Epilogue #3
He tore her shift in his haste to remove it, and she didn’t care, couldn’t care, not when his mouth was following his hands down her body, not when his tongue traced the delicate line of her gills, not when he sucked one peaked nipple into the hot, wet cavern of his mouth and her back arched off the furs.
His claws scraped lightly down her sides, a delicious counterpoint to the soft kisses he pressed against her belly.
She was wet and wanting before he even reached the heat between her thighs, and when his breath ghosted over her most sensitive flesh, she cried out, her fingers tangling in the furs beneath her.
“You glow for me.” The words were spoken against her core, rough and reverent. “Every time I touch you, every time I’m inside you—you light up like the stars. Do you know what that does to me?”
She couldn’t answer. Could barely breathe. His hands were everywhere, his mouth was everywhere, and her body was responding with an intensity that bordered on overwhelming. The lines along her collarbones pulsed indigo. Her gills fluttered with each gasping breath.
And still he didn’t stop.
“I spent years alone.” He pressed his forehead to her stomach, breathing her in.
“Years of cold nights and empty howls and teaching myself not to want things I couldn’t have.
And then you came out of the sea like something from a story, with your shining skin and your impossible song, and you saved my daughter. You saved me.”
“Valrek—”
“I love you.” The words were spoken into her skin, branded there forever. “I love every strange, beautiful part of you. I love the way you hum when you’re thinking. I love the way you hold Lilani like she’s the most precious thing in the world. I love the way you look at me like I’m not a monster.”
Tears pricked her eyes. “You’re not—”
“I know.” He lifted his head, his golden eyes blazing. “Because of you, I finally know.”
He kissed her again and she could taste herself on his lips, her desire flaring to meet his. She arched against him eagerly, but then he flipped her over onto her hands and knees.
“You want all of me? You shall have me.” He pulled her back against him and the thick head of his cock pressed against her entrance, making her whimper with need. His huge hands gripped her hips, holding her in place. “You’ll take me now. All of me.”
“Yes.” Her gills fluttered. “Yes, my Vultor. All of you.”
He pushed inside her in one hard, claiming stroke.
The world shattered.
Her back arched, her head falling back on a wordless cry as he filled her, stretched her, claimed her.
She was a creature of the sea, but this, this was a drowning she welcomed.
A complete submersion. He withdrew slowly, almost to the tip, before driving back in, setting a rhythm that was as ancient as the tides and as undeniable as the moon’s pull on the sea.
Her body responded, her skin a constellation of light against the dark furs. She could feel the vibrations of the echo-pipe in the back of her mind, a soft, harmonic counterpoint to the raw music they were making together.
She was aware of him everywhere—the hard heat of him behind her, his massive body caging her beneath him, the heavy weight of his balls slapping against her with each powerful thrust. One hand slid up to close over her breast and the other slipped between her legs to find the hard, sensitive nub between her thighs.
He circled it with one calloused finger, and she bucked against him, a high, keening sound escaping her lips.
“Valrek,” she gasped. “Please.”
“I have you,” he growled, the words hot against the back of her neck. “I have you, my mate. My star lady.”
His pace quickened, each stroke harder, deeper, more possessive.
He was a Vultor warrior, a being of untamed power and strength, and for the first time, he wasn’t holding back.
He was letting her see the beast, the wildness that lived beneath his civilized exterior, and she met it with her own wildness, her body moving to match his rhythm, her inner muscles clenching around him as if she never wanted to let him go.
His finger on her clit moved faster, pressing against her with a pressure that was almost pain, and the pleasure coiled in her belly, hot and tight and insistent. The waves were building, rising higher and higher, threatening to pull her under.
“So close,” she whimpered. “So close, please don’t stop.”
“I won’t.” He punctuated the words with a particularly hard thrust that made her cry out. “I’ll never stop. Never let you go.”
The wave broke.
A brilliant white light exploded behind her eyes, her body convulsing with a pleasure so intense it was almost agony. She cried out, a high, thin sound that was half sob, half song, and her skin blazed with light, so bright it illuminated the entire cave in a soft, ethereal glow.
With a roar that was pure, unadulterated beast, he followed her over the edge, his knot expanding and locking them together as a hot, wet flood of release filled her. His teeth sank into her mating bite again, a primal brand of ownership.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, their bodies humming with the aftermath of their passion.
The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the distant murmur of the sea.
He drew her closer against him, their bodies still locked together, and settled down onto the furs.
Her body was limp and boneless, still thrumming with residual pleasure.
“That was…” He laughed, a rumbling sound of pure contentment. “I don’t have words for that either.”
“We seem to be running out of words tonight.”
“Good. Words are overrated.”
She smiled against his skin, tracing idle patterns over the map of scars on his arms.
“Are you happy?”
The question slipped out before she could stop it, and his arms immediately tightened around her.
“Happy doesn’t begin to cover it.” He pressed a kiss to her hair. “Two months ago, I was alone on these cliffs with a future I couldn’t see and a daughter who deserved so much more. Now I have a mate. A pack. A purpose.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Now I have everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything that matters.”
She tilted her head up to look at him, this massive, scarred, beautiful male who had somehow become her whole world. His golden eyes were soft in the starlight filtering through the cave entrance. His hand came up to cup her face, his thumb tracing her cheekbone.
“I love you,” she said. “In case I forgot to mention it.”
“You mentioned it. But I don’t mind hearing it again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you, Valrek.”
His smile was like sunrise breaking over the ocean.
They lay there in comfortable silence, listening to the waves and the wind and the distant sound of Lilani’s soft breathing. Outside, the stars wheeled slowly through their eternal dance. Inside, the echo-pipe hummed a quiet note of contentment, as if blessing the scene before it.
She thought about everything that had led her here.
The accident that had changed her body. The father who had tried to help but hurt her instead. The debt that had nearly cost her her soul. The storm that had freed her. The choice she’d made in the black water, reaching for a child instead of a future that would have been no life at all.
And Valrek. Always Valrek.
The grumpy exile on the beach who had growled at her for trespassing. The devoted father who would have faced any danger for his daughter. The mate whose beast had recognized her before either of them understood what that meant.
Her family. Her home. Her Song.
“What are you thinking about?” His voice was drowsy now, heavy with satisfaction.
“The future.”
“The future?”
“Mmm.” She snuggled closer, her eyes drifting shut. “All the things we’re going to build. The bridges we’re going to create. The Songs we’re going to sing.”
“Together?”
“Always together.”
His answering purr vibrated through both their bodies.
Outside, the ocean sang its endless lullaby, the rhythm that had been her companion through loneliness and fear and all the dark nights when she’d wondered if she’d ever find a place where she truly belonged.
She’d found it now.
Not in the depths of the sea. Not in a laboratory or a gilded cage. But here, in a cave on a cliff, wrapped in the arms of a mate who loved every strange, impossible part of her, with a daughter asleep just beyond the firelight and a whole new world waiting to be explored.
The ocean had many songs, but none were as beautiful as the one they sang together.