Page 68 of Griffin Undone
A talisman. A lifeline.
Arik growled. The sound rippled up my legs and down my spine to meet low in my pelvis. His eyes shed their amber glow, throwing stark shadows across his face, making him appear animalistic. Or maybe that was his griffin rising beneath his skin. Whichever it was, it captivated me, made me burn, made me want to relax onto the mattress and spread myself for him. But something held me back, something I’d seen in his eyes when I’d first stepped into the office.
Rage. Frustration. Hate.
Whatever had happened tonight while he was gone, it had been powerful. The emotion it engendered lurked beneath the hunger suffusing Arik’s expression now, burning me down to my core, even deeper than his need could go. Searching his face, my heart stuttered, caught, tumbled over itself into a frantic pace, and yet all the while, those beautiful, intense eyes held me in thrall.
“Arik, what’s going on?”
The words came out too breathless, too hesitant, but at least they came out. Arik didn’t seem to register the question, didn’t hesitate as he crawled, one hand, one knee in front of the other, up the bed. I let myself go soft, relax back onto the pillows, surrendering to his approach despite the warnings blaring in my head.
His gaze dropped to my body, trailing over me as if he owned me, tension threading through his muscles until they stood in stark relief under his taut skin. My throat went dry at the lure of that dark desire. My mind blanked when he reached my feet. Wrapping a single palm around my ankle, he jerked, quick and hard, laying me out flat before him. Socks were removed, pajama pants, panties. His head lowered. His nose trailed along my ankle, my calf. The sound of his deep inhale, the vibrating purr that escaped him should have reassured me, but when his tongue sneaked out to trace the line of muscle, I tensed instead. Arik rubbed each cheek along my skin, marking me—no, this felt like his griffin marking me. Laying claim. I was no longer sure which animal I was in bed with, wasn’t sure I cared.
And when he reached my pelvis and paused to nuzzle into the apex of my thighs, I knew for certain I couldn’t care either way.
Then his fangs pricked my skin.
“Arik!”
He grunted against my inner thigh. “Kat.” He nipped me again, then again, startling little bites into my flesh. Marking me, making me his. I shook with fear, with need, but my legs opened to give him access anyway.
Arik licked the crease between thigh and pelvis. Moved down. And down, down, down… Hot breath hit the wet, aching center of my being. I arched up, begging silently for his mouth on my most private places. His laugh was dark, satisfied, and then his tongue speared deep once, twice. I cried out at the exquisite feel of him sliding inside me.
Arik reared back. I opened my eyes to him looming above me, his breath heaving, the racing of his heart visible in the pulse at his throat. The thin cami I wore was no match for his claws. It ripped down the center like butter, baring my aching flesh to his ravenous gaze—ravenous but somehow empty, as if I could be anyone, as if he’d cut himself off from me somewhere along the way. I squirmed, only then realizing my legs were trapped by his weight. “Arik, no.”
He blinked, a hint of awareness filtering into his stare; then he zeroed in on my face. As I watched, his pupils dilated to capture every nuance of light. A hunter who’d cornered his prey. He clasped a hand around each wrist and forced them to the bed on either side of my head.
“Arik—”
“No.” He shook his head, that predator’s gaze dropping to take in my naked body once more. “No stopping. No waiting. I can’t wait. I need this.”
I tossed and turned—whether to get away or to ease the need building inside me, I didn’t know—but Arik held tight, refusing to let go. Instead he bent and sucked one aching nipple into his mouth. And like his tongue inside me, his lips and teeth on my breast melted my resolve. We would do this; we had to do this. There was no choice, no need to hold back any longer.
My mind surrendered. My fisted hands relaxed. I opened my body to his hunger, and Arik indulged. A searing red haze blinded me to everything but the feel of him, his skin, his heartbeat, his hard male form covering me, completing me. Shocking heat flowed between us as muscled chest met rounded, needy breasts, as rough skin met soft. I tilted my head instinctively, exposing the secret, feminine hollow of my neck to his mouth, even as sharpened tips pricked my own tongue.
The scrape of his fangs across that sensitive spot made my eyes roll back in my head.
“Do it. Bite me,” I begged. “Oh God, Arik, please!”
Some part of me went hot with shame, but I couldn’t stop. All I knew was the driving need to feel him take me. But Arik didn’t bite. He jerked upright, muscled arms holding him above me, and separated his hard thighs between mine, forcing my already open legs wide apart.
My gasp sounded loud in my ears, more a frightened, aching sob, but my pelvis arched to meet his sheathed erection, desperately seeking his relentless drive inside the tight, wet confines of my body. Arik’s stare pinned me as surely as his body while he thrust inside, deep, deeper, filling me until all I could do was scream his name.
Arik swallowed my cry with a kiss. I pushed my tongue into his mouth, needing to penetrate him as he did me, needing him to surround me as my body surrounded his steel-hard shaft. He filled me, thrusting over and over in a frenzy neither of us could deny, didn’t want to deny. What did a little fear matter? It didn’t; nothing and no one mattered but Arik, his taste, his rough hunger, his need. It fed my own. Thought fled, questions fled, and all that remained was the drive to get closer. To be one.
I gripped his surging hips, pulling him tighter, my fingernails gouging the firm muscles of his ass. All I wanted was him. All I wanted was the ecstasy he gave me. It was right there, right at the edge of my awareness. Just a little further…
My body clamped down on the hard length inside me. My eyes flew open as I teetered on the very edge of the abyss. “Arik! God, I love you!”
Then came the roughest thrust of all. My body went tight as a bowstring when he hit my clit dead-on. The first thump of Arik’s climax jerked inside me, his eyes going wide and wild as my words seemed to register in the midst of ecstasy.
He yanked himself away.
For a single moment I was held, suspended, not sure what had happened. My body protested the abrupt cutoff of my pleasure, but the faint echo of my climax registered in some distant part of my brain, crowded out by the swell of emotion coming from my lover. As if he pushed it along the telepathic link between us, a feeling without words, a picture without explanation, without description.
My brain labeled it quite well without him: disgust.
I turned my head slowly, the move costing me more than the physical energy needed to complete it. Arik hunched on the edge of the mattress, his body shuddering with what could only be the rhythmic pulses of his release. My chest went cold at the sight. Not just my flesh but my soul hungered to reach out, to share the closeness of the body if nothing else, but he’d already refused me. As if admitting that I cared about him made me unworthy of his touch. I’d lived my whole life with that rejection, and I’d never expected to go back, not now, not with him, and certainly not like this.
