“Fuck you, asshole. I fucking yield.”
One hand grasps my thigh, the other threading up around the side of my face and cupping my cheek as he meets my eyes, challenging me—no, begging me—to hold his blazing stare.
“Don’t blink, Moonbeam.” Please.
“I won’t,” I rasp, all my welling frustration toward him popping into a honeyed cloud of chest-crushing need. Of yearning to meet him on this bridge of connection that’s so frail and uncertain … but exquisite.
Brimming with a magical, prickly warmth that makes me want to cry.
My mouth falls open as he strikes his hips forward, claiming me in one swift lunge, my body tiding with the motion—crammed so deliciously full.
He stills—hilt deep—our gazes caught in a clash that feels like a fissure in time and space. All I see is molten adoration. A fierce, untamable love so heavy it stomps me breathless.
All I feel is him.
He releases a shuddered exhale that reminds me to work my lungs, drawing a gulp of our tangled scents that might be the best smell in the world. His hand tightens around my face, stare deepens. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
I swallow, nod, then lift my pelvis to urge him on.
With a guttural growl, he begins devastating my body with deep, rhythmic rolls of his hips that strike me with luscious bolts of rapture. I whimper, moving to match his ferocious pace, his body surging in muscle-clenching waves.
We clash in a snarling beat until I’m cresting on a combustion that might just ruin me.
His thick length swells, making me feel impossibly full as he moves his hand between us, fingers flattening against my lower belly.
His thumb circles that slick, tender bud. Faster.
Faster.
My core clamps down, a tremble starting in the tips of my curling toes, traveling up my legs, into my sex, and along the line of my spine until I’m certain I’m going to split into a thousand jagged pieces.
I run my hands over his tensing arms, across his shoulders, my right palm pressing upon his heart that’s ratcheting to the same gorging rhythm as my own.
“You feel that?” he rumbles, setting his hand on top of mine and holding it over the thumping organ. His eyes take on a lighter shade that almost looks like reverence. “You found us, Moonbeam.”
I fissure.
Split.
Shatter.
Every fiber in my lower belly goes tight and tingly, lit with a crippling surge of hot, hungry euphoria. My mouth pops open, short, sharp moans rending the air as I clench around him, pulsing with such ferocity my mind melts, lights flashing across my vision.
I lose all sense of space and time—tumbling. Landing somewhere within his gaze where I drown in the most gluttonous way.
Kaan’s hand curls back around the side of my face, tightening. He roars, then snarls through gritted teeth, throbbing inside me. Pouring me full of liquid warmth and a primal satisfaction that butters my muscles.
My nerves.
Everything loosens, my body lax as he leans forward and nuzzles my head to the side, growling softly. He opens his mouth around my neck and gently bites. A nip that calls to my base instincts. Has me wishing he’d dig his teeth a little deeper.
“What did I just agree to?” I pant, melting beneath him.
His nip turns into a kiss he plants below my ear. That spot I never knew was so sensitive. “You’re not erasing me—no matter how much our impending conversation hurts.”
My breath catches, a chill slithering through my veins.
He plants another kiss on my neck, as if to soothe the scathing wound he just left. Another on my jaw.
The corner of my mouth.
“This is so much bigger than us, and you need to soften that heart or you’re going to break someone who’s not attuned to being stabbed through the chest by your reluctance to build connections.”
My body stills, every cell standing at stark attention.
I’ve been told off before, but never like this.
This is …
This chafes. Ringing with a tune of truth that makes my frayed heartstrings coil and squirm.
He grips both sides of my face, another flash of lightning filling the room with white light, his eyes volcanic as he says, “This truth is going to hurt, and you’re going to hate me for it. But there’s someone out there who needs you, and you’re going to change their life even more than you changed mine.”
My heart fractures, the crack weaving so deep it hits the soft, fleshy center.
I picture little Nee fluttering about, dancing the giddy swirls she danced whenever I lifted the lid on her box. Picture her nudging against me, nuzzling my neck, remembering all the times I gave her a belly rub. Unfolded her delicate pleats. Flattened her.
Read her.
Need.
My throat thickens so much I’m forced to swallow.
I always thought that little parchment lark came to me by accident, but maybe she wasn’t lost at all. Maybe she was exactly where she needed to be …
“So, Raeve. You can swipe at me all you want, pretend you don’t love me as much as I love you. I can take more scars, despite how much they hurt. But you’re not running away.” He plants a kiss on the tip of my nose, the tender motion so at odds with the hard edge of his words. “That’s what you just agreed to.”
King Ostern returned on his Sabersythe, trailed by his two youngest sons—Cadok and Tyroth—both here for The Great Flurrt celebration. It’s the first I’ve seen the male I’m to bind with since the slumber I set foot in his pah’s kingdom.
Call me untrusting, but I took one of the dragonscale blades Kaan had shown me how to forge and kept it close to my body. Until the moment Tyroth corralled me in a hallway and tried to shove me into a darkened corner. Then I pressed it against his throat.
He laughed. Said his sister had been a bad influence on me. My response was that I felt her influence was quite the opposite. He told me I wasn’t allowed to speak yet, so I told him he could eat dragon shit and that I hoped he choked on it.
Wishful thinking.
At feasting, I was made to sit beside him, donned in my veil, awkwardly eating the food that had been served for me like an animal. Hard with a clothed mouth. Even harder when all the food I’d been given was either too rich or spicy for my palate and I wasn’t allowed to speak—to ask for other things stacked farther down the table.
Kaan kept his stare firmly locked on Tyroth while I suffered in the silence expected of a princess unless she’s either bound or given herself to the Creators. Like Veya.
Speaking of which, Veya was strangely silent—closed off, eyes downcast—as she ate beside her nephew. I didn’t understand why until her pah started pecking at her, harping on about all the ways she’d disappointed him.
With each of his scalding words, she shriveled a little more, until he said he regretted the slumber he’d sown her in her mah’s womb.
A tear slid down her cheek—the first I’d ever seen her cry.
I snapped.
I ripped off my veil, climbed on the table, and charged to the other end. I slammed my fork through a pile of colk meat that I’d been salivating over since the meal began, then I proceeded to sit back in my chair, stuff my mouth full, and toss King Ostern a fake smile.
The fuck.
He glared at me as I chewed with my mouth wide open before plucking some blanched muji beans off Tyroth’s plate, stating that I’m certain he didn’t mind sharing with me since he was currently ruling my kingdom.
He glared at me, too, and I could see in his eyes that he was pushing down the urge to backhand me across the face for my bad behavior.
Wish he had. I desperately wanted an excuse to slam my fork through his thigh.
I was just sucking the meat juice off my fingers when King Ostern announced Kaan and Veya would be leaving with Cadok and Tyroth after The Great Flurrt so they could help rebuild a village torn apart by a rabid Sabersythe.