Chapter 29
TAMSYN
HE CAME AT ME LIKE A STORM, WILD AND SNARLING.
He clawed closer, his serrated breaths clogging the space between us.
I opened my mouth, knowing I could blast him with fire again.
I could let it roar free, flow and burn until he was no more than a pile of smoldering rubble. Until recovery was impossible.
Except I couldn’t do it.
Such an act would kill me as effectively as it killed him.
He was before me now, and I exhaled, yielding to him, my body collapsing, turning soft. My gaze lifted to look up at him.
He, too, collapsed, bringing his face low, his mouth poised at my exposed throat, baring his teeth at that most vulnerable flesh with a growl, ready to end it all.
It was over.
He didn’t recognize me.
“Go ahead,” I whispered.
Something flashed in his eyes, fury, frustration … a bleak twist in the icy depths of his gaze. He snarled and shoved at me, prompting me to react, urging me to move.
I did nothing.
He shoved again, harder, clearly perplexed by my lack of fight, at my surrender.
“Go on,” I said, my voice flat and thin as a thread.
He angled his head sharply at my voice. His dragon did not know what to make of this—of me. I was a worthy opponent, perhaps the better opponent with my skills, but in this moment, I would not resist, I would not fight back. Would not breathe fire. I was defeated, beaten in all ways.
I exhaled in a shudder. “You win.”
He hesitated only a moment longer and then brought his great head down, bumping my chin up with the edge of his horned frill. His breath fanned hotly against my stretched throat. My offering.
I closed my eyes. Breathed. In. Out. In. Out. Ready. Hopefully it wouldn’t hurt. My entire body was one aching bruise right now. At least that would stop. Soon there would be no pain. There would be nothing.
His inhaled, sniffed my skin.
“What are you waiting for? Do it!” I rasped the command, the words scraping the inside of my raw throat.
The next shuddery exhale was his … followed by a long groan that twisted and turned into something new … different, something I had not heard from him since he’d been unearthed.
Every one of his sounds since he’d exploded from the grave had been grounded in brutality. In aggression. This was altogether something … else. Something soft and tender. Broken.
Human.
A weight dropped over me, pressure at my neck. It took me a moment to realize it was not death sinking into me, not fangs tearing into my throat.
I poked and prodded within me, ascertaining there was no pain. None beyond what I already felt after our furious combat.
I opened my eyes. Looked down. Choked and gasped.
There was no death at my throat … no sinking of fangs, no dragon.
No. Dragon.
His hulking, silvery-hued body was gone. Human Fell sprawled over me, and his hands shook as he clutched me, long fingers flexing against my dragon hide, as though he didn’t know whether to bring me closer or push me away.
I exhaled and let go, my body coming undone, relaxing, unwinding, returning to—
Me.
I lifted my hand, observing the familiar fingers. My palm once again ached and throbbed, the X sparking with life.
Our bond was back in full, pulsing force.
“Fell,” I choked, sliding my hand into the locks of his silvery hair. The color might be different, no longer dark as a raven’s wing, but it felt the same. Thick, silken strands spilled over my skin. My nails scraped his scalp, relishing his guttural sigh.
He pulled back, looked at me with the face I knew.
In it, I saw all the beloved differences, the nuances that set him apart from his brother: the inked designs creeping down his throat, the slashing blade of a nose, and the lips unfairly lush, wide with a full bottom lip that I recalled intimately, that stunning wintry gaze of his like the fire that burned chronically, unremittingly in me.
Except the fire in his eyes burned for me.
“It’s you,” I said unnecessarily, my gaze gobbling him up.
He stared back at me, awareness of himself—of me—blazing in his eyes, hotter than the heat bubbling through me.
The sudden hope aching in my chest felt dangerous.
Perhaps I was dead. Perhaps he had torn open my throat, after all, and killed me, and this was some manner of afterlife where I was living out a beautiful dream.
A fantasy where I was me and he was him and we were together without any of the things hanging over us that had always been there—without ugly deceit and fearful secrets and the terrifying unknown marching toward us with steady precision.
He reached for my hand, taking it from his hair, examining it for a moment, each finger, knuckle, the wrist, like it was a curiously precious thing to him—before he claimed it, lacing his longer fingers with mine.
He pressed our palms flush, our hearts beating in rhythm, not as one but as two in concert, pushing against skin, popping and jumping, longing to fuse together.
The moment was brief but stretched endlessly. The barriers were gone, all the things that had kept us apart before, in Penterra, were forgotten. Such small, insignificant things no longer existed here.
My other hand moved quickly, reaching for his face, pressing against the plane of his cheek.
It had been too long since we touched. Since …
He closed his eyes and turned his face into my hand, gifting a fervent kiss there. His tongue flicked out, licking, followed by the scrape of blunt teeth against the palm of my hand.
My skin turned to gooseflesh, and I shivered, choking on a sob, giving myself to this, even if it was a dream.
“Tamsyn.” He whispered my name like a benediction, and I felt it like a bolt of thunder through me. His voice, finally, after all this time. My name living, alive on his lips. Not a memory. Not the communion of our bond. Not a dream. But us together, flesh to flesh.
He pushed up toward my mouth, and I met him, our lips crashing together fiercely, mating, merging. But it wasn’t enough. It was merely preamble.
We were already naked. My battered body didn’t even feel any of the injuries from when we’d been trying to kill each other only moments before. If he felt his injuries, he didn’t show it as he crawled up the length of my body.
We kissed and kissed and kissed. Hungry, open-mouthed, tonguetangling, teeth-clanging kisses.
I threaded my fingers through his hair, and tugged hard on the silver strands, arching, writhing beneath him.
He slid along my body, kissing his way down my throat, pausing at the double necklaces I wore—mine and his. His hand shook as it landed on the black opal, stroking it to make certain it was real. As real as I was.
I quickly lifted his necklace from around my neck and looped it over his head. “There now. Back where it belongs.”
He looked down at it, his fingers tracing his black opal almost reverently. Then his gaze shot back to my face, to my lips, and the intensity there stopped my heart.
“And you,” he growled. His hands slid beneath my thighs, gripping each one, yanking them apart to settle his bigger body between them.
One hand slid down, locking behind my knee, lifting my leg and wrapping it around him so that I was splayed wide, soft and vulnerable for the hard grind of his cock. “Back where you belong.”
I whimpered, delighted, thrilled, breathlessly rubbing myself against him, aching and beyond ready.
Weeks, months, a year beyond ready.
And yet he waited.
His fingers walked over me, grazing the sensitive skin between my breasts, trailing the undersides and outside swells, moving inward in circles, closer and closer until he brushed my nipple.
I hissed and arched my spine. He rewarded me, pinching and rolling the tip between his fingers. My hand went to his shoulder, fingers digging, clinging to him.
At the slickness of his scorched skin, I gasped, yanking my hand back. “Your skin! Fell … I burned you!”
His lips closed over my breast, drawing my nipple deep into the warm cavern of his mouth, intent on me, on devouring me.
As concerned as I was for him, I gasped at the heat of his mouth, at the blistering pleasure.
“I don’t feel a thing,” he said around the distended tip, then continued to suck me as though it was a life-and-death imperative.
I tangled my hands in his hair, my vision spotty as he twisted the pleasure tighter within me.
“Is that because I’ve burned you to the bone and you’ve lost all ability to feel?
” I choked out, my worry for him competing with the distracting and marvelous things his mouth was doing to me.
I arched, gasping as his teeth scored my nipple and sent a bolt of sensation through me.
“Correction … I am feeling many things.” He rolled his hips, grinding his cock against my aching sex. “None of which are pain.”
Seizing my hand, he tugged it down between our bodies where I found him hard and eager, jutting into the welcome grip of my fingers. His head bowed, hungry lips falling on my breasts again, and I forgot … everything.
My world was his mouth and hands and cock.
He groaned and thrust into my ready fingers. It was a delicious, empowering thing. I squeezed him and stroked him as his licked and kissed and nipped at my flesh. I reveled in his panted breaths. I reveled in him. Fell here with me.
He managed a broken “Tamsyn.”
I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I’d waited long enough.
I released him and grabbed his hair with both hands, tugging him up my body to claim his lips again.
This wasn’t kissing. It was a feast. A fury. A frenzy. A celebration for our lips.
Fisting his hair, I growled a demanding “Fell” into his mouth.
He answered with a surge of his hips, entering my wet heat in one smooth thrust.