Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,21

he deserved so little.

Before I could stop myself, I stepped back slightly, just enough to loosen Priest’s grip on my throat, and then lurched forward, clumsily launching my mouth up to his. I landed awkwardly, my mouth parted around the surprisingly plushness of his lower lip.

I was kissing him.

Kissing Priest.

Like a struck flint, my body ignited in all-consuming flames. Thoughts burned clean to ash and all that remained was heat, fixed at the point of our contact.

For one glorious moment, the span of one monumental beat of my heart, Priest let me kiss him.

The next, there was a brief flash of pain at my lip, then I was moving.

Hand to my throat still, an iron collar, he propelled me back against the wall, and with a strange mixture of gentleness and rigidity, he pulled me forward and pushed me back again, as if to underscore his point.

Then he was on the other side of the narrow hall, staring at me like a cornered animal, vicious and unsettled.

We stared at each other in the grimy pink light.

I noticed, as I licked my lips, that he’d bitten me in his haste to get away. The tang of copper exploded on my taste buds. My hand flew to my mouth, thumb to the little, broken welt in my bottom lip. The pale pad came away smeared with red.

I looked over the small evidence of his violence into Priest’s eyes.

There was a vibrating stillness to his posture, a coiling of muscles and potential energy just waiting to explode into action. He cocked his head slightly to the left, eyes narrowing as he watched me.

Slowly, deliberately, I brought my thumb back to my mouth and delicate as a kitten, licked the blood off my flesh.

He growled.

A low, barely audible purr of noise rolling through his chest.

As if a string connected us, I found myself shivering with the vibration of that sound and let out a resonant hum of pleasure.

Priest pushed off the wall slightly, then paused, as if caught between two dueling ropes.

I almost had him.

So close.

I was toying with a creature that was more monster than man, but I’d never felt more alive. More aroused. The place between my thighs I’d never been very interested in was slick with moisture, the tips of my breasts so tightly furled they throbbed.

I almost had him.

My heart thrummed like a hummingbird’s wings as I brought my saliva-slicked thumb back to my lips and purposely smudged the blood over my mouth like macabre lipstick.

His chest was discernably rising and falling now, great, calculated breaths dragged into his lungs in an effort to calm the beast that stirred there.

I wanted him to come out and play so badly, I shook with it.

Still, he didn’t move.

My tongue peeked out slowly, shyly, to prod at the wound as I assumed a more languid position against the wall, muscles lax, head tipped so slightly to the side to expose my throat.

The way a submissive wolf might do to its alpha.

The air went electric a fraction before he moved, sinuously, predatory, stalking the three paces across the hall. His hand went up to my neck at the same time his head bent to bring his mouth to mine.

He didn’t kiss me.

Instead, he carefully took my split lip between his teeth and tugged slightly. A bead of blood pooled from the wound, and Priest, sensually, almost lazily, licked it from my mouth.

I gasped, my mouth blooming open naturally, begging for more.

And for the first time in all my years of knowing him, ascetic, controlled Priest, he indulged.

My God, he ate at my mouth as if it was a lush fruit, licking up my spilled blood, diving deeper to taste the silken edge of my tongue with his, to explore the recess of my mouth. He ate at me as if I was his to devour.

I made low, whimpering, shameless noises that I couldn’t control. I was desperate to touch him, but too concerned it would shatter this perfect moment and remind him of his control. So I just hung there, pinned to the wall by the strong hand around my throat asserting just enough exquisite pressure to make my blood sing.

And I let him kiss me.

I let him ruin me so surely in that one, long, luscious kiss that I knew nothing else would ever do.

I needed this.

Priest and his dark, ferocious need. His cold, calculating mind locked like warring antlers with mine.

Lord, but I would eschew everything I knew to exist forever in