Beastly Passions (27 page)

“I fear that if this happens you will go over the railing and screaming into the night.”

Taras snapped his teeth together. “I do not foresee you making allowances for my leaving today without speaking to you first.”

She leaned forward with a fulsome smile and replied, “Then your vision is perfect.”

“I should apologize.”

Regarding him for a moment, she leaned back and focused out of the window. “No, actually, you shouldn’t.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Asha placed her attention on him again. “When I first met you, sat in your presence, I thought I could compartmentalize you. Dismiss you as I’ve done data.” There was an air of defeat surrounding her. “I thought that I could wait for my heat cycle, or at the very least a decision from my beast on its willingness to allow you to mark me, but it has come to my attention that those are exhausting methods that would be beyond pointless because at the very core of me, I want you.”

Unfurling from the chair, she lifted her arms and then gestured towards him. “I. Want. You. And that is petrifying. Because I wasn’t supposed to. I wasn’t supposed to want any of this. I’m not even sure I 
like 
you on most days, but I can’t change it. I can’t erase it. I can’t alter it. It’s a desire that will not be moved.” She balled her hands up and dropped them at her sides. “You are a representation of exactly how far my life has been reshaped. Who I thought I was, I’m not. Who I wanted to be, I’m not entirely sure she exists anymore because in just a few short weeks, I have gone from firmly believing that I despise you, to knowing that I cannot.” Her small shoulders rolled. “So I’m done fighting. I’m done hiding. And you have to be done also. If I have learned nothing else, if you have shown and told me nothing else, it is that I am safe here. I can lay my head down under this roof and escape from the grasping claws.”

Something incomprehensible fisted around his heart at those words and Taras stood stock-still. 

“And 
you
 are safe here too,” Asha continued. “You will 
always 
be safe here. With me. I can’t rid you of the rage. I don’t wish to tame or leash the beast. Not now that I understand why you cling to it. It has kept you alive. I’m more grateful for that than I can say. So I won’t separate the two anymore. I won’t ignore parts of you in favor of others. I just need it—
you
—to understand that if I am to lay everything at your feet, if I am to embrace what frightens others, you have to be willing to show me the things that you want to hide. No matter how ugly. No matter how intense. I want you to give me
everything.”

She suddenly took the hem of her oversized nightshirt and pulled it up, revealing that she wore nothing beneath.

“Asha,” he began, intending to tell her that she didn’t have to do this. But he was brought up short when she then tossed it at his feet. “What are you doing?”

“I told you,”—her irises went molten—“I want you. And I intend to have you.” Lifting a hand, she moved her hair around to her right shoulder and tapped the left. “Here, Taras. Put it here.”

His tiger stirred. “My mark?”

His wife nodded slowly. “Now, would you like me on my back or all fours?”

The thing inside arced forward. It shoved and clamored to be released.

She wants this. She wants us both.

He couldn’t argue that. He couldn’t deny the words that she had just told him. The commands she had just made of him. So without further hesitation, he decided to give his wife all of what she’d asked. 

Taras
didn’t ask any questions, simply stalked towards her. He nodded his head at the mattress and gruffly demanded, “On your hands and knees.”

She remained where she was for a moment too long; ensnared by the way his eyes had changed.

He grasped her about the waist and spun her so quickly that she gasped. His mouth brushed against the outer shell of her ear as he growled, “I asked you to move, mate. So you move. Understood?”

Asha could do nothing else but nod dumbly.

His palm came down on the left cheek of her buttocks and she cried out. “Aloud. Say it aloud.”

“Yes,” she choked out.

Another smack landed resoundingly on the right side and he hummed his approval. “Good girl.” Soothing rubs to her ass and upper thighs made her whimper. Gently, he pushed her towards the oversized bed. “On your hands and knees, love.”

Without question, and complete understanding of what she was doing, she obeyed. There was a growl as she did what she was told, rolling her hips against air when an unbearable ache built in the core of her. A groan sounded off.

“Do you have any idea how close I am to forgetting all reason?” Taras questioned. “I am trying to be gentle.”

“We discussed this earlier,” she pointed out. “I don’t want gentle. I want 
you. 
Even if it hurts a little.”

Rough palms molded against her thighs and yanked her back towards the edge of the bed. There was a slight thump and then…

“Oh!” the cry burst from her lips and she found herself dropping forward onto her forearms as Taras kneeled behind her, his hot tongue lapping at her, spearing her, twisting her inside out until she thought her chest would cave in. With every moan he seemed to gain a deeper motivation to send her spiraling.

“The sweetest thing I have ever had in my mouth,” he grunted against her pussy.

Her eyes crossed.

His hands spread her legs further as he played with the nub of her clit, flicking it with fervor.  She broke out into a sweat. Spots danced behind Asha’s tightly closed lids and she released a keen. Taras buried his tongue into her opening and fucked her with it, leaving her fingers to tangle themselves in her comforter as she searched for purchase beneath the sensations dragging her under.

Her limbs shook with the effort to not melt under his assault and with the slow glide of his tongue from her canal to the tightness of her rosebud, Asha couldn’t hold back anymore. She came screaming into the fabric clenched in her fists. Her pussy flooded and, much to her surprise, overflowed.

He didn’t stop until she begged him to. “Taras…please…”

Completely sprawled, she could only breathlessly cast him a glance over her shoulder, watching as he got to his feet. He licked his lips, his eyes holding hers captive with every swipe of his tongue. Her tummy rippled. When he went to pull his jeans down and off she shook her head.

Taras’ brow rose.

“I don’t have the patience,” Asha whispered. She lowered her gazed. “I need you now.”

He cursed and jerked the waistband of his underwear out of the way, letting the thick length of his cock spring free. She did no more than blink at him and he was on her; flattening her to the mattress. His cock tunneled deep, its way eased by her orgasm from moments ago. Asha arched up and Taras’ hands came to rest of her own, their fingers interlocking, clenching. The rough drag on denim against her legs sent her winding into harsh arousal.  

She undulated beneath him, turning her head so that their mouths almost touched. Their pants mingled but she purposely didn’t kiss him, preferring to watch the tortured expression he bore in an attempt to keep from being drowned in whatever carnality he was fighting. “Taras?”

His chest shuddered against her back as their gazes clashed.

Asha clutched his hands, squeezed, as she shot him a wanton look through her lashes. “Fuck me.”

For the second time that night, she saw something different gleam in his cerulean gaze. It seemed to take hold and leave his irises almost luminous in their vibrancy. Asha shook and turned her face into his forearm, kissing it. Pain was going to come with her husband’s particular brand of climax and it was something she was fully willing to deal with if it meant she could ride the post-coital glow he caused to burn. “Fuck me, Taras,” she crooned again.

He pulled back with a low snarl and then all at once slammed into her.

She yelped as he filled her again. He continued to meet every cry with a sharp drive of his hips, each thrust harder than the one before. Taras demanded submission and she gave nothing less than that, moving back against him with an urgency that couldn’t be denied.

“Yes…yes…yes…” she chanted, burying her face into her comforter, enjoying every inch of cock that he jammed into her body over and over again.

“Mine
,”
 Taras proclaimed the stroke of his member turning jerky but no less fulfilling. “
Mine.”

Nodding, she dug her nails into his hands. “Yes.”

“Say it,” he demanded. “Aloud.”

“Yours.”

“Can’t. Hear. You.” He shook free from her hands and reared up, his palms crashing down on her breasts, rotating against her nipples; the skin abrasive enough that tears crested on her lashes from the bliss. His flesh hammered unrelentingly, giving so much pleasure, taking so much sense. “Tell me again.”

“Ah…ah…
yours!” 
Asha shouted as he fisted her curls and tugged her head back with a firm grip. The slight sting shot straight to her clit.

“Touch yourself.”

She followed the hard-edged command with quavering fingers, rolling the fleshy bundle of nerves between them until her eyes rolled.

“Never forget it,” Taras ordered. “
Never 
forget it.”

Mindless now, she sobbed, “I won’t.”

He ran his tongue over the back of her neck. “Good girl,” he praised. “Now come.”

As if hardwired, she did that very thing. Her pussy clamped down with all of its shameless might around his cock, pulsating as it spilled over once more, without hesitation. And that was when his canines buried into her left shoulder.

Once she stopped screaming, Taras released her and she collapsed onto the bedspread, shaking.

Before she blacked out she thought she heard what distinctly sounded like a roar but was dropped into the darkness so swiftly that she didn’t even have time to consider it. She fully submerged with a smile. 

Sixteen

“It was less 
than five minutes, Taras.”

“Which matters very little,” he dismissed, refusing to be moved. “You were unconscious.”

She grasped his wrists—which were on either side of her head due to him cupping her face and closely watching the movement of her eyes.  “It was a momentary stasis brought on by a temporary loss of oxygen. I stopped breathing for a bit too long and the end result was a blackout. I’m just as surprised as you are considering that this should have been more likely to happen when you,”—she suddenly looked down as her face reddened—“choke me,” Asha finished on a whisper.

He leaned forward, now more amused than he was concerned and softly asked, “You do realize I am the only one here, yes? No one else is going to hear of your occasional need to have my hand around your throat.”

Her gaze rose, arousal stirring in its depths. “Either way, it’s not something to get hysterical about.”

“Hysterical? Who is getting hysterical?”

She shot him a look. “Before I convinced you to calm down you tried to take me to the nearest hospital.”

“I’m not exactly used to having women faint in bed with me. So excuse me if I was alarmed.”

That look turned deadly. “Unless you happen to be interested in finding out if there truly is an Elysian Field to run through after crossing over, you’ll be careful not to mention other females in your bed; fainting or otherwise.”

His amusement only increased. “Believe me, mate,” he answered calmly. “I do not wish to be the next victim to witness your sudden and very precise skills with a blade. You will hear nothing from me concerning others, as I happen to like my major arteries intact and unharmed.”

She gave an annoyed sigh and pulled her bare legs up to her chest as she leaned back against his headboard. “You don’t have to look so bloody proud.”

Despite his wife’s lowly grumbled words, he couldn’t curb the grin from his face. How could he? To be this full, this happy, had once been a foreign to him. What did he have to derive joy from before her? At best, he’d been grateful for a somewhat calm, passionless existence that varied depending on the impulses of others. And now literally everything he’d found himself desiring from the moment he’d met her had been placed in the palm of his hands. What did she expect of him 
but
 pride?

“You continue to surprise me,” Taras murmured, marginally closing the distance between their mouths. “Should I threaten to unleash you on lazy security teams? Perhaps you can frighten Alexei for me?”

Her look was nothing aside from exasperated. “You’re awful.”

“As you continue to tell me daily,” he said, nipping at her chin. “He pushed you, and as any tigress would do, you pushed him back.”

Asha’s lip curled. “I didn’t like his tone…or his face. His words held little weight. It was the condescension and the gall to actually voice them moments after you had already showed him your affinity for sporadic acts of violence.”

“Careful now, you exhibit this trait too, I’m afraid.”