House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(116)

I find its mushroom shape oddly alluring.

How fortunate, for this will be the last cock you will ever touch or look upon until your very last breath.

I look up at him, a smile blowing away my former anguish. My first is to be my last. How thoroughly ironic.

His eyebrows pull so taut over his eyes that they dent the skin between them. “I beg your pardon. Your first?”

“Remember your first crow? The one Phoebus dislodged from the Acolti vault?”

“Yes . . .?”

“Remember when I touched you . . . there?”

It takes several seconds for a smile to crest over his frown, but the moment it happens, I know he remembers me fumbling with his iron crow and pressing on the faint depression between his legs. Yes, in bird form, nothing dangles, but Gods, how foolish I’d felt believing it to be a switch to a mechanical clock.

To this day, I’m still torn between utter mortification and silly amusement, but tonight, as I kneel before Lore, I choose to view this strange event as comical. “That was the first time I fondled a man.”

Although Lore’s eyes glimmer with mirth, it’s the fondness with which he gazes at me that makes me dart out my tongue and lick the dewy bead before it can trip off his swollen head.

My lashes flutter because he tastes like salt and storms, like the ocean and like the sky—my two favorite places on our beautiful Earth. Where my flavor didn’t light up my palate, his makes me sigh and tongue him for another hit.

Give me your eyes, Little Bird, he rasps as he loosens his breastplate with white-knuckled fingers.

I look up at him, gently pumping his cock while sweeping the new dampness that forms at the tip. He curses, his fingers slipping off his armor’s straps, before grasping them with such force that I fear they will not survive.

Angling him up so I can reach the root, I flatten my tongue on his silken flesh and drag it from one end of him to the other.

Lore goes preternaturally still. He doesn’t even attempt to remove his armor. He simply stares and stares, and instead of degrading like my first time, it feels empowering. I may be on my knees, but I have all the power.

I tighten my fingers around him, and that precious part of Lore that I hold in my palm seems to grow thicker still. Instead of my tongue, I give him my mouth, and I take him as deep as my throat will allow. When I begin to gag, he drops his hand from his armor to knuckle my taut jaw. The caress is so sweet that it floods my heart, making it feel too large to be contained by my chest.

I’m about to suck him deeper when he dissolves into smoke, only to reappear crouched before me.

“I don’t want to spill myself into your mouth, Little Bird. Not tonight.” He cups my chin, his thumb tracing the shape of my lips.

I swallow because I know what he wants, and my stomach writhes as though filled with a thousand serpents. Before the fear can settle, he scoops me up into his arms and carries me to the bed, sweeping the lone book Phoebus left behind onto the floor.

“There will be no pain. This I swear.”

Considering he’s never penetrated himself, he cannot possibly be certain of this. I attempt to calm my nerves as he pitches aside his armor and the shirt he wears beneath. His boots come off next and then his pants, until he stands gloriously naked before me, a work of art shaded in gray and gold.

The moon gloves his torso, catching on every brick of muscle and highlighting the trail of black hairs that thicken beneath his belly button. I track their spill to that daunting cock of his that is still erect, pointed straight at me, a weapon made of veined skin.

As he climbs onto the bed, I hold my breath, gasping it out when he stops midway up my body to spread my knees and lean down. At the press of his mouth against my curls, at the stroke of his tongue between my folds, I choke out his name.

Just ascertaining that you’re still wet, mo khrà.

I’d assure him that I was if I could get my mind to focus on crafting words, but the only thing it manages to craft are moans of devotion to the male carrying me back into the starlit sky with only his tongue.

My spine arches as my blood thickens and converges in that swollen nub he is striking. When he whispers into my mind how exquisite I taste and how his tongue is so coated with me that he will be savoring me for days, I fracture into a million floating cells no more substantial than those clouds he calls over Luce whenever his temper gets the better of him.

He finally scales the rest of my body, dragging his weeping tip along the inside of my leg, painting my skin with his desire. When he stops moving, his cock flopping heavily between my thighs, he nudges my nose with his, then presses a featherlight kiss to my parted mouth before evaporating into his vaporous self. Wisps of his cool smoke glide between my breasts and around my neck, and then . . .

And then his icy shadows glide between my hot folds, and although they don’t firm, they expand and thicken, stretching me ever so slowly.

“Skin, Lore,” I moan. “Shift back so I can touch you.”

Not until I’m certain your body will tolerate mine.

I hold my breath as the frosted breadth of him burgeons.

Can you endure more?

“Yes,” I breathe out, and his shadows unspool, shouldering into my walls. My hands rise only to fall through the cool mist spread thinly over my body. “Skin . . . please.”

He finally indulges me, his shadows brightening into firm knolls and jagged trenches. My teeth sink into my lower lip as he fills in and out everywhere.