Dragon Betrayed (Immortal Dragons Book 0) (19 page)

“More. I need more. And please, let me see it. I’ve never laid eyes on my own blood before.”

The room tilted and the blindfold fell off. Belah found herself leaning at a diagonal angle against the platform, her bound feet resting on soft ledges. Nikhil stood facing her and she took in his tall, powerful shape. He was, indeed, naked and fully erect, the gold paint gone and his skin flushed with heat, in spite of the cool evening air that came in through the balcony doorway. His massive chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. The primal beast she loved was alive behind his eyes and he clutched the dagger in one hand, held as naturally as though it were an extension of his body.

He moved close, the contraption she was tied to offering space between her spread thighs for him to stand. The thick length of his cock brushed the very top of her aching slit and he pressed against her while he eyed her breasts.

Nikhil grazed the sharp tip of the blade over the upper swell of one breast, just hard enough for her to feel without actually breaking skin. Belah stared down, enraptured by the sight of the point and the pink line it left behind. He made another line on the top of her other breast, as though marking the cut before making it.

“Go slow,” she whispered when he positioned the blade back at the start of the first line and pushed in, pricking ever so gently but enough for her to feel the skin break and see a tiny, crimson droplet rise up from beneath her honey-colored skin.

He pulled the blade back, his breathing ragged. Instead of cutting her, he kissed her, the hand holding the blade cupping her cheek while he caressed between her lips with his hot tongue. Between them, he gripped his cock and tilted his hips back, positioning his thick head at her entrance. He only pushed in a tiny bit, and when he pulled back from the kiss, raw, hungry need filled his gaze.

“Do you have any idea how you honor me by allowing this?” he said hoarsely. “
’Iilahatan
, you are my heart. I would bleed a thousand men to make you happy, yet you only wish that I bleed you.”

He pressed the tip of the blade back to her breast and exerted just enough pressure to pierce her skin again. As he drew the blade across her flesh, he pushed his cock deeper. Belah stared down, fascinated by the way her skin opened and her blood welled up from beneath. The scent of it startled her at first—it smelled nothing like human blood, but was both sweet and tangy like the juice of some exotic fruit. It mixed in her nostrils with the scent of sex when Nikhil pulled out of her again and pushed back in, just as slowly as before while he began the second cut.

These were deeper than the first two, and the pain dragged across, flooding her with sensation as exquisite as the stretch of his cock against the walls of her pussy.

With a groan, Nikhil jabbed the knife into the cushioned support beside Belah’s head and cupped her breasts in both hands. He shifted his hips back, pulled out of her to the tip and slammed back in so hard he shoved her up the platform.

When he bent his head to capture her nipple in his mouth, the cut on that breast widened, more blood flowing slowly over the flesh and the stinging pain of it perfectly merging with the pleasure of his mouth suckling her hard tip. He tilted his head back and darted out his tongue, sliding the tip of it along the length of the cut and gathering her blood as he went. The sensation was as arousing as if he had run his tongue between her legs and Belah threw her head back with a groan of pleasure.

“Yes, Nikhil. Taste me.” The words fell from her lips even as a niggling memory flickered in the back of her mind. Something she’d been told thousands of years before about the proper ways to transfer power to a mate. But she couldn’t remember and didn’t care. All she cared about was the exquisite pleasure he gave her now.

He continued pumping into her while he tongued her breasts, nipping at her nipples and sucking at the cuts on her breasts as though her blood were mother’s milk. Each time he did, pain flooded her senses until she was nothing more than sensation.

Nikhil looked up at her after a moment, with beads of sweat covering his brow and glistening on his chest. His lips were red from tasting her and slick when they pressed against hers. Her own flavor hit her tongue and the taste was even more erotic than the flavor of his semen and her own sex juices combined. That it was his tongue transferring the liquid to her mouth made the pleasure surge even higher through her body.

His hips thrust his cock deeper, battering her insides repeatedly with each fresh thrust. She whimpered involuntarily against his mouth, overwhelmed by the combination of sensations.

“Does it hurt, little beast? Which hurts more: my cock, or the cuts I gave you?” He bent his head to bite hard at one of the cuts before gathering a mouthful of her breast between his lips and sucking hard. His tongue swirled over and over her nipple and around to both cuts that bracketed it top and bottom until the sensations became one, thrumming through her body to her core, where he kept fucking her harder and harder.

As amazing as he was making her feel in that moment, she knew deep down that this was more for him than it was for her. Even though he gave her more pleasure than ever before, he was reserving her true gift until after he’d had his fill of hurting her.

The thought of what was in store caused a sudden tremor to pass through her. She yelled out his name, the syllables broken by the pounding thrusts of his cock pushing air from her lungs. A second later he yelled hers in return and his cock throbbed and pulsed with his climax, his orgasm flooding hotly into her.

Belah could only lay back and take all he had to give, from the steady, wet heat of his semen filling her to the newness of his energy, now enhanced by the blessings he’d been given during their wedding ceremony. His energy tasted like life, like sunlight and rain and growing things, like air and water, earth and fire. She had reveled in it earlier in the day when they had first consummated their marriage along the streets of the city in full view of her people.

Something was different now, however. Like the dark threads she’d sensed in him months ago when she worried that his dragon blessing might be damaging his mind, a new thread was laced through the power with a frightening potency. It was something
beyond
simply life, and with a jolt she realized it was her own essence. But not the essence that a willing gift would provide its recipient. Her essence, taken directly from her body in a way that she could never willingly give except to her own offspring.

Nikhil had taken her blood into himself, and the shocking understanding of what that could mean terrified her. Never in the long history of her race had a human
taken
a dragon’s blood, much less the blood of an immortal like her. The memory that had eluded her before came surging back—the warning from her mother that a dragon’s blood should never be taken. Yet Belah had willingly orchestrated the taking of it, so surely that mattered? It must matter, somehow, because she could still sense the love in him.

With that exchange came a connection the likes of which she had never imagined. When Nikhil slipped out of her and strode away, his shoulders heaving from his exertion, every nuance of his thoughts were apparent to her, even down to the darkest wishes he kept locked deep inside his very soul.

What she saw beyond the very real and powerful love he had for her was something far darker. It lay dormant beneath the gifts he’d been given, subdued by the power of their love. Belah was comforted by that, at least. Everyone carried some amount of darkness in them, after all. But within Nikhil, it was like the sleeping leviathan that should never be awakened, lest you invite destruction upon the world.

That he was hers now meant she could at least control that darkness, to ensure it never saw the light. She alone had the power to provide him with the outlet he needed to keep his darkness sated.

She strained at her bindings, wanting to break them and go to him, to comfort the turmoil that raged through his mind. He wanted to cut her more, to see her blood flow. The ache was like a hunger inside him as strong as his desire to fuck her. That ache was tied to his darkness, and yet the part of him that rebelled against it was the part that wanted to please her.

He stood stock still a few paces away now, his entire body tense, and the knife still in his hand, its blade aimed at the floor.

“I need more of you, Belah,” he said in a strained voice over his shoulder, somehow too unsure about what he was about to say to face her directly. “Your pain is perfect, and to see your blood flow, to
taste
it, makes me feel so powerful. Like I am truly worthy to be the mate of a goddess. Perhaps someday I will be your equal if I do this. If I take all you have to give. Will you let me take it? It is what you want, too, is it not? I won’t waste a drop, I promise.”

“What will you take?” she asked, sure she knew the answer already but hoping he would turn back and tell her directly.

His shoulders quivered and she wished she could touch him, but he’d bound her. She could have easily broken the bonds, as strong as she was, but to do that would negate her trust in him.

Nikhil turned to face her, his expression haunted. His hair clung to the side of his face and he pushed it back vehemently. The usual wildness she loved in him was present in his eyes, but something new had taken residence. A craving she didn’t quite understand.

“Your life, my love. That’s what you want me to take, isn’t it?”

“You know it’s only temporary. I can’t die, Nikhil. I can never die. My life is infinite, and that infinite life I give to you. What you give me in return is everything I have always desired.”

He shook his head. “Don’t you see? What I have to give is no match for what you offer. No, you want me to mark you, remember? To brand you as mine. You would be mine for an eternity, but what good is that if I don’t have eternity to spend with you? No, I will only give you tonight like this. When we are done and you wake up, I want you to mark me truly. I understand what it means, but it is my free will to sacrifice, is it not?”

“Please don’t ask for that,” she said. The cuts on her breasts still twinged with pain, though they were healing swiftly, but the pain within her chest came from a deeper cut—one he couldn’t see.

“I have lived for this moment,
‘Iilahatan
. After I’m done, I only ask that you mark me, and then we can have an eternity together for you to remind me that you are my little beast.
Mine
.”

Belah stared at him, shocked by the earnest look he gave her and the absolute desperation that flashed like a fresh bruise through his aura. Her heart ached and for the first time her resolve crumbled.

“My love, I cannot say no to you when I am at your mercy like this.”

“Then it is settled,” he said.

Chapter Twenty

N
ikhil picked up a small stack of clay pots with one hand and strode toward her. With a flick of the hand that held the knife, he turned it so the flat of the blade was in front of her mouth. “Open,” he said. She did, and he rested the blade against her teeth.

Belah clamped down on the blade and watched him while he placed the ceramic bowls at each of the four corners of the platform she was bound to. Once he seemed satisfied with their placement, he took the blade from her teeth and kissed her with the slowest, hottest press of his mouth.

The kiss grew in fervor as his cock thickened between them, rubbing against the slickness between her thighs. He didn’t enter her again, but kept his cock sliding up and down, spreading delicious sensation over her clit.

While they kissed he reached both hands out, sliding them up along the insides of her arms. When he reached her wrist, he pressed the blade’s tip to the hollow of tender flesh, just beneath where her binding held her.

The pain seared her in a blinding rush that continued as he let the blade sink in, deeper than he had with the cuts on her breasts. The sweet scent of her blood rose again as the warm fluid trickled down her arm before a steady stream of it hit the carefully placed bowl beneath her.

Belah’s clit throbbed and the sensation of his cock rubbing against her grew even slicker from the flood of arousal that filled her. Ecstasy overwhelmed her when he switched the blade to his other hand and made the cut to her opposite wrist.

“Will you come for me, little beast?” Nikhil murmured in her ear. He pulled his hips back just enough to let his cock dip between her spread folds and slide into her yet again. His shaft was every bit as hard and hot as it had been barely moments earlier, and the hot rush of pain thrumming down both her arms now made it impossible for her to hold back a cry when he settled in deep. He barely moved this time—he barely needed to, because she went flying the second his pelvis pressed against her clit and rotated just the tiniest fraction.

“Nikhil!” His name burst in a gasp from her mouth as her body shuddered with her orgasm. This time he pulled out slowly, sliding down her body and laying soft kisses against her skin as he went. He lingered at her breasts, which to her surprise still bled, though the sharp twinge of his tongue over her cuts lent faint pain in comparison to the cuts he’d put on her wrists.

When he knelt between her thighs, he gazed up at her, sliding his hands up and down, massaging the insides of her legs with one hand and caressing with the knuckles of the hand that still held the blade. He spread her open, pressing the cool flat of the blade to the top of her cleft and holding it for a moment without moving. The temperature shift indeed calmed her throbbing flesh, but he pulled it away only to replace it with the wide flat of his tongue, licking her entire cunt from bottom to top in one mind-altering sweep that had her throbbing and ready for more.

He held the blade loosely in his hands now, poised above her navel, which he eyed with a slight smile. Belah sensed him assessing her skin the way an artist might a canvas. She knew he had deft hands, capable of fine, delicate work. He had a reputation as a master torturer, after all. He also had a very keen eye, though she had no idea what kind of mark he might be inclined to make into her flesh.

The bleeding from her wrists had slowed, the upraised angle of her arms preventing it from flowing too freely, but it still ran in a steady, crimson trickle into the containers beneath. She watched, fascinated by the red ripples in the small container that captured her very essence.

Pain pricked her belly just below her navel, and she hissed, glancing back down at Nikhil. He gave her a slightly admonishing look, but it quickly shifted to his familiar wild lust when the blade pierced her skin just enough to draw blood and he drew it down in a perfectly straight line. The sharper pain the cut caused surprised her and made her gasp. Her reaction incited a rough growl from Nikhil, but he remained focused on his work. From there, he traced a perfect arc, describing a half-moon shape around one side of her belly before tracing a mirror image on the opposite side.

Blood welled up to fill the lines he cut and she closed her eyes, letting her mind follow the pattern of the pain he drew into her skin. It flared with white heat on the backs of her eyelids, the design gradually becoming clearer with each cut. When he was finished several minutes later, he called her name, urging her to open her eyes again.

He stood before her, his wide shoulders and beautiful face filling her field of vision. After a quick kiss, he moved to the side. Belah came face-to-face with her own reflection and inhaled sharply at the sight. A large scarab shape was etched into her belly, surrounding her navel. Its wings stretched outward from either side, but the wings resembled her own unfurled wings rather than that of a bird or an insect. The scarab itself was the seal and symbol Nikhil used, representing his family and his patron god, but the wings she knew were his homage to her.

With effort, she tore her gaze away from the image and met his eyes, unable to do more than smile with pure gratitude at his gift.

“I am not finished yet,
‘Iilahatan.
Now, I worship you before taking you to your heart’s desire.”

He fell to his knees before her and pressed his lips to the top of one foot where it rested on the small ledge of her platform, only a short distance above the floor. With slow, deliberate movements, he kissed his way up, to her ankle and then a little higher. He paused there, squeezed and caressed her lower leg in an odd fashion. Before she could wonder what he was doing, he brought the knife up and made a swift, sure cut on a diagonal into the flesh inside her leg. Blood flowed, landing perfectly in the center of the basin he’d placed beneath.

The pain spiked through her, but subsided quickly until he shifted to the other side. The speed with which he cut her told her that the pain wasn’t his goal now, but the bleeding itself. The cuts to her ankles went deeper than the ones to her wrists and her blood flowed freely now, and so swiftly she felt a little drunk.

Nikhil rose up between her thighs and swept his tongue in a slow, languid lick around her soaked folds. He drew away and she could see fresh blood glistening on his lips.

“You taste like heaven,
‘Iilahatan
. It is my honor to kneel before you and worship you in your glory, to take your gift of blood while I give you the gift of pleasure. To take you into me the way I give my seed to you. I am your slave now, my free will matters not but how I can serve you. So you see, it will make no difference if you make me yours fully, for I am nothing without the taste of you on my tongue, the clutch of you around my cock, and the sound of my name on your lips. Tell me you will make me yours after I am finished making you mine.”

“Yes, Nikhil. I will,” she whispered, her lips and tongue feeling thick and sluggish. The ache in her heart lingered, but somehow what he said made sense now. It made more sense when he bent his head back to her pussy and covered her with his entire mouth.

He devoured her with a kind of hunger he reserved for the times he wanted to drive her mad to the point of begging to be fucked, his tongue sliding deep into her before slipping out and tasting every increment of flesh. She felt wetter than she ever had and looked down to see that the blood from the scarab sliced into her belly flowed down between her thighs, where Nikhil greedily lapped at it. He intermittently went back to her clit and teased and sucked until her hips began to twitch and the rising pleasure nearly went to her head. Then he would stop and simply lick like he were a child enjoying a sugary treat.

Over and over he took her close, each time looking up at her with eyes blazing. He was mad with his own need now, his aura a throbbing, pulsing cloud around him, deep red with the brightest threads of blue throughout.

In her muzzy mind, Belah thought the blue wasn’t right, that it meant something important she should be wary of, but couldn’t quite remember. Before she could reach deeper into memory to find it, Nikhil rose to his feet and leaned down to kiss her with both hands cupping the sides of her face.

He made love to her mouth, letting his tongue sweep inside in languid licks. The flavor of him was so unique it made her groan to taste. This was her very essence mixed with his and they were delicious together. What would a melding of their essences look like? If they could have a child, would the child’s essence be as beautiful as the feeling that taste gave her? Dare she even wish for such a thing? But was it her wish or his? She wasn’t so sure, now that his thoughts sank into her mind because she seemed to have lost the ability to control her power.

He slid one of his hands down over her collarbone, cupped her breast briefly, and teased at her nipple before coming to rest against her sternum. He pulled back from their kiss as breathless as she was, but his eyes were intent, concentrating on something.

Her heartbeat. She realized it without even meaning to read his thoughts, but in that second the heavy thud of his own made a quicker counterpoint in her ears. Her heartbeat was slowing, and with each beat she felt lighter and lighter and the love in his eyes was like the lightest breeze lifting her up.

“Stay with me, my love. Look into my eyes. I am the one giving you leave to fly, to release your tether to the world and set you free. Only I control that freedom, little beast. Little goddess,” he said, though the words were barely a whisper.

His cock was at her core again, pushing deep. The pleasure of his fucking enhanced the feeling of weightlessness and she gave into it entirely. He was in control of her pleasure, of her power, of her very need to be released.

Belah’s ecstasy peaked with the most exquisite surge of energy.

“Go,” he said. He released her with that single word, his face still contorted with the strain of his orgasm as his semen pumped into her.

She let go, diving into the darkness of the abyss, her wings catching the wind. Elation filled her and she soared, buoyed up by her love and gratitude for the man with the strength to give her everything by taking everything she had to give.