Chapter 41
Draven
I didn't kiss her right away. I held myself there, one hand braced beside her head, the other hovering at her jaw, and I just—looked at her. Let the moment have its weight.
Her fingers came up and traced the line of my collarbone. Light. Unhurried.
"Hi," she whispered.
My chest cracked open.
"Hi, love."
Her mouth curved. That small, tired, real smile that undid me every single time. "You're shaking."
I was. I hadn't noticed.
"Yeah," I said. "I am."
She cupped the back of my neck and pulled me down, just enough that our foreheads touched. Her breath was warm against my lips. "Me too."
We stayed like that for a beat. Two. The silence wasn't empty—it was full, brimming, the kind of quiet that only exists between two people who've stopped pretending.
"Draven."
"Mm."
"Don't be careful with me tonight." Her thumb brushed the hinge of my jaw. "Just be here."
I kissed her like I'd been dying for it.
Because I had been. Every second since I'd met her—I'd been starving. And now she was under me on the red linens, the bath sheet fallen open, her body laid out in amber light, and I was going to take my time giving her back every good thing this day had stolen.
I pulled back just enough to look at her.
God.
Her tits, full and heavy, nipples already tight from the cool air.
The soft curve of her belly. The flare of her hips, her thighs parted under me, the wet tangle of her hair dark against the pillow.
Flushed skin. Golden-brown eyes half-lidded, watching me watch her.
Purple highlights catching the amber light.
But I saw the rest of it, too. The barely healed burn on her arm.
The shadows bruised under her eyes. The faint tremor still running through her—not desire, not yet.
Exhaustion. She'd been through fire today.
Literally. And she was still here, still open, still looking at me like I was the thing she'd chosen instead of sleep.
I wasn't going to wreck her. I was going to make this the opposite of everything that came before.
My cock throbbed so hard against my thigh it bordered on pain.
"You're so fucking beautiful." Low. Rough. "Every inch of you."
Her breath caught. I saw the flush deepen across her chest, spreading up her throat.
I shifted my weight to one forearm, brushed a strand of wet hair off her forehead. My other hand settled on the curve of her waist—not gripping, just holding. Feeling her warmth under my palm.
"Tess." I held her gaze. "I want to use my magic on you tonight.
Just a thread of it. Enough that I can feel what you feel—where you want me, how much pressure, when you're close.
And enough that everything I do registers as pleasure.
" I traced my thumb along the dip of her waist. "Even the parts that might hurt. "
I didn't apologize. I didn't flinch. This was what I was, and she'd already told me she knew.
Her hand came up. Warm fingers against my jaw, tracing the edge of my tattoo where it curled behind my ear.
"I accept everything about you," she said. Quiet. Certain. Like it was the simplest truth she'd ever spoken.
A lock turned in my chest. A hitch, precise and irreversible.
I kissed her. Open-mouthed, hungry, but unhurried—like I had all night.
Because I did. I let the magic uncoil for the first time, a single gossamer thread extending toward her, and the moment it touched her energy I felt her—warm and golden and wanting.
The sensation layered over my own desire and my hips jerked involuntarily.
But underneath the arousal, older than the magic, the incubus hunger—the thing that lived in my chest like a second heartbeat, always restless, always pulling—went quiet. Not sated. Not fed. Just still. The way it only ever went still around her. I caught myself. Breathed through it.
Discipline.
I broke the kiss and put my mouth on her throat.
Her pulse hammered against my lips. I traced it down—the hollow beneath her ear, the tendon that tightened when she tilted her head back for me, the line of her collarbone.
I worked around the gauze over her burn without hesitation, without treating the skin around it like it might shatter.
She wasn't breakable. She'd proven that a hundred times over.
"I'm going to take care of you tonight," I said against the hollow of her throat. My lips moved on her skin with every word. "You're going to come for me before I'm anywhere near inside you." I pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the center of her chest. "More than once."
Her fingers slid into my hair. Tightened.
I took that as agreement.
I worked down her body with my mouth. Slow. Deliberate. Every kiss placed with precision.
Her tits first. I cupped one in my hand—heavy, perfect, spilling over my palm—and closed my mouth over the nipple.
The magic fed me her reaction in real time, a bright pulse of sensation that told me harder.
I sucked. Her back arched off the mattress and her whole body tightened, her ribs expanding under my hand, her fingers twisting in my hair hard enough to pull.
My cock pulsed against the sheets so hard I had to lock my jaw.
"Perfect," I murmured against her skin, switching to the other breast. I dragged my tongue flat across the nipple, then circled it, then sucked it into my mouth until it was a tight peak. "So responsive. You have no idea how long I've wanted to do this."
"Draven—"
"I know." I bit down gently. The magic confirmed, pleasure, not pain. Her hips rolled up against nothing and I felt the echo of her frustration through the thread. "I know, love. I've got you."
I kept moving. Her ribs, where the skin was thin and sensitive—she twitched under my mouth.
The soft round of her belly. I lingered here.
Pressed my lips to the give of her, the warmth, the way she breathed in sharp when I kissed below her navel.
She'd taken a hit here today—not this exact spot, but close enough.
I pressed my mouth against her like I could undo it.
Like I could replace every bruise with this instead.
"I love your body," I said. Not a compliment. A confession. "Every part of it."
Her fingers tightened in my hair again. I felt the spike of emotion through the thread—surprise, vulnerability, want—and the hunger shifted in my chest, settling deeper, fed in a way I'd never felt before.
I kissed her hip. The crease where her thigh met her body. She trembled. I pressed my mouth to the inside of her thigh and her legs fell open wider, and the scent of her hit me—warm, musky, drenched—and my vision actually blurred for a second.
I settled between her legs. Hooked my arms under her thighs. Looked at her.
Wet. Swollen. Pink and glistening and spread open for me on the red linens.
"Look at you," I breathed. "So wet already. So beautiful." I pressed my thumb along the outside of her slit, barely touching, and watched her hips chase the contact. "This perfect cunt. All for me."
Her breath shuddered. "Please."
I gave her my fingers first.
Two, sliding in slow. She was soaked—hot and tight around me, her inner walls clenching the second I curled upward. The magic mapped her in real time, there, that angle, that pressure, that rhythm. I adjusted. Found the spot that made her whole body jolt.
My free hand pressed flat against her belly. I could feel her muscles tightening under my palm, the involuntary clench that meant she was already climbing.
"That's it." I watched her face. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her lips parted, her brow creased in concentration. "Just like that. Let me feel you."
I worked her steady. In and out, curling on every stroke, the heel of my palm grinding against her clit with each push.
The thread between us hummed—stronger now, thicker than the gossamer I'd started with—her pleasure registering in my own body like a phantom pulse, making my cock throb in time with her heartbeat.
"You feel incredible around my fingers," I told her. "So tight. So perfect." Her walls fluttered and I pressed harder. "I can feel you getting close, love. Don't fight it."
"I'm not—I can't—" Her hand shot down and gripped my forearm. Not to stop me. To hold on.
"You can." I kept the rhythm exactly where the magic told me she needed it. "Come for me, Tess."
She broke. Her back arched hard off the bed, her mouth opened on a cry, and her cunt clamped down on my fingers so hard I groaned.
Draven. My name in her mouth, ragged and wrecked.
The magic piped her orgasm into me through the thread—a white-hot wave of pleasure that crashed through my chest, my gut, my cock.
And the incubus in me didn't just feel it—it drank.
Not the way feeding usually worked, not the sharp pull of taking.
This was pleasure pouring into me willingly, and it settled into my bones like warmth after a long winter.
Like sustenance I'd been starving for my entire life and never knew how to name.
I gritted my teeth and rode it out, my hips grinding once against the mattress before I caught myself.
Not yet. Not even close to yet.
I eased my fingers out slowly. Kissed the inside of her thigh. Tasted the salt of her skin.
"Again," I said. "Right now."
"I can't—"
"You can." I settled my mouth between her legs. "And you will."
She tasted like everything I'd ever been hungry for.
Not a metaphor. The actual taste of her—salt and musk and warm skin underneath, distinctly, irreducibly her—hit my tongue and my brain whited out for a full second. I groaned against her cunt, the sound vibrating through her, and her thighs clamped against my ears, her hips jerking up off the bed.
I licked her in a slow, flat stroke from entrance to clit. Then again. Then I sealed my mouth over her clit and sucked, and her whole body bowed off the bed.
"Oh god—"
"You taste incredible," I said against her. Slid two fingers back inside. "I can't stop. I'm not going to stop."