Grayling: Nocturnal Creatures Book 3 Read online

  “Do I appear to flee, Your Majesty?” she asked, letting her fingers drift until they reached his cock. “What exactly do you believe I have been doing in your absence to crave as I do, besides maiming your kingdom subjects?”

  “You mentioned something of climbing down the side of my castle.” The king’s arched brow was weakened by the twitch of his erection enwrapped by both of her hands at once.

  “Ah, yes. It is better that I tell you of it now before the captain can give you a more thorough accounting of my misdeeds. His telling would no doubt paint me a much more reckless color—although I would not risk my neck again, knowing its pricelessness to you now.”

  Asha kept her grip loose, but she twisted her hands over his sensitive flesh, in different directions with each. She licked her lips when he made fists in the silken blankets, shadowing her with his body and gazing down in half darkness, half fire.

  It reminded her of the night he had taken her in all his darkness in her bed, possessed her when she had not yet known whether she wanted to be possessed by him. Her resistance had emerged as a last expiation of her kingdom’s sins, he the one on whom she wreaked the final blame. She still held him accountable for what he had made his kingdom, but she blamed the elders more. She was their victim, the king a distant cause to her life’s suffering. And a salve to it now, with sweeter suffering at his hands and at the hands of his wolves. She could stand to forgive one. Just one.

  Forgiveness did not mean she had finished torturing him. She opened her hands to spit upon his cock and used her saliva to slicken her palms as she tightened her twisting grip. “On the night of the full moon, I followed the pack’s howls down the side of the castle to the den.”

  “The Gray is riddled with justifiable madness, and I much prefer such a mind to those of the rest of my kingdom, but when I left you, I thought you had discarded such suicidal impulses.”

  “It was the fever—a fever that the captain refused to let any wolf quench, my lord.” Asha squeezed as she twisted until he bucked, attempting to rub his erection against her abdomen once more. “He told me to avail myself of mere men, but I could not. Callina did what she could to assuage the growing heat, but she was bound by the same admonition as the other wolves. He kept such a watch upon me, as you wished, my lord. So close that he watched as Callina and the men of your bed entertained and seduced me, watched every single solitary second to make sure I was not satisfied so that the wolves could also remain unsatisfied.”

  “Did he, now?” He bared his teeth as she shifted one hand down to cradle his scrotum, not quite squeezing, but threatening.

  She rolled him in her palm, teased the folded flesh behind until he brought his fingers to her throat in warning. Amusement rippled through her chest and vibrated against his hold, and she raked her useless nails down his inner thighs before bringing her hands back up to follow the path of his spine.

  “He did not understand the fever, what it had made of my dreams and the perverse desires that simmered above its fire when again and again he denied me, out of nothing but his own damned stubbornness. You were always more dangerous than he, and with other wolves in my company, he must have known how frail his excuses had become.”

  When the king did not move down to take her, she shoved his chest to force him to his knees, then clambered to hers and shoved him again onto his back. His black eyes magnified surprise, but pleasure brought his cock up tight near his navel.

  Caring not that the sudden movements made her head throb, she threw her leg over his thighs to straddle him, but before she could bring her cunt up against his erection, he brought a hand between her thighs.

  In the past, he had avoided such sensitive places when he did not wear his leather gloves. With his claws shortened, he could tantalize flesh previously left untouched. The cool brushes of his claw tips coupled with the places on his long fingers with which he had not yet caressed her. She rocked in his palm, mouth dropping open when he ground the heel against the front of her folds where she pulsed for his touch.

  “Did you resent my captain for adhering to his pack’s abstinence, to the point of lodging a formal protest by risking your life on my castle’s walls? Such a convoluted rebellion.” Glee wrinkled the corners of his eyes—after all, he knew she had survived.

  “I confronted him first.” She slowed the movements of her hips when his fingers drew wetness over her folds from where he had dipped into her entrance.

  He trailed the sign of her pleasure in a gleaming smear up the center of her body, mound to breastbone to lips. She did not risk her throat by taking him deep, but he ran his tongue over the sharp points of his fangs as she sucked her arousal from his fingers, as he had sucked hers of blood.

  After pulling off of his fingers, she let her lips linger near his claws. “Do you know the real reason why he does not avail himself of your wives, my lord?”

  “I have suspicions, nothing more. It is certainly not a requirement that my queens ride the captain of my army. Nor is it a requirement that he keep himself apart from them. With most of my wives, he takes no interest at all. In the midst of all his duties, it does not surprise me that he does not always have the attention for a woman who is mine to attend to.”

  He brought his hands to her breasts, which hung with pendulous weight over him from her position. He caught the nipples between his more manageable claws and tortured them until they hardened and flushed.

  She imagined him suckling blood from her breast and struggled to keep upright at the unexpectedly strong wave of arousal that lightened her head.

  “But he attends to you, does he not?” the king mused as he pinched her breathless. “He has not attended any other of my queens since the first few after he became alpha. Even then, Rafe seemed fonder of watching than taking.”

  Her cunt clenched with each stab of pain and discomfort. She did not know when her body had become so confused, but she struggled not to let her confusion detract from the pleasure.

  “That sounds like the captain,” Asha managed between gasps. She held onto the king’s wrists but could not budge him. She collapsed against him, catching his cock between her folds and his abdomen, but he did not keep her from him this time.

  “Oh, he takes his share, but only of what is his. He is loyal to a fault, with great respect for what is mine, even when I offer. Even when my queens might.” He finally gentled his claws over her nipples before taking them between fingertips instead in a massage no less terrible and wonderful, awakening the same curling, tightening tendrils of desire that had her panting.

  “Such loyalties are his new excuse,” she said. “As an alpha, he claims he cannot be gentle or obedient, as his loyalty demands that he must with his queen, though I ask for neither gentleness nor obedience. I have seen him take a mate. I climbed all the way down to the den to see it, and I have thought of him taking me the way he does other wolves. As I have said, I would rather have the monster than any gentleman.”

  “Excuses, claims… You believe he dissembles?” the king asked thoughtfully.

  “I believe he resists.”

  The king raised himself up on an elbow. His own patience seemed at an end, his needless breath as quickened as hers. “Then he desires you. To resist, there must be temptation. Do you think he takes himself in hand and spills himself in strings over his rough palm at the thought and memory of you?”

  “Does my king speak from personal experience?”

  He barely let her finish the question before he had encircled her once more in his arms and teased her mouth open with a bite to her lips.

  The bed adjusted underneath them as he covered her, taking her mouth with silence that did nothing to minimize the intensity. After a moment to position himself, her body accepted him without resistance, arousal keener with him inside where his fingers still could not take her as Callina’s had.

  He broke away from her mouth and nibbled on her flesh down to the stinging bloodletting wound, where he worried the preliminary healing un
til it seeped new red over his lips. He pulled back so she could view him lick it all away like a demon. “You know I can desire without release, endurance that could last three nights without strain if I chose to test the full breadth of your pleasure. Yet nights and days had me spending seed in the dark to the thought of strapping you to the cross and flogging you, taking you from one side of the banquet table to the other, convincing my bed to delight every part of you all at once while I fuck you. I spent because I would rather have the release than claim unadmired endurance—and I would imagine my seed inside you or across your beautiful skin. It has no potency, yet the knowledge, the image…those are too potent to attempt to control. Close your hands around the rose vines, Ashling, and do not move them. You are mine tonight. Mine. Not hers. Not his. Mine.”

  He jerked her wrists back to the black copper and covered her hands with his to keep her there. The bed moved beneath her like a river, and her head filled with the groans of the men beneath the blankets and cushions. It had been many months since a king and queen had taken each other above them, shared lust with the lowly bed beneath them, and they made their pleasure known, which told her that the king preferred it when they did.

  Their sounds spurred him forward. He exhaled sharply with each strong thrust, but he did not rush her—he showed his strength rather than his speed. He had raced fast enough just to get to her, but now that he had her, he seemed in no particular hurry. Only his gritted teeth and the insistent way he ground into her when he slid all the way in belied impatience. He drew out every stroke, as though to insist that she dwell upon every inch.

  Her nipples ached, the flesh of her scalp crawled, and she tightened her grip on the metal almost to the point of bruising her palms.

  Asha first braced her feet on the cushions and the bed’s bodies beneath them, but the deeper and more insistently he penetrated her, her hips could not rise far enough to meet and welcome him. She yielded her control to him, wrapping her legs around his waist and giving herself over to his rhythm, his depth, his manipulation of her body.

  He kept up his pace, the darkness in his eyes drawing her gaze so she could see nothing but shadow. It was as though he entered her there as well as where he fucked her. She felt his gentle strokes through her mind, and from her mind, it spread out through her body like sheet lightning. Everything she thought dead came alive, and everywhere the lightning touched, fevered lust followed, quivering through veins that wanted him within them once more, until she could not hold back her own cries.

  They quickly drowned out those of the men beneath her. Her throat hurt from whatever sounds she had made when he had bitten her—the whole experience had become a blur—but she could not hold it in anymore. It was just the king and her. Not even the bed mattered; it was just a bed. What cause had she to restrain herself with her husband when she had let go with the wolves?

  The king bit at her lip where he had already bruised the tender flesh, and his tongue did nothing to soothe it. Then he dipped down to catch her nipple between his teeth, tugging it up until it could not stretch out anymore. Asha shook her head, screams grating through her throat and gritted teeth. The flesh quivered when he released it. He gave her no moment for the nipple to stop hurting. The king took almost her whole breast in his eager mouth, licking until he reached the peak and sucking upon it, which prolonged the pain until salt pricked the corners of her eyes.

  “That was what I waited for, Ashling,” the king murmured against her skin. “When I married you, I thought that you could go either way, a quiet lover or finding your voice through pleasure rather than through punishment. I love your cries, my dear, as much as your considered silence.”

  He clasped one hand over hers to keep them on the metal vines, but with the other, he ran his claws down her arm. They tickled when they reached under her arm. After a brief detour to her other nipple, making her jump with the harsh pinch and twist, he brought his thumb against the front of her folds. He still had to be careful, but he could use the pads of his fingers instead of his fingertips; before, he could not risk even that without his gloves. Where he stroked and where he pressed, she could not determine whether to bring her hips closer or shy away. With his cock and his power pinning her to the bed, however, there was nowhere to shy.

  “Less of a monster I might be, but this is what I wanted to be able to give you.” He quickened his thrusts, played her as though he were a musician and she a minstrel’s instrument. She could not cling to him with her hands around the metal. She could not beg him to stop through her cries. She could not shift away from him when he took her so deeply. He had complete control over her thoughts, over her pleasure, sublimating her soul through her body beneath his, and he did not even need a full thrall or his teeth inside her to do so.

  “Scream for me, Asha. I want to come with your pleasure all around and inside me. God, I need to come inside you, my queen.”

  He relinquished her hands to wrap his arm under her back as she arched. He plunged into her through the clenching of her cunt around him, holding her to keep her at the same angle, the same intensity, and to clutch her close against him. He buried himself within her, baring his teeth and taking in air with a swift, hissing inhalation.

  “Please, my lord, please, please…” She begged until she lost words, and only when her spine became loose in his hand did he sheathe his cock completely inside her. His hips jerked slightly as he spent his fruitless seed. Despite its impotence, Asha felt as marked by it as she had when he had left his bite upon her neck.

  After she released the copper, her fingers protested as she tried to flex them. But he took them and rubbed feeling into them again while he and Asha settled back against the bed, shifting to their sides. He remained within her, rigid and possessive. Every last aftershock flutter of her cunt seemed a beginning rather than an end.

  The king brought her hands to his mouth and saluted each finger, each palm, each wrist, both his kisses and his teeth sending tingling bursts of pleasure across her skin.

  “Now I feel it, the thrall,” she said. “I feel you, more than your body or your touch. It moves inside of me like pleasure, but it is bound with it rather than a part of it. I feel you where I once felt nothing, where I did not know I could feel.”

  She drew him to her by her finger in his mouth, held between his teeth. He grinned toothily, then caught her tongue when she offered it before sinking into her mouth.

  The act of sex demanded her presence, drawing from all over her body. But when he kissed her like this, she could close her eyes and untether within its sweet sharpness. The only deeper surrender was under his bite.

  The king combed his claws through her knotted hair, smoothing it away from her temples. “After attics, caves, and holes dug into the dirt, I could stay here for seven nights, entangled with you.”

  “Could you keep me as satisfied for all those nights? Or would such satisfaction eventually diminish?”

  “Once a man is dead, he has none of the limitations demanded of him in life. I could stay hard and desiring, each touch as fresh as the first. You might tire, but I now have ways to bind you—as you said—to my tirelessness. You underestimate me, little Ashling, and I cannot have that.”

  He rolled onto his back and brought her over him. The new position ground her against the base of his cock, even more so when he arranged her upright, her hair brushing her abused breasts. Even just the hint of touch from the ends of her hair was enough to make her wince.

  He rested his hands on her waist to position her, then slid them up to cup her breasts again. He did not pinch or twist, but the suggestion that he could made her twitch as though he did. His laugh vibrated through her from within and without.

  “I would believe you twitched with fear, but another part of you twitches to tell me something different.” He played with her nipples with his palms alone, rolling the hard nubs over the grooves. “Brace yourself, my queen. I shall give you your seven nights.”

  “What do you intend—?”


  He cut her off by plunging his thrall into her, closing its tentacles and fingers and other gripping things inexorably around and into her as though he intended to swallow her whole from the inside out.

  Digging her nails into the implacable skin of his chest, Asha threw her head back with an unrestrained cry to the arches and windows and the tops of the velvet drapes. She experienced the entire span of pleasure—the deliciousness of foreplay, the climbing, tightening desire, and the burst of orgasm—at all once. She rode him hard without thought, without control. Her juices and his seed from his last spending squeezed out of her and smeared over her thighs as she took him in again and again.

  He gave her a few moments to breathe. Only a few. Then he sent the orgasm and everything else through her once more. The arousal’s peak lasted longer this time. Sweat beaded on her temples, the small of her back, mingled with the liquid pleasure he squeezed from her with his thrall. Her toes curled; every place on her body experienced the most intense deliciousness threefold under his magical influence.

  “What do you think the elders would pay to see you now? Their houses? Their wives? Their souls? If I needed breath, you would steal it, Asha. If I could, I would give you this pleasure for the rest of your life and the undeath that will follow it. For every moment of misery that arose from your birth, I would give you this.”

  He sent it through her again. She took her nails away from flesh that would not yield and ran them over her scalp instead, gathering skin but not drawing blood. Her nipples felt as though they were each licked by seven tongues at once, her toes sucked, her folds touched and tasted, her cunt fucked, her mouth filled and kissed at the same time, her neck covered with kisses and bites, and her skin stroked all over. She felt like a female in the midst of the full moon den, and the king played that exquisite note inside her almost to the point she could not stand another moment. But when he pushed her longer, she endured, as though her body could not be broken.