Chapter 28 Meryn
MERYN
Stark kisses like the world is ending and I can be his savior.
It’s worship edged with danger.
His mouth is rough on mine, needy. I can taste his desperation—or maybe it’s my own. I can’t even tell anymore.
I thought if this finally happened, I’d be sated, quenched. But the opposite is happening. The furious pounding of my heart doesn’t quiet. It gets louder, as if he’s just tossed fuel on a fire.
His tongue is in my mouth, and I just need more of it. More.
I pull him against me, mouth and chest and hips. His fingers dig into my skin, and I shiver.
Arching slightly, I bite his lip in a delirious plea. He lets out the same hiss of pain I heard earlier and bites me back hard enough to draw blood.
The iron taste slips over our tongues, oddly euphoric.
The final brittle layer of my anger and pain and shame breaks open, shattering into a million pieces, leaving behind only the burn of desire and want.
“I can’t feel it,” I pant, pulling away from Stark, knowing that I’m not making sense. My mind is so muddled between his and my own. I don’t know where he stops and I begin anymore.
He grinds himself against my core, so rigid that I gasp. “This? You can’t feel this?”
He does it again, and I throw my head back against the ground hard enough that it smarts, my entire body lit up with exquisite, torturous sensation.
“S-stop,” I stutter, and he comes to a halt on top of me, frozen.
Through our connection, I sense dismay ricocheting through him. Rejection. I reach up quickly, putting my hand on his stubbled cheek.
“I can’t untangle my own emotions right now,” I tell him quietly. “I want to feel you. Fully. As myself. I’m going to close the connection first. Is that… is that okay?”
I hear my voice through his ears, how it’s tinged with a bit of fear—my own wariness of rejection. Will he still want me without my own hunger inciting him?
“Do it,” he says, and then grinds against me again so I can feel how hard I make him, with or without the way our minds are intertwined. “Quickly.”
With a forceful mental push, I shove him out of my mind. Then I’m back entirely in my own body again.
Alone with my own aching, pulsing need.
And I need to ask him something. “Noemi. Is she… ?”
“Like my sister,” he says, voice gravely. “Nothing more.”
Thank the fucking goddess.
Stark leans back down, his face so close to mine. I catalog his appearance: his long, dark lashes framing eyes filled with a need mirroring my own. The rough stubble surrounding his full lips, lips that I’ve now tasted, lips that I crave on every part of my body.
“Tell me what you want, Meryn,” he growls.
The sound of his voice rumbles through my trembling body, breaking me and remaking me. My core clenches tightly.
Have I ever been asked that? Ever once in my life?
Tears spring to my eyes, and I look away from him, unable to deal with how much it means that someone cares.
Stark grabs my cheeks in his large, tattooed hands, forcing me to meet his demanding gaze. “Tell me.”
What do I want? Him, of course, but that’s not what he means.
In this one place in my life, I want to surrender. To be safe to do that without the risk of losing myself entirely. I want to give into passion without possession. To be wholly somebody’s without feeling like I’m only theirs.
“I want—I want you to be in control,” I tell him, working slowly through my own desires.
Stark makes a low hum of approval, his eyes growing hooded with dark satisfaction. “I’m more than happy to boss you around, princess.”
He leans closer, his breath hot on my ear. The sensation of him hovering over me is so delicious that it takes everything to not arch against him again.
“But surely you know you’re in control here,” he growls.
A mewling, frenzied sound rips out of me. “Say it again,” I beg, heat coursing through me.
“You are always in control, Meryn. Now spread your fucking legs.”
I do as he demands, going slick at the command. He recaptures my mouth with his.
The way he kisses me is wild. Unleashed and raw. He takes my bottom lip between his teeth and worries it there, sending sparks through my whole body.
One of his hands moves to my hair, twisting silver locks and pulling gently, firmly. Testing. Making sure this is what I want.
“More,” I tell him, and he pulls harder.
Fuck. I press myself into his chest, moaning into his mouth.
His other hand traces down my body until he finds my breasts, cupping them through my clothes. I whimper, and he reaches down to rip my shirt out of where it’s tucked into my pants. Then his calloused hand slides up my torso.
Stark yanks down my breast binding and rolls my nipple between his finger and thumb. I gasp, moaning.
“More,” I beg again, and he shoves my shirt all the way up, exposing my breasts to the cold air. Then he continues to play with one nipple while he sucks the other into his mouth, through his teeth. The combination of pain and pleasure pulls another moan out of me, louder this time.
He pulls back, gaze unyielding and heavy with need. “Strip,” he commands.
And yet, I know this is not like with Killian. If I wanted something else, Stark would accept it.
Fuck, it’s so hot.
I do as he tells me, tossing off my jacket and then pulling my shirt off over my head. The breast binding goes next. Then I wiggle out of my leather pants until all I’m left in are my briefs.
I hesitate, even with the ache at my center. Are we really doing this?
“Strip,” he says sternly, the uncompromising tone of his voice coiling deliciously in my gut. I do as he tells me.
And then I’m entirely bared to him, spread out on the forest floor like an offering.
I’m not even self-conscious about it. Everything in this moment is right.
He leans back to look at me, and my whole body flushes at the primal heat in his gaze.
Stark spends a moment just staring, and I can tell he’s cataloging it all. My heavy, heaving breasts. The patch of dark hair between my thighs, which are spread for him. The glistening wetness between them.
Then he moves toward me again, capturing my lips in a forceful, pleading kiss. I moan against his mouth as he draws closer, as the rigidity of his cock presses near my core.
“Use me.” My words come out whiny. I’m so keyed up that I’m nearly incoherent.
He laughs darkly, pulling away from me. “Isn’t that my line, princess? And I thought I was in charge here. Get on your hands and knees.”
A thrill sparks through me, and I do as he says, the dirt and grass biting into my knees. Anticipation builds as I wait to hear his pants come down, wait for him to slide into me.
Instead, I nearly jump when his warm hand strokes down my back. He pushes firmly, forcing my torso down to the grass. I press my face into the ground, stretch my arms over my head.
Whatever is happening here is literally filthy, and I’ve never been so turned on in my life.
Stark wraps his strong arms around my thighs, and I gasp as he yanks me backward… toward his waiting face.
Heat sears through me as his firm, hot tongue slides along the entirety of my slit.
“Stark,” I moan.
It starts slow, like he’s learning my taste. His stubble is beautifully rough against the apex of my thighs. As he strokes over me, his hands come up and grip my legs, pressing them wider, opening me up farther for him.
And then Stark reaches up and flicks my clit while plunging his tongue deep inside me.
“Oh fuck,” I almost scream.
He lets out an answering groan, the rumble of it against my core nearly bringing me to the edge. He starts to rhythmically strum at my most sensitive place with his long, expert fingers while plunging his tongue in and out of me.
I rock my hips back against his face. “Please, please,” I beg. He’s already giving me everything I could ever need, pushing me to an orgasm faster than I’ve ever felt. “I’m gonna—”
Stark pulls his face away from me quickly, and I nearly start to cry in frustration. “Why—?”
Grabbing my hips, he flips me onto my back, the scratch of the grass rough against my skin and only heightening my longing. His face is flushed as his dark gaze combs my body. His lips glisten with my need.
Then he growls, “I’ve dreamed of this moment for too long, princess. I need to watch your face when you come. Pull your knees up.”
Dazed, I do as he says, holding my knees tight to my shoulders, exposing myself entirely to him once more.
Stark’s long, rough fingers start to tease at my entrance. I cry out his name and can’t stop my hips from rocking to his touch.
“Please.”
He lifts his face to smirk at me wickedly and then, without warning, he sinks two big fingers deep inside, stroking and twisting. I almost levitate off the ground, overwhelmed with sensation and wanting more, more.
Stark’s mouth goes to my clit, and he sucks hard. He lets his teeth graze over me before giving quick, gentle strokes with his tongue, teasing me. Driving me wild as he fucks me with his fingers. I push into him mindlessly, and he reaches his other hand up to play with my nipples again.
I’m whimpering, begging. I’m not thinking about anything other than his hands and his tongue and the intense sensation lancing through me, pulling me apart.
“Stark,” I whimper. I reach down and fist my fingers in his hair as the cresting wave starts to take me.
“Stark. Stark. Stark.” His name, over and over, a prayer on my tongue.
Muscles start to tighten. I can’t stop. Can’t stop any of it. Don’t want to. My thighs burn, and my heart beats so hard that it jumps from my lips in a desperate little, “Please, please, please. Stark.”
We make eye contact as I come, pleasure cresting from deep inside of me and washing over my whole body. His tongue doesn’t let up, teasing and licking. The world splits into fractured light, sensation pulling me apart in a thousand little pieces and then putting me back together again.
I tighten around his thick fingers, trembling and shaking, my whole body pulsing with wave after wave of pleasure as it refuses to let go of me.
I think I black out for a moment at the intensity. When my senses return, Stark has me tight in his arms, his body wrapped around me where I lie on the forest floor.
Birdsong starts up again, and the wind rustles through the branches above us, making spots of sunlight dance on our skin.
I turn to look at Stark, still dazed. He’s watching me carefully, as if determining what I need and deciding what to do next.
I want to undress him, to do for him what he’s done for me, but he pushes my hands away when I try.
“Just lie back,” he says, his dominant Alpha voice coming back out. I give him a half smile as I fall lazily back against the leaves.
We lie there and watch the sun dapple the forest, Stark’s hand stroking through my hair and down my side.
Eventually, I sense that Anassa is returning. Stark and I stand, and I quickly pull my clothes back on. He’s gone quiet, contemplative.
Broody.
There’s a bit of an awkward distance between the two of us, and I can’t figure out what’s causing it. We don’t have time for a big conversation about feelings, though.
Astreona is waiting for their answer.