Page 67 of Consort's Glory
Her breath hitched. Theodore had to lock his spine to keep from reaching for her as the small, stuttered inhale made her breasts move against her sleep shirt. Wait, Teddy. She’ll come to you.
“You have no idea how dangerous this is for me,” she rasped, a strangely desperate edge in her voice. “Everything in me knows that I shouldn’t do this, or want to touch you so bad, but it’s like trying to fight the need to breathe.” Margot tore her eyes away from his hand at last, her expression stark, and curled her arms around her chest. “I shouldn’t. I can’t.”
Prick her, his instincts growled. Make her fight you. Subdue her. Show her you can’t be pushed away, that she can trust you to always come back to her.
It was an entirely elvish impulse. Humans didn’t have the same courtship, the same pull that elves did. That was what his research said and the reason he’d gone out of his way to so carefully craft his plan to win her. But if coaxing would only allow her time to find reasons to fight the desire he knew she felt, then he would follow his instincts instead.
Dropping his hand, Theodore prowled forward. “You will,” he growled, matching her backward steps with long strides. “Because you want to, and because my consort is no coward.”
Margot sputtered. Stopping her hasty retreat, she snapped, “It’s not cowardice to see how this only ends badly for me!”
He forced himself to shrug. “Isn’t it? If you’re too afraid to fight for what you want, to even explore it, it sounds like cowardice to me.”
They were nearly chest to chest. Margot glared up at him, her head tilted back to make up for his significant height advantage. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea what I’d be risking by entering into any sort of relationship with you! You have no idea what being bonded to you means for me! You’re the fucking sovereign and I’m just— Goddess! You have no right to make any judgments about me!”
He shrugged again, and she finally appeared to notice how close they were. Making a strangled noise, she ordered, “Get out of my personal space.”
Theodore held her gaze without blinking. “No.”
He could feel her outrage thrumming through their bond, hot and sharp as elvish claws raking through his mind.
“No?”
“No,” he calmly repeated. “If you really want me to back off, make me.”
It was a bare challenge. If she were elvish, Margot would have gone for his throat immediately, the fury in her blood too hot to fight. The pull would be eating at her will too, demanding she make him work for their union, encouraging her to sharpen her claws against his hide to test his mettle.
Of course, Margot wasn’t an elf, so he didn’t really know how she would react to the challenge, but—
A sound startlingly like a snarl tore from her delicate throat. It was his only warning before she swiped at his cheek, her blunt little nails raking across his face with a shocking amount of force.
It was a glancing blow, nothing that could truly damage him, but he was so surprised that she reacted in the elvish way that he didn’t stop to think about his response.
Theodore caught her arm on the downswing, then snagged her other as she went to claw him again with her left hand. In an instant, he had her up against the wall by the door. Pinning her hands together with one of his, he wedged his thigh between her legs and fisted his free hand in her hair, knotting the red strands around his fingers until he had a good enough grip to gently but firmly pull her head back.
The furrows in the skin of his cheek burned hot, sparking an instinct deep and dark, bred into his very DNA.
Fight. Subdue. Bind.
He closed his teeth over the soft skin of her throat. His upper and lower fangs pressed hard against the fragile barrier between their razor sharpness and her jugular. He could feel it pounding against the flat of his tongue.
Her breathing was ragged, her thighs clamped hard around the leg he pressed against her hot core, and when he dragged his fangs against her skin, Margot gasped.
Like a switch flipping, the furious tension in her vanished.
Her hands, curled into vicious little claws, unfurled. Her slight weight settled against him as she let him support her. Her head tilted back, giving him free access to the most vulnerable part of her.
Subdued.
Again, it was the right response. An elvish consort would have instinctively capitulated once their throat was bared — the main reason all elves wore high, reinforced collars. Humans, he understood, reacted negatively to this sort of handling, but Margot appeared to be different.
Theodore wondered, in some very distant part of his mind, if the bond she created was feeding some of the pull into her.
If the pull made him crave her fight, it would make an elvish consort crave his victory. It was right that she would melt into him, the scent of her desire blooming between them until it clouded every bit of good sense in his mind.
Fuck.
Theodore purred approvingly, letting her know how pleased he was with her trust, and ran his mouth up her throat to kiss her jaw, her ear, her chin, her cheek, her lashes, and her pert little nose. He covered every inch of her he could reach before he finally pressed his lips against hers.
