Her Reaper's Arms, Charlotte Boyett-Compo [world best books to read .TXT] 📗

of bird is this?” she asked.

“It is the Coure crow,” he replied, his teeth lightly clamped to her nipple. “It

symbolizes good judgment although there are those who would argue I possess such a

trait.”

She smiled. “What trait would you say you possess, milord?” she asked.

He snorted and released her nipple with a loud pop. “Stubbornness perhaps?”

“And are the Coure men known for being stubborn?” she inquired.

“Stubborn and willful, I’m told. The reason the Coure clan has the tattoo is because

of Beldyn Coure, the patriarch of our family. He had it inked on his cheek to denote that

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

he had fallen prey to the wiles of a designing woman by the name of Justine Crowe. She

all but destroyed the clan before he besieged her keep and took her captive, later

strangling her with his bare hands. To me, the tat symbolizes a man thinking with the

part of his anatomy that is the least wise of his organs.”

“I’ve heard each Reaper has his own facial tattoo,” she said. “What…?”

“Enough talk of other men, wench,” he said, dragging his body up hers, grinding

his hard cock against her pubic mound. “You need only think on one man and that is

the one about to make you a woman.” His amber eyes turned dark gold. “His woman.”

Lea gasped as he plucked at her nipples—first one then the other—with his teeth. It

was a heady sensation that held no hurt within it but sheer, mindful pleasure that sent

chills down her sides and made her belly clench. The sweep of his tongue swirling over

and over, around and around her swollen buds made her slam her hands to the sheets

to keep from brutally grabbing his hair. She grabbed handfuls of the rough cotton and

twisted.

“Ah, wench, that is nothing,” he drawled, and moved down her until he could flick

his tongue into the concavity of her navel. That too brought waves of shivering to her

body.

She could not have stopped him even if she had been of a mind to as he slid lower

still and his hot breath fanned across her nether curls. She raised her head to look down

at him as he buried his face against wiry hair, rubbing his whiskers against it as though

he were a cat marking his scent.

“You like that?” she asked.

“Shush,” he said.

He didn’t want to think. He wanted to act. He didn’t want to consider consequences

or penalties or what it was going to cost him to do what he had set his mind to. He

simply wanted to feel.

Lea Walsh would have been astounded to learn that the man whose hands were

molding her breasts so expertly as his breath mingled with her pubic hair was as much

a virgin as she. Though his staff had been suckled by many a woman, had been handled

by even more as they eased him—and at times jerked him—to pleasure, he had not once

slid that steely cock into a feminine sheath.

“You must never touch your staff except to hold it to relieve your bladder,” the brothers

had warned him when he had taken his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in that

lifetime before he had been reborn a Reaper. “To spill your seed is a wasteful sin and

punishable by being thrust into the fires of the Abyss.”

“Do not stroke your cock when you are in Reaper form!” Morrigunia had sternly told

him. “If you do, you will suffer My displeasure!”

While the Triune Goddess had implied it was all right to relieve his need if he were

in Transition, Bevyn had never once done as he’d seen animals do. He had never licked

that part of him when he was in wolf form. He thought it a disgusting thing and

morally wrong. That, Morrigunia had told him, was what whores were for.

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“But never stick your cock into a female unless you want her as your lifelong mate!” the

goddess had also warned.

With Lea’s warm, spicy scent in his nostrils, he knew this female was his. She had

been born to belong to him. He knew it as surely as he knew his heart was beating in

synchronized rhythm to hers. He needed no permission to take what was—by rights—

his, though there was no doubt in his mind that a price would be exacted.

He stroked his thumbs over her nipples—back and forth, back and forth and smiled

when she arched her hips up against his chin. Trailing his fingers down her chest, over

the sweet indention of her belly, across the soft flange of her hips, he molded his fingers

around her upper thighs, caressing her as he rubbed his chin against her mound.

“You smell so good,” he told her, once more finding her eyes locked on his. “I could

lie here all day.”

“We’d never get anything done like that,” she teased.

He smiled lazily and slid his hands to the insides of her thighs, feeling her shiver

delicately as he touched the sensitive flesh, kneading the smooth muscles. He nudged

her thighs farther apart until he could see the dark pink creases of her sex.

“That,” he said, easing a finger to her softness, “is what I want to devour.”

Lea gasped as he touched a part of her that sent goose bumps prickling all over her

skin. She writhed beneath that contact, feeling to the very marrow of her bones. “WWhat did you do?” she asked.

“This?” he asked, and began a slow, rhythmic circling with his thumb around

whatever it was he was touching.

“Aye!” she said with a hitching breath.

“So soft,” he whispered. “So supple.”

He stroked his thumb between one slick fold and then the other—slowly,

methodically, whisperlike, his nail grazing her flesh, bringing scent and moisture from

between her legs.

“Milord, please,” she said, her head whipping back and forth on the pillow. She

had no notion of what it was he was doing but it was pleasure-pain that was fast

controlling her every breath.

“Lie still, wench,” he ordered, and turned his hand palm up to slowly drag his

index and middle finger upward along the valley of her sex.

She wriggled,