House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(115)

“Santo Caldrone, Lore . . .” My lashes flutter closed against my cheeks. “What are you doing to me?”

Waiting for your body to put out the fire.

“Wh-what . . .?”

He gently releases the sides of my dress and smooths the material along my hips. If he plans on hooking the straps back onto my shoulders and calling this a night . . .

Laughing softly, he plunges one hand through the part in my skirt and palms my sex. “What a good little bird. So drenched.” He caresses me over the fabric, and I mewl because I want more friction, more, more, more. “Shall we take this off?” He must’ve grown his talons because something bitingly cold and sharp shears the sopping textile.

And then Lorcan Ríhbiadh, master of the skies and rightful King of Luce, drops to his knees and takes both my hands from where they lay restlessly at my sides and carries them to his head. “Hold on to me, mo khrà.”

I fist his hair just as he seizes the sheer black material and tears the front clean off the bodysuit, leaving me standing in nothing but a stretchy black scrap of fabric that sits around my waist like a maladjusted garter belt adorned with a tail.

Talons retracting from his fingertips, he grips one of my knees and hooks it onto his broad shoulder, atop the leather cuirass he still wears while I wear close to nothing. I list, clutching his hair so tightly I worry I may rend it like he rent my gown.

Before I can even find my balance, he angles his face, parts my swollen lips, and presses his mouth to my center.

The first swipe of his tongue immobilizes me. The second pulls whimpers from my throat and vibrations from my limbs. The third . . . the third undoes me. I grip his head while he grips my thighs, and I shudder so hard that my bones liquefy and I sink onto his face like molten wax.

He suckles my throbbing clit, flicking it time and again with the tip of his tongue as I come down from whichever overworld he sent me soaring toward. So fucking sweet.

Hearing him speak steadies the chaotic beats of my heart. Here I was, worried I’d smothered him. What a shame that would’ve been, considering how gifted he is with his tongue.

His lips curve against my engorged core as he sets down the foot he hooked around his shoulder and gives that most phenomenal square centimeter on my body a final kiss.

As he leans away, he wears the laziest, smuggest, shiniest grin. “I hope I will forever be able to impress you, Behach ?an.” He tongues his lower lip that glistens with me, and makes a sound low in his throat that makes my stomach clench.

Coming on his thigh was something.

Getting lapped at by a male seemingly intent on ridding my body of moisture is something else entirely.

As he unfurls his tall, broad body as indolently as a curl of smoke, my heart pounds. I am terrified and excited—terrifyingly excited—of what is to happen next.

He snares my gaze with his as he flips a lock of hair out of his eyes. “There is no need for terror. There is no need for anything further tonight—”

I press up on my toes and squash my lips to his to shut him up, because the man has seen to my pleasure thrice, and I’ve yet to touch him. I taste myself again, this time on his mouth, but instead of wrinkling my nose, it drives me wild with want. I want to sample him. To mix our flavors and create one that will be uniquely ours.

After I’ve squirmed out of the ruins of my dress, I curl my fingers around the hem of his shirt but cannot tear it off because of the added leather breastplate. I press away to study his armor. His smile grows incandescent as I struggle and scrabble with the myriad of straps.

I shoot him a death glare that transforms his smile into that deep laugh I usually love, but I’m a woman on a mission at the moment, and that mission is to peel away all of Lorcan Ríhbiadh’s layers so that he stands bare before me.

I drop my gaze to his waistband, a devious smile tipping up my lips when I catch sight of laces. Those should be easy enough to undo.

“You deal with the top”—I drag my nails along his midriff, and his laughter sputters—“I’ll deal with the bottom.” Before rolling down his trousers, I palm the bulge straining against the leather.

Lore curses, not once, and not softly. As I knead him with one hand, I pull on the leather laces. Sadly, they don’t magically rid him of his pants. Looser now, the material fills out, his bulge swelling as though there was more cock than met the palm.

I know he’s large, for I felt him drift against my knee in the Baths, but I’m wholly unprepared for what lay in wait behind the smooth leather.





Fifty-Six





Holy Mother of Crows, what am I supposed to do with that.

I stare at the veined bobbing beast that stares right back at me, and I feel like weeping the same way it’s doing, because I want to make Lore feel good, but I will surely expire if I put that in my mouth.

“Fallon”—my name is a rough murmur on his lips—“you do not have to—”

I roll my fingers around his impossibly long, stiff length and pump, robbing him of speech. His eyes are wide and locked on where my tanned fingers connect with his pale flesh, tipped with an almost violet head that puffs out in a way Fae cocks don’t.

Phoebus, my go-to encyclopedia on all things Crow and sex, explained to me as we steeped in the warm baths, that Crows cut a thin strip of skin off their son’s appendages at birth and feed it to the Cauldron to show their allegiance to Mórrígan. Apparently, Shabbin men observe the same rites.