Rituals of Passion (20 page)

She hated caring, but she couldn’t help asking. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

Ares, so young! Young to lose parents, young to lead an  army. “How were you able to…to win,  to take such control, to get  men to follow you at the age of fifteen?”

He gave her a knowing look, peering directly into her eyes. “Fear, Maven. Andrespect. I made my friends respect me and my enemies fear me. Fear goes a long way toward keeping foes at a distance.”

His words brought to  mind the many rumors she’d heard about him since hergirlhood—how wicked he was, how frightening,  to  both  women  and  men,  albeit  indifferent ways. Dane the Dreadful. “Is it…wrong for people to fear you?” she askedwith a tilt of her head.

“Wrong?”

“Is it…apt?  When people call you Dane the Dreadful, is  it a name well-earned?”

“For anyone meaning to harm me or mine, it is
 
wise
 
to fear me—I can be a fearsome  man, wife.  But for those who are in my fold, no, they need not be afraid of  me.” His  voice softened. “
You
 
need not be  afraid.”

Curse him, he was trying to get her to warm up to him again. She moved from the bed once more, pulling the coverlet a little  higher on  her breasts, then spoke with colddefiance. “Even if I don’t fear you, I can never make peace with  the notion  that I’m owned by you.”

“I keep telling you, I didn’t write the rules of our society, Maven.”

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“But you enjoy them well enough.”

He shrugged. “What am I to  do?  Defy  the  laws  of  what  is  deemed  natural  and right?”

“Yes. Tell me I am your equal and treat me as such.”

He simply shook his head, looking aghast at the very suggestion and driving home  for her that he would never give in and that  she would, therefore, never be happy in this abominable marriage.

“That’s how it is between my father and mother,” she reminded him once more. “You saw where she was seated.  At his side.”

“That’s your father’s prerogative, not mine.”

“So you
 
choose
 
to own me, is that it?”

He tilted his head. “Does it matter how I  answer, Maven? I think you’re resigned to  hating me anyway, for the very fact that you had no choice in our match. And if you  examine it, you’ll see that you’re asking
 
me
 
to do the very thing
 
you
 
refuse  to  do  in  this union—submit to change.”

“You’re impossible!” she snapped, then turned  to march away.

But in an instant, the coverlet was yanked  away from her, leaving her as naked as  he. She darted her head around to find her husband had risen from  the bed  to grab onto  one corner of the large brocaded swath of silk.

“I hate you!” she shouted.

“You want me,” he said calmly and she couldn’t help letting the warmth of his  voice seep into her skin as she noticed  his cock—at some point the shaft had grown  hard again, lengthening. Despite herself,  the sight made her pussy spasm with need.

When she lifted her gaze back to his  handsome, rugged face, a knowing smile  quirked his mouth. And the heat of  embarrassment ascended her cheeks.

Letting the cover drop to the floor, he  started taking slow but confident steps  toward her.

As her heart began pumping faster, she eased backward, away from him. She had the notion she could get away—
 
would
 
get away—even as their eyes stayed locked, even as her heart pounded mercilessly  against her feeble chest.

Her breathing grew thready, labored, and as his steps increased in speed, shemoved faster, too.

Yet within  another second, he had backed  her into a corner, bracing his arms on the

smooth stone walls at either side of her.

She could hear her own breath and swore  she could have drowned in the bluedepths of his eyes. She bit her lip, her pulse still racing with fear but her cunt beating with a different sort of rhythm altogether —she suspected she was growing wet with desire.

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He bent to sweep a kiss across her neck, the tip of his cock brushing against her stomach and sending a ripple of sensation racing through her from head to toe. “Ares,” she breathed. It was like a cold chill, only  hot and ever so much more powerful. Her pussy wept.

His next kiss slanted across her mouth, warm and possessive and too delicious for her to even begin to resist. Against her own will, she kissed him back, crushing her lipspassionately against his as the  heat of his  flesh drew close, so close, his entire body barely grazing hers from chest to knee.

His hands  left the wall to close around her breasts—tender from all that had

befallen them in the previous twenty-four hours. She cried out in a mix of pleasure and  pain when he molded them in his palms. But the pleasure soon outweighed all else to  leave her panting as she gazed down at the sight of his rough fingers kneading her pale skin.

He bent to shower more hot kisses on the soft  flesh of her breasts, the taut peaks of her nipples, making her whimper and moan at  the delights that stormed her body at his ministrations.

“Oh Ares, how I hate you,” she managed  to murmur desperately into his hair.  “Your breasts betray you,” he breathed warm against the ridge of one.  “What?”

He lifted his gaze to her and bestowed one  last kiss on a hard, pink, oh-so-sensitivenipple, then smiled. “Because your breasts
 
love
 
me, Maven.”

She bit her lip, lost to  the physical sensations that made it so impossible to remain true to herself. But she had little  time for internal struggle as his hard kiss found her mouth again, even as his fingers sank between her thighs.

She moaned  her pleasure as they kissed. She could smell the ripe scent of her pussy as he caressed her clit and the wet, hungry  flesh below with warm, smooth petting motions. The scent assaulted her more fully  when he lifted his fingers to his mouth andsucked them dry, all while pinning her in place with that lethal gaze.

Next his hands were on her ass and hers  fell around his shoulders and he was lifting her and pressing against her and—dear Ares!—then his shaft was entering her, deep, deeper, as she cried out at the shock and pleasure.

She’d forgotten—just since last night— how  tremendous and heavenly he felt inside her. And now she was clutching at him, wrapping her legs around him, and he was pulling her  closer, closer—deeper, so much deeper. Oh, what strange and heady bliss!

She didn’t quite realize he was moving,  carrying her as he fucked her, until he eased down into the same chair he’d sat in  last night. Her knees became planted in theupholstery  alongside his hips and suddenly  being at such an angle—impaled on his cock—made him feel  even more huge. At the moment, it was as if his rod was the

biggest part of her.

“I hate you!” she said through clenched teeth.

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“I know. Ride me,” he commanded her.

She didn’t have to wonder what he meant—the motions came naturally enough, as if from deep down inside her, some ancient knowledge she’d been born with but never realized up to now. Pushing herself against  him in a rhythm that came instinctually, she couldn’t
 
help
 
but ride the man, her husband, her enemy. His cock demanded it, her pussy needed it—desperately.

She bit her lip again as she moved on him—this position seemed to bring her adeeper, more intense pleasure than she’d yet  known. It stimulated her clit wildly even as she got to experience the feel of  his huge cock pumping up into her.

His hands roamed her breasts, her hips, her  ass. Her panting  edged into a series of high-pitched moans she couldn’t have squelched if her life had depended on it.  Everything about him felt too good—driving her onward and upward toward theclimax she knew would strike soon.

It  took  her  by  force,  jolting  her  body  with  its power, making her cry out as she tried to grab onto the pleasure and control it, absorb it, let it  course through her. “Oh Ares,” she purred  when the spasms of hot pleasure  began to wane. “Oh Ares, that was…that was…”

He flashed his usual wicked smile. “Yes, wife, tell me what it was. I want to know exactly what you felt.”

Your power.

She would never admit
 
that
.
 
Never
.

But neither  could she lie to him, for that  would  be  stupid  at  a  moment  when  herbody clearly dripped with satiation, when  she continued to ride  the thrusts of his monstrous rod. “Ares help me,” she  murmured, “but it was incredible.”

His eyes seemed to glow with sexual heat. “I love making you come, Maven. I lovewatching the hot joy wash over you, love watching you abandon yourself to it.”

Abandon
. The word struck home. Indeed this  man made her abandon herself. She

didn’t answer—couldn’t, not while his  hot cock still lifted  her with its commanding  drives upward, not while she continued to pant and moan and move on him.

“I love fucking you long and hard and deep,” he said, his voice now little more than  a warm purr that nearly turned  her inside  out. “I love  pushing my shaft up into you,  filling you with it, making you moan.”

Despite herself, his words fueled  her, actually made her tremble, made her grit her  teeth as he thrust deeper, higher. She wanted to break away from his gaze, but she  couldn’t—it was as if he held her  captive. Fitting, she thought.

But such wry thoughts couldn’t compete for long with the power of his cock. And  his eyes—those hot, horrible, beautiful, captivating eyes.

Then she felt it again—a familiar sort of  pleasure beginning to rise inside her. “Ares,” she whispered, stunned. Could it happen again? Could she have  another  orgasm? Lavonia hadn’t addressed that, and the possibility hadn’t even occurred to her.

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But now, now…she found herself riding  him harder, felt the  delicious sensationsbeginning to fill her up, fill her until she was brimming.

“Yes, Maven,” he whispered, low and deep.  Their eyes still locked.  “Yes, Maven, doit for me again. Come for me. Come even harder than last time.”

It’s not for you,
 
she wanted to say, but passion prevented it. And besides, it would have been a lie. It
 
was
 
for him, like it or not. His erotic talk of wanting to  watch theclimax take her had given rise to this new heat.

She rode him harder, swiveled her hips in  tight, hot circles that delivered just theright pressure to her clit. She bit her lip and clenched her teeth. Finally breaking fromhis gaze, she let her head fall backward, so lost in desire now that she couldn’t think, could only feel, could only let her body drive her onward.

“Yes,” she whispered, barely audible, and  then the torrent of hot pleasure blasted over her, even harder than last time, making her buck and moan and sob with it, turning her  inside out with the sensations that pummeled her body.

“Oh,” Dane murmured as her orgasm began  to fade, pumping even harder into her now. “Oh Ares, yes. Me  too, Maven. Me too.”

Planting his hands at her hips, his thrusts were the largest she’d felt so far, lifting her body, even lifting her knees from the chair as he fully impaled her on his rod.

She cried out with him as he moaned his release, and when it was done, they slumped against one  another, his head resting on her breasts, her head atop his.  Without realizing it, she was holding him to  her, pressing him against her—and whenshe noticed the embrace, she didn’t  extract herself from  it. Couldn’t.
 
Just too exhausted
,she told herself in explanation.
 
Nothing more.
 
She felt nothing tender  for this man.

“Your heart beats very hard, bride,” he  murmured  against her breast, his voice drained but still sensuous.

He knows. He can sense how I feel—how warm right now,  how…oh Ares, she couldn’t deny it—how safe.
 
The knowledge, and her abhorrence of such, hardened her heart further, took her back to that place of resistance and  control, even as it pulsed against her chest.  “Not for you,” she whispered.

He raised his head, met her gaze with one arched eyebrow, challenging her. “For whom then?”

“It’s only a reaction to sex. I may be  new at this, but I learned enough in my

Orientation to understand
 
that
.”

Ares, he was still inside her, even  now.  The realization weakened her a bit,  making her feel liquid and limp, but she struggled not  to let it  show, to  let him witness only the defiance that burned through her now.

She couldn’t read his expression as he continued to look at her. “Well, if nothing else, you seem to enjoy fucking well enough,  so even if we can’t be happy in any other way, we can at least connect here in the bedchamber.”  What he meant, she suspected,

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