Chapter 27 #2
She cried out as he sucked one blushing peak into his mouth, pressing the other to the side of his face with a groan. The hairs of his beard were a sensation she’d never experienced. Tiny sparks that concentrated and shot straight to her core like a white-hot lance of need.
“Hmm,” he rumbled against her, tongue lashing out, something wicked in his gaze.
Propped on his elbows, Brand palmed her breasts and forced them together, until her nipples stood side by side between his fingers. Close enough to… to…
She couldn’t breathe for the waiting. The anticipation.
Sweet, shitting stars. He can’t mean—
Brand drew his tongue over them, teeth scraping both in glorious tandem before he devoured the tips.
“Ah!”
The cry echoed, bouncing around the cave like ten of her were shouting. It wasn’t enough to express her shock. Her wonderment. Lunara had never imagined such a thing. Wouldn’t have thought it possible. Could hardly believe it was happening, even as she turned molten beneath his ministrations.
She nearly sobbed when he broke away and rasped, “Noted.”
He gave her a squeeze and settled in at her side, head propped in one hand.
“Show me how you like it, how you prefer to be pleasured. No”—He stopped her from sitting up, from answering with words—“just feel and react. Let me learn from your body.”
Brand’s fingers danced over her soft stomach, down until he reached the curls at her mound, teasing his way into the wet inferno of her core. She would have sworn his hand shook as he found her entrance and dipped inside, but he seemed so in control. So sure.
He nipped at her collar bone, and she whimpered as he spread that wetness everywhere, finally landing on the throbbing pearl at her apex. Circling, teasing, his eyes locked on her face.
That piercing look darkened as he tilted his head. Between one gasp and the next, he ground more forcefully against her, keeping the same lazy speed even as he popped over the bud between sweeping passes.
A choked sound left her and she undulated her hips, pressing herself harder into his hand.
Brand hiked himself even closer, even tighter against her, as if he could absorb her pleasure skin-to-skin and have it for his own.
Stars above, maybe he could.
Without warning, he vibrated his fingers, and Lunara jolted, uncertain whether to lean into it or retreat. Sparks and spots whirled past her vision, her toes curling, but it wasn’t enough. Not what she wanted. Not what she needed.
A low hum rumbled from Brand’s chest, and he eased off with a nod—right before he slid his hand back to fully impale her with a thick finger.
Lunara loosed a keening moan and arched, her breasts swaying. On a snarl, he dove in and buried his face between them, dragging his cheeks over the mounds, almost mindless.
The scrape of his beard… His tongue and teeth everywhere…
Yes, this. This is what she needed.
He pulled out and added a second finger, harder, faster, his thumb working ‘round and ‘round with every thrust of his hand.
Her body moved with him, his abandon intoxicating. She was so close. So…
“Brand, I’m… I’m going to…”
Tighter and tighter, she coiled, until she was sure to snap.
“Everything,” he groaned. “Give me everything.”
Lunara could only obey. Her entire body bowed, locking up at the edge of that fathomless drop, teetering for a mind-blowing eternity before she let herself fall.
She was weightless as she spasmed. Floating as she gasped.
A kaleidoscope of colors as she shattered into a million pieces and finally let the building scream free.
She found her arms wrapped around him when she fell back into herself, cradling his head as he rained kisses on her skin and whispered praise, easing her through every trembling aftershock of her climax but not letting up.
There’s no way.
Brand surged into her, fusing his mouth to hers with a ravenous sound. “Again.”
Lunara swore, the feel of him so exquisite—so painfully right—that she couldn’t help it.
He took advantage of the action, sliding his tongue past her lips.
She met it with her own, twining and tasting in a frenzy of need.
She lost herself, reveling in the brutal strength coiled within him, the power she desperately wanted him to unleash on every straining inch of her body.
She was senseless in her passion, babbling as he took her to new heights ‘again.’ That time, when she broke apart and cried out, it was his name on her lips.
When his fingers left her, she wanted to rail, to shout her denial—until Brand gathered her up and tilted her head back, trailing kisses down one side of her neck before dragging his open mouth up the other and nipping her jaw.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, mate?” he husked. “How perfect?”
Hearing that word on his lips and the triumph in his voice, Lunara sighed, boneless, unable to speak.
He rolled off the platform and dragged her forward, until her bottom teetered off the edge. Her breath caught when he dropped to his knees, shoulders wedged between her thighs.
“Any idea how good you smell?” His nostrils flared and he leaned in, exhale fanning over her—just before he licked straight up her center with a ragged moan, pulling an answering cry from her when it rumbled against her most sensitive flesh. “How fucking good you taste?”
Bleeding sisters. Maybe you should keep him.
“Please.” That single drag of his tongue hadn’t been nearly enough.
At her plea, Brand’s lids fluttered closed and his head tipped back, as if he were the one with his lover’s mouth on him.
Perhaps he wasn’t the only one who could watch and learn.
She raised up onto her elbows and stretched her legs wider, pushing against his grip, offering herself to him. “Please.”
His eyes burned into hers, a sparking blaze of hazel—and then he consumed her.
Brand held nothing back, like his life depended on tasting every drip and throb and pulse.
When he spread her open with one hand and latched his lips onto her clit, cheeks hollowing as he sucked in rhythmic draws, Lunara’s hands slapped down and fisted each of his horns without a thought.
She needed something to hold on to, an anchor in the storm of his onslaught.
The sound that tore from him was raw. Desperate. Reverberating over every one of her nerve endings, as if…
She stroked them experimentally, using the obsidian lengths to guide him, pushing and pulling, the feel of him moving beneath her grip only heightening the sensations.
The groove between his brows deepened, the look somewhere between rapture and pain.
Oh, yes. He most certainly enjoyed having his horns touched. Used.
The realization sprouted within Lunara and grew roots, burrowing under her skin, electric when they reached the deepest parts of her.
If her pleasure was his, then the same was true in return.
She’d never experienced this level of connection, as if a thread had been pulled taut between them to send every feeling back and forth along its fibers.
“Again,” Brand whispered, eyes open and on her face as his tongue flicked her.
He thrust two fingers into her, curling them just so, and Lunara was done for. The orgasm slammed into her, knocking the air from her lungs. She had no control over the near-violent splintering of her body, or how it brutally remade itself again. She was at Brand’s mercy. Willingly. Blissfully.
It was a wonder his horns didn’t pierce through her skin as she bucked, clamping his head between her thighs. He didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. Not with the way his groans spurred her spasms. The way he clutched tight and spread her arse, pulling her even tighter against his face.
In the midst of ecstasy as she’d never known, a quiet certainty clicked into place—no matter what else happened, she would never be the same.
Lunara blinked and was surrounded by strong arms that warded off the chill air, Brand’s breath hot against her neck.
Weeping sisters, she must have blacked out.
Time slowed as they lay there, the enormity of it all crashing against her like waves upon the shore.
At long last, Brand gently pulled her by the hair, separating their bodies.
The trail of his other hand was like fire, searing its path into her flesh as he brought it around from her back.
He slid it across her wide hip, over the crumpled fabric of her dress and up the line of her body, settling between her breasts.
He paused there, staring at his thumb drifting back and forth, before he broke the silence with a ragged whisper. “I feel as though I’ve waited all my life for this moment, to be able to breathe.”
Curse and damn her heart for skipping. Her mind for understanding. Lunara forgot everything she was running from when he was near, and it freed her in ways she’d only dreamt about.
“Luna…” Brand swallowed, the sound cracking through the room. “Tell me this heart beats so fiercely here for me. Tell me I’ve finally found my home.”
Home?
Yes. That’s… that’s what he sometimes felt like. Lunara had gone so long without one—a true one, with family and laughter and warmth—she’d nearly forgotten what it could be like. The joy, the… the safety of it.
An echo of the Voice’s words drifted through her for the thousandth time. ‘Do not fear his light, Lunara.’
A small sob left her, fear and hope colliding.
Shitting stars, there’s no dissuading you, is there? What if it’s a mistake? What if—
“Y-yes,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “But…”
He tensed, his gentle strokes grinding to a halt.
Her own muscles went rigid, stomach curdling as words she’d kept imprisoned for decades started crawling up her throat. Parts of the truths she’d sworn to never utter.
No. No, no, no.
“I have secrets, Brand.” The admission fell out before her wiser half could claw it back. “Dark and messy and complicated. When they find out…” She pulled away to sit up and stare across the cave, hating the icy loneliness already creeping in.
Bleeding arseholes.