sensual skill he’d gained over the centuries to make her his slave.
Her panties stuck to the plump, flushed curves of her intimate flesh when he drew back, slid his hands under those silly little ribbons that made him insane, and tugged. She lifted up her body and he was peeling that scrap of nothing down her thighs an instant later. He stood to get them completely off, and when he looked up at her, he knew he’d reached the limit of his patience. Leaning down, he licked at the honey over her br**sts.
“So now I’m your serving dish,” she said with a smile that kicked him right in the heart. “I knew you had an ulterior motive.”
Laughing—and when had he last done that with a lover?—he kissed his way down her body, to the damp curls between her thighs. And found he had a little more patience after all. Enough to retake his seat, part her, and kiss her, hot and slow and with exquisite care, laving his tongue against the hard nub at the apex of her thighs.
Her back arched, her fingernails scrabbling on the wood. “Dmitri.” Her breath escaped her in a choked-off scream that made him tuck his thumb against the slick entrance to her body and push inside a mere fraction as he covered her with his mouth once more. It was enough. She came apart for him, a sweet burst of feminine spice against his senses.
Rising to his feet even as the final tremors shimmered over her body, he stripped off his remaining clothing and sat back down before pulling her to the edge of the table. “On me, Honor.”
“I can’t move.” It was a breathless complaint.
He kissed her hip bone, felt her shiver. Tugged a little more. She flowed into his arms, all liquid and pleasured and boneless, her legs spreading to either side of his body. Lazy, she kissed him before reaching down to squeeze his turgid arousal with strong, knowing fingers.
Hissing out a breath, he tugged off her hands. “Later.” He pulled her forward, lifted her using his considerable strength . . . and slid her down oh-so-slow onto his cock. Scalding heat and exquisite tightness.
His mind blanked for an instant.
“Oh.” A long, breathy moan. “You feel . . .” Hands thrusting into his hair, cupping the back of his head as she settled more firmly onto him, rolling her h*ps and using tiny inner muscles to squeeze his cock.
Dmitri swore a quiet blue streak, his hands clenching on her hips. When she continued to make the small sensual movements about to rip his control to shreds, he dipped his head and sucked one taut nipple into his mouth. She cried out and lost her rhythm, letting him regain a piece of his sanity. Licking her one more time, he insinuated his hand between their bodies to lightly circle her clitoris as he began to move inside her in the shallowest of strokes.
“You’ll kill me.” With that, Honor found his mouth.
Lost in the wild passion of her kiss, he stood, taking her with him, and perched her on the edge of the table, their bodies still joined. Her legs were wrapped around him, her mouth fused to his, one hand cupping his jaw, the other in his hair. He felt surrounded by her, adored by her. A startling thought . . . but welcome.
Kissing his way across her cheek and down her jaw when she broke the kiss, he moved his hand to her hip, angling her exactly how he liked. Then he began to move. Their gazes locked. Stayed locked.
Her eyes were shimmering midnight forests, her cry a single word. His name. He fell with her, so much pleasure rocking through him that it felt as if he’d broken into a million iridescent pieces.
31
A very sexy shower later—Lord, but Dmitri was inventive— Honor cuddled up next to him, amused at the thought of cuddling up to a vampire so lethal he scared others of his kind. “You’re a very clever man.”
He ran the fingers of one hand down the side of her face. “I know.”
Honor laughed because what else could a woman do when the man in bed with her had driven her to so many orgasms, she was still seeing stars? “That position—letting me be on top, while handing you all the power. I’m playing way out of my sexual league, aren’t I?”
“Don’t worry.” He wove his fingers into her hair. “I’m an excellent coach.”
Yes, she bet he was. Kissing her way up his body, she snuggled her face into his neck and drew in the warm scent of him. It felt like coming home.
The awakening was as rude as the sleep had been pleasurable.
“Amos has been spotted,” Dmitri told her after reaching out to answer his cell just before a misty gray dawn.
The vampire wasn’t on the grounds of Jiana’s Stamford estate when they arrived, but he’d left pieces behind—several of his organs sat in a glistening pile on the grass, covered with droplets of the fine, fine rain that beaded on their hair, dampened their clothing. Heavy steel spikes encrusted with blood betrayed where he’d been pinned to the earth, purple zinnias and sunny chrysanthemums crushed and splattered with blood congealed to black in pockets where the rain couldn’t reach.
“Whatever I might have dreamed of doing to him,” Honor murmured to Dmitri as they stood on the small rise overlooking Jiana’s home, the moisture-laden early morning wind lifting their hair off their faces, “this is worse.”
“He had to have been otherwise compromised or he’d have escaped those steel pegs before he was gutted, his intestines removed,” Dmitri said, eyes on the flesh and blood ropes that looked obscene surrounded by flowers struggling to reach for sunlight that wasn’t there.
“Or maybe,” Honor said, looking at the blood-soaked woman who sat rocking not far from the site of the carnage, runnels of red dripping from her arms and legs into the earth, “he didn’t want to escape . . . not until he realized she wasn’t planning to stop.” And still he’d been unable to end the life of his attacker, this woman he both loved and hated.