Dark Tarot (Dark Carpathians)

She dug her nails into him, scored down his back, as he rode her mercilessly. She wanted this with him, this perfect torment, harder and faster until she didn’t know if it was heaven or hell, only that she didn’t want it to ever stop.

Her body seemed to pause for a moment. Take a breath. Then she was exploding, fragmenting into a million pieces, being thrown into some other place where her only anchor was Sandu. She felt her sheath clamp down like a vise on his cock, squeezing like a terrible fist, determined to milk him dry. It went on and on, ripple after powerful ripple, wave after wave. His cock jerked and pulsed hard, rocketing hot semen, coating the walls of her sensitive channel, triggering even more pulse-pounding orgasms.

For a time, there was only the sound of their labored breathing in the cave. Adalasia wasn’t certain she was really alive, and it didn’t matter if she’d gone out with Sandu inside her. It was the perfect way to go. There was magic in coming together, burning so out of control in a firestorm after nearly losing each other. Adalasia couldn’t help but feel a sense of overwhelming love, of power at the fact that she alone could bring this man to such a fever of intensity that his iron discipline was lost.

She nuzzled his chest, uncaring that his weight was heavy and there was no give in the floor of the cave. She could have adjusted that, but she didn’t bother. She liked being his. Feeling as if he were surrounding her with his size and the sheer strength of him. She kept her arms around him, holding him to her while he kissed her neck, tracing the path where his teeth had bitten her several times. She wondered if he had left marks behind. She had the feeling he had—and on purpose, too.

“I am heating the water in the pool,” he murmured against her neck.

“It’s already heated. I prepared in advance.” She was certain she’d thought of everything.

“I like very hot water.” He waved his hand toward the steaming pool.

Adalasia frowned, flicking her gaze up to his face. He wasn’t looking down at her but studying her neck as if it were some kind of artwork. “How hot?”

A faint smile touched his mouth. “Very hot. It will take away any soreness.”

“You can remove any soreness several different ways,” she pointed out, placing both hands on his chest to remind him to move off of her. “Super-hot water doesn’t need to touch my very sensitive skin. I’m not a lobster.”

“I have never understood the idea of boiling a lobster,” he confessed as he rolled off of her to lie on his back beside her.

“Don’t change the subject.” Adalasia turned her head to look at him, doing her best to look stern when he looked like sin. She melted every time she looked at him, wanting to give him anything he desired. He probably knew it, too. If he did know it, he didn’t make the mistake of smirking.

“You usually prefer to do things the human way.”

Of course he would throw that in her face. Did he have to look so gorgeous when he was sitting up, all those muscles rippling and that hair spilling around his face making him look like a fallen angel? Her body should have been sated. They’d had wild, primitive, crazy, feral sex, and yet just looking at him had more erotic images playing through her head, and her sheath pulsed and clenched.

“The human way doesn’t include being boiled alive. That is probably more in keeping with the Carpathian way, Sandu.” Keeping her hand low by her side, she waved it toward the steaming pool to lower the water temperature by a couple of degrees, just in case. She was fairly certain he had increased the temperature.

Sandu rose smoothly to his feet and reached for her, gathering her up and cradling her to his chest. “You face the Cave of Fire without flinching, but you balk at the thought of a little hot water.”

The laughter in his voice and eyes was her undoing. Before she could retort, he was kissing her, robbing her of all ability to think, let alone speak. He could kiss like sin. Perfection. The firestorm was back, the flames licking at her veins, lightning forking through her core so that she could feel pressure building all over again.

Then he was in the pool, wading with her into the center. Steam rose all around them. She could feel the heat seeping into her pores, adding to the feeling of being wrapped in that fiery hunger he could produce so easily in her. He lifted his head slowly, his black eyes still smoldering with those red flames.

“You are truly beautiful, ewal emninumam. The way you surrender to me is such a thing of beauty. I can only thank you. I needed to feel you give yourself to me.”