32. Just One Fur #2
“Arden.” My name sounds thick in his mouth, almost like his inner dragon is emerging. “You’re injured. I won’t fall on you like a—”
I take his hand then, shoving it between my thighs. “This is what hurts. It aches . . .”
He groans and protests even as his fingers play in my wetness. “Arden, you should—”
I silence him. Cover his mouth with mine, seize his face in both my hands, reveling in the texture of his skin, the scratch of bristle on his cheeks, like he’s the most treasured thing in the world to me and he might deny me this—might take himself away from me.
It’s my first kiss to give. Apparently, observing kissing, sadly, does not mean I’m good at it. I’m pragmatic enough to recognize that.
My lips are everywhere, wild and so excited at the taste of him that I cannot control my clumsiness. His mouth is still under mine for several moments, and a horrible dread fills me. He’s not going to respond. I’m bad at this.
I’ve repelled him. He still thinks I’m too injured.
Crushed, I begin to ease away, ending the sloppy kiss, and then he hauls me back, one of his big hands diving into my hair while his other arm wraps around my waist, forgetting all about his qualms.
I make a sound of gratification: part sob, part moan.
He sits up and positions me atop his lap. Then his hands come down on me—all over me, freely roaming my back and hips, my ass and thighs, stroking, petting me until I’m writhing in his lap, panting hard into his mouth through the growing chaos of our kiss.
Blood pounds in my veins as he takes command, growling against my mouth, “Easy. Slow your lips. Do as I do.”
I breathe through my nose and temper my lips, no longer trying to devour his face with quite so much enthusiasm. I mimic him, grateful for his knowledge, his skill as I take his top lip, going slow as he does. Thorough, building in intensity.
“Nice,” he hums. “Now open your mouth wider.” I oblige and his lips slant over mine, deepening the kiss. He lightly bites down on my bottom lip, and I gasp. A tug pulls low in my belly. He licks where his teeth sink into me. “Touch your tongue to mine.”
I meet his tongue, savoring, gliding my tongue along his.
Our mouths mate, our kiss growing feverish, frantic, tongues wildly rubbing and moving together.
I had no idea. I didn’t realize that kissing could make everything better.
Hotter. More desperate. I never realized it could make the throbbing ache between my thighs so much sharper.
One moment his hands are flexing and squeezing my thighs, and then he’s maneuvered me so that I’m straddling him, thighs splayed so that my sex is exposed and flush and weeping against him.
Soon I’m rocking into him, my swollen nether lips gliding smoothly, wetly with my own juices, over that engorged part of him.
I break the kiss, gulping for air.
His mouth drags down my throat, teeth scoring the stretched lines of my neck.
“That’s it. Show me,” he growls.
I reach between us, my hand sliding between our lust-soaked bodies until I find him, encircle his cock. My thumb swipes over the head of him, finding the moisture beading there, lubricating him, and my core clenches in response, my craving for him a clawing hunger.
A shudder racks him as I guide his cock toward my entrance. My hips lift up in offering, ready to take him in, ready to sink down on top of him and feel the completeness I’ve been seeking for too long.
His hand locks on my arm. “Wait.”
I freeze over him, gazing hungrily, bewildered at his suddenly pained expression. “What? Why?”
His gaze flickers, traveling over my face like he’s starving and I’m the last morsel to eat in the entirety of this world. “I assume you have never . . .”
I stare at him blankly, willing him to finish, willing myself to understand.
He continues, his voice as tormented as his expression. “You were cursed for ten years. You were little more than a girl when—”
“Oh.” I nod, and then shake my head, a new kind of tension stealing over me. “That’s true. I have never, but why should that make a difference?”
“Because it will hurt, and I have no desire to hurt you.” His eyes glint fiercely, and he adds with a bleak vehemence, “I won’t.
I came from a place where hurting others, hurting those like you was the thing done.
Like breathing, like . . . blinking. I vowed never would I do that, never would I be that—like them. ”
“You won’t.” A whimper burns up my throat.
I rock my hips, sliding myself over the full length of him, not taking him in but enjoying the deep glide of him along my entrance.
It’s inconceivable this could ever hurt.
Still holding onto my arm, he allows me just this . . . but it’s not enough. “Please.”
He pauses and licks his lips. “You’re small and untried, Arden . . . and very . . . human.”
“You’ve been with a human before.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
He hesitates. “For one thing, she was experienced.” That’s right. A widow. “And another . . . it wasn’t like this. She didn’t know me. Not the real me.”
Like I do.
I know him. All his secrets.
And that’s the main distinction. I know him. There are no curtains between us. I’m a human and he is not. He shouldn’t want me. But he does.
I shouldn’t want him. But I do.
Help me, I do.
As long as this spell holds me, no human can see me. But he can. He can, and it’s a gift I won’t throw away. This beautiful being sees me and wants me the way I want him, even if he’s too stubborn in this moment to let himself have me.
“It will work between us, Tage,” I whisper, desperate to persuade him. I don’t know why I’m so certain, but I am. My desire for him is an insistent thing with a mind of its own. Not having him will hurt more than having him. In this, I am absolute, and I have to make him understand that.
I grind against him. The air hisses out from his lips. His hand loosens around me, not restraining me, allowing me to continue gripping his cock. He could stop me. He could wrench away. He doesn’t. He lets me ride him, and that gives me hope, feeds my desire and resolve to have him.
“Damn it, Arden.” His throat works as he struggles to swallow. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me right now by refusing me.”
He groans softly and mutters something unintelligible, his voice an anguished plea. “I promised I wouldn’t touch you and I’ve already broken that. I promised I would never harm anyone smaller, weaker . . . an innocent like you. I can’t break that promise, too.”
“I am not small. I am not weak.” Leaning down, I bite his mouth, my teeth sinking into his bottom lip, wishing it were him sinking into me. “And I’m not so innocent.” At least I don’t want to be. I don’t feel innocent right now in all the wanton ways that I want him. “Fuck me, Tage. Please.”
His body jerks, my words bolting through him. His hands flex on me, and I feel his heart, a beating pulse through his palms.
He goes rigid against me, tension humming from him, his restraint vibrating, a wire pulled taut, dangerously close to snapping. I know this. I sense that wildness in him, that ferocity, and I want it to erupt and flow over me.
His gaze rakes me, a hot blade scouring my face, down my chest, lingering on my less-than-impressive breasts before sweeping over my belly and the mound between my thighs.
Then I’m on my back. “Just remember. You asked for this.”
I don’t know if he’s saying those words to me or himself.
He flings them at me like a curse and a benediction as he comes over me, his body a large shadow in the gloom of his den.
I expect to feel him pushing inside me right away, but no.
“What are you doing?” I squeak as his head dives between my trembling thighs.
“Oh, I’m going to give you what you want, but first I’m going to make sure you’re good and ready for me.”
I yelp and grab a fistful of his hair at the first velvet swipe of his tongue. The single stroke whips me into a frenzy, and I buck against his mouth, my head dropping back on my neck as I release a keening cry.
He responds by increasing the pressure of his lips and tongue, devouring me .
. . sucking the little nub at the top of my sex, drawing it into the warmth of his mouth and lashing it with his clever tongue until stars burst in my eyes and spasms run through me as I come undone—and not in any quiet, controlled way.
Screaming, I press myself against his face, greedy and desperate, pumping against that sucking mouth of his.
I’m flying again in his arms, airborne. Only this time we’re on the ground, in his den, in his bed of fur.
He lifts his head, his breath fanning my sex as he rasps, “You taste so good.” His hand returns, a finger easing deep inside my passage, sending me arching, my hips pushing up to meet the invasion.
He adds a second finger, plunging with curling strokes, the wet, pumping smacks of his hand fucking me filling the air around us, mingling with my desperate cries and his heavy breathing.
His fingertips unerringly locate a hidden patch of nerves.
He rubs the spot over and over with a skill that shatters me, leaves me crying out in shrill sobs.
Hot tears stream steadily from the corners of my eyes as I break apart into a thousand pieces before falling back to the ground. Gasping for breath. Limp. Boneless.
“How . . .” I pant. “What?” I roll my head side to side, beyond words.
It’s incomprehensible. That just went far beyond anything I had ever witnessed from any of the lovers I spied upon over the years.
I’d never seen a woman react as I just did .
. . scream with pleasure, weep from the shock and impact.
And we had not even fully mated yet. We were just dancing and playing around the act.
I never knew such a thing could happen.
Never realized such a wondrous place exists inside me that could unravel me, but he knew—knows.
Maybe that’s his magic. His dragon. His special gift . . . to know how to light my fire.