King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde #1)(26)

Adrian kissed up my body once more—tongue gliding, teeth scraping, and as his face leveled with mine, I reached for my blade and shoved it into his side.

He snarled. It was a sound I didn’t expect him to make. He was quick to rear back and plucked the dagger from his flesh. Blood gushed from the wound, and he looked at me, eyes full of anger and lust. He turned his attention to the blade and snarled again, tossing it across the room. It clattered as it hit the stone floor.

“Oh, my sweet, you will regret that.”

He gripped my face, leaning close. I glared, waiting for his retaliation—for the bite that would end my mortal life. My attack had done nothing. But instead of turning me, he left the bed.

“What are you doing?” I asked, sitting up.

“I find it a little hard to continue where we left off, considering you just tried to kill me,” he said. “I’ll wait until you’re ravenous once more, and if you’re lucky, I’ll fuck you then.”

I scoffed. “As if I would ask you to return to my bed.”

Adrian drew his fingers into his mouth, tasting my come as he smirked. “I think you will, Sparrow.”

The moonlight scattered across his back as he retreated, and for the first time, I saw raised welts crisscrossed over his shoulders and down his back. They were scars, long healed, at least outwardly, and I wondered what horrible thing he’d done to receive such a horrific punishment.

I woke in a cold sweat, the space between my thighs aching. I squeezed them together and then gave in with a frustrated cry, parting them and drawing my knees up. If Adrian were near, I’d stab him again for this, for this unending ache that had driven me to pleasure myself—and fail—three times in the last two days. I let myself circle my clit and parted my flesh, but the attempt to find release was in vain. Frustrated, I sat up and found Adrian watching me from across the room. He sat, reclined, eyes full of things I’d never seen. The moonlight hit him—a sliver over his face and his chest. He’d changed and was now wearing what looked like a robe. He looked predatory and sexual, and I knew I had to have him.

I stood from the bed and shed the robe. He said nothing as I approached. I expected him to let me do what I wished, with the way he was looking at me. But as I moved to straddle him, he caught me around the waist and stood.

“Oh no, my sweet,” he said and turned me so my back was flush against his chest, his arousal settled against my ass. “You will not have the control here.”

His tongue touched my jaw and then my neck, where he sucked the skin into his mouth until it stung before he pushed me toward the bed.

He kept one of my hands secured behind my back, and the other I used for purchase against the footboard where he bent me over. His knee dipped between my thighs, widening my stance, as he guided the crown of his cock against my opening. My breath escaped in a shuddering gasp.

“Can you handle this?” His words were laced with barely restrained lust, and though all his movements up to this point had been rough, his question offered a strange sort of comfort. I knew if I said no, he would release me.

And I should have said no, except that as I spoke, I knew it was the surest I’d ever been.

“Yes.”

The word turned into a guttural moan as Adrian filled me in one brutal thrust. He paused to release my arm, only to bury his fingers in my hair. With both my hands free, I gripped the footboard as his hips moved, driving into me. The bed knocked against the wall. It was a sound that worked in tandem with the ragged cries coming from my throat.

“Yes,” Adrian hissed. His hand tightened in my hair, the other moved to my neck, and he guided me so that my back was bowed, my shoulder blades meeting his chest. In this position, he could not thrust, but he ground his hips into me, eliciting a new sensation that had every nerve ending in my body on fire.

“Scream my name, Sparrow, so that your commander may hear how loud I make you come,” he said against my ear, and then his teeth scraped my skin, once again trailing a path down the column of my neck to my shoulder, where he licked and sucked until I was certain I would bruise.

This was his claim to me, and right now, I could not even hate it because this pleasure…it was exquisite.

He released me, and I just had time to reinstate my hold on the bed before he drove into me harder. My breath escaped me in a strange sound—a guttural moan that could only communicate the pressure building in my core, the tension tightening every muscle—until my body burst, leaving me weak and shaken. I did not realize what was happening until Adrian lifted me into his arms and carried me on to the bed.

Compared to the ferocity with which we’d just come together, his movements were gentle as he settled me atop the covers. My body relaxed, despite my enemy’s hold. Too exhausted to fight or to speak, I just held his gaze, still clouded with desire and a strange warmth that seemed misplaced given what it had taken to get to this point.

Adrian hovered over me, his face inches from mine.

“How are you?” he asked.

I did not know how to answer. I felt like a traitor to my people.

So I stayed quiet, and Adrian asked a different question.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head.

He stared at me a moment longer. I expected him to leave then, but instead, he brought his hand to my face, his fingers brushing lightly over my cheek before he pressed a kiss between my breasts, down my stomach, until he hovered between my thighs. From that place, he stared at my whole body, as if I were the only thing he had ever wanted—a prize he had desperately sought and finally claimed.