Page 68 of Consort's Glory
She opened with a sigh. Her soft, slick tongue darted out to meet his. He was lost.
Certain that she was no longer planning on clawing his eyes out, he released her hands to cup her backside, encouraging her to slide more fully onto his muscled thigh. The heat radiating through his pants made his cock ache, but Theodore didn’t care. He lavished her mouth with kisses, relishing the taste of her, his instincts crowing with victory as he began the slow binding process that would satisfy the pull.
Although they bonded in the way of witches,they weren’t yet bound. Not in the elvish way.
For that to happen, and to stave off the the madness the pull inspired, they would need to keep near-constant physical contact. Sometimes it took weeks, or even months, for an elf’s unique pheromones to imprint into the skin of their consort and vice versa, completing the process the pull began. Only then would the dangerous chemical imbalance that made an elf so volatile settle.
But it will be an extremely pleasurable few months if that’s the case, he thought, daring to skim his hand up the outside of her deliciously bare thigh.
His claw-caps scraped gently against her soft skin, eliciting a sound from Margot’s throat that made his cock throb in the confines of his pants. He desperately wanted to be rid of the leather barrier of his gloves, but that sound was so erotic, so painfully raw, that it became imperative that he make her repeat it.
Ripping his lips from hers, Theodore pressed their foreheads together and rasped, “Do you like my claws, darling?”
He trailed them up the outside of her thigh again and felt her shiver. Oh, she does. Heat licked its way up his spine. “All that talk of being afraid of them near you,” he murmured, “and it turns out it’s really because they make you wet, don’t they?”
Margot jerked, her whole body tightening in a way that sent every drop of blood in his body below his waist. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but her lips were kiss-swollen and parted, her breaths ragged as they puffed between them, and he knew he was right.
Glory, give me patience.
He had always known that waiting for Margot was the right choice. It was the only choice, really, when one had a nascent psychic link to their soulmate from childhood. He couldn’t be intimate with anyone else even if he wanted to. His body just wouldn’t respond, not when his mind was so completely fixated on her.
And of course, Theodore fantasized about her, knew that they would have something extraordinary when they did finally touch. He spent many a long, lonely night wondering what her skin would feel like, how she would taste; wishing.
But in all of that, he never considered how he would fare when the time came. It seemed to him a given that he would be in control, that he would have no trouble lavishing her with pleasure again and again. He was raised by two straight-talking lesbians, after all. He was no slouch, and entirely unselfconscious about his needs and those of his partner.
The reality of actually having Margot in his arms, willing and smelling like lush desire, however, was both better than anything he could ever have imagined and much, much worse.
Calm, he mentally chanted. Be calm. Be in control. Win her. Don’t fucking blow it, Teddy.
Sweat beaded along his spine and across his chest as he tensed his abdomen, willing his control to hold.
Sucking in a deep breath, Theodore slid his hand up beneath the bunched hem of her sleep shirt to find the crease of her thigh and the side of her panties. Plucking at the fabric with just the tips of his claws, he asked, “Are you going to answer me, darling? Or am I going to have to find out for myself?”
Margot jolted. Her eyes opened to give him an adorably indignant look. “What makes you think you have the right to that information, Sovereign? Besides, for all you know, I could like any man with claws.”
She yelped when he nipped the shell of her ear, her back arching and unintentionally pressing them closer. Theodore gave her backside a hard, proprietary squeeze. “No one else is your bondmate. I am your bondmate, and I know you want me. I want to hear you say it.”
Margot glowered at him, apparently unmoved. “It doesn’t matter. I’m trying to tell you that this can’t happen, but you’re not listening! Sexual chemistry, the bond, whatever — I know what we have, but we can’t take this any further.”
Theodore pressed his lips against her temple before sliding them back down to her ear. Patience, Teddy. “Why? Explain it to me.”
There was real anger in her voice when she answered, “Because you’re the sovereign of the Elvish Protectorate, and elves don’t have relationships with other races.” A hitch, a breath that didn’t flow quite right, briefly paused the flow of her words. “Not out in the open, anyway. It’s great that I’m not dying anymore, sure, but I’m not going to be somebody’s secret. Not anymore. Not for my bondmate, no matter who he is. I’m not going to be a mistress, either. I won’t fucking do it.”
At the mention of the word mistress, Theodore felt all the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Scalding, familiar rage rushed up his throat and settled in his fangs, making them ache.
Pulling his hand out from under her sleep shirt, he cupped her jaw firmly, making sure she could not look away as he leaned in close to curtly inform her, “You are never going to be anybody’s mistress. You are my consort. You are my partner. You are everything I have ever wanted and more than I ever imagined. You are my bloody fucking heart.”
Breathing hard, he had to pause to keep himself from snarling the rest. “You’re right that we don’t allow ourselves to make unions with Others. We stopped mixing bloodlines a thousand fucking years ago because we thought our race was going to die out completely.” He shook his head. The bite of old, helpless rage never really went away, no matter how much he fought it.
Fools. Terrified, thoughtless fools just slowed our doom down.
“But we’re still dying,” he confessed, watching her stricken face as she took in the magnitude of what he was revealing. “Our rough estimate is that we’re only ten thousand strong now, and things are only getting worse. Mental degradation is up, fertility is plummeting, and we’re all too scared and proud to admit we need help.”
Theodore sucked in a deep breath. The scent of her, the feeling of her warmth pressed against him, the way she leaned into him even when she claimed she shouldn’t, helped soothe the angry boy hidden below the toughened layers of a determined man.
“You’re right that I’m the sovereign and that it’s something we shouldn’t do,” he allowed. When Margot — stubborn, beautiful Margot — flinched, he pressed another hard kiss between her brows to soothe her, to remind her that he wasn’t going anywhere. “But what you don’t understand is that it’s something we have to do. Our fertility rate is abysmal because we struggle to reproduce with people our bodies don’t recognize as our consorts. We need the specific chemical reaction the pull — the compulsion to find our mate — creates to have healthy offspring with any consistency.”
“I… what?” Margot sucked in a sharp breath, her mind working fast behind the copper of her eyes. “But that’s— Oh, goddess, it’s hormonal, isn’t it? Like orcs.”
