Page 41 of A Storm in Every Heart
“Not bad?” I tease, licking her taste from my lips.
She glowers down at me, cheeks flushed, but the effect is ruined by the way her legs are still trembling. “You cocky son of a bitch.”
“That’s more like it.”
I roll her gently onto her back and settle between her legs, licking a stripe up her inner thigh, slow and languid now. She writhes, hands slipping from the headboard to frame my face, fingernails raking lightly at my jaw.
“You’re insatiable,” she moans, voice half-resentful, half-awed.
I level her with a wicked smirk, then press a kiss to her hipbone, drawing it out until she’s squirming again. “And you’re delicious.”
Her eyes flutter, pupils blown wide and dark. I can see her trying to gather herself, to summon up the energy to say something flippant or biting, but she’s still undone, still shaking a little from the force of her orgasm. Good. I want her like this: spent, delirious, and at my mercy.
I slide up her body, planting hot, open-mouthed kisses on the swells over her breasts, along her sternum, the delicate line of her throat. She tilts her head to give me better access, and for a moment, I slow, savoring the way she tastes, the way her skin is still flushed and damp beneath my tongue.
But the self-control I’ve been so smugly congratulating myself for is rapidly going up in smoke.
My cock is so hard it hurts, a throbbing pulse that refuses to be ignored. All I can think about is how perfect she’d feel around me. How good it would be to lose myself in her.
She must sense it, because her hand snakes between us and she undoes the button of my trousers with a flick of her thumb. She reaches beneath the fabric and closes her fist around me, squeezing as if she wants to remind me who’s really in control here. My hips jerk, and I rock involuntarily into her palm, biting back a groan.
Odessa shimmies higher on the bed and lets her knees fall wide. I brace my hand on the headboard above her, and lock eyes with her. There’s a split second where the world thins to a pinpoint, every single muscle in my body wound tight. Her gaze is fire and challenge, her lips parted, her breath coming in shallow, eager pants.
I grip her by the hips, hard enough that I’ll probably leave bruises for days, and line myself up against her center, fighting the primal urge to just slam into her, and instead let the moment crescendo—so that when I finally slide into her, almost painfully slow, there’s no turning back.
She’s impossibly tight and wet, the heat of her swallowing me whole. She wraps her legs tightly around my hips and reaches up to clasp her fingers around my neck. I thrust deeper, filling her again.
I hadn’t intended to take her like this—facing each other—and it feels too intimate. I’m not sure how to feel about how I can see everything playing out on her face in real time—the startled lift of her brows as I bottom out, and then a beat later the shuddering release as her whole body accepts me in, clinging and pulsing with greedy need.
Her violet eyes flash indigo, and she holds my stare as her hips grind up, pulling me deeper, as if she wants to keep me right there at the edge of madness for as long as possible. I feel her everywhere: knotted around me, trembling against my chest, fingernails digging crescents into my biceps as she yanks me closer with every thrust.
I slam into her again, and again, only semi-aware of all the noise we’re making and of the bed creaking and groaning as it slams into the wall. Buttons, torn clothing, bits of crumbled drywall litter the floor. The blankets and pillows on the bed are twisted, and feathers from the mattress float through the air.
The once clean, almost sterile, space looks like it was hit by a storm.
Hurricane Odessa.
Her mouth finds mine with a desperation so sharp it hurts; she bites my lower lip, hard enough to draw blood, and then lets it go with a gasp that’s half-laugh, half-moan.
I slam into her one final time, and feel her tremble around me as I erupt with a shout inside her. And at the same moment, the muscles on my back ripple again, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it before my wings burst from my shoulders.
KASTIAN, AGE 18
“Your home is beautiful!” Queen Regina of Vernallis gushes. “It’s so impressive how you’ve been able to do so much with so few resources.”
“Oh. Well, thank you,” my mother replies, sounding startled.
“You will have to tell your kitchen to share the recipe for this fish with our chef. I’m always saying we should serve simpler meals from time to time.”
I grind my teeth and stab my fork into my fish with unnecessary force.
The full dining room is loud and buzzing with activity, but almost none of the chatter is coming from the high table where I sit with my parents, the king and queen of Vernallis, their son Prince Thorne, and my oldest sister Serena. My other two sisters, Dellanore and Avaline, were excused from dinner, probably because my mother guessed—correctly—that they wouldn’t be able to resist taunting the Vernalli prince.
I wish I’d been excused too. Dinner has been an uncomfortable affair, and we’re barely halfway through the fish course.
Queen Regina exalts herself and seems to take her pleasure from tossing thinly veiled insults at my mother across the dining table. Mother is too polite to acknowledge it, so the Queen of Vernallis keeps blurting out more and more obvious slights in an effort to gain a reaction. On the opposite side of the table, my father is talking to King Florian. It doesn’t seem to be going any better than Mother’s attempts at diplomacy.
I glance over at where my sister is attempting to make conversation with Prince Thorne. I lean in to listen just in time to hear him make a rude comment about her appearance.
