Chapter 6 #2
Beth knew what that meant. Emotional manipulation wasn’t just taboo, it was illegal. The deepest violation of autonomy. Magiks were tried for less. But hell, she wanted it. She wanted to feel him the way he felt her, wanted to burn where he burned. “Do it.”
Gael exhaled sharply, like her permission broke something in him. He didn’t touch her and didn’t say a word. His eyes flared–then it hit her.
Not gentle. Not gradual. Heat slammed into her, raw, unrelenting.
Not a wave meant to carry, but one meant to drown.
Her body jolted. Breath punched from her lungs as need, feral and blinding, crashed through her.
She felt everything. The way his cock throbbed for her.
The memory of her mouth on his skin and how close that had brought him to losing it.
Deep, brutal ache for her, to be inside her and stay there.
Claim her like someone he’d spent a lifetime waiting for and would burn the world to keep.
It wasn’t sweet, it wasn’t tender. It was ruthless, and it broke her only to make her anew, as if she had been rewritten in his hunger.
Her back arched like her body was no longer hers, her nerves hijacked by his want. Her knees gave out as a raw, wrecked sound tore from her throat. His voice was suddenly at her ear, low and dark and dangerous. “That’s what you do to me.”
Beth staggered slightly, her heart slowing as the wave of heat began to pull away.
Her body was still thrumming, her skin tingling, but the overwhelming rush was fading.
She felt herself coming back into the edges of her own awareness.
And lord, she missed it already. That tether, that fusion.
The impossible sweetness of him inside her.
But the need didn’t disappear. If anything, it deepened and settled lower, all hers and unsatisfied.
She looked at him, still so close. “Take them off,” she murmured, fingers brushing the waistband of her pants. “What’s left. Please.”
Gael stepped in, eyes locked on hers, and slid his hands to the button of her jeans.
Undid them. Shoved the denim and underwear down her hips.
He pushed her into the mattress and caught her mouth in a kiss that landed like a rough, possessive, and a long overdue promise.
It was teeth and tongue and the rough press of his body as he had her back into the mattress like he needed her under him to exist.
His hands skimmed down her thighs, then gripped them hard.
Skin to skin, need meeting need without anything in between.
Everything he’d felt, everything she still felt echoing through her skin, was right there in the way he touched her.
The drag of his hands. The bite of his mouth.
His body aligned with hers like it was always meant to be this way.
He kissed her like it would never be enough. His hand trailed down her belly like every inch of her mattered.
When he reached her pussy, he didn’t rush. He stroked her first, learning the heat of her, her rhythm, before slipping a single finger inside her. The groan he gave was low and guttural, like even that much undid him. “So wet,” he growled.
He curled his finger just right, dragging it over a spot that made her hips jerk and her breath hiss.
Focused and merciless, his thumb brushed her clit and she moaned, her hands clutching at the sheets, her spine arching as he worked her to a place of pleasure only.
The slick sounds of his fingers moving in her filled the space between gasps until she writhed beneath him.
Her muscles tightened. Breath coming in short, broken bursts.
Pleasure coiled tighter, sharp enough to hurt.
Her thighs trembled, her body straining against the edge.
And she shattered with a sound that was half sob, half scream.
Her hips jerked, breath punching out of her lungs as her orgasm ripped through her.
Her body clenched around his fingers, slick and pulsing, her vision going white-hot around the edges.
And still, he didn’t stop, not until she cried out again, shaking, too sensitive to take more.
Only then did he ease his hand from her, slow, like he didn’t want to let go.
Beth lay there, panting, her body still trembling with aftershocks, but somehow stretched thin.
Still starving. The absence of his hand left her aching, skin over-sensitized, nerves lit and reaching. She blinked up at him, breathless.
Then let her hands slide down his sides, lower, until her fingers wrapped around his cock.
Hot.
Heavy. Already slick at the tip.
He hissed through his teeth. His jaw flexed as he rocked into her grip, like stopping wasn’t even an option.
“Gael—” she choked out. “I want—”
“I know.” His voice was dark velvet, thin at the edges. He shifted, lined himself up between her thighs, and paused just long enough to meet her eyes.
Then he thrust in her, a slow, breathtaking slide that made her cry out, her hands scrambling against his back as he filled her, deep, hot, perfect. Her body clung to him, greedily. It had been waiting for this moment longer than she knew, didn’t it?
“I’ve imagined this in every way I shouldn’t,” he groaned. “And none ever came closer.”
She moaned when he started moving, her legs tightened around him and rocked up to meet his next thrust.
There was no holding back after that.
No restraint, no slow build, just the slap of skin, the punch of breath, the ragged sounds of two people too far gone to pretend it was anything but need.
But somewhere in the middle of the chaos, between the bruising kisses and the frantic rhythm of their bodies, she realized something.
Even without the magic, she still felt him.
In every touch, every sound, in every desperate, hungry second, she felt him as if he’d become part of her.
The way he filled her so deep it bordered on unbearable, and yet she wanted more.
Her hips moved without thought, chasing every thrust, meeting him with a hunger that stripped her down to something primal.
Sweat slicked her skin, his name spilled from her lips in broken fragments as he drove into her with a force that shook the bedframe.
She kissed him like she was giving what had always been his, biting his lip as his hands gripped her hips hard enough to bruise.
And she loved it.
Her release crept back up with a vengeance, fierce and fast and impossible to hold. Her fingers clawed at his back, nails raking down his spine as the pressure spiraled tight again.
“Gael—” The rest broke off in a strangled cry.
“Let go, l?oraen.”
His thumb found her clit between thrusts, and that was all it took.
Beth shattered again, harder this time. Her whole body locked around him as she came with a feral cry.
She clenched down on him, pulsing around his cock, drawing him deeper still.
Not just release, more than only pleasure, something warm and electric bloomed in her chest. She felt it in her bones, in her blood.
A sudden rush of connection so intense it knocked the breath from her lungs.
It wasn’t just him inside her. It was him in her. Through her.
And for a second, her mind whispered one absolute word.
Mine.
Gael swore—low and guttural—buried himself to the hilt, and came with a shudder that rocked through both of them. His forehead dropped to hers, breath pouring out in a broken groan as he emptied into her, hips twitching with every pulse of release.
For a long moment, neither of them moved, lost in the heat still pulsing between them, in the humming stillness of something ancient settling into place.
His hand came up, brushing her sweat-damp hair from her face.
The gesture, so gentle, so unguarded, cracked something in her.
This was the part she might not recover from.
And so, she leaned into his touch without thinking, pressing her cheek into his palm as his thumb brushed softly beneath her eye.
His gaze held hers for a moment longer, then dropped as he shifted carefully, easing some of his weight off her but never fully pulling away, and the slow thud of his heartbeat against hers was all she could feel. All she wanted to feel.
And then... something stirred low in her chest, like a second heartbeat that didn’t belong to her.
It fluttered once, soft and unfamiliar, then faded as quickly as it came.
Maybe it was just the crash of adrenaline, the come-down from something too intense to name.
Or maybe his magic was still working on her, somehow.
She didn’t have the words to ask, and she didn’t overly care, too.
She didn’t want to lose the warmth of his skin or the way his breath still ghosted over her cheek.
So she didn’t say anything at all, but basked into him.
She let her eyes drift shut as his fingers skimmed lightly down her arm, back up to her jaw, soothing, anchoring. Her muscles ached in the most perfect way. Her mind was a blur. Her body had never felt more at peace.
And then sleep took her.
GAEL WATCHED HER WHILE she slept peacefully. One hand curled loosely close to her face, her body still turned slightly toward his like she hadn’t meant to let go of him.
Gael watched her, and tried not to fall apart.
Her aura was quiet, dimmed by sleep, but still pulsing gently at the edges. He could still feel the echo of her pleasure, the last bursts of emotion.
He’d been touched before. Taken, desired.
But no one had ever looked at him with that kind of trust and asked to know his heart.
His past partners had all been elves. He’d never reached for someone else’s feelings, and no one had ever asked for his.
The distance had always been mutual, comfortable, and safe.
She had. Bravely. Generously. Without knowing what it would cost either of them.
And he’d let her all in.