Page 30 of Ravished By the Revenant

“We are not finished,” he growls.

I spin. My free hand comes up on pure instinct, my palm aimed at his chest, days of frustration looking for somewhere to land, and he catches that wrist too, fast as a trap snapping shut.

And then we’re just standing there. His hands around my wrists. My back against the door. Both of us breathing like we sprinted here from a battlefield. The shard in his eye throws blue light across my knuckles, his good eye is so dark it’s nearly black, his mouth is six inches from mine, and I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears like a war drum.

“Let go,” I whisper.

“Ask me again,” he whispers back, “and mean it.”

I don’t ask again.

I don’t know which of us moves first. It doesn’t matter. His mouth crashes into mine, or mine into his, and it’s nothing like the kiss from that first night. This is a fucking battle. He releases my wrists, and my hands are instantly in his hair, yanking. Aldric’s arm wraps around my waist and lifts me off my feet, and the door swings open behind me.

We stumble into the bedroom in a graceless tangle. I bite his lower lip, catch a piercing between my teeth, tug, and the sound he makes vibrates straight down my spine and detonates somewhere below my navel.

“You are the most infuriating creature,” he snarls against my mouth, walking me backward, “in seven hundred years of creatures.”

“You’ve been dead for most of them, your sample size is garbage⁠—”

The backs of my knees hit the mattress, and I go down. Aldric follows, one knee on the bed, one hand braced beside my head, careful even now not to crush me, and that does something to me. I pull him down by his collar. His weight settles over me, cool and enormous and solid, and I arch up into him, wanting more of all of it.

His mouth moves to my jaw, my throat, piercings dragging cold trails over hot skin. My hands roam his shoulders, his back, the terrifying breadth of him, and then slide around to his chest and find the top button of his shirt.

He goes rigid.

Before I can get the button through its hole, he catches my fingers, presses a kiss to them, and then he’s moving down.

“Aldric—”

“Later.” His voice is wrecked. “There is something I have thought about every night since you arrived, and I will not be denied any longer.”

His fingers find the button of my jeans, and then he’s peeling the denim down my legs—inside out, catching on my heels, the least sexy garment removal in human history, and neither of us cares. My underwear follows, and then Lord Aldric Blackthorn, terror of the German lands, conqueror of territories, goes completely still between my knees.

He’s staring at me. At—oh.

“You are smooth,” he says, with the reverent confusion of a medieval man encountering twenty-first-century grooming habits. His thumb traces over my bare mound, feather-light, and my hips twitch. “Everywhere. How⁠—”

“Lasered.” My voice comes out three octaves higher than normal. “Laser hair removal. It’s a light that—you know what, it’s science, don’t worry about it.”

“Again, I do not know what any of that means.” His thumb makes another slow pass, and his gaze darkens as he watches goosebumps appearing in its wake. “But I approve. I keep myself groomed as well. A blade, a steady hand, and patience.”

I can’t help but picture it—Aldric, a straight razor, scared hands gripping the trouser snake I can tell is a python—and the moan that comes out of me is frankly humiliating.

Whatever leash was holding him back snaps.

He hooks my thighs over his shoulders, drags me closer, and puts his mouth on me like a starving man finally seated at the feast. There’s no warm-up, no teasing. He licks me from my entrance to my clit, and then his tongue is circling, and the barbell in it is a cool, smooth point of pressure against all that heat, and I grab a fistful of his hair and another fistful of fancy bedding.

“Oh my god⁠—”

“No god here,” he rumbles into me, and the vibration alone nearly ends me. “I’m the only ancient spirit in these halls.”

“Shut up and—ah⁠—”

One thick finger slides into me, curling forward like he’s beckoning, and he finds the spot on the first try like he’s got a map.

“There she is.” His voice against my inner thigh is dark and filthy. “So wet you’re dripping down my hand, little intruder. Is this what being denied does to you? Should I refuse you more often?”

“I hate you,” I gasp, grinding shamelessly against his mouth.