Chapter 15
His fingers moved through her with a patience that bordered on cruelty.
Verity's hips lifted off the furs, chasing the pressure, but his free hand pressed flat against her belly, his palm spanning nearly the full width of her, and held her still.
The weight of that single hand was a command she could not argue with.
Her body obeyed even as her mind raced ahead, cataloguing sensations.
Slick. The word appeared in her thoughts. Engorged. Tumescent. Medical terminology she had memorized from treatises written by men who had clearly never experienced what she was experiencing now.
His thumb circled the swollen bud at the apex of her sex, and every word she had ever read about arousal dissolved into white noise.
"You are thinking," he said.
"I can't help it." Her voice came out fractured.
"What are you thinking?"
His thumb pressed harder. She gasped, her fingers clawing at the furs, but the furs had been displaced by his body, and her hands found his forearms instead. Her fingers could not close around them. The muscle beneath his green skin was dense as oak, warm as hearthstone.
"That the—" She had to stop, breathe, try again. "The anatomical descriptions I read were insufficient."
His chest vibrated against her. It took her a moment to realize he was laughing.
"Insufficient," he repeated.
"Dramatically." She was babbling now, words spilling out because if she stopped talking she would have to fully inhabit what was happening to her body, and that felt like standing at the edge of a cliff.
"The treatise on comparative anatomy described the female arousal response as 'a warming of the tissues and increased secretion of—'"
His finger slid inside her.
The sentence died in her throat. Her back arched, pressing her breasts against the hard plane of his stomach. Her mouth fell open, a sound escaping that was not a word at all. He was inside her. One finger, and she felt filled.
"Breathe," he said.
She dragged air into her lungs, felt her body clench around him, felt him hold perfectly still while she adjusted to the intrusion. His free hand stroked up her side, thumb tracing the curve of her waist, the swell of her hip, the soft flesh that spilled over onto the furs.
"Does it hurt?"
"No." It didn't. It felt strange. Full in a way she had never been full before, stretched around something that did not belong to her. But not painful. "It feels..."
She searched for the word. Her vocabulary, usually so reliable, had abandoned her entirely. Above her, his iron-gray eyes tracked the expressions crossing her face.
His thumb resumed its slow circles, and she felt her body soften around him, the tension easing. He withdrew his finger almost entirely, then pressed back in. The slide was easier this time, slicker, her body opening for him. She made a sound she didn't recognize, high and broken and hungry.
"There," he said. "That is what I wanted to hear."
He added a second finger.
The stretch was sharper now. She felt the burn of it, the way her body resisted and then yielded, accommodating him by degrees.
His thumb never stopped moving, keeping her pleasure high enough that the discomfort registered only as a counterpoint.
Her thighs had fallen open around his hips, the width of him forcing her legs apart, her knees barely reaching past his flanks.
"You are so tight." His voice was strained in a way she hadn't heard before. "So small inside. I will have to prepare you well."
Small. She had never been called small in her life. But caged beneath the bulk of him, his shadow swallowing her entirely, she understood.
"How—" She swallowed. "How much preparation?"
"As much as you need." His fingers curled inside her, and her vision went white at the edges. "I will not rush this. I will not hurt you."
His fingers moved in a rhythm she could not predict—sometimes slow and deep, sometimes shallow and quick, always accompanied by the relentless pressure of his thumb. She felt the tension building again, coiling low in her belly, tighter than before.
Her hands found his chest. Her palms looked absurdly small against the expanse of green skin, the dark hair that spread across his pectorals. She could feel the rumble building in him, that growl that meant pleasure, vibrating against her palms like a second heartbeat.
"I'm going to—"
"Yes." He pressed deeper, curled harder, and she came around his fingers with a cry that echoed off the stone walls.
The climax was different from the first one. Sharper. More internal, radiating outward from where he filled her, her body clenching in rhythmic pulses she could not control. She heard herself making sounds and could not make herself care.
He worked her through it, his fingers gentling but never withdrawing, his thumb slowing to soft, soothing strokes that drew out the aftershocks until she was trembling and spent beneath him.
"Good," he murmured against her temple. His tusks grazed her hair, cool ivory against damp skin.
His fingers slid free, and she felt the loss of him like an absence, her body clenching around nothing. He shifted his weight, moving down her body, his massive frame sliding between her spread thighs.
She realized with a jolt of alarm what he intended.
"Again?" Her voice cracked. "I don't think I can—"
"You can." His breath was hot against her inner thigh. His hands curled around her hips, lifting them off the furs. "You will."
His mouth found her, and she discovered he was right.
The third climax built slower, her body oversensitive, every touch almost too much. His tusks pressed against the soft flesh of her inner thighs. She could feel the impossible width of his shoulders forcing her legs wider, the scratch of his stubbled jaw against skin that had never been touched.
When she finally crested, it was with a sob, her thighs clamping around his head. Her fingers tangled in his hair. Her entire body shaking with the force of it.
He rose over her. His mouth was wet, his eyes savage. The firelight caught the sheen of her arousal on his chin, his lips, glistening between his tusks, and she should have been embarrassed but she was too wrung out to feel anything but want.
He leaned down and captured her mouth in a kiss that tasted of her own tart musk. Verity moaned into it, her hands clutching at his shoulders, her fingers digging into muscle that bunched and shifted with every movement he made.
His skin was hot beneath her palms. Not human-warm but hotter, the blood that ran through him like a furnace banked but burning. The scars under her fingers were ridged and rough, a topography of violence that should have frightened her and instead made her feel impossibly safe.
Targesh broke the kiss, his breath ragged against her cheek.
"Now," he growled, the vibration rumbling through her bones, and she felt it everywhere their bodies touched—her breasts, her belly, her thighs. "Now you are ready."
He shifted, his weight settling between her legs. She hooked her ankles together behind him, her feet finding purchase on the hard swell of his glutes, toes digging into muscle that did not yield.
He positioned himself at her entrance, one massive hand gripping the base of his cock. It bobbed heavy and thick, and seeing it from this angle—dwarfing her belly, the head dark and leaking—drove home the scale of what she was about to attempt.
He dragged the head through her soaked folds, coating himself in her arousal. She gasped as he notched himself at her entrance, the pressure immediate and insistent. The blunt tip alone felt wider than his fingers had.
"Look at me."
She met his eyes. Iron-gray, nearly black in the low light, fixed on her face with an intensity that made her chest ache. His face was all brutal angles above her—the deep-set eyes, the heavy brow, the long tusks framing his mouth. Not human. Not even close to human.
But hers.
"I will go slowly," he said. "You will tell me if it is too much."
"Yes."
He pressed forward.
The stretch was immediate fire. Her body resisted, clenching against the intrusion, and he held perfectly still.
"Easy," he murmured. His tusks grazed her collarbone as he lowered his head, cool ivory against her thundering pulse. Only the head was inside her, and already she felt stretched beyond capacity. "More?"
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
He pressed deeper. Another inch. Another.
Her legs tightened around his hips, heels digging into the hard muscle of his backside, trying to find leverage, trying to ground herself against the overwhelming sensation of being opened. The ridges she had seen dragged against her inner walls with a friction that bordered on pain.
Her hands found his shoulders and held on.
"Halfway," he said. His voice was gravel, barely controlled. "You are taking me so well."
She wasn't sure if she was taking him well. She felt split open, remade around something too large for her body to contain. The stretch burned at the edges, a sharp counterpoint to the impossible fullness pressing against places inside her she hadn't known existed.
"More?" His voice was gravel, barely controlled.
"Yes."
He sank deeper. She felt every ridge as it passed, each one dragging against nerve endings that sent sparks up her spine. Her breath came in short, sharp pants. Her fingers had gone white-knuckled on his shoulders, her nails biting into green skin.
Then his hips met hers, and he was fully seated.
She couldn't speak. Couldn't think. Could only feel the weight of him inside her, the way her body had stretched to accommodate something it should not have been able to hold.
His pelvis pressed against her mound. His chest heaved against her breasts.
His arms caged her, his hands planted in the furs on either side of her head, and she was surrounded by him, covered by him, filled by him in a way that left no room for anything else.
He withdrew a fraction of an inch and pressed back in.