Page 54 of ColdIron
“I was trying to get you to relax,Eirath.” His smile held no apology. “I don’t want you to worry. Thechemical in a vampire’s bite induces pleasure. Men and women both climax from it.”
My heart skipped a beat.
So that was how vampires disarmed their prey. Pleasure as a weapon. I’d have to put up double defenses. I would not become anyone’s victim. I must keep my head sharp, my body alert, my vision clear.
“I wouldn’t leave a bite mark on your neck for others to see,” Nikolai said, his tone shifting—still intimate, but threaded with a new possessiveness. “Not unless I imprint you as mine. And when that day comes, you’ll wear my mark with pride.”
My head spun. Imprint? As his?
“So I’ll give you a choice,” he continued before I could process. “I can drink from your wrist. Some will still see the mark. Or I can drink from your thigh, and this thing between us stays a secret for as long as you want.”
I was already being called a warlock. If the cadets saw a vampire’s mark on my visible skin, they’d brand me a blood whore before the day was out.
“Thigh,” I sighed.
Nikolai moved before I could second-guess myself.
His arms swept beneath me and lifted me off the floor. I was a tall woman built with dense bone and growing muscle, and he carried me like I was made of air. The ease of it did something reckless to my insides.
He laid me on a high leather chaise near the fireplace. The leather was cool against my back, the fire’s warmth pressing against my left side. He stood over me for a beat, crimson eyes tracing my body from face to feet with undisguised hunger.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I gripped the edge of the chaise with both hands.
“The pants need to come off, Max.”
“The boxers stay on.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “That’s non-negotiable.”
“As you wish.”
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my pants and drew them down my legs. Slowly. His knuckles trailed along my outer thighs, dragging fire in their wake. I lifted my hips to help—a small, involuntary cooperation that my brain registered a second too late.
The cool draft hit my bare legs. I lay before the vampire prince in a men’s shirt, a chest-bind, and a pair of boy’s boxers, and I’d never felt more exposed in my life.
His hand settled on my knee, cool and burning at once. He pressed gently, guiding my legs apart, and lowered himself between them, one knee on the floor like a man kneeling at an altar.
When his lips touched my inner thigh, every coherent thought I’d ever had left the building.
Shit, this wasn’t what I had in mind.
His mouth traced a slow line along my soft, sensitive skin. No one had ever touched me there before, and the nerve endings were so raw that each press of his lips sent a shock wave rolling up through my center. His breath fanned hot against my thigh, and his tongue followed. The sensual strokes tore a gasp out of me.
My leg kicked in pure reflex. He caught my calf in one hand and pressed it flat against the chaise withoutbreaking rhythm, his grip firm, his mouth never leaving my skin.
“I won’t sleep with you.” The words came out threadbare. My last defense, flimsy as wet paper.
He raised his head just enough to speak against my thigh, his lips still brushing the damp skin. “I don’t plan to.” His crimson eyes found mine, and the heat in them made my stomach free-fall. “I’ll service you. Pleasure you. But when the day comes, when you’re ready, you’ll beg me to fuck you.” His thumb drew a slow circle on the inside of my knee. “And you’ll say please.”
Was he always this obnoxious?
But fuck, he was hot. Too hot for his own good. And mine.
“Will you allow me to undress you and lay you bare, Max?” His voice was low, careful—the voice of a man who wouldn’t take what wasn’t offered, even with his mouth an inch from where he wanted to be.
“I…I don’t know.”
“I won’t fuck you even if you plead today because you aren’t ready,” he said. “I just want to see you. Let me worship you.”
“Fine.” The word left me before my brain cleared it.
