Page 93 of Consort's Glory
Margot leaned down onto her elbows to kiss his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids, his chin, his nose. She peppered him with slow, affectionate kisses, and when he turned his face up for more, she covered his mouth with hers and showed him exactly how much his tenderness unwound her.
When she felt the hard, hot bar of his erection pressing insistently between her thighs, Margot pulled her mouth away from his to breathe, “Oh, that’s—”
Theodore curled his fingers around the nape of her neck to drag her back, his tongue slicking against hers with a smooth, sensuous glide. Margot clenched her fingers in the pillowcase as he slowly lifted his hips, grinding them together in a way that shot sparks up her spine.
Her heart pounded in time with the aching pulse between her legs. The silky heat of his erection, so foreign and exciting, made her stomach flip with taut anticipation.
Margot untangled herself from his grip to sit up completely, her weight settling against him in a way that made them both gasp. She licked her lips and wondered, with a forbidden sort of thrill, Will it feel this good inside of me, too?
“Fuck, darling, you can’t just think those things at me,” he gritted out. The wonderful, talented hands she so admired closed around her thighs, his fingers digging into the soft skin as Theodore bucked his hips against her.
Margot’s breath came out as small, panting gasps as she rocked her hips in time with his, the movements becoming smoother with each pass as her core softened for him. Pleasure, wonderful but yet unfulfilling, made her clench with a needy ache.
Now that her secret was out, now that she knew she was safe with him, Margot wanted to let go. She wanted to chase all the things that were forbidden for so long. She wanted to know what it was like to have Theodore inside of her, to feed that touch hunger that dogged her for so very long.
“Theodore,” she murmured, pleading for something she had only ever dreamed of. She pressed her hands down onto the tense muscles of his stomach. A buzz took up residence under her skin: the madness of instinct she only barely understood. Margot curled her fingers into his skin to satisfy the urge to claw, to bite, to provoke him into the frenzy her other half demanded.
Her legs locked, her breathing sharpened. Yes, she thought, that’s what I want to do. But I can’t do that. That’s not normal.
No, normal witches didn’t want to close their teeth around their lover’s throat as they slammed into them, their claws digging into tender, sweat-slick skin as they struggled to define who would make the rules, who would be on top. Normal witches liked soft kisses and slow, gentle exploration. They didn’t want violence.
Margot pulled her hands away from Theodore’s stomach, horrified by the possibility that she might have left furrows in his skin. She was vividly reminded of her loss of control in the clinic, when she struck him. What had come over her? What madness would drive her to strike a man she was rapidly falling in love with?
“I’m sorry,” Margot yelped, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I—”
“Do you want to bite me, darling?” Theodore smoothed his hands up her thighs and over her hips until he could circle her waist. With a simple movement of his wrists, he pushed and pulled her against him, rocking them in time. “You want to use your claws on me? You want to test me? See if I’m worth a damn?”
She shuddered as he slid smoothly against her slick skin, her clitoris throbbing with each tantalizing pass. “I s-shouldn’t. That’s not normal. You shouldn’t want to fight the person you want to…”
“Fuck?” Theodore’s voice was a velvety purr in the darkness. “You want to fuck, darling. You want to bite me and scratch me and mark me up, make me work for it, because you’re a fierce little halfling, and that’s what we do.”
Margot’s hips jerked involuntarily. A bolt of lightning-hot lust slammed through her, making the ache almost unbearable. She shook her head, her long, half-dry hair flying over bare shoulders. “No, I’m a healer, I shouldn’t want to do that. We don’t hurt anyone. We definitely don’t hurt the people we love.”
“You’re the woman who justifiably clawed my face a few hours ago,” he reminded her, “and you’re the woman who shocked me and you’re the woman who fearlessly jumped out of a moving car. I think you’re capable of a lot more than you realize.”
All of that was true, of course, but she’d spent a lifetime suppressing the other half of herself, the one that howled, and Margot wasn’t entirely sold on letting it out. Her grandmother drilled control, the need to hide anything beyond the bounds of normal, from the moment Margot was able to comprehend speech. To suddenly defy a lifetime of that conditioning felt impossible.
And desperately, tantalizingly freeing.
“Do you want to stop?” Theodore asked, concern humming through their bond as he brought their moving hips to a slow halt. “If you’re uncomfortable, you just have to say so. I won’t ever push you into something you’re not ready for.”
Did she want to stop? No.
No, she didn’t. Margot wanted to live, and living meant facing the parts of herself she didn’t necessarily understand. It meant that maybe her grandmother was wrong. It meant that maybe, if she could trust this man who looked at her like she was Glory’s own flesh, that howling part of herself deserved to live, too.
Margot sucked in a deep breath. “You’ll tell me if I do something you don’t like, right?”
Theodore rubbed her sides with slow, tender strokes. There was a husky note of pride in his voice when he answered, “Yes, darling.”
“And if I… I get too rough, you’ll stop me?”
“Yes, darling.” He gave her waist a gentle squeeze. “You won’t get too rough with me, though. We’re consorts. Half of the pull is fighting one another.” He paused long enough to find one of her nipples. Smoothing his thumb around the tight bud, Theodore added thoughtfully, “Thinking about it now, that’s probably why my gloves turn you on so much. They seem dangerous to you, don’t they?”
A flood of warmth trickled through her veins as he conjured the image of his gloves in her mind: The black leather stretched tight over his knuckles, the dangerous shine of the claws, the smooth glide of them over her skin — and yes, the very, very dangerous appeal of knowing he could so easily harm her with those wicked silver tips.
Margot shuddered, her hips moving in slow circles over him as he plucked at her nipple. “Yes.”
“And you want to bite me. You said so yourself.”
