Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,74

didn’t want to remember, and now . . . and now—

Damien releases out a throaty groan.

A furious blush crests my cheekbones.

With a dominance that leaves me aching, he snags the waistband of my knickers and pulls the material down the length of my legs to leave in a discarded pile along with my pajamas. Then both hands claim my arse and spread my cheeks wide.

I’m completely exposed.

Devoured in a way that I thought existed only in fantasies.

He licks at me with unrepentant strokes then uses his fore and middle fingers to hold my folds open. His opposite hand snakes between my spread legs, and, in a simultaneous move that shatters me completely, he circles two fingers over my clit and plunges his tongue inside my pussy.

I die.

Right then, right there.

Limbs shaking, mouth gaping.

“Damien,” I cry, “oh, God, Damien.”

He thrusts his tongue, mimicking exactly what he plans to do with his cock, and I come. For the first time in my life, I come. It’s glorious and terrifying and beautiful. It’s everything I never knew it would be and yet everything I could have ever hoped for and more. A splintering of the soul, a loss of control. It’s trust placed in another’s hands and also the most inherently selfish feeling that I’ve ever experienced, and God, I want to be tangled in its grip again.

The hands on my arse smooth upward to grip my hips, and then I hear Damien’s knees pop as he rises from the floor. Still naked from the waist down, I push up from the altar so that I’m no longer resting on my elbows. Turn my head, lick my lips, and—

“When you ripped off that bandage, you asked me what I saw.” Damien grasps my chin, and I smell the fragrance of sex off his fingers. Spiced. Feminine. Sweet. “Do you remember?”

I remember cool stone beneath me, much like it is now. I remember a tremor in my limbs and a searing weight of despair carving out a place in my chest, where my heart ought to be. And I remember fire—the fire that ravaged my skin and the fire that ravaged my soul until I would have clawed my way out of that cell, had I only been able to rise to my feet.

“Yes.” The word is torn from my chest. “Yes.”

“Ask me now what I saw when I looked at you then.”

“Now?”

He ducks his head to hover his mouth over mine, not so much a kiss as it is consuming my very essence. “Now.”

My throat constricts.

Turning around in his embrace, with my restrained hands lowered between us, I lean my arse against the altar for balance. Pretending that the shape of him is there, just waiting for me to blink and watch him appear before me, I drop my head back. “What did you see?”

“Me,” he growls. “I looked at you and saw only me. Every blade of rage that scrapes at my being, every shard of hope that begs to be seen. I saw madness and I saw destruction, and I knew then that it’d be best for the both of us if I walked away for good.”

It’s an unexpected punch to the gut that leaves me gasping.

Raw. Vulnerable. Humbled.

Despite my silk restraints, I fumble for his hand. “Damien—”

“I’m not going to walk away, Rowena,” he says, the devil on his tongue, “and I’m not going to do what’s best for either of us. I’m going to strip you naked and fuck you so hard that you’ll be old and gray and still remember that it was me who made you feel this way. And if you have a problem with that, then you better say so right now because in five seconds, it’s going to be too bloody late.”

If he hadn’t offered a choice, I may have walked away.

But Damien Priest isn’t content with dragging me into hell, kicking and screaming, with shackles locked around my wrists. No, the blasted man wants me stumbling into the devil’s lair right alongside him. He wants my submission in the same breath that he wants my iron spine, and any chance of me telling him no died the second that he chased me down the halls of this mansion.

Earlier, even, when he put the revolver to my temple and refused to let me sink into the abyss. Own the darkness or it’ll own you, he’d said. I’m not sure that he intended sex with him to be my first foray in harnessing the restlessness