Page 61 of Sacrifice

Lucien seemed to hear her. “Perhaps you shouldn’t stand up.” He reached up his hands to take hers and she knelt before him, a fellow pilgrim of desire at prayer.

His eyes were darkness. Onyx pools that pulled in the room's light to be lost in their depths. She kissed him, slowly at first, then with a fever, reveling in the sensation of his skin against hers. She pressed herself against him and felt the hard shaft of his cock pressing into her stomach. Her hands went to it, instinctively tracing its length.

“Are you mine, Lucien?” she asked, and Lucien let out a low groan.

“Yours for the taking, my queen,” he said, and Eve pushed him onto his back so that she could climb astride and claim what was hers.

Lucien arched his back and then pressed the hard bulge of his crotch against her, but still they were separated by a layer of fabric. Eve levered herself up to tear it away. Now both were entirely naked but for the pendant that laid on her chest. She straddled him again.

“You must draw your rune on my chest, Eve. Brand me with your mark,” Lucien hissed.

My mark?

But then she knew what it would be—the 8-pointed star, the star of Ishtar.

She put her finger to his chest and traced the shape, but Lucien laid his hand over hers to stop her. With the other, he drew a dagger from the box, the Venus blade. “With this,” he said.

Eve took it and examined the point. The blade was keen, but it would be possible to go lightly. It hummed in her hand, desperate to be used.

She placed the point on his chest, and Lucien squirmed with pleasure beneath her. The tip of his cock pulsating at her entrance. She dragged the knife across his skin and ground her hips down onto him. Lucien flexed and his member glided along the moisture of her body to press tantalizing against her, almost inside but not quite.

She swept the blade lightly to draw another line, and Lucien flexed the other way. Eve pressed down onto him again, but still he did not slide inside. She drew the blade across his skin again and he flexed again, still not breaching her.

“Harder,” he hissed, “Press harder.”

Her eyes met his.

“The blade, my queen.”

“I want you inside me,” she purred.

“Harder, then.” He pulsed his hips and Eve pressed the knife against his skin a little harder as she dragged it. Pink welts raised in its wake.

“Yes. Again.”

She scored another line. This time, the smallest droplet of blood popped from the broken skin.

“Yes. Harder.”

She ground down, and Lucien’s hands took hold of her hips. He eased her forward and back. His wonderfully hard cock was so tantalizingly close and gliding against her. He held her there, the tip of him just finding the soft welcoming flesh of her inside. She tried to slide on to him, but he held her firm.

“Harder,” he hissed, and Eve pressed the knife into his skin to draw a thin line of red across his chest. “Yes.” He pulled Eve down onto him and she cried out at the relief of finally taking him inside.

She swept the knife again, and he pushed her away to thrust into her again.

“Harder,” she said and caught his eye.

A wicked smile came to his lips. “I am at your command.” He pulled her down and thrust to fill her completely.

She slashed the knife across his chest to complete the star and then threw the blade aside. She dipped to kiss the spot on his chest now scored and raw and Lucien thrust into her again and again, slow and deep. Delicious friction and the fizz of their energy built around them. He guided her hips, the full length of him sliding in and out, over and over. Energy fizzed in Eve’s skin, the runes she had just discovered squirming with pleasure at the proximity of their maker. Every nerve was alive with desire. Lucien was everything. Lucien completed her. The missing piece she’d not known existed until now. His body inside hers. Her body: an extension of his. Their essenceswirled and merged. She rode him in ascending ecstasy, pleasure and desire dancing together, higher and higher until she could contain it no more and the tension inside her broke. She juddered and faltered.

“Yes.” Lucien gripped her hips tighter still, plunging into her, extending the exquisite waves, until he, too, shuddered in release. Eve looked down at his glistening body, slick with sweat and smeared with blood. Her mark was on him now.

“You are mine,” she said.

Thirty-Two

Havingsight of the stars always made Michaels feel better. He might have been trapped on earth for a millennium but still echoes of Akkadia sounded inside him. Looking up at the heavens helped him to remember who he was. It helped him to think.

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