Chapter 17 #2
We lay tangled together in the sweat-damp sheets, his hand curled around my hip like he still wasn’t sure I was real. His chest rose and fell beneath my cheek, steady and solid. Anchoring.
I sighed and stretched against him, languid and loose and beautifully sore in all the right ways.
He kissed my temple, his lips brushing my skin like an apology. “Did I hurt you?”
His voice was quieter now, hoarse and tentative, like he was afraid of the answer.
I lifted my head, brushing a curl of hair from my damp cheek and giving him a crooked smile. “No.”
He didn’t seem convinced. His hand slid down to my waist, stroking slow circles across my side, the pads of his fingers reverent, careful. It made me ache in a different way.
“Graven,” I said, soft but firm, “I feel like my body was struck by lightning and left humming in the ruins—and I liked it.”
His eyes flicked to mine, still storm-dark, still shadowed with that lingering guilt. I kissed the line between his brows before it could deepen.
“I’m not breakable,” I whispered.
“You are,” he said, almost inaudible. “To me, you are.”
That nearly undid me more than anything else.
But instead of answering with words, I let my mouth trail kisses along his jaw, down the strong line of his throat. His breath hitched as my lips found the hollow at the base of his neck.
I kissed him there, slow and deliberate.
He made a sound, half warning, half surrender.
I grinned against his skin. “Tired already?”
His hand tightened reflexively on my thigh. “Irina…”
I kissed lower. The curve of his shoulder. The hard plane of his chest. My tongue flicked lightly over a scar I hadn’t noticed before, and I felt him flinch beneath me—not from pain, but from memory.
“Don’t,” he murmured.
I stilled.
He looked down at me, eyes soft but guarded. “That one’s not a story I want you to wear on your mouth.”
I nodded, understanding more than he knew. Some stories we might never share.
So I kissed beside it instead.
“Thank you.”
“You never have to thank me.”
“No, I must, because I am so grateful for you.”
The way he teased language, it undid me. “Then do what you desire.”
He relaxed beneath me again, tension bleeding out with each brush of my lips. I let my fingers follow the path my mouth had taken, learning the shape of him all over again—the dips and ridges, the heat and muscle and the scars he hadn’t hidden, but hadn’t offered either.
“You’re still hungry?” he asked, voice low and rough.
I met his eyes and let a slow, wicked smile unfurl. “For you? Always.”
He groaned, dropping his head back against the pillow. “You’re going to be the end of me.”
“No,” I whispered, lips tracing the line of his ribs. “I’m going to be the part that brings you back.”
And then I kissed lower, into the space between where ache met want, and began again.
When I wrapped my hand around his cock, it was thick and hard, and so beautiful it would make angels weep.
The length of it was generous, but the girth reminded me of how he’d filled me.
How he’d stretched me past the point of pain to where pleasure existed in its own realm.
I’d never been fond of oral sex, and only ever experimented once or twice. Sex itself seemed fine, if unremarkable. Until now…
Sex with Graven was a religious experience and when I traced my tongue over the tip of his cock, his whole body shuddered. He reached for me, but I pushed his hand away.
“No,” I said, and it came out an order. A sensuous one, but an order nonetheless. “I want this. I want to taste you. I need you in my mouth.” Every single word was true. “I want you to feel me the way I feel you.”
That was a declaration that came from some depthless place within me. I had no reason to expect him to obey, yet his acquiescence was immediate and without question. Delight shivered through me as I licked him from base to tip, savoring the musky scent and rich ambrosia of his taste.
When I swallowed around him, he let out a groan that pleased me on the most primitive of levels. More than once he thrust into my mouth deeper and I took him to my throat. When I pressed down with my hands to his hips, he went still again.
We lingered in this sensual haze for hours or years, I lost count, as I took him to the edge and then let him drift down again. Only when he whispered my name in the most solemn of pleas did I relent.
I cupped his balls, rolling them against my palm as I stole a look upwards. His eyes were twin pits of fire and they blazed as he stared into my eyes. A single nod from me and every corded muscle in his body tensed before he let out a shout and came in a wild rush.
Every drop of his release was a salted nectar. I wouldn’t call it sweet, but I was definitely drunk on the pleasure radiating off of him. I barely had time to savor his expression before he rolled me over and pinned me to the bed with his hands on my waist.
“My turn,” he said in a voice so thick with sensual promise that I almost came from it alone. Then he put his mouth on me and my thoughts scattered like birds taking flight.
The only thing I felt, saw, or heard was Graven and when he drove me to a shaking orgasm with his tongue, he thrust into me again. We rode the tempest, or at least I rode him , until we seemed almost one and then we would collapse, clinging to each other to breathe.
Only to start all over again.