Claiming the Prince: Book One by Cora Avery Page A

torrent. He towed her against him, dragging her into the pulsing current of his body, holding her there, drowning her in his nectar sweetness. The dizzy churn of their breath meeting, mingling, of his tongue sweeping between her lips, stole the air from her lungs and almost stole her away from her senses. The thirst inside her suddenly returned, greedy and raw. In his arms, she plunged, diving straight into the silent depths of darkness where nothing, no one, existed but them.
    How easy it was to lose all rational thought to a Prince, especially this Prince. Riker had never kissed her this way. He’d never really wanted her, only been drawn to her because of what they were. But there was no doubt, as wave after wave of need washed over her, that Endreas’s desire was real. And she knew that he felt her heat flowing back into him. There was just one thing holding her back.
    She ripped free and punched him in the face, knocking him flat on his back and into the mud.
    He groaned, cupping his jaw.
    She kicked him in the side. He grimaced and rolled over. She ripped her finger-knives from his hand and jammed them on. Pushing him onto his back once more, she straddled him, blades drawn and held up by her shoulders.
    He ran his fingers lightly over his jaw, but his eyes were bright, dark as they were, and she could feel them tracing the lines of her body. He smiled.
    She snapped all of her knives away, except one. Her wolf blade.
    She drove it into his shoulder.
    He cried out, hands locking around her waist, but he didn’t try to throw her or even resist.
    Leaning over him, she let the knife retract slowly.
    He bared his teeth as the blade left his body. The hot metallic tang of blood mixed with his sweet and cool scent. His eyes went hazy for a second, but then refocused, sharper than ever.
    He seized her face and kissed her again, harder, biting her lip. She shoved him back. The mud splattered onto his face, clinging to his hair. He chuckled.
    “You’re sick,” she said, breathless from his kiss.
    “A little bit,” he admitted, still smiling, pushing his hips up against her. She held back the sound that almost escaped her, but her eyes fluttered as another aching surge ran through her.
    She crushed her hand down on his wounded shoulder. He growled, starting to push back against her, until her wolf knife pressed to his throat.
    “Tell me what you really want,” she said.
    “I told you.”
    “There’s more than that.”
    “You don’t think you’re enough, magpie?”
    “Why aren’t you with Lavana? Weren’t you her Prince?”
    His expression hardened and smoothed. His eyes went still like the water at the bottom of a deep well. “I am no Pixie Prince,” he said.
    Before she could ask what he meant, his hand shot between them. He grabbed her wrist and flipped her over. Mud oozed under her, soaking into her clothes as his weight pressed onto her. He seized her other wrist and pinned both of her hands above her head. Had she been in better shape, she would’ve been able to stop him. But as his tongue ran up her neck, his hand cupping her breast, his thumb grazing the pliant tip, hardening it, she forgot about fighting, about the mud, and just about everything else.
    “I will take Lavana if I must,” he said, “but I like you better.”
    She snapped out of the fevered fog he’d cast over her. “You have no idea how to talk to women, do you?”
    “No,” he said with a smile. “They usually just give me what I want without forcing me to listen to their insipid thoughts.”
    “God, you’re an asshole.”
    “No, I’m an Elf.”
    She shoved him away. Or more precisely, he allowed her to shove him away. Scrambling to her feet, she looked him over again as he rose, languidly, to face her.
    Sputtering, she said, “That’s not—you can’t be—”
    “Have you ever met an Elf?” he asked. “Or even seen one?”
    Wiping the lingering tingle of his tongue from her neck, she said, “No. Of course not.”
    He