Page 89 of Blackwicket
“But have you ever knelt for it,” he murmured, continuing the strokes, running my hand from head to the thicket of blackcurls at the base and back. The eroticism of touching Inspector Harrow, a man who I’d believed was out for my blood, shattered me in innumerable ways.
His question was whiskey poured on an open flame. The intensity of my yearning became reckless, bewildering hunger.
With my eyes raised to his challenging, unwavering gaze, I lowered myself to my knees amidst the rootstocks and vines that had grown ever further near us in answer to the outpouring of magic, blackberry vines rustling as they reached toward us, plump fruit heavy on their stems.
The Inspector released his hold of my hand, allowing me freedom to touch him as I pleased, and though he curled my hair around his fingers, he didn’t force my movement, but held me as I drew my lips along the silky head of his shaft. His skin was hot, and I laved my tongue across the engorged tip, and his magic sank further into mine, caressing otherwise unreachable, intimate places. With no patience left for teasing, I took his cock in my mouth, sliding him as deep as I dared. I couldn’t accommodate all of him, so I kept my fingers curled around the thick plinth, glorifying in the texture of him sliding along my tongue. When I reached the end, I closed my lips.
“My fucking god, Eleanora.” The near-reverent exclamation was a reward, worship, and he divested himself of his initial gentleness, hand tightening as he drove in. Despite his intensity, he abstained from choking me, though I’d have been eager for it. There was nothing Victor could do that would temper this growing, brutal need.
As I pleasured him, his manipulation of my magic turned me liquid, and I reached under my skirt, tucking my finger into silk, stroking frantically.
Victor had positioned his other hand beneath my chin, keeping my head angled at the perfect pitch as he took my mouth in measured, controlled thrusts. I stroked myself in time,awareness of the physical world growing hazy, and released his length to grab hold of the muscular flesh of his thigh, moaning in the onslaught.
The vibration of noise ruptured something in Victor, and on his next thrust, he disposed of caution and buried himself in me to the hilt. My throat opened for him, and though for a moment I couldn’t breathe, my body didn’t reject the invasion. He didn’t remain, pulling himself free of my mouth before scooping me up, and flipping me roughly even as I protested the interruption.
“So impatient.” The depth of his voice had dipped into a thunderous reverberation of erotic appetite, and he lifted me so I was on my toes, losing balance, forced to lean forward and place my palms on the bare wall, so near the portal which hummed and convulsed with the capricious energy we were feeding it. He ground himself against my backside, my skirt still an agonizing barrier. He freed the breast still encased in the brassiere, so my chest was bare in the cool of the room, and rolled the summit between his fingers.
“This is torture,” I cried, trying to gain traction to press closer, my toes barely reaching the ground.
“Minutes ago, you were asking me to kill you,” he crooned. “What’s a bit of torture?”
But at long last he showed mercy, abandoning my breasts to lift the front of my skirt. Making no efforts to tease, he glided two fingers into my wet heat, pressing his thumb across the aching swell of my clit. His caressing of me, inside and out, remained consistent, coaxing me to the precipice. He didn’t venture to please himself further, keeping me at a well-controlled angle so I couldn’t do it for him. Panting, I raised my head, attempting to look over my shoulder at him, longing to watch his face as he claimed me with his hand.
“Eyes down,” he barked, and the timbre of his voice wasunusual, guttural. I was too lost in the building power of my oncoming climax to be disobedient. The blackberries had flourished, drawing high and close like a cage, blocking the last of the sun from the window, trembling, the curses in each of them begging to be washed in the electric power of our passion. The house was holding its breath as I did, lungs pleading for oxygen, which I denied them in favor of at last tumbling from the zenith.
“Fracture for me,” he enticed, drawing his fingers up to bear acute focus on the taut hill of my clitoris. “You beautiful, wicked creature.”
I pitched into orgasm, the cry I elicited nearly a sob. Unlike the wail of anguish, this cry was jolting in its release. The rapture unexpectedly triggered my base instincts, and I parted my lips, inhaling, calling to the curses swarming among blackberry vines. The fruits began to burst, their sullied magic sweeping into the gravitational pull of mine, made inescapable by passion. The curses dissolved, emerging as misty white scrolls.
For the second time, Victor had brought me to climax and denied himself. As I was descending from the highest point of my ecstasy, I became aware of the sordid weight of Victor’s magic, obscured by the Drudge infixed within him.
He removed his hand, touch slick with my lust falling between my still exposed breasts, rising to my throat as he gathered my body against his without lowering my feet completely to the ground, the still turgid pillar of his desire pressing into the center of my back. But it wasn’t Victor’s muscle-corded arm holding my waist, nor his steady, capable fingers at my neck, holding my head against his chest.
“That was very good,” he grated, and his voice rumbled too low, overtones of whispers lingering like wind in the trees.
The curses I’d called forth from the baneful Blackberry vines continued to rise, wringing the plant dry of life, until oneby one they collapsed in twisted, brown husks. The same force that pulled them in enticed my magic as well.
The new soughing lilt of the Inspector’s voice encouraged gooseflesh to rise across my skin.
“Now it’s my turn to give you the truth, Curse Eater,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
He loosened his grip, allowing me down, and I turned to find myself eye level with the chest of a Drudge, long-bodied and arboreal, his torso as thick as oak core, burled limbs and skin knotted by brawny muscle. Unlike Drudge I knew, this creature possessed no spectral quality, no ghostly lack of substance; only a monstrous presence, with cursed magic rising from it like spindrift. I lifted my gaze to meet a face both hardened and fiendish, marked by a brutish jaw and an enduring scar, stark against the charred tone of its skin.
I clutched my shirt closed, shielding my naked chest, as I looked up into his face, ochre eyes burning, alight with chaotic magic.
“Victor?”
The creature leaned toward me, the skeletal points of its fingers scraping the wall above my head. “Regretting your lust, Eleanora?”
“You’re a Drudge.”
“Drudge, human, a profane version of both welded together by a man’s hunger for power.” A clicking growl emanated from him as he breathed.
“Someone did this to you?” The implication was chilling. To hear of the horrors of human made monsters during the War was one thing, but seeing the result of it, curses made flesh and blood, was another.
“Grigori Nightglass,” he breathed. “When I was a boy.”
