The Master and The Marionette (The Pawn and The Puppet series Book 2)

He loses his words, nodding before he scoops me in his arms, keeping me wrapped in two blankets. I’m weightless to him. A small bag of feathers. Because he uses one hand to hold me and the other to open the door. As we step out into the hallway, I tighten my hold around his neck, breath hitching in my throat as I look down at the guard.

He’s—asleep. Head back against the wall, mouth gaping open.

Or is he?

“I drugged his flask,” Dessin mutters.

I snicker. “Effective.”

He closes the thirteenth door behind us, slowly, careful not to leave an echo that bounces off the walls. And I’m being draped over his bed, so carefully I stare up at him in shock. Like he’s afraid to break me. He’s far gentler with me than I’ve ever seen him with anyone.

It turns my heart to putty.

Dessin steps in front of the side of my face that’s resting on his pillow. “Lift your head.”

I blink twice. “Okay.” I strain my neck, lifting as he tosses the pillow to the floor, sitting so that his lap is now my pillow. He coaxes me back down, combing my long hair to drape over his legs.

I stifle a shiver. His hands are the source of chills that want to run blindly down my nervous system. Bliss. Paradise.

“You’re going to bruise here from the tub restraints,” Dessin says, using one finger to lightly touch the side of my neck, the area I was being forcefully held underwater.

But then his hands are slipping under my shoulders, massaging the tight muscles across my upper back, then coasting up to my sore neck. I let out a husky moan.

“I never wanted you to go through that,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me. “Not much throws me off, but that gutted me, Skylenna.”

I nod against his hands. “I saw.” He was trying to keep it together, but I know he would have carved that orderly’s liver out. He would have fed it to the priest. In fact, I’m certain he was hoping they would challenge him.

His fingers dig into a knot, pressing on it gently. I arch my back, letting out another pained and satisfied moan.

But I did something wrong. Those strong fingers still, pausing midstroke. And he lets out a frustrated sigh. “That’s exactly how you sounded when I had my face between your thighs.”

That’s all it takes. A surge of unleashed desire shoots through my core, causing my breath to hitch, my thighs to flex. His hands leave my shoulders, skating across my collarbone, and ending over the sheet that covers my bare breasts.

My entire body tenses. Because his palms are centered over my hardening nipples, poking his hands in a desperate attempt to get him to stimulate them. He groans quietly as he squeezes, letting his head fall in defeat at the feel of me.

“Fuck,” he grits behind clenched teeth.

“More,” I plead.

The movement of his hands is automatic, as if I’ve said the magic word. But his fingers surprise me. They pinch my nipples, twisting, plucking, making me squirm under the blankets. All of my thoughts and fears scattered like tiny rodents. The ache in my lower belly manifests into something wild, something hungry, something untamable.

Dessin’s pants grow under my head, a steel mountain pulsing.

And he’s up, slipping out from under me, darting to the wall farthest from the bed. He’s mumbling to himself. “I’ll make things worse.”

I sit up on the bed, careful to hold the sheet around my shoulders, my hips.

“I’m already yours,” I tell him, swallowing down that agitated fear of rejection. “I’m yours to touch, taste, and love however you want me.”

And with a calculated sense of purpose, I let the sheet drop to the bed.

And Dessin, with widening eyes and parted lips, gazes at my naked body.

It’s like watching an ocean rev up into a wall, into a tidal wave. Like he’s holding his breath. Like his eyes have returned home from a long journey. And he’s swallowing me whole, taking in my bare legs, stomach, and breasts as if he wants to remember them. As if this may be the one and only time he gets to look at me. In this weak, golden light and cold, empty shadows.

He moves like he’s falling, three hard strides to the bed, arms looping under my knees until his hands reach my hips, and he’s spinning me until my head is lying where the pillow once was.

Here we are again, my legs hanging over his shoulders. But half of my back is on the bed, my lower half is hoisted up at an incline, and his hands are holding me by my ass. My gleaming pink flesh is open for him, just under his chin. Like he’s carrying a meal, waiting to lick his plate clean.

“Dessin,” I whine. Because I don’t care for him to taste me again. I want that growing bulge in his pants. I want to feel him stretch me. Feel him pump inside of me.

He shakes his head. “I need to make you ready for my size, baby.”

I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but he begins lapping me up anyway. Painfully slow licks up and down my center. And it’s cruel. Like a punishment. The wicked wet heat slipping inside of me, bringing my body to tremble like an earthquake.

“Oh,” I gasp.

“That’s it,” he murmurs against my throbbing clit. “Open up for me.”

I lose all sense of decency. My hips buck against his face, legs clenching down on his shoulders. He moves his hands to bite down on my hips again, angling my pussy to his mouth exactly where he wants me. He’s sitting upright on his knees, dipping his tongue in and out of me, until I can’t take it any longer.

“I’m ready.” My legs begin to drop from his shoulders. But this man, this alpha, yanks my hips hard back to his mouth. It’s primal. Like an animal being interrupted while it feeds. He’s blacking out at the taste of me, eyes gone dark and foggy and blind with insatiable need. I have never seen anything so sexy.

Like a rubber band, my tension burns between my legs, at the base of my gut, coils tighter, twisting until I’m sure something is going to combust.

I’m grinding against his mouth now, those plush full lips, and Dessin lets out a low sound in the back of his throat, guttural and agonized. It pulls the last ribbon of my hindrance undone. I’m screaming as thundering pleasure washes over me, legs spasming over his back.

One large, powerful hand flattens over my stomach, lowering my bottom half back down to the bed. I’ve transformed from a solid to a liquid, melting across the sheets.

“I want you—I want you to make love to me,” I utter breathlessly.

A hand clenches around my chin, tilting my face up to look him in the eye.

“Are you certain that’s what you want? You can handle me inside of you?”

“Yes.”

Dessin towers over me, tossing his shirt to the floor, unzipping his white pants.

“I’ve waited so fucking long.” He takes another look at my spread legs with feverish longing. “To have you tighten around my cock. To fuck you until you remember me.”

I almost ask what he means—but his cock has sprung free, hard and enormous. I gulp or choke on my own saliva. I’m not sure which. My mouth waters at the sight. My blood, muscle, and bone crying out for it to fill me.

I nod my head, even though he hasn’t asked me anything.

“I’ll go slow,” he says, using his strong arms to lower himself, wedging his hips between my legs.

I’m panting, watching the tip nestle on top of my center. “Eyes on me, baby. I’ll let you watch me pull it in and out another time,” he commands, devastatingly deep.

“Okay.”

Slowly, Dessin nudges the head against my opening, working himself in as carefully as he can. And I’m needy, so unbelievably desperate to connect with him wholly. I’m undulating my hips against him, trying to speed him up.

“Skylenna,” he barks. “I’m working my way in so it won’t hurt as much.”

“I don’t care if it hurts.”

He blows out a pent-up breath. “You will.” And he’s in a solid inch, stretching me, not painful, but it is overwhelming.

Another inch. I hold my breath and he watches my reactions closely.

Halfway in and I shriek. A ripping of flesh. A sharp stab of pain. “Easy.”

He nods, stopping, letting me adjust. “God, look at you. So fucking beautiful. You’re trying so hard to take it all.”

I blink up at him, shifting my hips to let him know I’m ready for more. But now he’s retreating, my slickness making it easy for his cock to glide out. Yet not all the way. Another small thrust and he’s in. Retreats. Pushes back in a little farther. And he’s making a mess of me, or it’s the other way around. Because I’m dripping, soaking, lathering him in my aching need.

He’s almost all the way in, but he keeps going back, hesitant to fill me completely.

“Dess—” A wet, slick sound comes from him, pulling his cock out another inch, and his eyes lock with mine darkly.

“Fuck, Skylenna.” And I’m free-falling into his glazed eyes, his sudden feral need to take me in one bite. He isn’t thinking clearly, isn’t in control anymore as he pushes himself to the hilt hard enough that his hand finds my mouth, stifling the scream that tears out of me.

But it doesn’t hurt. It’s delirious ecstasy.

He withdraws again, only to slam back to the deepest spot of my insides. I cry out against his hand, still locked in the impenetrable gaze of his eyes.

I don’t know if it’s from the earlier stings of his entrance, or the fulfillment and captivating adoration of this man that we are closer than we have ever been—but I’m blinking away evidence of internal sobs.

His hand shifts away from my mouth, wiping away tears that run down the side of my face.

I want to tell him right now. How I really feel about him. I want him to tell me back. But as he pumps himself inside of me, over and over again at a slow and steady pace, I can see that look in his eyes. That yearning, that soul-shattering love. That man who will die for me. Who will tear down any man that wishes me harm.

His cock hits that spot that his fingers drummed against last time. I’m hissing as the coils inside me wind up, tighter and tighter, until I’m chasing that high, climbing that hill of pure bliss.

“I’ve never wanted anything more,” he growls, crashing into me until I’m teetering on the edge, begging for more. I’m clenching my inner muscles around his shaft, and all I can make out from him is a rough, throaty rumbling. “Jesus. You’re going to make me—”

But I’m already there, choking on my gasps as I whirl into climactic oblivion.

Dessin pauses to watch me before he unfolds. Before he attacks me in a vicious erotic frenzy, fucking me like a possessed man. Like an uncivilized barbarian.

It’s too much, pounding into my sensitive area until I’m blind with the need to release again. A muffled roaring sound fills my ears, and I’m falling again. But this time, he falls with me. Roaring into my neck as his arms and hands clamp around me as he erupts, going up in smoke and flames. And even as the climax passes over him, softening his muscles, loosening his grip. He still doesn’t let me go.

I hope he never will.