Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,151

her throat, escaping through her tightly clenched teeth. He gently claimed her mouth with his, the kiss still deceptive, purely a cover for the torture as more wanton need blossomed like fireworks inside her and Ares swallowed her wordless cry.

She began to release the headboard, her fingers sliding over the stone with the intent to ease the massive building pressure inside her, but Ares’ words whispered through her mind. I told you not to let go, little dragon.

A sob escaped her when a prolonged wave of oblivion took hold of her and Ares slowly broke their kiss. Anna re-claimed the stone out of self-preservation, squeezing the headboard harder than ever as her lover’s lips trailed across her cheek to her ear. “Good girl.” And then to the side of her throat. One hand fisted in her hair allowed Ares to pull gently, exposing the unprotected white column of her throat.

The arm he caged her to him with slowly relented in its hold to slide down her body, his fingers carving a quivering, branded trail of blazing nerve endings behind them. At her abdomen, he paused as if to soak in the feel of her naked form beneath his grip.

Anna felt the scrape of the tips of his long, sharp teeth where they returned to the side of her neck, pricking dangerously. Her breath caught, refusing to keep up with her racing heart, because she knew what was coming. The place he threatened with those teeth was different this second time, a slight distance from where he’d made his first heart’s mark. He wouldn’t have so carefully placed them if he wasn’t going to –

“Are you ready, Annaleia?” he asked.

Does it matter? she had the fortitude to reply.

But when he asked her, he waited, his lips hesitating above her pulse point. She was trembling madly, held aloft no doubt by his strength alone. Yet he did not move those teeth again until Annaleia finally closed her eyes and drew her surrender from air-stilled lungs and pushed it from her parched and gasping throat.

“Yes.”

Ares’ grip on her tightened as he pierced the skin and sank his fangs in deep. Anna made a helpless sound, her knees giving out completely beneath her. But Ares was holding her up easily. He’d obviously known this would happen.

As he began to drink, very gently pulling her blood into his mouth in contrast to his general impatience, Annaleia realized he hadn’t pressed his teeth quite all the way in this time, and there had also been no pain. He was going easier on her, and yet his power curled around her, ebbing and receding and throbbing, mirroring what she knew was his own driving need. He drank – and drank, and she basked in the sensations. Until the sensations grew stronger, and she found she was becoming less docile. She moaned low, her back arching, the “v” of her legs searching for release of their own.

What is it you need, little one?

She growled through gritted teeth. He knew damn well what she needed.

Laughter, dark and wicked rolled through her mind.

Antares…. She needed what he’d denied her since they’d arrived at his damn den! She needed what she’d been missing for fifty years!

But again he laughed, this time aloud, and his laughter rolled across her throat from where he gripped her between his teeth, causing her to shiver.

And then she gasped and moaned loudly when he released his hold on her hair to slide his hand down her body, roving across her ribs until his calloused palm was pressing none-too-gently over the milky white rise of her breast, the roughness of him scratching her nipple with delicious pinpricks of pain.

Anna bit her lip and jerked in his grip when his fingers pinched next, rolled and squeezed the nipple. Another moan escaped her.

Fuck, little girl… you feel so good.

She was moving again. She couldn’t stay still. But then Ares trailed his hand further down her body to her waist, hip and then her leg. Anna sank away from him reflexively, knowing where he was headed and both yearning for it and fearing it at once. She was already mad with need, and she was well aware of what his fingers could do to her.

But Ares simply moved with her, until those fingers settled in on the treasure between her legs, where she was aching to the point of fever. There, there, he spoke soothingly in her mind, even while he kept his teeth firmly planted where he wanted them