Page 128 of Vasmora

Another surge of his hips drove the third rung up inside me.

I let out a grunt, my thighs trembling around him, knees locked against his ribs.

“You’ll never know pleasure again.” The voice of General Loyce sank into my mind like a poison-tipped blade.

Eyes shuttered, I shook my head, desperate to banish her from my thoughts. “More,” I rasped.

The fourth rung slipped inside, the vibration crawling up into my stomach in delicious little shocks. Lip curled between my teeth, I writhed beneath him, fingers digging into his shoulders, grasping for an anchor, while the promise of ecstasy pulled me like a riptide.

Zevander groaned and shuddered, every thrust drawing me further from that voice, closer to him.

I opened my eyes to his beautifully ruined face, his gaze simmering with something beyond mere lust. The intrusive thoughts from before slipped away, as I lay mesmerized, watching his muscles flex, the veins in his neck thick and pulsing.

Time slowed.

As if we were submerged in water, drifting and tumbling into a rhythmic bliss. No one could touch us there, in the place where our bodies merged into one, our souls entwined in a delicate knot too strong to unravel. No pain or suffering. No screams or quiet pleas. Only the drumming of our hearts and shallow breaths.

“Another,” I whispered.

“Please tell me you’re certain, because fucking hell, you feel divine.”

“I’m certain,” I gripped the back of his damp neck, and he inclined his head toward me, a low sound of need rumbling against my throat as he kissed me there. When he drove into me again, I bit down on the iron curve of his shoulder, the fifth rung sending a deep, cramping vibration shooting up my spine to the back of my head. I arched my hips, meeting his thrust, and tipped my head back for a scream that failed to come forth, the pleasure so intense, my lungs locked.

“Breathe, A’miszhla,” he whispered, kissing my cheek. He plunged again, and I gasped, drawing in a quick breath, another jolt of ecstasy rippling up my spine.

A deep, throaty moan tore out of me, and I rolled my head back and forth, my fingers and toes curled into him, body tight and trembling. Raising my head, I stared down between us, at his gleaming length disappearing inside of me, and my teeth found his shoulder once again.

He upped his pace, grinding his hips into me with deep, powerful strokes, his brawny thighs flexing, controlled with every thrust. As steady as the waves pounding against the shore. “Cursed gods, you are the sweetest poison.”

I focused on the feel of his body across mine, our skin stitched together by scars and blood. Fingers digging into flesh. Teeth to bone. Breaths quiet and stuttering. He was everywhere, every part of him pressed against me, and I clutched him, silently sending up a prayer to the gods that I would never know the suffering of his absence again. That neither death nor wrath would take him from me.

Tears leaked out of me, emotions rising to the surface.

“Eyes on me, moon witch,” he commanded, and I opened them to find him staring back with the kind of reverence that sent an ache to my chest.

My muscles clenched and trembled around him.

“You’re mine,” he said in a ragged voice.

Another drive of his hips sent jolts of pleasure exploding outward to my limbs and up to the back of my skull. I cried out, the broken rasp in my throat reverberating off the cave walls.

He released a strained and agonizing groan that brimmed with relief, as hot jets of fluid spilled down my thighs. Elbows anchored at either side of my head, he braced himself, his body shuddering, arms twitching and threatening to collapse. Tiny shocks tingled deep in my core while he held himself inside of me, his face buried in my neck.

“I’m sorry, he whispered. “I should’ve never pushed–”

“I wanted it.” I turned my head to the side and kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you, Zevander Rydainn.”

His lips found my throat, my cheek, then my mouth. Gripping the back of my neck, he pressed our foreheads together, our breaths mingling. “As I lay on that rock, perhaps a mere twitch away from death, contemplating every moment I’d spent with you, there was one thought that troubled me most. That I never told you how profoundly my world has changed because of you. That I had spent two centuries never feeling anything but the exhilaration of a blade. The thrill of spilling blood. Until you.” Cradling my face in his palms, he pressed his lips to mine and inhaled deeply through his nose. “There isn’t a word that encompasses the love I feel for you, moon witch. It transcends anything I’ve ever felt before.” When he pushed up from my body, the gore of what I’d done to him smacked me in the face.

My heart withered at the sight of the deep gash I’d carved just above his bicep during my climax, the blood smeared over his skin.

Seeming to notice my preoccupation, he lifted his arm, eyes on mine, and ran his tongue over his ravaged skin.

I told myself the sight of it repulsed me. That there was nothing arousing about watching him lick the blood I’d spilled.