4. Sky #3
Not mindless. Never with her. But deeper than reason, older than pride.
My hips drive harder. My mouth finds her throat, her breast, her shoulder.
I mark where I can without breaking skin, then lose that restraint and bite the curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
She cries out and comes around me so hard the knot starts swelling at the base of my cock.
I thrust deep. The knot thickens at the base, stretching her around me with each grinding stroke.
She gasps, hands clamped on my ears, body trembling.
I slow, giving her time. Her channel works around the swelling knot, fluttering, clutching, trying to take me.
“That’s it,” I breathe against her mouth. “That's my good girl. Open for me. You can take me.”
Her body yields. The knot locks and pulses again. My teeth ache. The thrum burn in my gums, in my blood, in the place beneath reason.
Beatrice makes a sound that would start wars on less civilized planets. “Why did you stop?”
“Because I have to ask,” I growl.
Her lashes lift. Her eyes are dark, dazed, annoyed. Beautiful. Mine.
“Ask what?”
The English feels too small for this. Everything on Earth feels too small for this. The room. The bed. The fucking planet. I brace one hand beside her head and force the words into the language she understands.
“Beatrice of Earth,” I say, and my voice changes. Deeper. Rougher. The old words slipping through the cracks in my control. “Will you let me bite you?”
For one second, she stares at me. Then she smiles. A soft, breathless, almost wicked little curve of her mouth. Her hand lifts, trembling, and pats my cheek.
Pats it.
As if I am not holding myself over her with my knot half-formed and my teeth aching for her throat. As if my entire bloodline is not leaning forward inside me, waiting for her answer. Humans are insane. Adorable. Dangerous. Possibly unfit for diplomacy.
“Skylor of Layn,” she whispers, voice warm and teasing, “Yes. Bite me.”
For half a heartbeat, I cannot move.
She said yes.
Lightly, strangely, with that impossible human humor threaded through the words, but she said yes.
My mate looks up at a sacred thing and smiles at it.
Maybe this is courage. Maybe this is how Earth women stand at the edge of forever.
Not solemn. Not trembling before tradition.
Smiling, breathless, one hand on my face like I am hers to soothe.
Fuck, I love this planet.
No. Too soon. Not love.
Something worse.
I lower my mouth to her throat.
Her pulse jumps under my tongue, fast and hot, and the scent of her floods me so completely I forget I am an Ak of Layn.
In this moment, I'm just a man. Her alpha.
She is slick around me, tight and soft and still adjusting to the size of me.
Her fingers slide into my hair. One thumb grazes the base of my ear, and pleasure snaps down my spine so hard my hips jerk.
“Careful,” I growl against her skin.
She laughs under me. “You’re the one about to bite me.”
The thought should steady me. It doesn't. It's not every day that a man mates his omega princess.
My tongue passes over the chosen place first, releasing the full strength of the aphrodisiac. Her body melts around mine. The tension leaves her thighs, then returns as need. Her breath breaks. Her hand clamps on my shoulder.
“Skylor.”
There. My name like that. Dragged out of her by want. My teeth sharpen.
I bite.
She cries out, and the sound becomes the center of the universe.
The mark opens under my mouth. Her blood touches my tongue, hot and bright and intimate in a way Earth has no proper vocabulary for.
The bond catches. Not gently. It slams through me like a door blown open by weather.
Beatrice’s pleasure pours into me, shocked and gold and blazing, and my body answers before I can command it.
The knot swells.
“Skylor—”
“I know.” I barely recognize my own voice. “Hold on to me.”
She does.
Both arms around my neck. Legs locked around my hips. Teeth against my shoulder as I push deep, deeper, until the knot presses against the tight entrance of her body and stops.
She freezes.
So do I. There is still time to hold back. To soothe. To wait. To be reasonable.
Reason is a corpse on the floor.
Her body flutters around me, slick and hot, resisting and asking at the same time. I bring my hand between us and circle the swollen center of her pleasure with my thumb. She jerks, gasping into my shoulder.
“That,” she chokes. “Do that again.”
I do.
Her body opens on the next slow push.
The knot seats.
I stop breathing. My orgasm tears through me.
No elegance. No control. I spill into her in hard pulses, mouth still at the mark, hands shaking against her hips.
The knot holds us together while her body clenches around me, dragging more out of me than I have ever given anyone.
She comes too, sudden and violent, her cry breaking against my shoulder, nails scoring my back.
My cock continues its pulses inside her, filling her in hot waves while the knot holds us joined.
The sheath grips her from within, velvet texture pushing against her inner walls, and her orgasm follows mine in a violent rush.
Her body clamps around me. Her fingers twist around my ears, and the pleasure becomes too much to separate into parts.
No office. No mission. No planet beneath us.
Only Beatrice.
When the storm passes, I am still inside her, locked there by the knot and the bond settling into place with frightening quiet. I roll us carefully to our sides, keeping her gathered against me. She whimpers when the movement tugs at the knot, then melts when I still.
“Pain?”
“No.” Her voice is small and stunned. “Full. Held.”
Held.
The word roots in my chest.
“Yes.” I press my mouth to her hair. “Held.”
Her hand rests over my heart. My own covers it before thought can interfere.
We lie that way while our breathing slows, while her body learns the strange intimacy of being unable to pull away and not wanting to.
The bond glows between us, not visible to her eyes perhaps, but unmistakable in her aura.
Gold and blue thread at the edges. Her truth and my claim meeting without permission.
The ring vibrates from downstairs. Damn the emergency bypass.