Chapter 12
Quinn
This was crazy, right? Making out with a monster? I felt kind of crazy, writhing beneath Lance’s sculpted body, gasping as he tested his teeth against my nipple. But not at all in a way that made me think I should stop this.
We’d barely gotten started, and he was already drawing more pleasure through my body than I’d felt in ages. Maybe ever. What other hookup had been this exhilarating?
What other man could have sliced open my shirt with his bare hands?
He swept his tongue over my breast again, and this time it felt a little different, new flexible ridges hugging the sensitive tip. A choked sound jolted out of me with the rush of unexpected pleasure. My arms jerked against the firm hand that pinned them above my head, and Lance eased back to grin at me.
“Enjoying yourself, baby girl?” he said, giving the nickname the same teasing lilt he had when he’d used it before. “I can bring out my dragon tongue for you as much as you want. If you ask for it.”
“Yes, please,” I mumbled, but a deeper impulse gripped me. That wasn’t what I wanted most. I wet my lips. “Would you… would you use your claws again?”
Something sparked in Lance’s violet eyes, turning him even more feral and gorgeous than usual. He flexed the fingers on his free hand and trailed the pointed ends of his claws over my skin, skimming the curve of my other breast, one of them flicking right over the nipple.
The movement was so precise my nerves jittered at the cutting edges, but he didn’t damage a particle of my skin. Just a tender caress that could have killed me if he’d jabbed downward for an instant. My pulse leapt at the sensation, my panties soaking even more than they’d already been.
“Like that?” he asked, studying my reaction with interest so avid it lit me up just as much as his touch.
“Just like that,” I said. “It feels amazing.”
He gave a pleased hum, his grin slanting into a smirk. “Lie still, then.”
He traced patterns all over my torso, giving special attention to my breasts, like he meant to carve my skin like he did the cabin walls. Every inch of me was tingling with the awareness that he could, but he never broke the surface. The giddy pleasure sparked everywhere his claws grazed—and I never knew where they’d dart next. I held myself as motionless as I could, ragged noises tumbling from my throat with each new caress.
I wasn’t going to say there was anything okay about hordes of monsters wanting to shred me to pieces, but I’d never have gotten to experience this thrill if I hadn’t needed saving. Maybe there was a tiny bit of a trade-off.
Lance started swiveling his claws around the nipple he’d been licking while swiping his ridged tongue over my other breast. My whimpers turned even needier. I couldn’t stop my hips from swaying upward, seeking out a fuller satisfaction.
The dragon shifter shifted his weight over me, a taut length beneath his slacks suggesting he wasn’t remotely unaffected either. He gave my breast a light nip and glanced down my body toward my sex. “You want to be touched down there.”
Just the thought of him dragging his claws all the way to my pussy nearly made me explode. “I—yes. Please. If you want to.”
“Hmm, I’m definitely not done with you yet. So much more terrain to uncover.”
He reached for the sheet that’d pooled around my waist and then paused, glancing up at his other hand. He couldn’t move any farther down my body while keeping my wrists clamped down. An odd uncertainty crossed his face.
“Would you rather if I didn’t touch you?” I asked tentatively. “I mean, I’d like to, but if it’d bother you for some reason—you just need to tell me. You don’t have to hold me down.” At this point, I’d agree to just about anything to find out what other miracles he could conjure with those claws and that tongue.
Lance gazed down at me with an unusually pensive air and then abruptly offered a beaming smile. “You can touch. You wouldn’t hurt me any more than I’ve hurt you.”
“Of course not,” I said, with the twist that’d come into my gut before when he’d hinted at how other humans had treated him. Then he released my wrists to peel back the sheet and reveal the panties that were all I’d worn to bed on my lower half, and I lost my breath at the glide of his claws down my thighs.
“So wet,” he said, sounding a little breathless himself as he lowered his face toward my sex. “And your scent…” A soft snarl escaped him. “I know you have extras of these. Crag brought back a whole pack.”
Before I could process where he was going with that statement, he jerked his hands past my hips and severed the sides of my panties in one swift movement. My chest had only just hitched in eager surprise when he nuzzled the swath of fabric away and buried his face between my legs.
His tongue stroked right through my slickness, over my clit and down across my folds, and pleasure erupted in its wake. I bucked into his mouth, my hands flying down to curl into his messy hair. I hesitated for a second, afraid I might have gone too far despite his claim that he didn’t mind being touched, but he showed no indication of even noticing the contact. I gripped the silky strands and gave myself over to his fervent worship.
He lapped at me like I was an ice cream cone, with all the enthusiasm I could imagine him bringing to that task as well as this one. His tongue flicked and swirled, his lips suckling more bliss from my clit. The knot of need in my belly expanded, swelling to fill my entire abdomen with ecstatic fire. I couldn’t restrain a moan.
Did the other two men know what we were getting up to? Hell, for all I knew, they could be in the room, watching from the shadows. The possibility should have made me cringe, but somehow it sent my desire sparking even hotter.
I might not be a monster, but I’d let them see me lose myself in savage abandon. I could be as wild as they were. I wasn’t going to shy away from one bit of this delirious adventure I’d embarked on.
Lance raised his head just slightly to focus his attentions on my clit. As the ridges of his tongue gripped the sensitive nub with swipe after swipe that radiated pleasure through my core, he tucked one of his hands between my thighs. He couldn’t extend a finger into me, of course—that was one place I didn’t want any claws to travel—but he rocked a knuckle between my folds, filling me with just enough pressure to inflame me.
“So good,” I muttered. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t let up, not even for a second. Shudders traveled through my body. The heady mix of desire and exhilaration surged through me.
Lance caressed my hip with the claws of his other hand while nipping my clit, and I unraveled with a cry. My release flooded my whole body, leaving me shaking and then limp. My head tipped back into the pillow.
As my hands fell from his hair, Lance peered up at me. “I brought you there,” he said, not quite a question. “To the place you wanted to go.”
A laugh spilled out of me. “Hell, yes, you did.”
He gave my thigh a playful nuzzle and loomed up over me again, his eyes glinting. “Does that mean you’re done? Or can you get there again?”
I stared at him, my mind spinning. Those words clicked into place with little pieces I hadn’t quite understood before, starting with his initial hesitation when I’d first kissed him. The possibility stunned me enough that it took me a moment to regain control over my mouth.
“Is this… the first time you’ve done something like this?”
Lance flashed a grin, showing no sign of self-consciousness about his inexperience. “It’s exciting new territory I’m delving into. I’m doing well so far, it seems?”
Holy fuck. I was having the best sexual encounter of my life with not just a monster, but a virginal monster who was figuring this shit out as he went. I blinked, having trouble arranging my thoughts back into coherent order.
Lance raised his eyebrows. “You are enjoying it, aren’t you?”
A blush burned my cheeks. “Yes. A lot. I—I was just surprised. Because you’re so good at it.”
His smile turned wicked. “I’m paying attention to what gets those tasty little sounds out of you. There seem to be plenty of things that do the trick.”
My mind tripped back to the questions that had started us on this subject. He’d wanted to know if I could keep going—presumably because he wanted to.
I slid my hand to the back of his head and tugged him up to fully rejoin me. “You’re doing a very good job. And I’m definitely not done.” I hadn’t gotten the chance to hear what sounds I could get him to make for me, after all.
The revelation gave me a rush of confidence I hadn’t felt before. I was the closest thing to an expert between the two of us. He wasn’t comparing me to hundreds of women across however many centuries he’d been in existence. I’d never had sex with a shadowkind before, and he’d never had sex before, period, so the playing field was definitely a lot more level than I’d assumed.
When his mouth crashed down on mine, I kissed him back hard, my tongue darting between his lips to encourage his own out to play. He’d let the dragon ridges subside, but they formed again as our tongues twined together. A giddy shiver passed through me just from that small but startling sensation.
I hadn’t gotten to touch very much of him so far. He teased his claws down my side to blissful effect, and I ran my hand down his chest to the fly of his slacks. His erection strained against it, electrifyingly hard against my fingers. When I gripped it through his pants, Lance made a rough sound.
“Ah, yes,” he murmured. “I approve of your explorations too.”
I couldn’t help giggling, not that he appeared to mind. But my body was still on fire after my first orgasm, the craving to be filled even more deeply forming an ache in my core. There was way too much fabric still between us… and none of it was on me.
“We need to get you out of all this clothing,” I grumbled, tugging at his shirt. “And I don’t have any claws to tear it off you.”
Mischief twinkled in Lance’s eyes. “That’s easy to take care of.” Without so much as a farewell, he blinked out of existence.
I’d barely sucked in a breath, my lungs tight with a jab of bewildered loss, when he sprang back into being braced over me in almost the exact same position. He’d ducked into the shadows, I realized. And come back completely naked.
The rest of him looked as gorgeous and as human as his face did. For a few moments, I could only brush my fingers over the planes of muscle that filled out his chest, flicking my thumbs over his small, dark nipples that stood out against his golden-brown skin, making myself every bit as much an explorer.
Lance gave me free rein, his eyelids dipping low as if he were basking in the caresses. Then he seemed to decide it was time for him to take lead in our joint expedition. He rocked his hips, and the rigid cock I’d only glimpsed jutting down below rubbed over my clit.
I gasped, pleasure spiking through me from my core. My hips arched toward him of their own accord in a plea for more.
Lance dipped his mouth to my shoulder. A nick of the gentlest possible pain tickled though my flesh, and I realized he’d brought out his dragonish fangs as well as the tongue. When he tested his sharper teeth more firmly against the muscle there, I quivered with inexplicable excitement.
Why did it feel so good to know he could tear me apart and yet wouldn’t? It just did. What could be more enlivening than the knowledge that I was not just defying my possible death but fucking it?
“There’s one place I haven’t explored yet,” he remarked with his lips brushing my skin, angling his hips so the head of his cock slipped down to my drenched slit. “Not fully.”
My knees rose beside his hips automatically. Every particle in my body screamed to urge him onward. From what Torrent had said about shadowkind never getting sick, I wouldn’t have had to worry about STDs even if Lance had been more experienced, so the extra condoms I kept in my bag were a moot point. But a tiny part of me that still retained some practicality had the wherewithal to confirm one essential fact. “Crag said shadowkind don’t have babies?”
I had an IUD, just in case one of my flings went wrong, but I was pretty sure no one had checked those for effectiveness against monstrous cum.
Lance chuckled. “No babies, so no need to worry, baby girl.”
“Then what are you waiting?—”
He didn’t let me finish the question, thrusting inside me as swiftly as he did so much else. I was so wet and relaxed after coming that the stretch of his erection was only a heady pleasure, not a hint of pain despite the abrupt penetration.
I whimpered and lifted my hips to meet him, but the dragon shifter just held there for several seconds, a low rumble reverberating through his chest. I traced my hands down his sides to grab his ass, and something flared in his gaze.
“Mine,” he muttered with a puff of heated breath, snatching one wrist and then the other and pinning them over my head again. He kissed me, his mouth scorching against mine, and nipped the side of my neck with his fangs. A ripple of fire on his breath and a flick of his tongue sealed whatever marks he’d drawn there.
“Mine,” he announced again, more forcefully, holding my arms with one hand as the other kept him braced above me. I might have protested the claiming or the restraining, but then he started to move, and the swelling roar of pleasure drowned any argument out.
I’d happily be his as long as he was making me feel this good.
Somehow he slid deeper with every thrust, stretching me more with that incredible, blissful burn. I swayed to meet him, a keening moan like I’d never made before slipping from my lips. I did feel wild then, like an animal driven only by my basest needs, like the kind of being that would fuck with claws and fangs.
The ravenous growl Lance let out only made me wilder. I pushed myself faster to meet his speeding thrusts, and his growl turned into a groan.
He pounded into me, a more potent wave of heat emanating from his body, setting every part of me it touched alight. I hardly ever came without any stimulation on my clit, but I was close. So close to shattering all over again?—
He bit my shoulder with those tiny splinters of perfect pain, and I cried out with nothing but pleasure. Ecstasy raced through my veins. I clenched around Lance’s cock, and his breath stuttered. His hips jerked, more heat flooding me on the inside.
He let out a low, languid groan and eased to a stop, his eyes closing completely. His grip on my wrists loosened. I eased one hand free and reached up to touch his cheek.
“A good experiment?” I felt the need to ask.
His eyes opened into slits, gazing down at me. “One of the best. We’ll do that again.”
It was a statement rather than a question, but I wasn’t inclined to debate his decision, so I let the assumption slide.
Lance stretched his frame before pulling out of me. His brow knit as he considered my shoulder, and he healed the small marks left by his fangs with a spurt of breath. Then he shot me one last grin. “Maybe exploring will have tired you out enough that you can finally sleep.”
He vanished into the shadows before I could respond.
I lay there, slack and sated, for a few minutes before I started to take stock. Both my tank top and my panties were ruined—but what the hell did that matter right now anyway. I pulled the sheet up over my nakedness, already feeling the weight of exhaustion creeping over me.
I’d almost drifted off when the strange sensation in my chest burst into being again, this time feeling not so much like a flutter as an entire sparrow beating its wings against my ribs.