twenty-seven
He was like a taut rope, pulled past its limits and snapped. My words released him from whatever cage he’d put himself in and Thurl scooped me off the floor. Pawssonova hissed at the rough treatment and launched from my lap with a disgruntled look.
I would have shrugged, but Thurl’s warm body trapped me. Before I could fully form a thought, I was on our bed—when had I started thinking of this bed as ours?—stripped of my pants and my monster’s hands wrapped around my thighs, spreading me wide with a delicious pinch of his claws.
His breath hitched as he hovered over my hips, his gaze flicking down my body with an intensity that made me squirm. My pulse quickened, a drumbeat echoing in my ears, and I could practically taste the heat rising from him. Each growl sent shivers cascading over my skin, igniting a fire deep within me.
"This is what you want?" His voice was gravelly and unsure, velvet against the tension in the room. The vulnerability that lay beneath his fierce strength mesmerized me. "Once we bond, there’s no backing out."
I held his gaze. I understood the implications. This meant forever. “I know,” I breathed back, my heart racing as I laid my hands on the sides of his face, my thumbs brushed over his cheekbones, his fur warm beneath my fingers. “I read the information in the binder. I understand, but more than that, I can feel it. It’s what I want, Thurl.”
His jaw clenched, and the friction of my fingers against him spun the response into a singular shared moment. A suspended breath caught between us. Then he leaned closer, pressing his nose between my legs, his deep inhale sending cool air over my heated flesh. It felt as if the world outside—and all the dangers that lurked within it—faded.
“If you’re sure,” he murmured, eyes like molten lava, burning with intensity.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Now bite me before I’m so frustrated I scream.”
He looked up at me and his eyes blazed. He was pure beast in that moment. There was nothing tamed about him, and I marveled at the power I held over him. This monster would—had—killed for me. I knew in that moment there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep me safe.
His jaw dropped open, and I braced for the sharp sting of his teeth, but his tongue darted out and traced lazily up my inner thigh. He gave my other leg the same maddening treatment before finally swiping his tongue through the folds of my pussy.
I moaned in relief. Each flick of his wicked, forked tongue ignited my skin and sent shock waves deep into my core. A primal, desperate need that clawed for release.
Thurl growled against me. My head fell back, my hands fisted in the sheets at my sides, my thighs trembled as he licked and sucked at my clit. I forgot all about the impending bite, my thoughts centered on how he played my body like a Stradivarius.
“You are so beautiful.”
My knee jerk scoff stuck in my throat when he nibbled at my soft folds. The way he played my body made me almost believe.
With every curl of his forked tongue as it dipped inside, only to return to my clit like a long-lost friend, he coaxed me higher, closer to ecstasy. The world outside faded. My entire focus on the feel of Thurl’s tongue, his hot breath, the small sting of his claws where they held my thighs open.
My core fluttered, and my back bowed off the bed. I fell over the edge, swallowed by the most intense orgasm of my life. Sparks flared behind my closed eyelids as wave after wave of unimaginable pleasure flowed over and through me. It was so intense I thought I might die.
Happily, I might add.
I barely felt Thurl’s teeth sink into the crease of flesh at my upper thigh. His upper jaw piercing a line to my hipbone, his lower in the crease of my butt cheek.
The prick set off another wave, stronger than the ones before. My body quaked as pleasure tightened my muscles and unwound my brain. I surrendered to the bliss, to his hold, to him.
“Thurl,” I gasped, not sure what I asked for but needing something to ground me before I shattered and my dust floated into the stars. I grasped his horns and tugged with all my strength, which equaled that of a moth, but he indulged me.
He rose over me, his eyes impossibly bright.
No, it wasn’t entirely his eyes. There were now motes of red light dancing around us, a halo that bobbed and weaved as we breathed.
I inhaled. “What?”
Thurl’s head tilted as he studied the tiny balls of light. “Our bond.” His eyes met mine as his cock slid home.
You’d think after the never-ending orgasm I’d just had, I’d need time to recover before another, but when he moved, that coil in my belly wrapped tighter and threatened to spring loose in seconds.
The spikes on the sides of his dick swirled in and out of me and hit all the right spots. His heat wrapped me like a furnace, and the balls of light—our bond—pulsed in time with his thrusts, giving the room a disco effect.
I felt like I was on the verge of an aneurysm. And I wasn’t even sure what an aneurysm was.
My voice cried out, “More… harder…” and I had no idea where it came from, but Thurl obliged with a low, grunting growl that raised goosebumps on my skin. Nothing had ever felt more right in my life and I wanted to fuse myself to him. I would have chuckled at the thought if I hadn’t orgasmed the orgasm to end all orgasms.
I think I blacked out.
Thurl stared down at me. “Are you all right?”
“I have no idea.”
He scanned my body as if he tried to determine for me. I chuckled, then dissolved into a full belly laugh. When I sobered, I cupped his muzzle and kissed his cold nose. “Yes. I’m fine. I feel like a sponge that a compactor squeezed, but I’m fine.”
I reached up to bat at one of the dancing lights. It drifted on the breeze I’d created before settling back into line with the others. “This is our bond?”
Thurl nodded. “Drym and Kendal described it as a tether of balls of light.”
“A tether?” Visions of only being able to go so far from Thurl before being violently yanked back filled my head.
“Of sorts. It’s non-corporeal, and it will stretch between us no matter how far or wide we roam from each other.” He glanced away. “I will feel your pain as well.”
“Like, literally? If I get a papercut, you’ll feel it?”
He nodded. “On the very same finger.”
“What about you? If you’re hurt, will I feel it?”
“We assume it works both ways.”
I sat up, my scientific curiosity overwhelming any other thought I might have. “Let’s test it. Scratch your arm.”
He shook his head. “No. I will not have you feel pain.”
“But I’m curious. I want to know.”
He shook his head again.
I humphed . “Fine.” As quick as I could, I pinched his chest. My brows slashed down. “I didn’t feel anything.”
The corner of his mouth tilted in a smirk. “I’m not sure you would, since that didn’t hurt.”
I smacked his bicep. “Come on, just one small scratch on your arm and we’ll know if it works both ways.”
He shook his head and I squealed in frustration. “It’s going to drive me crazy not knowing, and thus I will drive you crazy.”
His muzzle tipped to the ceiling. In thought or exasperation, I wasn’t sure, but I knew I was close to winning.
“It doesn’t have to be deep or long. Just enough for you to feel it.”
He grunted and used his thumb to pop the cap off his index claw. After a deep breath, he pushed it past his fur and into the skin of his forearm.
I stared at my arm with bated breath. The sting came without preamble. I rubbed at the spot. “Okay, yeah. I felt that.”
Thurl fussed like it was me that was bleeding.
My stomach twisted at the pain. Not what I’d felt, but what I’d caused him. “Okay, we’re never doing that again.”