Page List

Font Size:

Haerune rubbed the back of his neck, looking as uncomfortable as Rentir had ever seen him. “I cannot be certain, but… if it is distance from you that is making him ill, proximity will likely cure it. The, ah, closer the better?”

“Shut up,” Rentir told him.

Cordelia didn’t shudder in disgust at the idea. Instead, she said to Haerune, “Give us a minute.”

Hope, lust, and desperation became a maelstrom inside him.

CHAPTER 40

Haerune left without a word,and Cordelia stared after him for a long moment, in disbelief at herself.

This was a horrible idea. There was so much they still needed to talk out, things she wasn’t even sure she had the guts to talk out. Seeing him like this, his lavender skin nearly as ashen as Thalen’s, his green eyes dull and sunken… it was like he was dying. Wasting away before her very eyes while she held the cure in her hands. Withholding it felt too petty to bear.

She turned back to him to find that he’d lowered himself to his knees like a supplicant. One trembling hand was gripping the exam table, clearly working to hold him back, while the other slid across the floor toward her feet. His tail writhed on the ground like a snake in its death throes. He panted softly, his mouth open to reveal the tips of his many fangs.

The look he gave her was such a strange cocktail of desperation and self-loathing.Deliver me, that gaze begged.Hate me, it advised.

“Cordelia,” he said, and his voice was a whimper.

She nodded slowly. He crawled across the floor to her, his gaze never leaving hers. His hands skimmed up her legs, and hischeeks rubbed over her thighs. The sound of relief he made was guttural and animal.

“Cordelia,” he repeated, this time in worship.

She sank her fingers into his hair as lust throbbed within her. All her anger and distrust were, however briefly, irrelevant. Her relief was so substantial that she had the terrifying thought that she’d needed this as much as he did. Maybe it was contagious, the strange bonding chemistry that plagued him.

“What do you need?” she asked. Had she ever sounded so breathy?

“You,” he groaned, hooking his fingers into her waistband. “Please,please.”

His cheek rubbed over the strip of bare skin were her shirt hem had rumpled up over her pants. When his long, black tongue slipped out to lathe at it, whatever failing resistance she had left finally crumbled.

“Take it,” she told him, leaning back against the console for balance.

He shoved her pants down around her ankles, ripping the seams in his impatience. He yanked them off one leg, his nose buried in her mons all the while. Her boot went flying, and the fabric ripped further as he wrestled them out of his way. A firm grip around her ankle forced her foot off the ground, and she slumped back against the machine that was doubtless important to Haerune’s work, scrabbling for balance. Buttons lit up and the machine beeped angrily, but Rentir ignored her when she made a sound of distress over the chaos.

He planted her foot up on the console, spreading her wide to his gaze. When it slipped off the polished metal, his tail wrapped tight around it and held it aloft instead, forcing her back onto her elbows.

There was no preamble. No soft touches or meandering kisses. His tongue dove into her as he snarled like an animalbetween her thighs, devouring whatever that flexible muscle could reach. His breaths chuffed against her, his nose buried between her folds as he delved deep. She could feel his throat working, swallowing every drop as he sucked at her.

She came with just as little buildup. It was like he had touched her with a live wire, all her muscles jumping and contracting as a warbling moan tore out of her throat. The orgasm only increased his fervor. The claws of one hand bit into her ass as the other shoved her half-clothed leg wider.

“Rentir, I’m going to?—”

She slipped before she could warn him, nearly sliding to the floor as he kept one leg dangling in the air. He caught her, releasing her ankle as he rose to his feet and swept her up in his arms in one fluid movement. He carried her over to the exam table and set her down roughly. The metal was freezing against her bare ass, but he ignored her protests. He was already back on his knees, sucking her labia into his mouth one after the other, bathing her clean of her release with his tongue.

He was in some kind of frenzy, that much was clear. She might have been frightened by it if she wasn’t enjoying it so much. He yanked her other boot and pant leg off without pausing in his ministrations. She resigned herself to it, lying back across the table and flexing her thighs open further for him. He purred in approval, and the vibration rumbled deliciously through her pelvis.

Nearly as mindless as he was from the pleasure, she rocked into his mouth, seeking more friction, more fullness.

“Rentir.” She begged, trying futilely to fuck herself with his tongue. It was too soft, too subtle.

He growled, pinning her hips to the table. Her legs trembled as he bit the middle claws off one hand—and then he was impaling her on them, three at once, the stretch so tight itpinched at her. She flinched, but he didn’t give up any ground. He kept pressing on inexorably deeper.

When she made a small sound and tried to press her knees shut against him, he pinned them open with his free hand and his shoulder.

“Take it,” he commanded, his voice an unrecognizable growl. “You can take it.”

And for some reason, despite how she’d just told him not to tell her what to do, she listened, blowing out a slow breath and forcing her inner muscles to relax for him. He didn’t fuck her right away; apparently he wasn’t totally without compassion even in this strange, sex-fueled state. He let her throb and stretch around him as his mouth returned to its obsessive work, painting long, flat strokes over her clit and her stretched, sensitive inner lips.