I fall into that look like it’s my salvation, nuzzling his hand.
Cupping it closer.
He groans, brows bunching. “You’re magnificent.”
My heart skips a beat.
The words …
The look in his eyes …
The way he’s holding my face …
I could revel in him for eternity and never stop marveling. More evidence that whatever pulled Elluin away hurt.
I lift a brow—a pitiful effort to lighten the mood. “You’re biased, Sire. And perhaps forgetting the fact that I almost hacked you open more than once.”
“No. I’m fucking obsessed,” he growls, wrapping his other hand around my face and jerking me forward.
Our lips crush together, and I swallow his guttural sounds as I grind against his solid length, rekindling that ravenous throb. His fingers feather down my spine that curves into his touch, his firm hands gripping my hips, urging me to roll deeper.
Harder.
Breaking our kiss, I pepper more down the column of his throat to the sound of his gravelly moans, savoring each languid press of my lips upon his skin like a sip of life. I plant more upon each of the scars on his chest.
Around the side of his ribs.
I map the constellation of his pain with my mouth—imagining each slow, tender kiss absorbing a little of his violent history—moving down his abdominals, past his navel, taking his thick, hard cock in my hand.
My mouth waters, core pulsing at how hard he is for me.
How ready and wanting.
My lashes flick up.
I hold his volcanic stare and flatten my tongue against the velvety base, then drag it all the way to the tip, traversing a web of bulging veins. His hips buck as my tongue sweeps over the rim, lapping the salty bead of precum dripping from the slit.
He hisses, jerking.
I wrap my lips around the swollen tip and drop low, opening my throat, taking him so deep I can’t breathe—my hand still wrapped around the girthy base. Again, his body jerks as I pull back, keeping my lips tight until I pop off the top, flicking another glance up into his eyes.
My pulse scatters at the way he’s looking at me. Like a male who’s been living on air, on the verge of starvation, and is now seated before a feast for kings and queens.
I smile. Take him into my mouth again. Slide up and down until he’s taut and shuddering, hissing sharp breaths that fill me with liquid satisfaction, his hips rising to meet me. Until he’s so thick and firm I’m certain he’s about to—
He fists my hair and gently tugs me back until he’s free from my mouth, my neck stretched as he watches me with cutthroat intensity.
Something in his stare has changed, braced with an assertion I don’t understand.
I frown, and it takes me a moment to register the thick tension in the room. That his energy has gone from warm and playful to hard and serious.
Before I have time to untangle that thought, he loosens his hand and flips me onto my back—now kneeling between my spread legs, lording over me like a savage silhouette.
The air stiffens.
“Why did you stop m—”
Another flash of lightning, and he grips my thighs, widening me so much there’s no place for me to hide. “I’ve made a decision,” he growls, spreading his hand across my lower belly, the pad of his thumb circling my swollen clit in slow, ruinous circles.
My hips buck, and I thread my fingers through my hair, strums of pleasure thrumming through me as he plays me like an instrument. “Good for … y-you.”
The fact that he can think at all right now is beyond me.
Seriously—good for him.
He sinks his fingers into me, curling them, rubbing at some deep, tender patch of nerves that strikes me with a bolt of knee-shaking rapture.
I wail from the startling sensation.
Fuck.
What was that?
He strokes that sensitive spot again, again, again—winding me so tight I can hardly breathe. “You’re not erasing me,” he rumbles, thumbing my clit faster.
Faster.
“Not this again,” I moan, but the words don’t hold the punch I intend, his fingers working me so expertly my mind has withered into compost. The sort where bad decisions go to sprout.
“I’ll cut you a deal,” he spurs with a flash of his canines.
“Fuck your deals.”
“No, Raeve. Fuck yours,” he growls, pushing another finger in.
Stretching me.
“I spent over a hundred phases crushed beneath the weight of your death, wrecking myself, trying to shed the hurt from my heart. Do you know how much easier it would’ve been to simply remove you from my mind?”
I groan as he pumps me full, my body singing for his ministrations, wet sounds filling the room.
“But I didn’t, because I’m not a fucking coward.”
I snarl, arching up to snap my teeth at him, flopping back upon the pallet with a pleasure-filled groan as he pushes me full again.
“I don’t take you for a coward.”
“Stop t-talking. You’re ruining it.”
“No.”
Another thrust.
Another.
“You don’t get to treat me like a secret this time,” he grinds out, strumming my clit with his thumb.
My pleasure begins to peak, a mighty wave cresting—
“I’m not your secret. I’m your truth.”
He pulls his fingers free, dissolving the climax before it has the chance to curl over.
I cry out, my sound turning into a needy whimper as I tug my foot back to shove him in the chest for being a teasing asshole.
He snatches my knee, then the other, pinning my spread legs to the pallet, his eyes shadowed embers glinting in the flashing storm. “I know you’re a feral creature that likes to swipe at everything that moves into your atmosphere, but there are only so many hits I can take before I start swiping back. Once upon a time, I listened to you. Let you push me away. Then you died. So no,” he growls, “I don’t accept your deal. But I will offer you a new one that’s favorable to all parties—not just your own selfish whims.”
“I’m not selfi—” He dips his head between my thighs, flattens his tongue against my throbbing entrance, and licks a hot line all the way up me. “Ohhh, you’re good at that,” I moan, bucking.
He does it again, my fingers tangling with the hair at the back of his head as I rock my hips to his laving beat.
Okay, I am a bit selfish.
I press him closer, his tongue spearing into me. He lifts my hips, cranking my rapture to an entirely new level.
My center begins to clench—
He pulls back.
I cry out, though my frustration sputters as he thrums my clit with his thumb again. “Reach back and put your hands on the wall,” he commands, such calm authority in his voice that I immediately obey, certain my compliance is going to earn me the orgasm he keeps dangling just out of reach.
He tosses one of my legs up over his shoulder, grips the other, and spreads me wide. He fists his length, then thumps it against my swollen core.
Again.
Again.
I soften with each heavy thud to my tender clit, picturing him inside me. Filling me.
Moving in me.
Creators, this male …
“What’s the deal, asshole?”
“Yield and I’ll fuck you.” He flashes me a sharp smile that’s all canines and feral delight, devastating me with more teasing thumps. My hips buck up to meet each one. “Then I’ll tell you.”
“That’s a shitty ruuuu—Creators,” I grind out as he swirls the thick head of his cock around my entrance, dipping in the slightest amount.
Pulling out.
Swirling again.
Maybe it’s not such a shitty rule.
“You made the rules last aurora fall when you fucked me at that play table. You had me agree, knowing full well you planned to remove me with a wish up your sleeve to ensure you saw it done.”
I really don’t appreciate having a mirror shoved in my face while I’m edging toward an orgasm.
“I hate you,” I whimper, lifting my hips to meet the next heavy thump.
“No, you don’t, Moonbeam. You love me. You’re just too busy feasting on my heart to notice.”
I would flinch from the barbed accusation if I weren’t wound so fucking tight.
Another luscious swirl binds me into a mewling knot, his next word snarled. “Yield.”