Chapter 147: Don’t you want me?
Chapter 147
Lucian froze, looking down at Isabella. She wasn’t pale with death but still. "I was killing you, Isabella. Look at you... you can barely stand."
"I feel... I feel amazing," she countered softly, pushing herself off the wall, her movements fluid and predatory in a way they had never been before.
The golden light in her eyes flared as she stepped toward him, the water splashing around her ankles.
She reached out, her hands sliding over his bare, scarred chest, reaching for the back of his neck, pulling him down until their lips were inches apart.
The scent of her—jasmine, blood, and a new sharp of power—was more intoxicating than the blood had been.
"Lucian," she moaned his name, the sound vibrating through his chest. "Kiss me." She didn’t wait for him to find his resolve. Her mouth crashed against his with an unbridled hunger.
The copper tang of Isabella’s blood was still on Lucain’s lips, a forbidden vintage that set his nerve endings on fire all over again.
He tried to keep his hands flat against the cold marble of the shower wall, tried to maintain the crumbling wall of his restraint, but Isabella was a wildfire, and he was nothing but dry timber.
Her hands moved from his neck and tangled into his hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer until there wasn’t a whisper of air between them.
Her body, which moments ago had been swaying with exhaustion, was now vibrating with an unnatural, electric heat.
"Isabella," he groaned against her lips, his hands finally betraying him. They slid from the wall to her waist, his fingers digging into the damp fabric of her shirt, pulling her up and into him.
"You don’t... you don’t know what this is. The blood... it’s talking for you."
"Let it talk," she rasped, her eyes snapping open, the molten gold of her irises glowing even brighter in the dim, steamy light of the ensuite.
She broke the kiss only to drag her lips across his jaw, her breath hot against the cold skin of his ear.
A low moan started in her chest—a sound that made the Sovereign in him roar in response. It was the call of a mate, a frequency of power that bypassed his mind and went straight to his instincts, aka his dick.
"Kiss me again," she commanded, her voice dropping into a whimper. "Stop thinking and feel me, Lucian." She moaned his name, her damp shirt had slipped entirely from one shoulder, and as she arched into him, her bare breasts—taut and flushed from the heat of the shower—pressed firmly against the scarred, cool expanse of his chest.
Her hardened nipples grazed his skin, a friction so agonizingly perfect that Lucian’s head snapped back against the tile, his eyes rolling shut as he fought the surge of lust that threatened to incinerate his remaining logic.
"Isabella... stop," he managed to choke out, though the words sounded more like a plea than a command.
She didn’t stop. If anything, his resistance seemed to fuel the fire dancing in her eyes. She pressed harder into him, one leg rising to his hip. Lucian unknowingly hooked one hand to her raised knee, pulling her flushed against him.
Isabella’s hips began grinding into his with a desperation that made the blood in his veins turn to molten lead.
She was practically throwing herself at him, her hands roaming over his wet shoulders, her lips trailing fire along the column of his throat.
"I don’t want to stop," she whimpered against his skin, the sound vibrating through his marrow. "I want you. All of you. Right now, Lucian. Please..."
Her hand traveled down, sliding over his damp stomach and lower, until her small, warm palm cupped the heavy, aching length of him through his wet trousers.
Lucian let out a groan of pure, unadulterated pleasure. The contact was electric, a jolt that nearly buckled his knees. He was rock-hard, straining against the fabric, his body screaming for the release she was offering so freely.
Every time she ground her hips against his, the friction of her damp, thin shirt against his bare skin felt like a brand.
His hand, acting on an instinct that predated his own crown, tightened around her raised knee, pulling her leg higher up his hip until the center of her heat was pressed flush against the rigid, pulsing evidence of his own want.
He was drowning. For centuries, Lucian had prided himself on his control—the Great Mask that allowed him to stare down councils and monsters alike—but here, under the flickering light of the bathroom and the golden gaze of his mate, that mask just was dissolving.
"Isabella, look at me," he gasped but Isabella wasn’t interested in his warnings. Her pupils were blown wide.
She let out a needy sound that started in her chest and ended against the pulse point of his throat.
Her hand, which had been cupping him through the wet fabric of his trousers, shifted. Lucian’s breath hitched, his entire body locking into a singular, agonizing point of focus. He felt her small, nimble fingers find the metal tab of his zipper.
The sound of the metal sliding down was a gunshot in the silence of his logic.
Zip.
The cool air of the room hit the skin of his lower abdomen as the fly parted, but it was immediately replaced by the searing, direct heat of her palm.
Isabella didn’t hesitate. Her hand slid beneath the waistband of his underwear, her fingertips grazing the very top of his length.
Lucian let out a shaky roar of pleasure, his spine arching as a jolt of pure electricity traveled from her touch straight to the fangs in his gums.
"Isabella... stop... we can’t..." He tried to pull his head away, but she followed him, her teeth grazing his earlobe, her breath hitching in a way that told him she was just as close to the edge as he was.
"Why?" she moaned, her fingers dipping lower, her palm beginning to slide over him, slicking with the friction of their proximity.
"You want me. I can feel it. Lucian. Give me this." Isabella leaned back just enough to look him in the eyes, her lips parted and wet, her chest heaving so hard her bare breasts were slicked with the spray of the shower.
"Please," she whimpered, and that single word—that note of genuine, raw vulnerability—was what finally reached through the haze of his arousal.
She wasn’t herself. The Isabella who had challenged him in the North Wing, the Isabella who had looked at him with wary, intelligent brown eyes—she was buried under a chemical surge of Sovereign-mate energy.
If he took her now, in the wreckage of a room he had destroyed, while she was literally bleeding from the neck because of him... he would never be able to look at her again without seeing a victim.
He wouldn’t be her mate. He would be her master. And that was the one thing Lucian refused to be.
Her hand began to slide deeper, her fingers curling to fully encircle him, preparing to pull him free from the confines of his clothes.
Lucain moved, he physically pushed himself back, his boots slipping on the wet marble as he created a empty space between them.
The loss of Lucain’s contact snapped Isabella’s eyes open. She froze, her hand still hovering in the empty air where he had been a second before.
The golden light in her eyes flickered, a flash of hurt and profound confusion crossing her features.
"Lucian?" she whispered, her voice small and trembling. She looked down at her empty hands, then back up at him, her lips quivering.
"Did I... did I do something wrong? Don’t you want me?"