Chapter Thirty-Five
Most of the world was blacked out, fading into the sidelines of her consciousness, but Nicholas was dead center, in focus, and larger than life. His transformation had been awe-inspiring, horrifying, and absolutely wondrous. She’d imagined beings like him, somewhere in some other universe, reigning from dark heaven, but even in her dreams, they’d never looked quite as magnificent, quite as forbidding, not nearly as menacing as the Nightmare King who now bent low over her and whispered words across her lips.
His skin was the color of night, his eyes glowed like a red giant sun, thick black horns spiraled up from his head, and bright white fangs pressed on his lower lip with teasing, terrible promise. He carried the scent of night with him, of the very dreams she remembered. It was an indescribable thing, like a memory, sultry and faint and tantalizing. He loomed over her with wings twice as large as the wings he’d worn before. They spread out behind him like the cover of night, shielding her from the Cosmos. With him above her, she felt enveloped and somehow both endangered and safe, despite the bindings he was meticulously wrapping around her limbs.
Hard, relentless heat spread through her, taunting, teasing. She was on fire at her core, burning with a need that she was sure would drive her mad. She tried to move, tried to assuage the driving desire, but he took her arms and legs, trapping them in bindings she could not escape, inhibiting her movement. She fought, not because she didn’t want him to do what he was doing, but because she couldn’t help it. She needed to move, she needed to touch, she needed….
Oh God! she thought hopelessly. What is this?! What is this pain?!
It hurt. He’d told her it would, and he was right. It already hurt and he hadn’t even done anything. She needed him so badly, it was too much. Do something! she pleaded with him wordlessly – wordlessly because she could not form words, she couldn’t speak. Her mind was muttering incoherently, and her mouth could do nothing but part its lips and breathe.
She fixed her gaze on his teeth; his eyes were too intense, too beautiful – they saw into her soul, and she damned well knew it. And his teeth were so sharp, and he was smiling so… promisingly.
When she was completely tied down and he’d managed to do away with her shoes as well, she pulled against her restraints, testing their strength. They held her fast, and she knew they would continue to do so no matter how hard she fought. She closed her eyes. A sensation swept over Adelaide. For once in her life, she didn’t have to be in control – because she couldn’t be in control. It was freeing, exhilarating, and wonderfully frightening.
She felt him move above her, and she opened her eyes again. Nicholas sat back and straightened, rising over her like the devil himself, and his eyes raked over her form. She was still clothed, as was he, but his muscles now strained beautifully against the fibers of his clothing as if they would break at any moment. And his gaze burned through her, searing her as though she wasn’t wearing a single thread.
Her pulse quickened impossibly when he leaned over and curled the claws of his fingers into the material of her shirt at her collar. Sharpness pricked at her skin, threatening to pierce through. She held her breath, and Nick’s fanged smile broadened wickedly. Slowly, he ran the make-shift blade down the cloth, and the shirt split in two, revealing her flesh beneath inch by teasing inch. The cool air touched her newly exposed skin, and she had an idea of the reality of the situation.
The shirt fell open, and Addie closed her eyes. The lace of her bra rubbed stiffly against her tightening, lengthening nipples. Her breasts heaved, heavy and swollen, flushed with helpless need.
He chuckled, low and cruel above her, and she gasped, arching her back when those same claws he’d used to destroy her shirt now curled over the top of her bra. They scraped along the flesh of her breasts, pricking her nipples as they curled downward, gripping the material tight. The sensation coursed through her entire body, nearly too much for her to bear.
He paused only a moment, possibly to allow her to suffer, then ripped the bra in two with one quick tearing motion. The material didn’t have a chance to cut into her before it was in tatters.
Now the air hit her and his eyes scorched her, and Adelaide pulled at her bindings, flexing everything she possibly could in an attempt to stop the pulsing pain that was her lust. His laughter followed her into that madness as he moved down her body, and his breath burned every inch of flesh his lips passed over. He slowed over her breast, and Addie bucked.
His mouth closed over her nipple, impossibly hot. He was burning her! It was delicious and sizzling, but impossible to bear. Then his teeth pricked the sensitive flesh. She cried out with the intense surprise of it, but she had almost no time to adjust to the sensation before he lifted his head and said, “I did warn you.”
His voice was a growl in the candle-lit darkness. She managed to look down the length of her body at him, barely catching his menacing form in focus – the devil in the dark – before he lowered his head again, and his lips once more closed over her nipple.
She threw back her head – and screamed into the night as his teeth pierced the tender skin of her breast, sinking deep. The pain was incomprehensible, because lacing it like ice on crackling fire, was a pleasure that shoved her toward a precipice and left her dangling helplessly over it.
Then he pulled against that fresh, deep wound, and she tumbled over the edge head over heel.
An orgasm ripped through her, stealing the breath from her lungs so her scream died into an agonized silence. Nicholas Wargrave continued his torture, finished drinking, and pulled his teeth from her wound. He laughed again, low and evil. “Gods, you taste good,” he told her as she rode out the waves of pleasure rippling through her. Sweat broke out along her body, and her legs pulled ever stronger at their bonds.
But he wasn’t finished, she knew. Not by a long shot. Which he proved when he moved over her again and his breath touched her other breast. His muscles rippled, his wings flicking like the disturbed wings of a dragon behind him, and once again, his hot mouth closed over her breast.
As she caught her breath, and more yearning followed too fast on the tail of her exquisite release, she moaned low, a helpless sound that foretold of her intimate demise. He sucked hard, and his teeth teased, nicking small pinpricks that divulged droplets of precious blood and had her yanking madly at her restraints.
The leather was beginning to dig into her wrists. She knew it would bruise, but she couldn’t have cared less. She was in agony, her core on fire.
Nick’s strong hands were suddenly on her upper arms, grasping them tight and holding them still. He lifted from her body long enough to gaze threateningly up at her. “Only I’m allowed to mark my queen,” he told her.
Then, as if to prove it, he lowered his head and in one fluid, painful movement, he sank his fangs once more into her tender waiting body. Just as he had with her first breast, he sank deep – and she screamed. He pulled hard, harder than he had before, and it hurt more. The climax that came over her a second later was all the more powerful. She arched her back and tossed her head, her voice piercing the heavens.
He sucked and he drank, and she could not fight him – and her body burned a bonfire of continuous need and release. Without releasing her from his bite, he let go of her arms to slide his hands down her sides, gripping her body tightly as he went. He marked her there too, leaving small bruises that made her mind spin. She was becoming his in every way.
He continued to drink while his claws were once more curling over an article of her clothing, digging into the waistband of her jeans and gripping tight. A blink – it was all she did – and the material was disintegrated beneath his onslaught, ripped to a hundred different pieces and left to decorate the bed with its remnants.