Page 94 of Consort's Glory
“Yes.”
“Do you want to claw me, darling?”
Margot bit her lip, her lashes fluttering. Yes, she did want to rake her nails across the tight skin of his stomach until she hit that line of crisp black hair below his navel. Then she’d be gentle. She’d handle him with care as she stroked the hot length of him currently grinding against her slick core.
But she couldn’t say that.
“Well?” When she still didn’t answer, a rumbling growl built in the darkness between them. He was too fast and the light from the street too dim to give her any warning before the hand on her waist slid back to deliver a swift, sharp swat to the back of her thigh.
The reaction of her other half was so fast, so overwhelming, that Margot didn’t have any hope in fighting it.
The thrill of a challenge, the indignation of being swatted, the boiling lust turning her veins into rivers of heat — all of it combined to crack the walls holding her elvish blood at bay. Instinct was a haze slamming down over her mind. It moved her hands, it pulled her lips back in a snarl, and it said, We have claws, too!
Her hands lashed out on their own, swiping at his chest and stomach in vicious reprisal.
Margot didn’t have time to be horrified. The instant her nails made contact with his skin, Theodore was flipping them over, his weight pinning her down as he fought to wrangle her arms over her head. Instinct compelled her to make it as difficult as possible. Her teeth snapped whenever he dared bring his throat too close, and when he couldn’t get a good grip on her, she ran her nails down his vulnerable sides and twisted her hips, trying to buck him off.
Not too much, though,her other half whispered gleefully. Just enough to make it difficult for him. What will he do if I fight? Does he know his own strength? Will he lash out? Or will he seduce, gentle, show me he’s willing to work for it? Will he play?
Oh.
Margot’s struggles paused as she processed that thought. It’s… play.
That’s what the elvish blood wanted: a partner to play with, to test, to fight and know, without any doubt, that they would never, ever hurt them. It wasn’t weird, or unnatural. It was just… courtship.
The relief of the revelation was overwhelming, but it was almost immediately washed away when Theodore successfully pinned her arms over her head with one hand, his hips wedged against the cradle of her thighs as he purred against the line of her throat. A slow, deliberate lick along the throbbing pulse of her jugular told her that she had lost this round.
“Ah, darling,” he whispered against her skin, “I love it when you use your claws on me.” His fangs left a line of fire in their wake as he dragged them down her throat, over her collarbones, to nip at the valley between her breasts. “It shows you trust me. Each little bite and scratch means you think I can take you, that you want me to prove I can subdue you without hurting you, that I’ll take care of you. It means you want me.”
Her fingers clenched uselessly in the air. “I do.” Margot tried to breathe, but the air felt thinner, less essential than everything that was Theodore “I do want you. So much it makes me feel crazy.”
“You have me. You have me, darling.” He placed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the tip of her breast, sending a streak of pleasure straight to her core. “But I’m not going to fuck you here. I’m saving that for our bed, in our home.”
It took a second for the words to penetrate. Margot lifted her head to blink owlishly at his shadowed face. “What? You’re not going to touch me?”
She could feel his smile curve against the soft skin of her breast. “Now, I never said that. I am going to touch you, darling. Don’t worry.” Theodore released her hands with a slow drag of his fingertips down her arms, her breasts, her stomach, to slide down the bed.
When he grasped her thighs and hooked them over his wide shoulders, she sucked in a sharp breath of disbelief. “Again?”
“Yes,” he purred, “again.”
* * *
Again, as it turned out, did not mean once more.
It meant several times, enough to leave her boneless and deliciously sore from the insistent stretch of his talented fingers when she woke up a handful of hours later.
Theodore’s voice was a low murmur from the next room. Margot heard him, felt his warmth in the back of her mind, before she opened her eyes. Why should she hurry waking up, anyway? She knew instinctively that she lay in his spot, her nose turned into the pillow that smelled like cedar and cinnamon and him, the sheets so silky against her skin.
Most mornings of her life were dreadfully early, rigidly regimented things.
Wake up, shower, get dressed, eat, work. All before sunrise, and before a long, exhausting day of working in Healer Mason’s Ward, or, in her childhood, before an endless day of advanced tutoring. Or, most recently, in her own Healing House.
Which is destroyed, she reminded herself with a grimace.
Was it wrong to feel so… relaxed when everything she had ever defined her life by — her secret, her work, her staunchly guarded privacy — now lay in shambles? Maybe.
But Margot couldn’t summon the will to fight the languid peace that settled over her like a blanket. For the first time in memory, she was free.
