Page 103 of Wicked Court

Elara doesn’t recoil from the perversion I’ve laid bare. She doesn’t scream and run, though I wouldn’t blame her.

Instead, she steps closer, the space between us charged with an electricity that both threatens and beckons.

“How?” I utter, my voice trembling with a painful break. “How can you stand to be near me?”

“Let me show you,” she says, her voice a gentle stroke against my soul. “Let me remind you what pleasure can be.”

Her audacity should enrage me further, yet all it does is pull me into her orbit, a planet doomed to crash into the sun.

Chapter 31

Cav

“That’s what tonight is about, isn’t it?” Elara asks with forced bravado. “Endless euphoria.”

My hands shake as I pin her to the wall, my breath ragged.

“Is this what you want?” I snarl, but my voice betrays my pain. I want to punish her, frighten her into never daring such recklessness again. But at the same time, her proximity is maddening, the heat of her body calling to mine in a language older than words.

Elara’s amber eyes lock onto mine, fierce and unyielding.

“I didn’t ask for your protection, Cav,” she says softly, her breath warm against my face.

“Please,” I whisper, a single word carrying the weight of centuries of men who’ve suffered my fate. “Don’t…”

The air between us shifts, charged with anger and something far more perilous.

“Elara,” I groan, my resolve crumbling as I capture her lips with mine.

The kiss is merciless, a clash of teeth and tongues.

Her fingers tangle in my hair, pulling me closer, deepening the kiss until there’s no space left for thoughts or curses or deaths.

I’m lost in the sensation, in the taste of her, the way her body is so pliant against my rigid cock.

I kiss her with raw savagery.

It’s real—this is real.

She meets my lips with the same fervor. Elara doesn’t see the chains that bind me, doesn’t feel the grip of our ancestor’s corpses around my throat.

“More,” she says before biting my lower lip, a plea that shatters the last vestiges of my control.

My hands roam over her, grasping, claiming, driven by a hunger that has nothing to do with the darkness of our heritage and everything to do with the woman who challenges and captivates me in equal measure. I push her dress up, relishing the softness of her skin under my rough touch, the way she arches into me, seeking more.

“Tell me to stop,” I rasp out, desperate for her to remember where we are, what I am.

But she doesn’t. She looks at me with a reckless abandon that matches my own, her gaze smoldering with that provocative spark that refuses to acknowledge the prison I’m in.

“Never,” she breathes, sealing her fate to mine.

Her declaration fucking unleashes me.

Clutching the collar of her dress, I rip it in half. She gasps as the ruined fabric puddles to the floor.

I press her against the wall, claiming her mouth, biting her lips until they bleed, my body flush against hers, feeling every curve and contour. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want her.

Pulling back with a low snarl, her blood wet on my chin, I kneel between her legs, my heart racing at the sight of her purple underwear. They’re damp with desire, and it takes all my restraint not to tear them off her right then and there.

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