Page 57 of Kazimir

“Devon,” he said, rough as gravel. “Svetoch, yes.”

I pulled off enough to breathe a laugh against his shaft as saliva dripped down, then dragged my tongue down the underside, following the thick vein, to my hand. I licked my palm and fist until both shone, then wrapped them around him in a corkscrew, stroking as my mouth played at the head—suck, swirl, push past the ridge, release. He cursed in Russian, the syllables like little knives I wanted him to keep throwing. I glanced up, because half the pleasure was written on his face, and I didn’t want to miss any part of it.

His eyes were barely open, pupils blown wide, lashes low. His mouth was parted, fangs just kissing the bottom lip, a glint of white danger that made heat flood my belly. A muscle in his jaw jumped with every bob of my head. When I swallowed around the crown and hummed, his hand tightened in my hair, just enough to remind me that restraint was a choice he’d made and could unmake at any second. The idea made me wetter than was decent.

“Bozhe,” he said again, voice gone low and desperate. “What you do to me, little angel.”

“I want to give you everything,” I said, lips barely moving around him, then sank down deeper, shallow-throated at first, just to test my own limits. The weight of him pressed at the back of my tongue; I eased a breath out, let my throat relax, took him another inch. My eyes watered. I didn’t stop until my gag reflex flickered like a tripwire; then I backed off with a filthy, satisfied sound I hadn’t known I could make and stroked him with both hands, mouth lewd and greedy at the tip.

He was close. I felt it in the way his thighs tensed under my palms, in the little tremor that started low in his belly and climbed. He put one hand flat on the back of the couch, like he had to brace himself against something he couldn’t fight. He looked down at me in that same instant, and whatever he saw there pulled a groan out of him that felt like surrender.

“Devon,” he warned, breath staggered. “I am—”

I didn’t let him finish. I sealed my mouth over him and used my hands and lips together, all the way to the base, up to the head, twist on the upstroke, hollow my cheeks, again, again, sucking harder, taking him just past where comfort flirted with edge. His teeth sank into his own lip. His head fell back. He swore again, my name scattered in the wreckage of his control, and then he was coming—hot and thick across my tongue in pulses I could count with my fingertips on his thighs.

I swallowed like it were sacrament. All of it. He groaned, head tipped back, throat exposed, hands flexing uselessly because there was nothing to hold on to that would save him from the fall. I eased him through every spasm, gentling my mouth and hands until the tension bled out of him and he was just a man who had let a woman who loved him undo him because his pleasure meant more to her than her next breath.

When I finally let him slip from my mouth, he was already watching me again—hunger not sated so much as banked. I licked my lips slowly, because I liked the way his eyes went darker when I did, then crawled up the smooth plane of him in kisses. His lower belly, where muscle cut hard lines I’d mapped with my hands and teeth. The hipbone that made me think of altars. The long sweep of his chest, the old scar that bisected it, the nipple I caught briefly between my teeth just to hear that hiss between his clenched molars. The column of his throat smelled like rain on stone; I pressed my mouth there for a heartbeat and felt the thread of something wordless hum like a plucked string.

By the time I reached his mouth, his hands were already in my hair, cradling my face. He dragged me in and kissed me like he wanted to taste his own ruin on my tongue. I let him. He gentled it after a moment, like he couldn’t help checking that I was all right even when he was the one who’d been stripped to the nerve.

He drew back an inch, thumb sweeping along my jaw, eyes blazing with a softness that would have made me cry if I hadn’t already been dehydrated by want. “What am I going to do with you, svetoch?” he asked, and the endearment fell like a velvet noose I happily shoved my neck into.

I smiled against his mouth, breathless and sure. “Everything,” I said.

Chapter 17

Kazimir

Amber lamplight painted the leather sofa in inviting hues. The glass that overlooked the main floor wore its smoke-dark tint. I could have turned ruthless. I could have taken without a word. That was the man I had been, sometimes, before I learned that vows meant little if your hands could not keep pace with your heart.

“My turn,” I said, voice low enough the room seemed to lean closer to catch it.

She smiled, soft and wrecked and sure, hair a pale storm tumbling around her shoulders. I brushed it back with slow fingers and kissed her forehead. The contact was simple, and it shook me. I wanted to fall to my knees and pray against her ribs. I wanted to show her that power never stood taller than when it chose to serve.

I set about undressing her as if the cloth were sacred. The zipper at her spine yielded with the obedient whisper of a well-trained thing. As the dress slackened, I kissed the point of her shoulder where the fabric first gave way. It tasted like skin warmed under stage lights, clean sweat, a hint of the perfume that was not perfume but her—cool air off a winter river. She shivered when I pressed my mouth to the tendon at her neck, so I did it again, then let the dress fall.

The sight of her should have made me brutal. Instead, it made me careful. My palms smoothed down her arms, over gooseflesh that rose at my touch. I worked the straps from her shoulders as if they were garters binding wings. Her breasts broke free of their polite architecture, and I breathed out like a starving man. Dusky rose, peaked from anticipation and the cool of the room, they offered me a test of my restraint that I already knew I would fail—later. Not yet.

I kissed her belly, the hollow of her hip, the curve of her knee, and then her ankle, slow head to toe, because I had promised myself a method and I had not yet touched every inch of her. I turned her foot in my hand and kissed the arch. She laughed, startled, the cutest little tremor of amusement, and it shook the last of the aftershocks away.

“Sorry,” she said, breath catching as if she owed me decorum.

“Never apologize to me for joy,” I said, voice ironed smooth. “It is what I am here for.”

I pressed my mouth to the top of her shin, the soft place she probably never thought of, then climbed the line back to her knee. I spread her again and mouthed at her inner thigh where the skin went delicate and the scent of her flooded richer. I grazed teeth there and soothed, repeating, leaving no mark but heat.

When I finally found my way back to the center, she was already shaking her head, tiny, helpless.

“Kazimir…”

“Hm?” I said, mouth half on the swollen hood. “You have something to ask me, svetoch?”

“Yes. Don’t stop.”

“As you wish. Come,” I said softly. I’d placed a soft throw onto the floor. “On your stomach.”

I smoothed my palms along the seams of her scars.