King of Battle and Blood (Adrian X Isolde #1)(95)

Twenty


I woke up with a start to find that I was in Adrian’s room. I was dressed only in my shift, the smell of smoke clung to my hair, and my throat was sore. I touched my neck, wincing as I swallowed. As I rose into a sitting position, I found Adrian standing a few feet away, staring out his dark windows.

He did not seem to know that I had awakened, and I was too caught up in my emotions to attempt to bury them now. I’d been inside Yesenia’s head. I’d watched the people she loved die. I’d watched Adrian beg for her life at my feet. I’d heard him scream for her. I’d seen his horror and his pain.

“I know about Yesenia,” I said.

Adrian turned toward me. He was still dressed as if he had come from the celebration in the great hall, but he had discarded his overcoat.

“Everything you do, you do for her.”

He said nothing.

“What I don’t understand is, why me? Why make me your queen?”

“Isolde—” Adrian said my name like he was desperate for me to understand, but there was no explaining this.

I pushed the blankets off and stood from his bed. “You took me from my home to fill a place beside you that I could never fill in your heart.”

“Isolde—”

Again he said my name but firmer.

I pushed on. “I did not want to love, because it has only ever meant loss, but I let myself do it anyway!” I screamed, and it hurt so bad, I flinched. Everything hurt.

“Are you finished?” Adrian asked, a tinge of annoyance in his tone.

“I hate you,” I said through my teeth. It didn’t matter that I had just admitted to loving him.

He took a step toward me and then another. “You hate me because you love me,” he said, and it felt like a taunt as the corners of his lips lifted.

The only thing I knew to do was fight. So I launched myself at him, but his legs tangled with mine, and I ended up on the floor with Adrian on top of me.

“Don’t you dare laugh!” I struggled against him.

“I would never laugh at you,” he said.

“You are! You did!” This time, I could not keep the hurt from my voice. Everything just kept getting worse. “I wish I had never met you.”

“Isolde,” Adrian said, and there was something in his voice that made me go completely still. He called my name, and it called to my soul. His eyes held mine as he brushed stray pieces of my hair from my face. “You have a place beside me because you fill my heart. I love you. I have loved you since the beginning,” he said, and his voice almost broke. “I have loved you forever.”

His words hurt in a way I’d never imagined. This was a good kind of pain, an agony I’d die for. “If you have loved me for so long, why didn’t you to tell me?”

“You would have laughed at me,” he said. “But it is also the nature of my curse.”

“I thought you weren’t cursed.”

“I am not cursed to be a vampire,” Adrian said. “But I am cursed in other ways, and you are one.”

I shook my head. “And Yesenia?”

“Isolde, it isn’t what you think. I don’t know how to tell you—”

I pressed my fingers to his lips and stared at him. I wanted to know, but not right now. Not after what he’d said, what I’d said. I needed more than words.

“Make love to me first.”

Adrian captured my face between his hands, eyes searching mine before our mouths sealed together. As he did, his fingers threaded into my hair. His body moved against mine. Our hands searched for ties and clasps, eager to feel skin against skin, and when we were bare, Adrian knelt between my thighs. One hand dipped behind my knee, guiding it over his shoulder, and he parted my flesh with his fingers while his mouth closed over my clit. I let out a breath that sounded more like a sigh and twisted my fingers into his long, silken hair.

As he thrust and teased, a harder sound escaped my mouth, my fingers digging into his scalp. He looked up at me from his place between my legs, his eyes glinting, full of a furious desire to pleasure and please. And he did, sending coils of electricity throughout my body until my stomach was wound so tight, I began chanting his name and moving with him.

“Please,” I breathed. “Adrian.”

He rose up my body and kissed me, slow and languid.

“Hold on,” he said, and I wrapped my arms and legs tight around his body as he carried me to the bed. The blankets cradled me, and Adrian covered me. His body felt so warm and solid and right. His lips left mine to trail along my jaw and collarbone before he lifted himself to meet my gaze.

“I do not pray,” he said. “But I begged for you.”

Then he bent and kissed the place between my breasts before rising fully and pressing inside until he had filled me, whole and deep, and paused. We took a breath and stared at each other, and after a moment, Adrian began to move—slow, lush thrusts that ensured I felt every part of him.

Perspiration built on our skin, and I held his forearms, nails digging into his hard muscle as sounds and words escaped my mouth—an erotic song he encouraged me to sing. It was in this moment that I understood I truly loved him. He had made me come alive in a way no one else had from the moment I laid eyes on him in Lara, and I’d spent every day since fighting it—but no more. Suddenly, I wondered what it would be like to surrender to him, to offer my whole being.