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

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 king. 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…”