Claiming Ecstasy Read online

  Claiming Ecstasy

  Madeline Pryce

  Jolie Dupree is prophesied to bring an end to the deadly war waging between the vampires and the Seelie court. Groomed from birth by a vicious mother, Jolie knows her future can only end in blood—and the murder of the one man she can’t resist. Consumed with guilt, Jolie can’t fight the lure of Nicolas Larkin, the vampire king. She returns to him over and over, every caress of pain and every stroke of pleasure drawing her deeper into the darkness. She must decide between the concrete and the chaos, the light and the dark, for her choice will tip the scales between good and evil, and quite possibly cost Jolie her soul.

  A Romantica® paranormal erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Claiming Ecstasy

  Madeline Pryce

  Chapter One

  Nicolas Larkin’s hot breath drifted across the back of my neck with each thrust of his cock. Panting. Moaning. Fucking. My skin pebbled with goose bumps despite the heat radiating between our writhing bodies. With a twist of his cruel, elegant fingers on my clit, he wrenched a cry of tortured pleasure free.

  I braced myself against the abrasive stone balcony scraping my tummy with every thrust. Far below, the black Irish Sea churned and crashed against jagged rock. Nicolas wound the wavy strands of my long, dark hair around his hand and pulled, forcing my head back with a growl. Pricks of pain stung my scalp and I soared with ecstasy. Frigid ocean spray misted the air and dampened my exposed flesh. The scent hit me—salt, seaweed, brine and something undeniably fresh. The aroma was bracing, cold and magnetic. It cut through my bones and slapped me in the face.

  I was a liar. A whore. A harbinger of death. Everything my mother had told me I’d grow up to be.

  Soon, I am going to be a murderer.

  My palms sweat against the rail I clutched. My hammering pulse kicked up its beat with such fierce determination it had my head throbbing. A different kind of pain filled me, one that cut so deep I felt it in the depths of my beaten soul.

  He’s a monster, Jolie. I recalled the sharp, burning snap of the whip—how the sound had cracked. Thin, razor-sharp straps of braided leather sliced through flesh and I jerked under its assault. You are weak. A disgrace. Mother paced around me, the points of her stilettos clicking across shimmering white granite, the tails of her weapon painting a circle of blood in her wake. I see the way you look at him, you filthy whore. You think I don’t know you let him into your body? I saw you!

  Crack.

  He will slay all of us unless you stop him. You. Must. Kill. Him. Death before dishonor, it is our code! Searing agony punctuated each word. The Seelie court stood and stared, their judgment adding to my humiliation. Only when you destroy him can you claim your place among us, until then you are nothing. The queen’s words, beaten into my flesh, were ones I could never forget. Not even while I fucked my enemy.

  Every second I spent in his dark embrace was a betrayal of everything I had ever learned. He was an assassin. He was a stealer of innocence. He was the vampire who had destroyed generations of my race and taken vengeance on the people I was supposed to care about. He was the man who’d destroy us all if I didn’t stop him.

  Tonight—the eve of my twenty-first birthday—either I cut out my lover’s heart or I started a battle that would decimate our warring races.

  Kill one to save thousands.

  A sob tore free and mixed with the decadent pleasure twining through my limbs. I reveled in every touch. Each thrust. This was my last liaison with Nicolas—one way or another, one of us was going to die. Months ago I’d made a promise to myself that I’d stop going to him, that I’d sever the connection between us before I couldn’t follow through with my duty. The Seelie had one motto—death before dishonor. Every encounter with the vampire king was supposed to be the last time I used him to slake the cycle of gnawing self-hatred eating me alive.

  I was nothing but a whore and a liar.

  “You are mine, Jolie,” Nicolas whispered, digging deeper into my soul and bringing me back to him.

  These words, spoken in his heavy Irish brogue, increased my arousal and I surrendered. To this. To him. If only for a little while. He took away the pain and the emptiness. He soothed the wounds Mother had forever branded me with, even before she found out I’d let him defile me. For these few precious hours I wasn’t the fairy princess my people despised, but someone desired. Wanted.

  He drew his mouth along my neck, teeth nipping the pulsing vein before he moved higher. His voice was a sexy rasp against my ear. “I feel the way you preen under my touch. See how you tremble, hear your moans. You’re so desperate for me, lass, so hot.” He pulled out of my pussy, slammed back inside. “So wet. I could fuck you for eternity.”

  Every word fluttered like silk and caressed me from within. He had no boundaries. Nothing was forbidden to him—not even the tattered remains of my spirit that broke a little more with each passing day. I was desperate for him, proof that my people had every right to ostracize me. A true Seelie would have rather died than live with personal dishonor.

  My hand slipped on the railing. With a strong, hot palm on the back of my neck, Nicolas readjusted his hold and forced my torso over the terrace. Serrated teeth rose from the inky water and for a moment I envisioned my death—the only way I could truly be free of guilt. He bent over me and the tight, slick muscles of his chest rubbed against my back. He thrust hard. Harder. Each flex of his hips commanded my body to submit to his will. Our skin slapped together, an erotic accompaniment to the cresting waves. His cock was a driving force cutting me open, splitting me in half. The sensation was agony, like the fiery pits of hell, but wonderful because I deserved to be burned.

  A clenching ache moved through my stomach and the space between my legs became wetter. Stars danced behind my closed lids. I cried out. “Harder, Nicolas. Fuck me harder.”

  “Mmmm… You’re such a naughty girl,” he purred into my ear. “I know how much you crave my cock, my fangs. You need me. Come for me. I want to hear you scream.”

  My pulse sped. Deep inside, my womb contracted and I fought it. I might go to hell for my twisted desires, but I wouldn’t come at his command. To give in would be surrender. The only thing that was truly mine in this world was this—my time with him. I decided where. I decided when. This small semblance of control kept me sane.

  I shook with the effort of holding back my body’s natural reaction. “No.”

  Nicolas curved his hand around my neck until he cupped my throat. He pulled me from the railing, cutting off my air supply, and trailed his rough touch from my hip to my stomach. He held me closer, tighter, stroked his index finger over my ribs on a deliberate path to my breasts. In an expert caress, he rolled the erect bud of my nipple between his fingers and pinched. Bolts of fire shot straight to my quivering pussy. My eyelids fluttered. I was close. Damn him.

  A surge of jolting, electric power licked across my skin and signaled his transformation. He was no longer a man. I didn’t need to see him to know that his eyes had changed from electric blue to gold. His teeth were sharp points against my shoulder blade. I gasped. Nicolas knew my pleasure didn’t come from any place that was good.

  My pleasure was darkness and pain, the only things I knew.

  He bit down, not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough for the tips of his fangs to score my flesh. In case I’d forgotten, Nicolas reminded me of what he was—a vampire, a demon, the creature I’d been promised to long before I was born. I was fucking the person my people called a monster and I loved it.

  Two hundred years ago, in an act of desperation, the fae had negotiated a peace treaty with the vampires who hunted them into near extinction. The price was my unborn soul—not yet in existence, but prophesied by the vampire k
ing. On my twenty-first birthday, I was to be his wife and the contract they’d sworn a blood oath on would be fulfilled. Too bad for the Seelie I’d been born generations too early. Grown up too quick. My life, my destiny, my mere presence signified the end. Once Nicolas had me, what would stop him from demanding more? New negotiations would begin tomorrow—if Nicolas still lived.

  My Seelie kin—the ones who held themselves in such high moral regard—devised a backup plan. Mother had amassed an army of Unseelie goblins, drunk on the magic of my blood—the only thing she’d said I was good for. Where the vampire king saw my eventual birth, seers beholden to my mother saw my betrayal.

  Tonight I was to prove my allegiance.

  I pushed back on a desperate moan and forced Nicolas’ cock deeper—needing the connection between us to breathe. I was trapped, pinned within the cage of his hard, muscled chest and the iron bands of his arms. The balcony was no longer close enough to touch. The concrete was gone and in its absence, only chaos remained.

  “Yes. Gods, yes,” I screamed as the ecstasy numbed my toes. My voice was raspy, seductive. I barely recognized it as my own.

  I was lost in sensation. My death—the true end of my life—beckoned as the tight walls of my pussy pulsed around his cock, the first tremors of my orgasm threatening to sneak up on me. Sometimes, when he fucked me, it felt fatal—this time it would be. The more pleasure, the more pain I gave into with Nicolas, the tighter the black fist of death squeezed around my soul. He controlled the fist, choked my essence until the pressure was all consuming. One closing finger at a time, my life force was being extinguished. I felt it and welcomed it. I was sick. Twisted. I was in love with my rival.

  Each beat of my heart came harder. Each breath I took was shallower than the last. I drifted in thoughts of death, of the freedom it would bring.

  I should die. The thought was punctuated with the hard, steady thrust of his cock.

  Nicolas forced my head to the side and dominated my mouth with his. I gripped the back of his head, slid my tongue against his and deepened our kiss. I couldn’t kill him but knew I had to, not just for my people but for self-preservation. My love for him was more than an obsession. My want for him went beyond my control. He was the dark to my light. I needed him like air—like water. No one except him understood how perverse I really was. No one except him understood me at all. No one except him cared.

  Kill me. The plea burned the tip of my tongue.

  “I can show you death, lover, if that’s what you want.” Nicolas growled and turned me to face him.

  The dark night brightened with electric light, exposing the barren balcony layered in smooth gray brick. The ground rumbled from the sky’s fury. The sudden burst of light let me see that Nicolas’ heavy-lidded eyes were amber with flecks of golden, swirling power. His too-handsome face was a mask of perfection. The high cheekbones combined with the sweep of black, curling hair should have been feminine but his square, muscled jaw was too chiseled to be anything but pure, devastating male.

  Nicolas gripped my thigh and drew it up, over his hip. He didn’t enter me right away. Our gazes clashed—his full of furious desire, mine of guilty acceptance. He slid back inside one slow inch at a time and the anxiety flowing through me eased. Carefully, with more tenderness then anyone had ever shown me, he guided me onto my back atop the cool, hard floor. The chaos inside my head disappeared. He filled me, stretched me again and again. The tips of my nipples scraped against the hard wall of his chest. I knew from the smug tilt of his sensual mouth and the satisfied gleam lighting his eyes that he read my relief. This only added to my shame.

  Nicolas drew a line along the corner of my eye with his thumb and stared at me. “I could drown in your eyes. They are so pure, so innocent. No matter how hard I fuck you, how badly I hurt you, they still shine with a desire that burns brighter then the Irish moss your irises resemble.”

  I shook my head, hated his attempt to make this anything other than a primal meeting of bodies. “They are just green.”

  He tried to smile at me, I think, but his lips curved up into something that was more a snarl of sharp, gleaming fangs. Doubt crept in. Mother’s words haunted me. He’s using you, you stupid bitch. His fancy words were a game, a battle of wills we’d been playing since he’d snuck into my bedroom on my eighteenth birthday three years ago. It had been the best and worst day of my life. For the first time in my existence, I’d been wanted. I’d been disgustingly easy to corrupt. And when he was done and gone, his cold seed dripping down my legs to mix with my virgin’s blood, I’d never felt more isolated.

  He’s using you to get what he wants. Fight him. Kill him.

  “If you’d stay with me, you’d never be alone again. No one would hurt you. At my side, you’d be a queen.” His words compelled me to trust him. To give my soul over to him.

  It was all a game.

  I sneered. “Until you tire of me and move on to your next plaything. Shut up and fuck me.”

  Nicolas growled and forced his consuming magic into me, connecting us together not just physically but spiritually. I cried out. The biting, prickling pain of his invasion started in my toes, moved up my legs and slammed deep into my core. The sensation of his power felt so fucking good I couldn’t help but writhe on the ground beneath him like a bitch in heat. I, Jolie Dupree, a fairy princess, heir to the Seelie court, was getting rutted by a beast. Blasphemy.

  I’d been taught to fear my future vampire husband. My nanny, ignorant of my sexual escapades, had spoken at great lengths about what would happen when my betrothed came to collect me—rape, pain, acts of sexual depravity that I should endure with quiet acquiescence before I plunged the knife deep.

  Nicolas’ eyes lit with amused pleasure. Had he read my mind? Did he know I was to kill him? Shivers of fear raced down my spine and sharpened the edge of my arousal.

  Before I could move, he cuffed my wrists with his hands and pinned me down. Nicolas’ mouth hovered over mine, his every breath painting my parted lips a tease—a warning.

  “If only your dear, sweet nanny knew how you begged to be fucked, to be hurt, how you cry out for more.” His voice lowered. “I know about the army, about your little quest…”

  My heart stopped. I struggled against his impenetrable hold. He knew.

  “Stay out of my head.”

  He twisted his hips, plunged deep, and I moaned in tortured pleasure.

  “Never.” Nicolas shoved into my psyche with metaphorical hands.

  I looked down as he used his magic to break my spirit. It seemed real, corporal. Ropy lines of dazzling blue light skipped over my skin, sank under it, touched things never meant to be caressed. My flesh was so fragile, so pale, its bluish, almost silver hue was visible through my skin, moving in patterns. An illusion, but the feeling was terrifying.

  “Stop,” I cried out, the sensation overwhelming.

  This wasn’t pleasure. This wasn’t pain. This was Nicolas—sick, twisted and wicked. This was why I secretly loved him. This was why I was prepared to do anything to please him. That thought scared me more than anything he could, or would, do to me.

  He let go of my wrists, bent my knees up to my stomach and resumed thrusting his long, hard cock in and out of me. A deep rumbling vibrated from his chest. Our skin slapped together with a wet, slick sound that battled the crashing sea around us. His pale skin was luminescent in the darkness. Rippling muscles tightened with every grunt and I couldn’t look away.

  With every thrust of his hips, he bumped the mouth of my cervix. The pain of him piercing me so deeply wasn’t enough for him. He steadied my face with his strong hand and I knew it was because he wanted to see the blissful agony making my eyes shine with tears. I didn’t want him to see me so vulnerable. I turned away, deliberately giving him my cheek. My defiance made his cock pulse once, twice.

  We were so tightly joined that his growl echoed through me. He grabbed my face and forced me to look at him.

  “You won’t kill me.” His words
were a statement.

  Even Nicolas didn’t believe I could fulfill my destiny. Anger simmered.

  “I will.” I lifted my hand to stop him from holding my cheeks, but my fingers weren’t long enough to close around the thickness of his wrist that I tried to pull away. With a quick bark of cruel laughter, he squeezed tighter and I gasped.

  Still laughing, he pursed my lips together and held my unwilling gaze. “I do believe in you. I believe that you are mine. Tell me what you want and it’s yours. You only have to ask. Stand by my side, make a choice to join me and I’ll never deny you anything.”

  Darkness filled his eyes. An unruly lock of curls fell from the tie holding his hair back. It fluttered across his forehead and tickled my lips. I’d never seen him look more beautiful or more dangerous. I’d never seen him look so sincere.

  “I want to live. Living means you have to die. There is no other way,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” he hissed. “Who do you fight for, Jolie? That bitch mother of yours who has beat you down at every turn? Your so-called people who spit at your feet when you walk by? You don’t belong with them.”

  I moved to push him off me—I’d had enough of this game for tonight. Nicolas was quicker. Lifting my arms up, over my head, he pinned me to the floor. The second he removed his fingers from around my wrists, I rose to fight him. I was met with resistance. My arms were bound. When did that happen? I looked first to my left, then my right. As I turned my head frantically back and forth, my long, dark brown hair became whips against my cheeks. Brilliant silver manacles pinned me in place.

  I no longer felt Nicolas’ power inside my body. It had manifested itself and I was too distracted to notice. Brilliant coiled snakes were etched into the silver. The chains weren’t real, but I was bound by his magic, stretched out before him. Helpless, just as he preferred me.

  He’d gotten inside my head in a way he hadn’t been able to before. The authority he would wield over me, the prophesied destruction my eventual desires would cause, was the very reason that my mother had tried to drown me when I was born. She’d known that one day Nicolas Larkin, Vampire King, would possess my tender soul and lead everyone to their deaths.