Page 14 of Trial of Three
Coal’s need exploded. Stars speckling his vision, he grabbed Lera’s hips and threw her off him so hard that the female was airborne for the instant it took him to recapture her body. To propel her off the bed and toward the wall.
Coal twisted to take the crash of impact himself as their bodies hit the hard stone, then twisted again to pin Lera’s back to the wall. Thethrob, throb, throbof his cock driving all thoughts into a dark abyss, Coal clamped his hand over Lera’s wrists and forced them up high above her head.
Lera opened her mouth. To moan or to scream, Coal didn’t know. Didn’t care. He’d wanted her from the moment her soft backside first pressed against his cock on Czar’s back, but he’dneededher from the moment she first sparred with him, taking his blows with defiance, meeting his darkness with brilliant fire. And by the stars, he’d have her now.
Capturing Lera’s open lips, Coal drove his mouth over hers, swallowing her gasp. His tongue pierced the opening between her teeth and stroked her mouth as hard as his cock throbbed. As hard as the burn of waking magic that scorched his nerves.
All the times Coal had dreamt of tasting the mortal—and there had been many—he’d imagined her to taste sweet, innocent. But he’d been wrong. Lera tasted of power. Power and violence and steel. Lera tasted of Coal’s own magic.
Impossible. Illogical. Undeniable.
Coal’s breath caught then painfully filled his lungs.
The female pulled against his grip, struggling to free herself from his living restraints. Not a mortal’s feeble jerk, but one filled with the same preternatural strength that they’d shared in the second trial. No. Not the same. Stronger. So, so much stronger. Power hummed under Lera’s skin, radiating from each of her muscles. And that was after just one kiss. Coal’s heart stuttered.
Which was all the leeway the girl needed.
Twisting her wrists against Coal’s thumbs, Lera broke free of his hold. Her mouth still locked with his, she jerked them around, slamming Coal’s back into the wall in her place. Driving into him hard enough that his bones rattled from the impact. Releasing Coal’s mouth, Lera glared up at him, her eyes... usually a stunning brown, but now filled with speckles of silver magic, sparkling like tiny stars over the irises.
Not a weak, fragile human, but an equal. A predator to be conquered.
Lera’s nails raked across Coal’s chest possessively, ripping skin. Marking him.
A roar formed inside his soul and spread through his body, the untamed beast inside him yanking against its tether. Coal knew that beast, made of power and magic. When the qoru had chained him, bled him, pinned him against the wall and used him for sport, the magic inside Coal had roared this way too, right before turning him into a beast capable of meeting his owners blow for blow.
The beast had let Coal survive Mors. And now it set its predatory sights on the female, drowning out the last of Coal’s better sense.
Coal yanked on Lera’s right wrist, bending it until her knees buckled. Pulling the wrist across her body, he twisted the female around and shoved her chest into the wall.
With Lera’s arm now pinned into the small of her back, Coal pressed himself against her, his hard, sensitive cock striking her backside. Coal’s nostrils flared, Lera’s scent, her arousal, heating his blood. Bringing up his knee, he forced it between her legs, wedging her thighs apart until she was splayed open before him.
Lera’s heart pounded—Coal could feel it through the press of their flesh. Dropping his free hand down, he gave no warning before plunging two fingers deep into her sex.
Wet, flaming slickness met him, Lera’s body begging for him even as she struggled to get free. A perfect, powerful body whose every contraction made stars dance before Coal’s eyes.
Coal slipped his hand out of her long enough to free himself, his cock hard and dripping. Screaming with need. With no breath left, he thrust forward, sheathing himself in Lera’s wicked tightness.
10
Lera
Igasp as Coal thrusts into me, the great length of him filling my body as his equally great power fills my essence. Magic explodes inside me, my sex tightening around Coal. My shoulder burns where he has my arm twisted behind me, but even the pain is a rumble that wakes my senses, somehow making the roaring pleasure in my sex even more vivid.
The power of Coal’s thrusts brings me to my toes, his hot breath scorching the back of my neck. My heart pounds, the energy exploding between us ready to rip the room into shreds.
I feel... strong. Stronger than I did in the ring this morning. Stronger than I’ve ever felt in my life. As if a fog has lifted from the bridge linking Coal and me, revealing Coal’s power in all its intoxicating, undiluted glory.
Shoving away from the wall, I knock us both backward, caring nothing for what might be in the way. We crash onto the hard floor, my body screaming its fury over the sudden, unintended loss of Coal’s cock. I scramble to pull him back into me, my flailing limbs connecting with something that sends a rain of weapons and armor clattering down to the stone floor.
Coal grips my hair as he climbs to his knees. His blue eyes flash with specks of black and purple, and as our gazes meet, images of gray-skinned qoru flash in the aching depths of my mind.
Ourotherconnection surfacing to play, the fog fighting to reclaim its throne.
Panic flashes in Coal’s gaze, the images coming faster now. Shackles. Pain. The dampened sounds of those bent-the-wrong-way legs approaching in the Gloom. Fear and fight.
This close, I feel Coal’s desperate, bloodcurdling struggle to stay in the present. A fight that the black specks in his eyes say he is losing. My heart breaks.
“Leave,” Coal pants, his jaw clenched, his muscles quivering, his hair gleaming silver in the moonlight. “Break for the door and run.”
