Mara
His mouth comes down on mine and takes whatever I mean to say with it. He kisses me like he can’t get to me fast enough, like he’s done being gone, and I get his name out against his lips, broken in half.
“Aaron.”
His hands are already everywhere, dragging down my sides, spreading over my hips, sweeping up to my breasts and back down like he can’t decide where to land, like he has to touch all of me at once or none of it counts.
He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t say a single word, and that, more than the weight of him, is what tells me how far gone he is.
My lion isn’t shocked. I am, my head spinning at how fast he’s gone from happy tears to this. But she’s awake and delighted, and she’s the one who answers him.
My tail curls up and strokes his cheek, slow and proud. It slides down the length of his back, learns the muscle there, then slips between our bodies, over the hard plane of his stomach, to wrap around his dick and stroke him in one long pull.
He breaks against my mouth and grunts into me, ragged, and the sound moves through my whole body.
His mouth leaves mine and trails down the side of my neck, over the claim mark, and lower.
He closes his lips around one nipple and works it filthy, sucking deep and rolling the other between his fingers, pinching just to the edge of too much, and my back bows clean off the bed to feed him more of me.
I’m stroking him the whole time, my tail working him in a slow nasty rhythm, and he grinds himself down into my grip and groans against my breast like it’s the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to him.
The wet drag of his mouth, the sting of his fingers, the heat of him pushing into the curl of my tail—I’m soaked already, rolling my hips up to find some friction he won’t give me yet.
His magic comes for me then, catching both my wrists at once, warm and absolute, pinning them above my head to the bed so I can’t move them.
My tail goes slack in the same instant, uncurling from his dick and falling limp against the sheets like he reached in and switched it off, and inside me my lion stops.
She doesn’t pace or fight it. She curls down small and warm and rests her head on her paws. My lion has never once gone quiet in the middle of this, not ever, and the wrongness of it cuts through the haze.
“Aaron.” I narrow my eyes at him, my breath coming fast. “What are you doing?”
He lifts his head from my breast just enough to look at me, and his mouth is wet and his eyes are something I’ve never seen on him in bed.
“This is the happiest moment of my life,” he says, his voice scraping. “And you’re about to feel every bit of what I feel. What I feel, you feel.”
His eyes go black. Not dark. Black, edge to edge, the way they did last time, his magic rising up under his skin, and everything in me goes hot.
“Oh, shit.” I know what this is. I know exactly what this is.
This is the price of the spell he cast on himself, the one meant to keep me from getting pregnant.
It was always going to come to this—him going feral for me, every line of him one raw want.
He’s just been too buried in the Glen and Eric and a crown he won’t pick up to let it surface.
Now he knows I’m carrying his cub, and it’s loose.
“Aaron. Aaron—“
He drops his head and puts his mouth back on my breast. My eyes go wide, and I stop breathing.
The orgasm rips up through me from somewhere deep, nowhere near where his hands or his mouth are, folding me around it. It’s the hardest I have ever come in my life. He hasn’t touched me there.
His hand is on my hip, his mouth is on my breast, his magic is in me. He’s poured what he feels straight into my blood, and I come so hard my pinned arms strain against the hold, my voice breaking open on a sound I don’t recognize.
I’m still shaking, squirming under him, when I hiss it. “You—you made me come with magic.”
He hums against my breast, pleased. The next wave is already building in me with nothing touching me at all, and a thrill of pure animal fear chases the want through me.
I understand now: he’s going to take me apart.
He’s been holding an ocean of this back, and he’s finally letting it out, and he’s going to wreck me.
“Feel what I feel,” he says, low and ruined, and then he stops talking altogether.
He slides down my body, my wrists still pinned where he wants them, and settles between my thighs, pushing them wide. Then his mouth is on my pussy, hot and open and hungry.
He licks into me deep, slow then merciless, dragging the flat of his tongue from my entrance up to my clit and circling it, sucking it between his lips, and the sounds he makes against me are obscene, slurping and groaning like I’m the only thing he’s ever wanted in his mouth.
My hips buck up into him and the magic holds all of me, leaves me with nothing to do but take it. I come on his tongue with a cry, my thighs clamping around his head, and he licks me through every pulse of it and doesn’t let up.
His hands come back to me and turn me, flipping me onto my stomach, lifting my hips until my knees are under me and my face is in the sheets. My tail lies dead and limp down my back, no help to me at all, my lion still curled and resting deep inside.
His hands spread me. His mouth drops to my ass and he licks me there, filthy and without an ounce of shame, then moves to my pussy and feeds on me from behind, his tongue working me, his nose pressed into me, the wet noise of it filling the room.
I’m shaking all over, and when I come again it rolls through me so long and so deep I think it might never stop.
He doesn’t give me a second to recover. He fits the head of his dick against me and buries himself in one stroke, and the stretch of him punches the air out of my lungs.
He fucks me into the mattress, one hand gripping the back of my neck and the other clamped on my hip, every thrust slamming me forward, the headboard cracking against the wall, and it’s too much and not enough, the painful, perfect edge my lion has always craved, and I’m too wrecked to even reach for her.
The pressure builds and builds with nowhere to go, and then it breaks, and I’m coming so hard I let go, slick gushing down my thighs, my legs shaking under me so badly they give out. He follows me down, grinding deep, working me through it with a low broken sound.
I think we’re finished. We’re not even close.
His magic rolls me onto my back. He comes down over me and slides into me again, slow this time, deep and grinding, his hips rolling against mine. The new angle catches something that has me arching up off the bed, clutching at him with hands he finally lets me move.
He fucks me long and deep, devastating, his forehead dropped to mine, his black eyes locked on my face, watching every wave cross it, and when I come again it’s quieter and somehow worse, shaking me apart from the inside out.
“Aaron.” I get a hand to his cheek, my voice barely working. “Aaron, honey, hold on—“
He’s not listening to me. He’s not anywhere I can reach.
He rolls again, smooth and unstoppable, taking me with him until I’m straddling him with his dick buried deep. His magic and his hands settle on my hips and start lifting me, working me up and down the length of him.
He sits up under me, wraps an arm around my back, and takes a nipple in his mouth, sucking hard, his other hand helping me ride him when my own strength is long gone.
I’m slick with sweat from my hairline to the small of my back, my thighs burning, my body wrung out past anything I knew it could survive, and still he bounces me on him, steady and relentless, chasing the feeling through me like there’s nowhere in any realm he’d rather be.
I come one more time, scraped raw and shaking, my forehead dropping to his, and this time, finally, he goes with me. He locks me down onto him and spills into me with a sound torn out of the bottom of him, his whole body shuddering, his arms iron around me, his face buried against my neck.
When it’s over, it isn’t him who breaks. It’s me. Every part of me lets go at once, and I sag into him with nothing left, the room swimming, my eyes already falling shut.
Through the roaring in my ears I feel him cradle me down out of his lap and onto the bed, and I hear him, far away and warm.
“I’m the happiest man in the world,” he murmurs into the top of my head. “I’m going to be a father. You’re giving me life, Mara.” His mouth presses to my temple. “I love you so much. I don’t deserve you, I know that I don’t, but I swear to you I’ll do anything to be the man you deserve.”
“Aaron.” It’s all I have left, the shape of his name and nothing behind it.
I feel him moving me, easing my limbs into place, drawing the blanket up, tucking it under my chin, his hands gentle now where they were merciless, settling me until I’m warm and held and impossibly safe.
My lion stirs once, sated, and sinks back down.
I’m already going under, and the last thing I hear is his voice, quiet and close.
“I love you, Mara. I love you more than anything.”