Madness of the Horde by Zoey Draven

Chapter Thirty

Vienne looked at me steadily. For once, she seemed…calm. Unafraid of my temper. Perhaps she knew by now that just because I was quick to anger, that anger did not mean I would hurt her. That anger wasn’t even directed at her. It was directed at me. Myself.

She surprised me—my little leikavi—when she reached across the table and took my hand. Her touch was soothing and I felt my shoulders loosen. I watched as her eyes darted over my features, studying me, before they trailed to my lips.

“I dreamed of you when you were young,” she whispered, as if speaking too loudly would crumble the careful sense of peace she was building within me. She wasn’t using her gift, however. Just her gentle touch, which I was coming to crave. “Here. In the eastlands. Your first ungira kill.”

I knew the memory she spoke of. It rose in my mind. That sun-filled day, Devina’s laughter as we walked further and further away from our encampment, our souls filled with the desire to roam and explore.

“And I knew your name,” Vienne said quietly, “because your sister was screaming it because she was so frightened for you.”

I shut my eyes, pain blooming in my chest. I swore I could still feel the slicing cut of the ungira’s talon across my belly—where there was a small scar to remember that day—but in reality, it was only my loss, my grief.

Some days, losing Devina, losing my family, was still as fresh as the moment after I’d watched her die—the moment after I’d felt her die inside my own soul.

“Davik,” she whispered.

I opened my eyes and found Vienne was next to me, kneeling by my side, her hand on my face. When had she moved?

“I’m sorry,” she said.

But I didn’t think it was for the stolen memory, the inadvertent intrusion.

I think she knew. That Devina, my sister—my twin—was no longer alive.

I’d been wrong that day. Because though we’d shared glory, Devina and I, we hadn’t shared death. She’d gone ahead of me. Left me behind.

I made a sound in the back of my throat as her fingers trailed down the scar on my cheek. Her touch was still gentle but I needed it to be rough. I needed it to hurt.

My jaw tightened.

“I need you, kalles,” I rasped, my brow furrowed, my lips turned down into a scowl. “Right now.”

Her breath hitched at whatever she heard in my words. She knew what I meant.

“Davik,” she whispered, unsure of my mood, hesitant.

With a growl, I pulled her into my naked lap, my cock thickening, readying. She gasped when I suckled her nipples between my lips, through the thin material of the tunic she’d stolen from my chests. Her hands trembled before they rested along my shoulders, before she stroked her fingertips along a slab of muscle there.

Still so fucking gentle.

Frustration and want and need and lust and anger built up in my chest.

Still, I suckled on her nipples, wetting the material until it was transparent, until she was panting from it. After a moment, when I pushed up the hem, when I swiped my finger across her slit and found her wet, I didn’t want to wait anymore.

I froze when she reached between us and took my cock in one of her soft hands. Tingles exploded up my spine as she stroked once, from the root to my very tip, where the beginnings of my seed had begun to pool.

My back arched against the pole I was leaning on, a rough cry tearing from my throat.

She was biting her lip, her eyes half-lidded. She wanted this just as much as I did, this sensual little creature who terrified me, who enthralled me.

“Get me in you now,” I growled roughly when she stroked again. “Or I will come all over your thighs.”

My grip on her waist tightened, half-afraid she’d pull away, and I needed this.

“Hanniva,” I rasped, my eyes catching on hers. Begging now. “Please.”

Vienne took a shuddering breath before I felt her shift. She might have been inexperienced with sex but she was curious. About me. About this.

My cock slipped between her lips and it took a few swipes against her before her body gave…and I sunk inside.

“Lysi,” I hissed, even when I felt her tense around me. Still tender?

But she didn’t pause. She rocked her hips over me steadily and slowly. Maddeningly. A constant growl had risen from my throat by the time I was seated all the way inside her cunt.

“Ahh,” she cried when I lifted her slightly, when I slid out and then thrust back inside, hard enough that her breasts bobbed underneath her tunic.

Lysi.

Thiswas what I needed, what I craved. A distraction. A moment away from old memories.

And yet, sex brings old memories too, I knew. Memories best left forgotten.

I could not win either way.

And yet…

Vienne’s moans and hitched breaths filled my ears…and they were like a balm on the ragged edges of those memories, dulling them until I felt more confident that I could keep them at bay. Her grey eyes were luminous and wide as they stared into mine.

The longer I looked into them, however, the more panic began to rise.

Something was happening between us, something I didn’t think I could stop, something that had sparked from the first moment I’d seen her—covered in filth and frightened in Dothik.

Nik, nik, nik.

To keep it away, I thrust harder into her body and a breath whistled out from her lungs. I pounded between her thighs, our flesh slapping together hard, filling the voliki with the sounds of mating and lust and anger.

“Davik,” she breathed. I growled when I felt her hands clasp my face and I tried to shake her off, not meeting her eyes. But she pulled me to her as I drove mercilessly into her until I was forced to look at her and look deep. “Gentle. Please. I know you can be.”

My chest expanded with a long draw of air. I stilled inside her, leaning forward to press my forehead to the side of her neck, my shoulders shaking. Her hands were stroking down my cheeks, drifting towards my jawline. Then down my neck, my chest. So soft and sweet.

I can give her this, I thought.

I decided right then that I wouldn’t fear this, that I wouldn’t fear her.

With a deep huff against her skin, I stood, still deep inside her body. She gasped, clinging to me.

I brought us down to the furs on my bed, tugging up her tunic until she was naked underneath me.

“You touch me like no one else has before,” I rasped quietly to her, pressing a kiss to her collarbone, reaching down to widen her thighs. I withdrew from her, holding my breath, the feel of her sublime.

She gave me a shy smile that thudded deep in my chest.

“I…I like touching you,” she said as her palms trailed down my chest. “Is it okay that I do?”

“Lysi,” I hissed, feeling like her hands were stroking every inch of me.

She gasped, a lush cry falling from her lips when I thrust forward slowly, filling her, stretching her.

“Good?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes falling shut when my dakke pressed against the bundle of nerves between her legs.

“Gentle,” I murmured, pressing more kisses to her flesh. Her neck, her breasts, before finding her lips. “Lysi?”

Her eyes met mine as I kissed her slowly.

“Yes,” she whispered against me.

I wondered if this was how wild pyroki felt before they were tamed. I thought of Nillima, my own pyroki, how I’d found her in the wildlands, injured, alone, scared, rejected by her mother. I’d brought her back and though she’d nearly tried to kill me in her fright in the days afterwards, I cared for her until she learned to trust me.

I had the strangest sense that Vienne was doing the same thing to me. Taming me with her gentle touches and her gentle, knowing eyes and her soft smiles. I was rebelling against her, lashing out at her, fighting against what I truly wanted: to give in, to find peace.

I found I wanted it.

I wanted her to tame me.

So, I stroked her body with mine. I slid deep, I groaned into her skin, I felt her hair and her nipples glide over my chest, I tasted her lips and her tongue and felt her gasp into me, filling me with her breath.

Before long, I felt her tightening. Her little claws were beginning to dig into my shoulders and I huffed, my pace increasing, giving her long, full strokes of my cock.

When she began to come, I pulled back to look down at her features, knowing what I would find. There was a brief smile—that smile that sizzled in my blood—before her lips parted, her eyes closed, and then she was deep in the pleasure of her orgasm.

That smile triggered my own. She took me deeper inside her, pulling and demanding my seed, and I gave it to her, bellowing out my release, feeling it burst from me.

Pleasure from sex had always been fleeting but this continued for long, long moments and when it was finally done, I dropped down beside her, pulling her against me, shuddering.

I waited for the restlessness to come, as it always did. I waited for my blood to feel like it was bubbling under my skin, as it always did.

Only it didn’t come.