Page 65 of Black Sea

I glowered at him and arched my fingers on his taut abs, as if I had claws instead of nails and could sink them into his skin to make him flinch away from me.

To pull him closer.

To mark him.

He grinned cruelly against my lips. “You want me to say all those words that make your lovely, pointy ears turn red.”

He stopped touching my butt cheek and moved to my thigh to look for the split in the drapes of my skirt. When he found it, I grabbed a fistful of his tunic—perhaps to prepare to shove him.

Perhaps to order him to take me away. To our room.

Amlach’s hand slid between my thighs, prompting me to instinctively part them a little. He ran his fingers over my throbbing sex, spreading my arousal fluid over the hot and hairless skin, widening its lips, increasing the pressure until I gasped.

“And you want me to do it,” Amlach continued in a voice so persuasive and erotic that I trembled, “while I’m here.”

He penetrated me with two fingers, without any delicacy, sucking my moan in his mouth as if it were his only source of nourishment. I clenched his wrist, digging my fingernails into his skin until he hissed through his teeth, which scraped lightly against mine. I attempted to wriggle away, but he yanked my hair, leaving me unable to move.

“Here,” he said. “With my hand. With my mouth. With my cock.”

He pulled his fingers out and pushed them inside me again with such force that the base of his palm slammed against my pubis, causing me to let out a guttural groan that was lost on his lips.

“So deep that I’ll take your breath away. So slowly that I’ll make you feel like you’re going crazy. So hard that I’ll make you scream as you’ve never screamed before.”

He flexed his fingers until he touched a point that made me moan loudly. My vagina tightened so intensely that I eagerly inhaled Amlach’s grunt of pleasure.

“Tell me you’ll be mine, Nauriel,” he said in a tone as persuasive as commanding, moving his hand at such a fast rhythm that I felt my fluids cover his palm and begin to drip down the inside of my thighs, our bodies swinging against each other as if he were actually possessing me. “ All mine.”

Those words snapped me back to reality. A reality where, after three thousand years of solitude, I had accepted that no mate was destined for me. A reality where I would never belong to another; where I would never be truly loved.

A reality where there was no future for us together.

Sadness spread within me like a frozen stream, extinguishing the flames of desire that had enveloped me. Amlach instantly realized that my body no longer responded to his skilled touch and stopped, his eyes drowning in mine with such intensity that it pained my heart.

Broken, I said, “I’m an elf, Amlach.”

And I could never be his.

He understood it. Slowly, he released my hair, pulling his fingers out of my sex with a final caress that made me sigh with melancholy.

“And I’m just a human,” he replied softly, his voice soaked with anger and disappointment.

I leaned my head against the column and shut my eyes, attempting to hold back a painful grimace. To fight the impulse to rail against the Spirits for making me meet Amlach.

The impulse to scream because he was not like me.

He was not meant for me.

I breathed deeply to regain control of myself and opened my eyes once more, instantly frowning. Amlach exuded a dark, predatory aura and was gazing at me with the ferocious intensity of a ravenous wolf, as if he wished to rip me apart.

He kept his eyes locked on mine as he lifted the two fingers, covered with my arousal, to his lips.

Stunned yet incredibly thrilled by that shameless gesture, I watched him suck and lick them until I had the impression that his tongue was on my sensitive, still wet sex.

Until I was about to order him to kneel and lift my skirt.

Just as I envisioned running my fingers through his hair while he ate me with his mouth, Amlach smiled with satisfaction and abruptly turned away, pulling me along against my will.

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