Chapter 28
Ash
Salt and spice rush across my taste buds.
Orion lifts me up as though I’m nothing more than a feather. My legs wrap around him and I draw him as close as I can get to my core, but he holds firm. One massive hand splayed across my lower back, the other gripping my thigh like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he loosens his hold.
“Not yet.” His voice has dropped into something raw, something that makes my stomach clench. “I told you what happens next.”
The bark bites into my spine as he presses me against the tree. I should care. Should feel the scrape, the roughness, the forest closing in around us.
I don’t.
All I feel is him.
“Orion—”
“Quiet.” He drops to his knees.
The sight of him, this massive Wild Court guardian kneeling before me in the moss and the dark, his amber eyes blazing up at me like I’m something worth devouring, short-circuits whatever protest was forming in my throat.
His hands slide up my thighs. Slow. Deliberate. Memorizing every inch of skin.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he says against my hip, his breath hot through the thin fabric still clinging to me. “For weeks. For months. Every time I closed my eyes in that fucking forest trying to find you.”
He hooks his fingers into my waistband but doesn’t pull. Just holds. Lets me feel the promise of what’s coming without delivering.
“Orion.” His name comes out strained.
“Patience.” He presses a kiss to my hip bone. Then the other. Then the soft skin just above where I need him most. “I spent a month starving for you. Hunted you through the borderlands until I bled. And now I’ve finally caught you.” His teeth graze my hip. “Let me savor my prey.”
He drags my pants down an inch. Just an inch. Presses his mouth to the newly exposed skin.
My hips buck toward him and his hands clamp down, holding me still against the bark.
“No.” The word vibrates against my skin, more growl than speech. “You don’t get to rush this. You made me chase you. Now I make you wait.”
“I didn’t—”
“A month, Ash.” He looks up at me, and there’s something in his expression that steals my breath: not hunger.
Starvation. “A month of bleeding through the borderlands. A month of feeling you through the bond and not being able to reach you. A month of your scent in my head and your taste on my tongue from that one night and nothing.” He presses his palm flat against my lower belly, right where the heat coils tightest. “Nothing but my own hand and your name in my mouth when I came.”
My brain whites out. Reboots. Fails to come back online.
He drags my pants down another inch. Kisses the new skin. Pulls back.
I’m going to lose my mind.
“So yes.” His voice has gone guttural. “I’m going to take my time, and you’re going to let me. Because you’re not prey that wants to escape, are you, Thorn?”
His tongue traces the crease where my thigh meets my hip before I can answer.
“You followed me out here. Felt how hard I was through the bond.” His breath against my center, hot and deliberate. “And it made you wet.”
I make a sound I’ve never made before. Something between a whimper and a growl.
He laughs against my skin. Low and dark and not remotely civilized.
“There she is.” He finally, finally pulls my pants down fully, dragging everything with them in one motion. The cool air hits me and I gasp, but his mouth is there before the cold can settle, pressing a kiss to my inner thigh.
Not where I need him. Close. So close. But not there.
“Orion, please—”
“Please what?” He switches to the other thigh. Kisses the soft skin. Bites down hard enough to make me yelp. “Tell me what you want, prey.”
I hate begging. Hate the vulnerability of it. Spent twenty-five years learning to never ask for anything I couldn’t take for myself.
But my hands are in his hair and my thighs are shaking and he’s looking up at me with those amber eyes that have gone full predator, and the words spill out before I can stop them.
“Your mouth.” It comes out wrecked. “I need your mouth on me. Please. Please, Orion, I need—”
He rewards me with one long, slow stroke of his tongue up my center.
I slam my head back against the bark. Stars explode behind my eyelids. My hands grip his hair hard enough to hurt, but he groans as if the pain is a gift.
“Fuck, you taste good.” He licks into me again, deeper this time. “Knew you would. Thought about it every night. What my little prey would taste like when I finally ran her down.” Another long stroke. “Reality’s better. So much fucking better.”
Except he pulls back just as the pressure starts to build. His lips glisten. His breath comes ragged.
“Not yet.” He presses a kiss to my inner thigh, right over the bite mark he left. “Not until I say.”
“I swear to every god in every realm I will murder you.”
“Noted.” He licks another slow stripe through my folds, circles my clit once, just once, then pulls away. “But you won’t. Because then you wouldn’t get to come on my tongue.” His eyes find mine. “And you want that, don’t you? Want me to eat this pretty cunt until you scream?”
“Yes.” The word rips out of me. “Gods, yes—”
“Then beg prettier.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“Noted.” Another slow stripe. “Beg anyway.”
My legs are trembling. My whole body is trembling. The bark scrapes my spine with every involuntary movement and I don’t care. Don’t care about anything except the way he’s taking me apart piece by piece.
“Please.” The word tears out of me. “Please, Orion. I need to come. I need your mouth. I’ll do anything—”
“Anything?” His eyes flash full amber. No whites. All predator.
“Anything.”
He seals his mouth over my clit and sucks.
I shatter.
No build. No warning. Just his mouth and his hands on my hips holding me against the tree and the orgasm ripping through me without mercy.
He doesn’t stop.
His tongue keeps working, dragging out every aftershock, every tremor, until I’m shaking so hard I can barely stand. Until I’m pulling at his hair and making sounds that don’t belong to any language I know.
“One,” he growls against my oversensitive flesh, and I jolt at the vibration.
I’m still trembling when he rises. Still gasping when his body cages mine against the tree, his chest a furnace against my bare skin.
His hand wraps around my throat before I’ve caught my breath. Not squeezing, just holding. Claiming me with the one simple touch. Though it is anything but simple.
“That’s one.” His thumb strokes across my pulse point. “I’m not done with you.”
His face shifts.
The amber of his eyes sucks in then outward, swallowing the whites until there’s nothing human left. His skin ripples with heat I can feel radiating off him in waves. The hand on my throat tightens. Still not painful, but present. Undeniable.
This isn’t the Orion who joked about pee spots and played catch the queen with children.
This is the guardian. The predator. The Wild Court magic that’s been coiling beneath his skin since the moment I walked into that clearing and found him with his hand on his cock.
He spins me around before I can draw breath, my palms slamming against the bark, my cheek pressed to rough wood.
“Hands on the tree.” The words vibrate through me, more growl than voice. “Don’t let go.”
I grip the bark until splinters bite into my palms.
Not because he told me to.
Because I want to see what happens when I obey.
His foot kicks my stance wider. His hand slides down my spine, pressing until my back arches, until I’m presented to him like an offering.
A sound rumbles through his chest. Not quite a growl, not quite a groan. Something in between that makes my cunt clench around nothing.
“There we go.” His nose drags up the back of my neck, inhaling deep.
Scenting me. “Finally caught you. Been chasing you for months, Thorn. Through the borderlands, through the wards, through every wall you put up.” He inhales again, and I feel his cock twitch against my ass.
“And now I’ve got you. Bent over and dripping and mine. ”
One hand grips my hip hard enough to bruise. The other guides his cock to my entrance, dragging the tip through the wetness there, coating himself in everything his mouth just pulled out of me.
“Feel that?” He notches himself at my entrance but doesn’t push in. Just holds there, letting me feel how thick he is, how badly I want him inside me. “That’s what you do to me. Make me fucking feral. Make me forget I’m supposed to be civilized.”
“Orion.” I’m begging now. Not ashamed of it. “Please—”
“Please what?” He rocks forward the barest inch, then pulls back. “Tell me what you want, prey. Use your words.”
“Fuck me.” It comes out ragged. Desperate. “Stop teasing and fuck me. I want to feel you for days. I want—”
He slams home.
I cry out. Can’t help it, can’t stop it.
The sound echoes through the Dark Forest. Something in the trees stirs, and I don’t know if it’s the wind or the wildlife or the magic that lives in this place, but I don’t care.
I don’t care about anything except the way he fills me, stretches me, hits something deep inside that makes my vision blur.
He doesn’t give me time to adjust.
His hips pull back and snap forward again. Again. Again. Setting a rhythm that’s brutal and relentless and exactly what I need.
“This.” He growls against my ear, teeth grazing the shell. “This is what I thought about every night in that forest trying to reach you. My hand on my cock, your name on my lips, imagining what it would feel like to finally catch you and bury myself so deep you’d feel me in your throat.”
I can’t respond. Can only take it. Only press back against him and meet his thrusts and let the sounds spill out of me without shame.
“You feel that?” His pace turns punishing. “Feel how hard you make me? How fucking desperate?” He bites the junction of my neck and shoulder. Not gentle, actual teeth. The sting makes me clench around him. “Spent a month starving. Now I’m going to feast.”