Page 115 of Black Sea

Suddenly, I sensed his fingers arch slightly and press, like the talons of an eagle eager to tear my skin and break bones and sink into flesh to reach my heart.

“I can’t hold back anymore,” he said in a tone filled with sinister desire. “I don’t want to.”

In the next moment, he framed my face in his hands and claimed my mouth.

Our first kiss, finally. And it wasn’t at all how I had imagined it.

It wasn’t a gentle discovery of each other’s tastes, but a voracious plundering. It wasn’t a slow exploration, but a devouring of each other with a ferocity I had never experienced before.

His tongue meeting mine shocked me. His beard scraped my chin and cheeks each time he adjusted my head to deepen the kiss. Our breaths blended with each gasp, brimming with the need for more. My moans prompted him to press his lips harder against mine, bite, and suck them.

Suddenly, he shoved me against the balustrade so forcefully that when the edge dug into my lower back, I gasped in surprise. I broke the kiss, casting an alarmed look at the void beneath me.

He’d almost pushed me off the terrace.

Amlach gave me a wolfish smile, grabbed my face with one hand, and resumed kissing me fiercely. I put my trust in him once more, responding with a passion I never thought I had.

Suddenly, just as Amlach started to gather my skirt around my hips, I realized anyone looking up could see us.

“Amlach, we can’t,” I panted against his lips.

In response, he sat me down on the parapet and positioned himself between my now-exposed legs, his eyes burning with ravenous lust.

I hoped that the elves in the gardens were too absorbed in dancing and the wine’s drunkenness to notice my hair, which, swaying in the breeze, appeared to catch the moon’s rays.

“They’ll come”—I tried to protest again, but Amlach penetrated me with two fingers—“looking for us,” I finished in an ecstatic groan.

He wrapped his other hand around the back of my neck, his mouth parting over mine to swallow every sound I made as he curved his fingers inside me. “Let them come,” he declared with fury. “Let them see you are mine. And I . . .” His grip on my nape tightened so much that I briefly thought he might break my neck. “I am yours,” he concluded in a low growl, saturated with resentment.

Then he kissed me again, with such passion that I felt as if I was falling into an abyss of pleasure.

I crossed my ankles behind his back to pull him closer, and after a few seconds, Amlach picked me up and brought me inside.

He set me on the edge of the bed and, before I could react, started tearing my dress off like a bear ripping its prey. Fueled by his raw strength and the tatters of fabric flying around, I knelt on the mattress and fiddled with his tunic’s belt. Looking down at me with a smug smile, he let the robe fall off his shoulders. Meanwhile, I hurriedly unbuttoned his trousers and slid my hand inside.

The moment I touched his cock, feeling the difference between its hardness and the velvety skin with slightly bulging veins, Amlach grabbed my hair and eagerly pressed his lips to mine with a grunt of pleasure. I moved my fingers downward, brushing against soft hair, and gently squeezed his balls, causing him to pant into my mouth. I then slid my other hand under his shirt, and he quickly removed it over his head.

Seeing him like this before me, majestic as a dark divinity peering down at me with pride, his erection rising fiercely from the fly, left me in awe.

“Sit down,” he commanded.

I complied, feeling like a puppet controlled by his gaze, blazing with lechery.

“Open up,” he ordered.

I leaned back on the heels of my hands, slightly arching my back, and spread my legs without any shame as my breathing grew increasingly shallow.

His longing eyes dropped to my sex, which started to throb more intensely at the thought that he was about to kneel and lick me, just as he had done in my dream.

A small smile appeared on his lips as he first removed one of my shoes, then the other. With bated breath, I watched him take off his boots and eventually his trousers.

Several times, in Master Roxior’s house’s thermal bath, I had caught myself casting a sidelong glance at him. Nonetheless, now it felt as if I were seeing him for the first time.

And the aura of power he radiated was so intense that I felt nearly suffocated.

I felt destroyed.

As soon as he climbed onto the bed, I instinctively moved back toward the pillows at the headboard. With the lethal, elegant movements of a jaguar, Amlach crawled over me. He lowered himself until his abdomen aligned with mine, and I gasped as he slowly rubbed his erection against my vulva, already glistening with arousal fluid.