Page 44 of Our Vicious Oaths
Chapter Twenty-Three
FORMERLY, MALACHI HAD THOUGHT HE LOVED WAKINGup to any beautiful female with her lush lips around his cock. But the experience of having some random female doing it versus having Kadeesha rouse him by sucking him off was incomparable. The fact that he hadn’t shot awake at the rustling of bedsheets as her body slid down his but dragged alert slowly, reveling in rapture while lingering in a sleep-fogged state, was a testament to how much he was coming to be comfortable with her in his inner sanctum, in his private spaces. Which was truly foolish given the fact that she’d made it plain she intended to try and kill him when they no longer shared a common enemy rather than bowing to him as Nimani’s sole monarch.
But, honestly, in this moment when her succulent lips had his cock in a viselike grip as she took the entire length of him in and let his head hit against the back of her throat while gagging around his cock and making a pretty mess of herself and him—he would’ve given her his damn throne if she asked for it right then and there. Alarm bells rang, because such musings weren’t him at all. Then, Kadeesha’s tongue swirled around thebase of his dick, licked the top of his balls, and her teeth lightly scraped his shaft behind it—any innate warning emptied out of his head. His hand tightened in her hair, fisting several of her long braids. Kadeesha’s eyes were on him, a swagger about her that said she was precisely seeking out this reaction and she thought she’d won some tussle that Malachi’s mind hadn’t come awake enough yet to know they were playing at. He was fully awake now. And more than game.
He tightened his hold on her hair, locked eyes with her. “If you’re going to do this shit, do it right, Princess. Don’t just gag on my dick; choke on it,” he rumbled. He pumped into her mouth. Keeping a tight grip on her hair, he flipped them so she lay on the bed beneath him and he could fuck her gorgeous mouth properly. “Open wider for me,” he demanded, and she complied. She ran her hand up his chest as he sank deeper into her mouth. He allowed himself to savor the feel of her warm touch for only a moment before snatching her hand away and pinning both of her wrists to the bed, one of his hands locking around them like manacles. “If you were trying to keep control of this, that isn’t occurring, love,” he told her with slow thrusts. Her mouth was too full to smile, but she did it anyways, taunting him with the wicked gleam in her eyes. She sucked him down in the same slow rhythm he hit the back of her throat with, making him feel it through his whole being—bodyandsoul. Watching himself disappear between her lips as he ravished her mouth and she moaned around his cock made something inside him snap. He forgot to keep her restrained, locked a hand around her throat as her nails dug into his ass, ordering him closer and deeper. He obliged the Aether princess, gave her what she wanted. Gave himself what he wanted too. He picked up speed, thrust intoher sinfully tempting mouth hard and fast as she gagged and choked and moaned around his cock. He eased the pressure on her neck when her blinks slowed, unsure if the sluggishness was from being lost to rapture or the restricted supply of oxygen. He drew gentle circles where his thumb had formerly dug into her flesh, lightly massaging the delicate skin as she tried to suck his soul from his body.
This fucking female. She isn’t merely a fae. She is a siren. An enchantress. Perhaps an entrancing Celestial.Shehadto be something more than mere fae, because he finally had to admit what he’d been denying since sinking into her heat at Oleander House—he was utterly, unquestionably, irrevocably enthralled. Someone could barge into his rooms and have a sword poised to take his head, yet he wouldn’t have the will or desire to withdraw from her mouth, to sever the way she was deep-throating him, even to save his own life. Waves of pleasure built inside him, his release coming on swiftly and furiously as he continued to relentlessly fuck her mouth. “I would ask you where you want it, but I like the idea of you not getting a choice today,” he told Kadeesha, his voice a dark, merciless promise. “I like the idea of coming wherever I want to and you greedily letting me, begging me to do so.” Lust shined clear in her eyes, telling Malachi she got off on the thought as much as he did. He roared, his balls tightening in response. He slowed his pace a bit because he wasn’t ready for this to end just yet. He stroked Kadeesha’s neck, lightly applied pressure again. “I realize your mouth is full at the moment, but you can still, obviously, produce sound, Princess. So, let me hear it.Beg.”
He reached between her legs, pinched her sensitive clit. Her hips bucked off the bed. She cried out. “Please,” she managed tosqueeze out in a lovely, garbled mess between one thrust that left Malachi shuddering when he hit the back of her throat and another. “Iwannatasteyou,” she got out between another round.
It did him in. He gave her what she wanted. What his cock throbbed to do. Her hands tightened around his base and she swallowed every last drop of him down, still sucking him off as she did. How she managed to do both at once was beyond Malachi. But he loved that skill, and needed her to repeat it. Many, many times.
The musing stayed with him as he settled his bulk between her thighs, kissed her, caught her tongue between his teeth and then sucked on it the same way he’d do to her clit, drawing a moan out of her and making her rub against him. He sank into her slowly, dragging this brand of torment out for them both, feeding her an inch at a time, gaze penetrating and locked on hers.I see you. All of you. Your wants. Your needs. Your desires. What you love. What you despise. The dark shit and your scruples, and I wantallof you.The wordless decree he knew he communicated with his eyes should’ve been like plunging his hand into fire. It should’ve had him jerking out of her, no matter how good her heat felt wrapped around him, and had him kicking her out of his rooms. It should’ve had him ending their bargain and cutting her loose to return to her own court. Instead, as he withdrew from her, grinned at her whimper, and then fed her his cock just as slowly again, thinking about her leaving made him want to chain her to his bed and never allow her to venture beyond his domain. He’d never been a territorial male before; possessiveness toward a lover wasn’t his operating mode. In fact, he and Trystin, or Jakobi, or Dedrick, sometimes shared. But the thought of anyone else touchinghermade him feral. And the princess clearly liked to be thoroughly fucked. The thoughtof her fulfilling that need with anyone else when their bargain was over drove him to a frenzy. Although, not in a manner to where he picked up the pace with which he thrust into her. It was hard and rough as she liked it, but he kept his strokes slow, making sure she felt every inch of him sliding against her walls and filling her each time, making sure he felt every moment of her squeezing him. Celestials be damned, she was a perfect fucking fit.
There were few spoken words this time, just him telling Kadeesha how things between them were about to go from this point forward with his unwavering stare and with the way he hit that spot over and over again that made her cry out his name, made her start to sputter incoherently and sob, made her know, unequivocally, that there was nobody else in existence who would make her voice hit such a pitch, or make her body tremble so violently, or make her come so hard she ascended into the fucking stars. Or come just as violently right along with her, in perfect sync with her, their guttural moans entwined together. This time he didn’t consciously let void magic engulf them. Nor did he think Kadeesha consciously did so with her aether. Yet their magic tangled in ribbons of black and purple all around their joined bodies and suffused the entire room in striations of light and dark, flames and shadows.
Another thing he didn’t think about doing, only acting on instinct, driven to frenzy by pleasure, was biting down on her neck as he emptied himself inside her while she came on his cock. It was at the juncture where the sensitive, easily shreddable flesh met her collarbone. His canines lengthened and sank into the flesh. His mouth filled with the coppery yet sweet, heady tang of her blood. While he pulled at the artery, lost to blind, all-consuming lust and a need to claim this female andpossess her inside and out, he felt a sting at the base of his own throat a second before the burn of his flesh shredding. Then, he was hit with the absolute euphoria of Kadeesha’s lengthened canines sinking into his throat while his were still lodged in hers.
Later, he’d be appropriately alarmed at how massively he’d fucked up. How he’d done the one thing he’d vowed years ago never to do, and hadn’t planned on doing even after he’d been made to take a wife and queen. But in the moment, he was lost to Kadeesha’s spell. All he did was groan, kept moving inside her, gripped the back of her head, and pressed her lips more firmly to his neck, urging her to drink him dry if she pleased.
Chapter Twenty-Four
AT FIRST, WHEN THEY’D FINISHED, ALL SHE COULDdo was lie beneath Malachi limply. She breathed raggedly, could barely catch her breath. Her head swam in a manner that left her blinking rapidly and made the room wobbly. Then, there were the disorienting circles Malachi was tracing over her neck at the spot where … Replaying the events that had just occurred was like plunging her whole body into a pool of electric eels.
She shoved at Malachi’s chest. The male was so solidly built that she might as well have been pushing against the Yunna Mountains. However, he rolled off her immediately and positioned himself on his side. He propped his upper body on his arm. She turned sideways to face him, not letting her gaze dip below his waist. She’d felt his thick erection that lingered when he’d been between her legs, and if she saw it, she’d lose this newfound clarity.
“You bit me!” she cried, slapping his chest. “You.Bit.Me!” She found herself fingering the spot on her neck. The puncture wound had already healed, but the area remained a sensitivebundle of skin that had her nipples hardening and a delirium-inducing electric current shooting straight to her core when she merely touched it. Malachi’s stare was searing. It completed a slow sweep from her neck to her breasts, and then lower before snapping back to her face. The way he looked at her had shifted, the smugness gone for now. In its place was something else, something a tad frightening—he no longer gazed at her like a male intent on bedding an object of his desire; he looked at her like a predator who’d already run down and dragged what he sought back to his den and didn’t intend on letting it escape. Ever. She snarled, feeling claustrophobic and needing to assert the fact that shewas not, in fact, Malachi’s caught prey. “I ampretendingat being your war prize. I amnotsuch a thing and never will be, regardless of how many times we might fuck,” she growled.
Malachi blinked, as if dazedly coming out of some trance. He scowled as he touched two fingers to his own neck where twin bite marks remained. He stiffened when he did, and Kadeesha surmised he felt the same sensations she had when he touched the marks. “You bit me back!” It was a clear accusation that made Kadeesha’s hackles raise.
“You initiated it,” she reminded him. “I was caught up in passion; I acted solely on natural instinctafteryou sank your teeth into me!Youhauled us there, not me.”
He reached for her and snagged her around the waist, pulling her against him. His hand covered hers, which was now clutching her neck while she delusionally pictured tearing the damnable bite marks off. He pulled her hand away from her skin and replaced it with his own. With painstaking gentleness, as if handling something extraordinarily rare, immensely fragile, and precious, Malachi touched two fingers to the marks he’dleft on her. She wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the sensation that his touch would induce. She bit her lip hard enough that she drew blood to keep from moaning. But it did nothing to curb her body going soft and pliable against his or the wetness gushing down her thighs. Malachi’s arm banded tighter around her, soldering their bodies together. “You are exquisite when you’re on the precipice of coming,” he murmured. “I want to be the only one who puts that look on your face. The only one you desire to place it there. The only male who’d dare even attempt to place it there. I’m going to ruin you, Kadeesha. If you dare think to take another lover, they won’t compare, won’t satisfy you, nor will they live very long.”
He was blowing an infinite amount of arrogant air, and she was about to tell him that. Instead, she moaned loudly when he threw her leg over his hip and pushed inside her once more, his strokes matching the energy of and then punctuating each decree he’d made. Her eyes crossed. She couldn’t think straight when they were connected like this. Every rational thought scattered, and she skimmed her nails over the bite marks she’d left in the groove of his neck, wantinghertouch to have the same mind-bending effect onhim. He shuddered. A primal sound ripped from Malachi that was a guttural version of her name. His fingers dug into her hips, and he hit spots inside her she was formerly unaware could be reached. She should shove him away, because they needed to have a very real conversation about what exchanging bites meant—but her thoughts fractured again when Malachi withdrew from her excruciatingly slowly and then plunged back inside brutally swift. Exactly like the first time this morning and the many, many times last night, Malachi fucked her furiously and relentlessly, as if chasing a release that they both painfully needed. When it hit, for themboth at the same time, it was like being launched into the stratosphere and floating amongst glittering stars whose heat licked every inch of her body. Then, she was biting him again, making a fresh puncture wound at the barely healed site, and his teeth were shredding her skin where he’d first delivered his bite mark. The act left her suspended among those stars, spinning wildly out of control with no tether back to solid ground. She remained completely out of her mind with bliss for what might’ve been an eternity for all she knew. When she finally came down from the high, Malachi’s features were contorted with a rhapsody that told Kadeesha he’d experienced the same.
After her breathing and heart rate returned to a steady enough state, she scooted out of Malachi’s arms, needing to place a fraction of distance between them so her head remained clear. Yet even then, she felt a dizzying pull to move back closer, like some invisible thread ran between her and him and it savagely tugged on her if she ventured too far away.Thatwas enough to rattle some sense into her, which stayed put. “You’ve bitten me—twice now,” she hissed.
Malachi’s jaw ticked as if the proximity she’d placed between them personally offended him. “Yes, and you’ve done the same to me,” he said nonchalantly, like it wasn’t a huge affair.A catastrophe, actually.
“There is a reason it is a long-abandoned act between lovers inanycourt!” she cried. Even among spouses who’d been wedded for centuries, mutual biting in the throes of sex did not happen. Especially among faefolk who wielded magic. Blood exchanges when passions ran high had a way of intermingling both parties’ magics on a transcendental, metaphysical level. Not only was the possibility high that the act could open a two-way channel between the participating parties’ very life forcesand their inner wellsprings of magical power, it perilously allowed each party to have uninhibited access to the other’s life force and power moving forward. And it could irreversibly bind the two together.
Ice flooded the pit of her stomach. She’d been stupid. She wasneverstupid when it came to meaningless sex. She had it a lot, and she thoroughly enjoyed each time, but she was also extremely careful about what power she relinquished—meaning she never relinquished even a fraction. Not once. However, with Malachi, she’d lost her Celestials-damned mind.This male is planning to usurp you, steal your court, kill you eventually!She reminded herself of everything she should’ve been thinking about when he took her on the dining table and then when she let her guard down in his bathing chamber and then when she didn’t immediately set him ablaze for biting her. She took a deep breath before a frenzy overtook her that revealed too much and showed Malachi,her damn enemy, that she was actually now terrified. Displaying such an emotion would only enhance her current state of vulnerability.The consequences go both ways, she also reminded herself in order to place things in better perspective.He has exposed himself to a weakness that can be exploited as much as you have.The knowledge helped her calm mostly down. The war board wasn’t imbalanced. As long as that remained so, she could still shape things to her advantage. Hopefully.
“It is not that shunned of a practice in my court.” Malachi’s revelation wrenched her from her thoughts. His admission went against southern customs so egregiously that her face went slack with shock. Then again, his court didn’t exist among the southern lands, and faefolk who lived on opposite sides of the Yunnas rarely mixed. “You all still widely engage in Markings?” she asked, incredulously. “Why in all the realms would anybodydo so?” Yes, she was aware how hypocritical it sounded given her current predicament.
Malachi chuckled at how positively flummoxed she was. “It isn’t necessarily commonplace. But it isn’t some archaic practice that is heavily ostracized like it is among you southernfolk. My parents both wore Markings and …” He paused as if judging something heavily. Something in his gaze shifted after a few spells. A resolute gleam shone in his dark eyes, as if whatever he’d been weighing, he’d come to a definitive decision. “My parents’ Markings made them both all the more stronger for it,” he said at last. “It is true that bearing Markings exposes a mutual vulnerability between two powerful fae, but it can also make both stronger if the effects of Markings are cultivated wisely.”
Kadeesha’s mind raced. She combed over everything Malachi had just said and everything he’d done. One thing it was imperative to figure out up-front: Did he bite her because he’d been as overwhelmed by desire as she was, or was it part of some larger maneuver? She internally flinched that the latter could be the case, even though she knew that was completely foolish, especially given her own agendas. She gnashed her teeth, flames burning just beneath her fingertips, at the prospect that what occurred was another plot of Malachi’s to expand his might. Had he always intended to turn her pliable enough to ensure they ended up at this precise moment? Had he intentionally manipulated her so she freely gave something vital away that might increase his power and reduce hers, rendering her even less capable of moving against him and protecting herself and her kingdom against his conquering ambitions when their bargain was done? It wasn’t a far-fetched conclusion. Malachi had, after all, proven ruthless and remorseless to a fault.
Yet for all her wariness and simmering fury—and perhapsthis proved her enemy had already won—when Malachi reached for her, she let him haul her back closer, so she was once more pressed against his chest, with the two of them wrapped in each other’s arms. He brushed a kiss to the pointed tip of her ear, then repeated the same with her earlobe and right atop her Marking. It was like being struck by a lightning bolt, but one that delivered endless waves of pleasure instead of agony, whether she wanted to feel it in the moment or not. Malachi ended what was unmistakably a campaign of seduction with a fervent kiss to her lips that made her toes involuntarily curl. “You doubt me,” he said, “and you should be leery. I am the bastard that had a hand in a portion of your court being murdered, I coerced you here, and I plan to engulf your court into mine. However—”
“If this is where you think you’ve entranced me with your cock enough to consent to allowing you access to my magic, the answer is hell no,” she seethed at Malachi, her anger finally cresting and overriding whatever binds Malachi had on her. It didn’t matter that as she raged, her body rubbed against his of its own accord.
Malachi barked in laughter. “Fuck no, Princess. It’s a two-way passage, remember? I’d be giving you just as much of a clear pathway to access my power if I coaxed you down that route, since you bit me too. That, I’d never yield to anyone. I was simply answering the question you asked about why Markings aren’t obsolete among us northernfolk.”
The statement was haughty and disgruntled and asshole-ish and quintessentially Malachi. But those were traits about him she knew well, and they made for a rational ledge atop which she could find her footing. Less panic-stricken, she said, “If that’s not what you intended to come of this, why’d you bite me?”
