Chapter 78
W armth pools between my legs.
I nibble my bottom lip as my mind tunnels toward the vivid memories I’ve seen …
Lived.
Memories of us tumbling between the sheets together, laughing.
Loving.
Memories of him working my body into a precipice of pleasure that can only exist when hearts collide in synchrony with a passion-fueled clash. Something I never thought possible until I dreamt it.
One of the reasons I found it so hard to go, while at the same time making me equally desperate to do just that—leaving me torn two ways. Unable to move at all.
And here we are.
Me, like a charmed dragon struggling to rip from Kaan’s atmosphere. And him—
Him.
Fuck.
To think I almost slit this male’s throat rattles me to my marrow.
Kaan pulls the strap farther down my arm, freeing my aching breast, his thumb brushing the peak of my hardened nipple. “Did we play rough or gentle?”
Another kiss on my neck as his fingers slide across the gathered silk of my black sleep shift, feathering over my navel.
“Did I tease you until you were wet, shuddering, and mindless, screaming for me to take you?”
He nips my neck, and I jolt.
Yes, Kaan. I’ve screamed for you in my dreams. Woken with your name still hot on my lips, pulsing with the memory of your hand …
Right where I need it now.
I press my ass against his swelling shaft, putty for his touch skating over my hip, dipping lower.
Lower.
A languid roll, and I lift my right leg, the hem of my shift slipping up my thighs. He gathers it a little farther, leaving me entirely bared.
“Did I take you hard?” he coaxes, grazing his fingers along my seam, parting me, swirling around my throbbing entrance.
Again.
Again.
Two fingers circle that sensitive nub of nerves while he kisses my neck, working me into a knot. “Was it deep and slow?”
“All of the above,” I rasp, and a dense rumble rattles his chest as he pushes into my slick, fluttering core—
Pleasure ripples through me, making me shudder.
Another unhurried thrust, and I widen my legs, trailing my hand down his arm, just like I did in my dream. Using my own fingers to press him deeper into my aching heat—grinding to the same famished rhythm.
He nips the shell of my ear, then kisses it with devastating tenderness.
I rock to a steady beat, keeping his hand between my thighs, coaxing my flesh to flush with a swollen warmth that’s hungry.
Wet.
Wanting.
Another kiss to the side of my neck casts a trail of tingles to my breasts. Past my navel.
Down into my core.
All my fine ligaments twinge and tighten, and my body deepens its rolling ride, building my pleasure from the fill of his fingers.
I tip my head in a quiet request for him to kiss my neck again, groaning when he laves at that tender stretch of skin with such voracious confidence. Picturing his tongue doing the same thing elsewhere .
Every nerve ending below my belly button begins to tingle, intensifying until I can’t speak.
Can’t think.
Can’t breathe.
Another lavishing kiss to my neck, and every muscle in my body clenches with fierce, greedy violence. My release rips through me like a rockslide, splashing me with wave after wave of explosive pleasure.
He gently withdraws his fingers, and a moan bludgeons up my throat as he rubs my tender coil of nerves while peppering kisses around that spot beneath my ear—winding me up.
Unraveling me.
I continue to pulse, Kaan’s low, satisfied growl shuddering through me, and I laugh, shaking my head. So high it feels like I’m dancing through the clouds.
If only I could live in this imaginary existence forever. Things feel good here. Wholesome and happy.
Free.
He plants a kiss at the corner of my mouth, sending another zing straight between my thighs despite my ebbing release.
My attention homes in on his hardness pressed against my backside, the muscles under my tongue tingling …
I roll out of his arms, and his eyes flare as I reach for the clasp of his pants, popping the button.
Yanking them down.
Tossing them aside, I straddle him, greedy gaze sweeping his body. He’s a work of art tangled amongst the silken sheets, his manhood resting against his belly, the tip almost meeting with his belly button.
He reaches up, cupping my face, looking at me in the same way he did in that small, lopsided dwelling. Like he’d catch a fallen moon for me. Only this time it doesn’t chafe, because we’re shaping memories from silt. Something that can be washed away with the next torrential downpour.
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 .”
“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.”