His face pulled back from my needy lunge, my whimpering voice. He grunted, gripping under me to grab handfuls of my ass and slam me on his lap.
I didn’t know what I was doing, I was inexperienced, but the throbbing of his big cock inside me, filling me, showed me I was doingsomethingright.
I wailed, ready for another orgasm, encircling my thick legs around his torso and squeezing—
And Lukain froze.
My eyes shot open. A strange expression passed over his beautiful features. It was close to confusion, or distaste, as my blood trickled past his wet lips, down his chin.
“M-Master?” I stammered.
“Nngh,” he let out, but it was not a sound of his own orgasm. It was a grunt of . . . something else. He shook his head, blinking his eyes rapidly, and then smiled at me, regaining his wits. “Apologies, little grimmer.”
“Are you all right?”
“Just high from your essence. Where were we?”
I smiled at him.
He slammed into me again, humming at the way my curves jiggled on his lap. His hands curled around my back and he brought me up so I could properly ride him.
“Fuck, you feel so perfect, Sephania. I wish we could do this forever.” His voice was heated, rasping for release.
I nodded, unable to use my words as the pure pleasure of his cock drilling inside me made everything else go blank. I dug my forehead into the crook of his shoulder.
We lost ourselves together the next time I planted my ass on his lap, in a surge of curses and moans that changed my life forever.
Because I knew what Ineedednow . . . even more than freedom.
Chapter 20
Three things haunted me from that evening: the grotesque splaying and feasting of Kemini’s body on the table; Jinneth’s sudden murder of Aelin; the quickness with which I fell for Lukain Pierken.
In the weeks following, I would dream of all three at various times. Interspersed with the nightmares was the strange bloody sunflower dream. I began to wonder what its relevance was.A vision of the future? A metaphor?
Becoming a vampire was not something I wanted . . . and yet, seeing Manor Marquin and its splendor and audacity showed me there were worse fates.
Our group of eight Grimsons had dwindled to five when we left the manor. The ride back to the Firehold and the grime of Nuhav was a gloomy affair. My Holdmates remained quiet most the time, locked in their own thoughts with their own opinions on what we’d all just witnessed.
It felt we left Olhav on baited breath, simply content with getting out of there alive. The shadowgala in the ballroom had not exploded into a full-blown orgy by the time I awoke in a pampered bedroom on the second level.Or perhaps I missed it. I was getting my own . . . affairs in order, after all.
The other gloomy thought likely keeping my Holdmates quiet was the notion thatthiswas our lives. The five of us had reached the pinnacle of our fates as Grimsons. We would either die in the ring or be chosen by a vampire as a breeding mare and nothing else.
No human was ever given status or position in Olhav. It just wasn’t done, Lukain had explained to us, because they saw us as animals to suit their purposes and nothing else. All that dark thinking had been abstract until the night of my first shadowgala.
At least I have Lukain to lean on,I thought as the carriage trundled through the southern Olhavian countryside. The thought of that man’s skin against mine—the way we had fallen into each other—made a small smile curl my downcast face.
“What’s the smile for?” Rirth snapped from the other bench. His face was bruised, jaw locked tight in contemplation and barely restrained anger.
My smile flipped into a frown. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t get on her case, Rir,” Helget sighed. “Any smile is a blessed thing in that hellhole. We should all be so lucky.”
Rirth scoffed and sat back, crossing his arms in defiance. I glanced over with an appreciative nod to Helget. I hadn’t expected her to come to my defense.
“I’m surprised you were not chosen, Helg,” I said.
“They had you naked, tugged between two of them,” Rirth cut in, agreeing.
