I palmed his cheek, letting my thumb run over the scrape of his stubble along his chin. “Feverish.”

“This is the most alive I can make you feel…” He set the throbbing tip of his cock at my slick entrance. “Letting your nerve-endings tingle as I push inside you…” Rhythmic pulsations let me stretch around his sizable girth, each inch of progress accompanied by a sensuous kiss to my mouth. “Sharing my heat with you, skin against skin…” He framed my head with his arms, staying closer to me than he ever had as he thrust deeper, rolled his hips up and back, then thrust again. “Making your cunt weep around my cock. And this…”

Ba-boom-boom.

Ba-boom-boom.

Ba-boom-boom.

The beat of my heart shuddered in my ears, a sound that startled me as it sent tingles through my limbs and into my core. “That feels nice.”

“It takes me a great deal of focus to sustain it.” His forehead lowered against mine as we stared at each other, letting our moans resonate the sliver of quivering air between us each time he drove into me. “Each beat of your heart is nothing but me thinking of you. Never again shall you go without it.”

Enosh rocked in and out of me at a sensual pace, heating my inner walls with measured strokes. His hands closed around my wrist, slowly bringing them upward where the white grass slung around my arms, gently restraining me.

“Do you feel me? I am a thousand caresses upon your skin.” More spread into my hair, sending one blissful shiver after another from my scalp down across my body. “Never again will I deny you my touch. I am all yours, Ada. Forever.”

He fed me his kisses, assurances of his love, and each masculine groan that tumbled from his lips.

And I feasted on it, clasping his back, sensing the familiar shift of his muscles against my palms. My legs clasped around his waist as the grass lengthened with my motion, allowing me to pull him deeper into me. Back arching, I met him beat for beat, aching for completion with unrestrained need.

“I love you.” His hand fisted in my hair, angling my head until the side of my neck lay exposed where he licked and kissed, only to growl his pleasure against my earlobe. “The ground shall tremble beneath my army of corpses, letting the depravity of mortals crumble by my queen’s feet. However many wicked lives it takes, I shall sacrifice them all to have yours restored. I shall destroy this world wrought with corruption, building a better one for you and our baby.”

Our baby.

My nails clawed at his back as my insides convulsed with an intensity that set my core aflame. The beat of my heart quickened, drumming so loudly inside my head that it overwhelmed all thoughts of caution, all lessons of morality, and even my scream as I peaked.

Enosh’s throaty groans mixed into it. He gave a final thrust, pinning me between the weight of his body and the tickle of grass along my blessedly warm skin. Shudders wracked his body, but he remained otherwise still, his cock twitching and throbbing inside me.

When our breathing calmed, he nuzzled my temple. “We shall stay like this for a few days while I tend to you. Then, we shall provoke my brother to come into his form, and demand he gives you the breath of life.”

I reached up, stroking black strands from his face. “Do you think he might agree, then?”

“If I can convince him of my determination and resolve, he might.” Whatever he saw on my face had him hushing me as he cupped my face. “Let me deal with my brother. All I need of you is to trust me and to be hopeful. Can you be hopeful for me, hmm?”

“I can be anything you need me to be.”

If only it would return my baby.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 17

OceanofPDF.com

Enosh

I was a man of my word.

A god out for revenge.

And yet, here I lay, on a bed swaying a foot above the ground from the willow in my wife’s garden, letting time pass us by.

For days, I’d put my grudge aside for the sake of enjoying my woman’s touch. How she drew letters beneath my shoulder blade. Tugged on the ends of my hair. Traced the sway of my ribs.

When her movements slowed, I let a groan muffle into the furs. “Do not stop.”

I sensed her cheeks bunch where her face rested inches from mine. “I thought you were asleep.”

“Had I been sleeping, your heart would have stopped.” Instead, I had found bliss in days of conversation and nearness, while eventually drifting into comfortable silence and quiet rest. “Your touch is… hypnotizing.”

Ada increased the pressure, letting her nails gently scratch down each side of my spine until the fine hairs on the small of my back lifted. “Not cold?”

“Cold is all I have ever known, my love.” I slowly blinked my eyes open, stretching my legs and inhaling deeply before I cupped her cheek. “You will be warm again soon. Until then, I shall be the beat of your heart, the throb of your pulse, the rush of your blood, and the salt in your tears.”

A gentle smile curved her lips, pink again from the constant supply of warmed blood borrowed from others I sent through her veins. “When will we leave?”

“As soon as we have made ourselves look presentable.” I rubbed my other hand over my cheek, smooth shaven since we’d bathed together the night before. “Black mink, white fox, or brown sable. Choose.”

“Black mink.”

“Excellent choice. But first…”

When I rolled her onto her back and climbed between her legs, she gave a pitiful shove at my shoulders. “You just had me.”

“Mmm, yes, in the most curious way.”

Oh, my brother called me a bore, but had he ever loved a woman at the bottom of a spring, encapsulated in heat while he happily drowned? How strangely wonderful it had felt, filling Ada with my seed as my lungs filled with water, unable to die but succumbing to the panic of its premise, nonetheless.

“Are you denying me?” Clasping her wrists, I brought them over her head, letting the ropes of hair that suspended our bed gently bind her. “Tell me, little one, what happens if you do not allow me to touch you, hmm?”

Ornery thing she was, she pressed her foot against my chest and wiggled her toes. “I’m sore, almost as though you refuse to ease it.”

“Because this is how I prefer you, feeling me between your legs long after we coupled.” Shoving her leg aside, I lowered my head to kiss our child, as I had promised I would. “You are counting, yes?”

My kisses over her belly ripped the most adorable little giggles from her as she writhed beneath me. “I can’t count that high.”

“I shall teach you, but for now, it serves us well since the sun has long risen beyond that gate.”

And yet I kissed her scars a dozen times more, letting my senses reach into her belly. I could not feel my child, so I touched it the only way I could. Focused on the tiny void, I caressed around it, letting it know I was there, never again to fail as its father.

Lips benumbed, I rose, then reached out and lifted Ada from the bed just as I removed the bonds and dressed my wife for the occasion. “Keeping you warm will pose a challenge, for the lands are sleeping beyond a layer of snow and the winds are biting.”

“Which explains the sheer weight of this.”

She glanced down at the dress forming around her, with long trumpet sleeves, a high collar with bone buttons in the shape of small robins, and a heavy cape that rested on her shoulders. Fur-lined gloves of black leather formed around her hands, and matching boots completed my creation.

I let a black leather outfit form around me, with inlets of the same mink, the inside lined. “Is it to your liking?”