Rites of Blood: Cora's Choice Bunble 4-6 (22 page)

His hands were under my shirt, under my bra, moving hard across my body. I kissed him hard, wanting him, one hand fumbling at the button on my jeans as the other tangled in his hair. I got it free, unzipped my jeans, and kicked off my shoes as he pushed them over my hips, catching my panties and hauling them off, too. I grabbed the pants leg as it slid over my foot and pulled the jeans off as he loosened his belt and fly.

He leaned the seat back as he pulled me down to his mouth again. My bare legs hung over the console, my rear in his lap. I could feel his erection against my hip, separated only by the thin layer of his underwear.

He kissed me, hard, took my mouth and then bent to move to my neck. I pulled his suit jacket and waistcoat open, yanking at his shirt buttons, needing his skin against my hands. One of his palms found my breast, and I let go of his shirt and grabbed his head, pulling his mouth up to meet mine again, kissing him with an urgency that I’d never felt before. With his other hand, he pulled my knee across his lap so that I straddled him, my damp thighs opening.

His hand slid up to my entrance, teasing my clitoris with strokes of his fingers before dipping inside me to stroke the nub there while I rocked and shook against his body, my fingers digging into to his shoulders. He pushed me right up to the edge of a climax, but I felt him holding me back, and I made a sobbing noise of frustration as I reached, reached—

“Want it?” His voice was harsh in my ear.

“Now,” I demanded. “Do it now.”

He slid his fingers out of me and reached between us, freeing his erection. He grasped my hips and guided me over it, until the head pressed against me. Then he pulled me down hard, and I cried out as he hit the swollen sensitive place inside of me, pushing me right up to the edge. I tried to hold still, panting, but his hips were moving under me, his hands on my hips demanding that I rise and fall with him. I did, every thrust coming up against that spot and then the other, deeper one, sending hot pleasure around into my clitoris and deep into the center of my body.

He stole my gasps with his mouth, kissing them away. One of his hands slid from my hip, across my buttocks, to press against the space between my entrance and my anus, finishing the circle of pleasure. I teetered on the brink for a long moment, moving with him in that maddening rhythm, my skin so hot I thought I would be set on fire.

“Cora.” He ground out my name against my lips and shuddered underneath me, and I shattered.

The pleasure, as sharp as pain, flared up in my center and tore through my body, taking everything with it, sense, sight, and sanity. He was still pushing me onward, into the climax, and I plunged into it madly, embracing the immolation of self in the surging need.

Coming to myself again, I sank bonelessly against his bare chest.

“Oh wow. Just wow.” I realized that was my own voice, and I stopped.

Dorian was stroking my hair, and I turned my head to catch him looking down at me.

“That wasn’t planned,” he said.

“I should hope not,” I retorted. “Anyone could have walked by.” The aftermath of my climax still washed through me, my skin still tender and flushed. I was almost appalled at how much I had wanted that, how much I had enjoyed it. All of it, including his teeth piercing my skin, his mouth moving against it to drink my blood.

God, he really had turned my brain inside out, hadn’t he?

I pulled away, wincing as I swung my stiff leg over his thighs. There was no elegant way to slither back across the console, but I tried to retain some semblance of dignity. My bare rear hit the warm leather seat, and I reached quickly for my pants and dragged them on.

“Cora,” he said, my name something between a question and an apology.

Pausing in the fumbling with my fly, I closed my eyes for a moment. “I need to go upstairs for a minute. Then—I want you to take me to your home.”

T
here was a long silence as I finished straightening my clothes. I didn’t look at Dorian, but I could hear him doing the same.

“All right,” Dorian said finally. I heard a hint of some emotion in his voice, fiercely repressed. Was it gladness? His face was completely closed, as if he didn’t dare to show anything.

Was it me that he didn’t trust? Or was it himself?

Dorian reached into the back to hand me my jacket. He still wore his sports coat. “Shall I come up?”

“Sure,” I said. I hoped it sounded casual. In truth, I wanted him close to me so badly that it hurt.

I pulled my coat on as he stepped out of the car. He was at my door by the time I had it on, opening it and offering his hand. I took it self-consciously and stood. He shut the door behind me, and I walked silently toward my apartment block under the weight of his arm. I felt my need for him like an ache, a pain. I was far from satisfied.

I was afraid that I never would be.

“What made you change your mind?” he asked. The words were light, too light. My answer mattered too much to him.

“I don’t know,” I said. I frowned at him. “I really hope that the answer isn’t you.”

“You can’t keep second-guessing every impulse, Cora,” he said.

“How can’t I?” I asked. “How can I ever know why I want anything, ever again?”

“Human couples grow more alike over time,” Dorian said. “If your taste in music changes because your boyfriend keeps putting on a radio station different from what you normally are used to, is that a malevolent influence? If you come to enjoy a new genre of movie or a new kind of food, or if some of your preferences for clothing begin to align more with his over time, is that evidence that you’ve been corrupted?”

Reaching the door, I scanned my ID, and he opened it so I could pass through first.

“I suppose not,” I admitted. I hit the button to call the elevator. The doors opened. I stepped inside, Dorian following.

“If you want to be with someone, perhaps it is simply because you want them,” he said.

I turned to look at him, so handsome that it was almost painful.

“I do,” I heard myself say, my voice suddenly rough. “I want you.”

He closed the space between us so quickly that I didn’t even have time to take a breath. He pressed me against the wall of the elevator, his arms around me, under my clothes, his mouth over mine. I clung to him and kissed him back, hard.

The door chimed and opened far too soon. He stepped backward through it, pulling me with him, taking my keys from my unresisting grasp with his other hand. In moments, my door was unlocked and we were through. He closed the door with his foot as he pulled off my coat and dragged my shirt over my head. My hurried fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. One caught, and I yanked, and it came free with a tearing sound.

“Sorry,” I said, my hands freezing.

He just chuckled and grabbed the open edges of the shirt, and with a single motion, he tore the remaining buttons free. I heard them clatter as they bounced off the walls and floor.

“I don’t know how I’ll explain that one to Lisette,” I said breathlessly.

“Don’t, then,” he said, stripping off his shirt, waistcoat, and jacket in one go. Catching my hair, he tilted my head back so that my mouth turned up to meet his.

And he tasted so good, like everything I’d ever wanted in my life.

Dorian twisted my bra free with his other hand, tugging it down over my arms, then he took my hips in his hands and worked his mouth impatiently down across my neck and collarbone.

His kisses were rough, and I craved every one of them. The bite on my wrist had aroused me to an edge of pain that I suddenly needed again, a need that he seemed to understand without my asking. My breath turned ragged, my hands holding his shoulders so hard that I felt his flesh under my fingernails.

His breath against my nipple made it harden, sending a ripple of sensation down into my clitoris, and he enveloped it in his mouth. There was nothing tender about it. He took it sharply in his teeth, his tongue rasping across the tip, and I cried out, wanting the edge of the pain in the heat of pleasure. He pulled his head back, his teeth scraping lightly along my nipple, and I gasped, my fingernails digging into his shoulders. Then it was free, damp and tingling in the chilly air.

Never had I imagined this—never would I have thought I could have wanted it so badly.

He moved to the other breast, his deep kisses turning to nips that left me shaking, arching my hips to meet a resistance that wasn’t there. His mouth slid across my belly as he knelt at my feet, his hands working at my fly, and he shoved my jeans over my hips and down. Then his tongue was there, at the juncture of my thighs, working rhythmically against my clitoris as his hands slid back to cup my butt and pull me more firmly against his mouth.

I rocked in his grasp, panting, as his tongue pressed deeper, sliding between my folds. My hands balled into fists around his hair. His grip on me only tightened, pulling my buttocks apart. I knew he could taste me and what he’d spilled into me, and I didn’t know whether I was more aroused or mortified.

“Dorian,” I managed, not sure what I wanted to say.

He broke off, stood again, and kissed my mouth, and I could taste it, too—myself, him, mingled together in his demanding mouth.

Then he scooped me into his arms and carried me the three short strides to the sofa, where he set me down with my hips hanging over the wide arm and pulled my pants the rest of the way off, taking my shoes and socks with them. His followed. I started to wriggle up on the couch, but he grabbed my knee.

“No,” he said, pulling me back. “I want you here.”

He hooked one of my legs over his shoulder, sliding his hand down the inside of my thigh until it rested on my entrance, the outer folds pulled open by how he held me. He rolled my clitoris between his fingers, teasing it until my entire body felt suffused. And then he slid two fingers into me, side by side, stretching me as he found that place in front where he pressed, rhythmically, again and again as his thumb stroked above. A finger of his other hand dipped briefly into me, then pulled down, hard, so that he was at both ends of my entrance, relentless, overwhelming.

I came, clenching around his hand, the heat shooting through my body as I cried out. His lower hand slipped lower still, pushing hard against the space just behind my entrance, and then it was there, at my anus, pressing just inside as I shattered around him. It shook me again, in a way I had never felt, driving me deeper into the throes of my orgasm.

Then it was over, and his upper hand slid out of me, but the lower one was still there, the tip just inside me.

“What—” I started. Then I changed it to, “Why?”

“I want all of you, Cora,” his said, his eyes shadowed and his voice raspy. “I want to take you in every way. Do you trust me?”

His finger was still there, just barely inside me. I was having a hard time thinking. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“If you want me to stop, tell me now,” he ordered.

I shook my head. I couldn’t, and he knew it. Whatever it was that he wanted to do to me, I wanted it, too, at least in this moment.

He grasped my leg that was over his shoulder with his free hand, and with the other, I felt three of his fingers spreading me as he began to circle, slowly, with the one inside, pressing down, deeper. It was still wet from me, and it slid inside fractionally deeper with every loop. The sensation was intense, overwhelming. I heard my own breath, catching, whimpering, panting. My body was shaking. Too much—it was too much. And then I felt his knuckle against me, and I realized he was all the way inside. Just then, he pulled out, and I pushed against him reflexively—and he slid back in, so fast that it took my breath away, leaving me gasping.

His erection was above, at my entrance, pushing deep inside so that he filled both places. And he began to thrust, deeply with his erection, shallowly with his hand, until one sensation flowed into the other and it bunched tight in that deep place, knotting harder and harder until it exploded, tearing through me, and I cried out, too loud, desperate, ragged noises that were more animal than human, coming so hard that my head pounded with it, my hands and feet tingling like a hundred wasps had stung them.

And then he shuddered, and I heard him come, too, and it was over. I screwed my eyes shut tight as he pulled away, taking deep, ragged breaths. I kept them shut tight until I heard the sound of the kitchen faucet running, then shut off. I finally looked up to see him drying his hands, his shadowed gaze upon me.

I fled. There was no other word for it. I pushed off the couch and ran into the bathroom, where I shut the door. I turned on the water, got a washcloth, and scrubbed myself, still shuddering with reaction. I didn’t know if I was more frightened by what had happened or that I had enjoyed it so much.

N
ever,
I thought.
Never would I have...

Where was the line? With Dorian, was there even one? I thought of the woman I’d seen at my introduction, the one with the silvery marks down her back. Would I be like her, too, one day? The idea revolted and fascinated me.

I looked at myself in the mirror, naked except for the necklace at my throat. His necklace.

Even now, I shook with the aftermath of it. I grabbed for the pills on the edge of the pink, popped one out of the foil, and swallowed it, knowing it stopped nothing but needing to do something, anything. Then I closed my eyes, the water still running, and leaned forward to rest my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror.

Geoff would never do that. I was sure of it. Not in a thousand years.

Why did that make me want Dorian all the more?

Taking a steadying breath, I turned off the water. I was spending too much time hiding in bathrooms. I had to make a choice. Soon. I was afraid that it might already be too late.

I stepped out of the bathroom—and back into Dorian’s arms. He kissed me, slowly, lingeringly, thoroughly, until my head was swimming and I was ready to surrender to him all over again.