6. Sky #3
The first lick makes her cry out. I flatten my tongue over her swollen clit, giving her enough of the aphrodisiac to blur the pain and sharpen the pleasure.
Her hips buck. I hold them down. Not cruelly.
Not gently either. She needs something stronger than patience, and fever has stripped me too far to pretend otherwise.
I lick her again, slower, deeper, tasting the salt of separation sickness and the honeyed rush of slick.
Her thighs clamp around my ears. The pressure against the ridges nearly destroys me.
"Skylor," she gasps.
I growl into her cunt.
She shudders. Her hand digs into my hair, not pushing away, holding me there.
I take the permission and use it. Tongue, lips, teeth at the soft crease of her thigh, two fingers sliding in when her body loosens enough to accept them.
She is tight, hot, swollen from need. The first push of my fingers draws a broken sound from her. The second makes her arch.
"There," she chokes. "Right there."
I curl my fingers and suck her clit.
She comes with a cry that sounds like surrender and accusation braided together.
Her body clamps down, slick flooding my tongue, thighs shaking against my shoulders.
I work her through it until she starts shoving at my head, overwhelmed, laughing once without humor because her body has betrayed her side of the argument.
I rise over her with her taste on my mouth.
Her eyes fix on mine. "You look smug."
"I am trying not to."
"Try harder."
I kiss her. She tastes herself and moans into my mouth.
Her legs wrap around my hips, dragging me down, and the remaining barrier between us becomes intolerable.
My trousers come open under her impatient hands.
I help only when her fingers tremble too hard to manage the clasp.
My cock springs free, heavy, aching, already ridged with the true-mate response.
Her gaze drops, and fear flickers through the hunger.
Not fear of me. Fear of how much she wants the knot.
I grip myself and rub the head through her slick. "Say no if you want no."
Her teeth dig into her lower lip.
"Say wait if you want wait."
She shakes her head.
"Then what do you want?"
Her eyes lift, glossy and furious. "I want you inside me."
The words nearly finish me.
I press into her slowly because her body is human, because our first week taught me her limits, because dominance without care is only brutality wearing a crown.
Even prepared by my mouth, she gasps at the first stretch.
The velvet texture along my shaft rises as I enter, designed by biology to stroke, hold, claim.
Her nails rake my shoulders. I stop halfway, shaking over her.
Her touch leaves me barely sane. I thrust the rest of the way in, and the world narrows to heat. She takes me with a sob, body clenching around every alien ridge, slick and swollen and impossibly tight. My knot pulses at the base, waking under the pressure of her thighs.
She feels it. Her eyes widen.
"No," she whispers.
I freeze.
Her hands clutch my back. "Not no to you. No to how much I want it."
My restraint thins to a single, shining wire.
"Then take what you want."
I move.
The first strokes stay slow because she is sore, because fever has made her tender, because even now, even half-mad, my body knows what belongs to reverence.
Then she lifts her hips and bites my shoulder hard enough to mark me, and patience burns.
I drive into her with deeper, heavier thrusts that rock the small bed and twist the nest beneath us.
She meets me, angry and needy, mouth open against my skin.
The fever breaks in sweat along her throat.
Her scent turns lush, satisfied and desperate at once.
"Say it," I rasp.
Her eyes fly to mine.
There it is. The mistake. Some part of me knows.
The command carries too much Alpha, too much prince, too much of the old reflex that believes truth can be pulled into the open if enough pressure surrounds it.
But I am inside her, fevered and relieved and terrified that morning will take this from me.
I need one truth that cannot be filed, delayed, reframed, or argued into professional distance.
"Say this is real."
Her jaw tightens. "Don't."
I thrust once, deep enough that her eyes flutter.
"Not forgiveness," I say against her mouth. "Not surrender. Truth."
"Skylor."
"Say you know what we are."
A tear slips into her hair.
My chest cracks. I should stop. I do not.
"Say it, and I will spend the rest of my life making myself worthy of the words."
The vow is too large for this bed. Too late for the wound. Too much like a demand dressed in devotion.
She hears that.
She also wraps both legs around my hips.
"It's real," she whispers, voice breaking. "Damn you. It's real."
The bond opens. Not gently.
My knot swells as if her words unlock something my body has held at bay.
I bury my face against her throat and thrust into the tight, slick welcome of her once, twice, then deep enough that the knot catches.
She cries out, nails scoring my back. I pause, shaking, giving her the chance to push me away, but her heels dig into me and her hands clamp around my shoulders.
"Again," she says.
I obey because I am lost.
The knot breaches her slowly, a thick, impossible pressure that makes her sob and arch and clutch my ear with a cruelty that sends pleasure tearing through me.
Her body yields around me, hot and resistant and perfect.
When I seat fully, locking us together, she comes with a broken sound against my mouth.
Her cunt clenches around the velvet length of me, around the knot, milking with ruthless little pulls until my orgasm rips through me.
I mark her again with my teeth over the healing claim. Not deep enough to wound. Enough to renew. Enough to blaze through the bond like fire through dry grass.
She says my name as I spend inside her, but it is not forgiveness. Even in the storm, some part of me knows that. It is need. It is anger. It is the truth of a body that cannot lie and a heart that has not agreed to follow.
We remain locked together, breathless and damp, the nest twisted beneath us.
I hold my weight off her as best I can. She trembles under me, lashes wet, lips swollen.
I kiss her cheeks, her jaw, the corner of her mouth.
She lets me. After a while, her hands slide into my hair with exhausted tenderness, and I mistake it for peace because I want peace badly enough to become stupid.
"Sleep," I whisper.
"This changes nothing."
"I know."
But I do not know. Not fully. Because she sleeps against me with my knot inside her and my scent around her, and some primitive, ruined part of me believes I have pulled us back from the edge.
I hold her in the small nest she made from scraps and lie to myself with the warm weight of her body as proof.
---
Morning is colder. Gray light presses through the thin curtains. The fever has receded to a bruise under the skin. The knot has gone down. My head clears enough for memory to return in full: the hallway, the nest, her shaking body, my mouth, my command.
*Say this is real.*
Shame arrives before she speaks.
Beatrice sits on the edge of the bed in her robe, back to me, shoulders stiff.
Her hair falls forward, hiding her face.
The nest lies wrecked around us, blankets twisted, my shirt crushed beneath her pillow, her notebook shoved half off the mattress.
Evidence again. Her life keeps turning into evidence around me.
"Bee."
She flinches at the name.
I sit up. "The fever?"
"Better."
Relief loosens my chest. "Good."
"No." She turns then, and her eyes are tired in a way fever did not cause. "Not good."
I go still.
She draws the robe tighter around herself. "You made it worse."
No defense comes fast enough. Good. A defense would be another insult.
"You came here sick," she says. "I let you in because I was sick too. I wanted you. I consented to what happened."
Her throat moves.
"But in the middle of it, when I was fevered and naked and full of you, you demanded the one thing I was trying to understand for myself."
"My acknowledgment."