Chapter 16 Lyssa
LYSSA
The fire is low, just embers now, but the heat between us is fierce.
Thorrin’s hands are everywhere—rough, reverent, shaking with the same desperation that’s been clawing at my insides since the bone cathedral.
We haven’t spoken in hours. Words feel too small for what we survived, for what we still have to survive.
All that’s left is skin and breath and the frantic need to prove we’re still alive, still ours.
I straddle his lap on the bed of moss and pine needles, the borrowed dress already torn open down the front.
His claws shredded it the moment I kissed him, careful even in hunger not to cut me.
The fabric hangs off my shoulders like surrender.
Moonlight spills through the branches above us, silvering the scars on his chest, the blood still crusted under his nails from the tavern.
I don’t care where it came from. Tonight it’s the price of my heartbeat, and I will pay it gladly.
His mouth finds my throat and I arch, offering everything.
Fangs graze the place where my pulse hammers—close enough to kill, gentle enough to worship.
A low growl rumbles through his chest into mine, and the vibration makes me wetter than I already am.
I grind down on the hard ridge of him through his leathers, frantic, shameless.
“Need you inside me,” I gasp against his ear. “Now, Thorrin. Please.”
He doesn’t make me beg twice.
One clawed hand rips his leathers open; the other lifts me like I weigh nothing.
His cock springs free—thick, ridged, impossibly hot against my bare skin.
I reach down, wrap my fingers around him, and he snarls, hips jerking into my grip.
He’s slick already, dripping for me, and the feel of it makes me clench around nothing.
I rise up on my knees, guide him to my entrance, and sink down in one slow, burning slide.
The stretch is perfect agony—too much and exactly enough. He fills me to the hilt, the broad head nudging so deep I swear I feel him in my soul. My head falls back; a broken moan tears out of me. His hands clamp on my hips hard enough to bruise, holding me there, impaled, trembling.
“Look at me,” he growls.
I force my eyes open. His heart-light is blazing white-gold, so bright it hurts, pouring straight into me. There’s no room for darkness when he looks at me like that—like I’m the only thing keeping the monster caged and the man alive.
I start to move.
Slow at first, rolling my hips, savoring every inch dragging in and out.
His breath stutters; claws prick my skin without breaking it.
Then hunger wins. I ride him harder, faster, the slap of flesh loud in the quiet clearing.
Each downward thrust drives him deeper, until my thighs shake and my clit grinds against the coarse hair at his base.
He lets me set the pace for exactly three strokes.
Then he snaps.
One moment I’m on top; the next I’m on my back in the moss, legs shoved up and spread wide, knees hooked over his massive forearms. He slams back in with a single brutal thrust that punches the air from my lungs. My spine bows off the ground; a scream rips free, raw and ecstatic.
“Mine,” he snarls, hips pistoning, relentless. “Never again—never fucking again will they touch what’s mine.”
Every word is punctuated by a thrust that bottoms out, the head of his cock battering that spot inside me that turns thought into white fire. I claw at his back, nails raking over old scars, urging him deeper, harder, more.
“Yes—gods—yours—always—”
He shifts angle, and suddenly he’s hitting something new, something devastating.
My vision fractures. I come with a wail, cunt clenching around him so hard he roars, pace faltering for one stunned heartbeat.
Wet heat gushes between us; I feel it soak his balls, drip down my ass, mark the earth beneath us.
He doesn’t stop.
He flips me onto my stomach without pulling out, yanks my hips up until I’m on my knees, chest pressed to the moss.
One massive hand splays between my shoulder blades, pinning me.
The other tangles in my hair, wrenching my head back.
Then he’s fucking me again—deeper, filthier, the new angle letting him split me open in ways that should be illegal.
His claws rake lightly down my spine, leaving raised lines that sting and burn and make me sob with pleasure. I push back into every thrust, greedy, broken, alive.
“Tell me,” he rasps against my ear, voice ragged. “Tell me who you belong to.”
“You,” I sob, tears and snot and spit smearing the moss beneath my cheek. “Only you—always you—Thorrin—please—”
He reaches beneath me, claws retracted to careful fingertips, and pinches my clit hard.
I come again, harder, a full-body seizure that milks his cock in rhythmic pulses.
This time he follows me over—hips slamming deep, cock swelling impossibly thicker.
He roars my name as he spills, pulse after pulse of scorching heat flooding me so full it leaks out around him, painting my thighs, dripping to the ground in thick ropes.
We collapse sideways, still locked together, his cock jerking with aftershocks inside me. He wraps around me like armor—arms, tail, one massive thigh thrown over mine. His heart-light flares once, brilliant, blinding, then settles into the steady amber-gold that means home.
I’m crying, I realize dimly. Not from pain. From the overwhelming certainty that I’m his, and he’s mine, and nothing—not Malakor, not Beda, not the entire rotting world—will ever take that away again.
He presses his face into my hair, breathing me in like I’m the only oxygen left on earth.
“I love you,” he whispers, voice cracked open and raw. “Love you so much it fucking terrifies me.”
I turn in his arms, kiss him slow and deep, tasting salt and pine and us.
“I know,” I whisper back. “Me too.”
We stay like that until dawn creeps pale through the trees—tangled, sticky, branded inside and out. When the first rays touch us, his heart-light flares once more, softer this time. A promise.
Whatever comes next, whatever horrors wait beyond these trees, we’ll face them together.
Covered in each other, claimed down to the marrow.
Unbreakable.