Page 58 of Consort's Glory
“You want to test it?”
Margot stared up at him, wide-eyed and breathless. “What?”
“I bet I can prove it to you.” Theodore skimmed his nose along hers, close enough to feel him but just shy of truly touching. Heat curled in her stomach. Her skin felt hyper-sensitive, every nerve firing with more intensity than they were seconds before. His voice was a low growl that made her pulse throb when he purred, “If you’re so sure, then prove it.”
A challenge.
The beast in her snapped its jaws and paced, the hunger to provoke and claw and test was a steady drip of lava in her veins. What do I have to lose, anyway? If I’m going to die, I might as well go out in style.
Death by kissing the sovereign sounded a whole lot better than burn out, at any rate.
“Fine,” she gasped. “Prove it.”
Theodore hovered above her, frozen, for three erratic heartbeats before a rumbling purr rattled through his chest and into hers. His fingers dragged through her hair, the clawtips catching on the soft strands. Liquid heat pooled in her belly and flowed outward as her pulse pounded between her thighs. She could see the whites all around his irises when he leaned down to growl, “You are my consort, Margot Goode, and I am not letting you go.”
Theodore’s head dropped. His lips pressed against hers in a scalding kiss that was neither gentle nor coaxing. It took.
Margot gasped, a shock of sensation blazing a trail through every nerve as he took her lower lip between his fangs and nipped her hard.
Her hands clenched in his shirt involuntarily as he swept his tongue along the stinging skin and then past it, bringing with it the taste of rain and man and something too erotic to name.
Stars exploded across the backs of her eyelids. Magic fused with pleasure, bursting through parched internal pathways in a flash flood that made her whole body jerk.
Margot didn’t think about it when she lifted her head to get closer, her caution and tightly wound self-control shredded. She didn’t notice the way her temples throbbed in time with her heart. She didn’t consider the claws now collared around her throat, holding her in place as he slicked his hot tongue against hers.
The slow expansion of her mental walls didn’t even register until it was too late.
Margot released his shirt in favor of cupping his cheeks, her palms flat against his warm skin as she demanded he move closer, that he soothe the ache that was her entire body. Now that she had a taste, a touch, it was as if she couldn’t breathe without touching him, without getting more of him on her tongue and in her pores and so deep inside her that she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.
Skin, she thought, too desperate to examine anything, let alone the hot prickling in her palms. I need skin contact. I need to touch him. I need to feel his skin and taste every inch of him. Gods, I need him to touch me.
Theodore’s growl vibrated through her as he reached down to hook her leg over his hip. He pressed his thumb into the crease behind her knee and rocked against the cradle of her thighs with one hard thrust.
Margot tore her mouth away from his to gasp for air, her body burning, magic thrumming under her skin, the shock of that single burst of pleasure tearing her up inside.
The needy beast in her bowed its back, dug its claws into him, and roared, Mine!
Margot would have buckled under the force of the internal transformation if she weren’t already flat on her back, the hum of the car a subtle vibration along her sensitive spine. Her fingers dug into the skin of his jaw as Theodore trailed his mouth across her cheek to her ear.
“You’re my consort,” he snarled, “and not even Grim will take you from me.” His fangs sank into delicate skin with a sharp, possessive bite, and Margot’s magic exploded.
