Past Tense #3
Every thrust was calibrated to me, every drag of him out and press back in measured by the smallest changes in my breath, my hands, my face. He watched me, learning in real time, with every intention of becoming fluent.
The pace was deliberate. He filled me to the hilt, withdrew and waited patiently for my body to chase him, then pressed back in until the bond rang bright and sharp.
His weight stayed over me, braced on one arm. His other hand returned to my hip, holding me exactly where he wanted me.
The bond climbed with him, opening wider with every thrust until I stopped being able to separate what I felt from what he did. His pleasure came through the line hot and heavy, folding into mine until my body couldn’t tell where the pressure started.
His hand tightened at my hip and his mouth found my throat.
“Mine,” he said again, darker this time. Rougher. The word sounded dragged out of him.
The bond answered before I could.
Heat rolled up the inside of my thighs and gathered tight in my stomach. My hands slid over his back and held on. My nails caught skin. He felt it and moved harder, deeper, the rhythm shifting from careful to barely contained.
His forehead pressed to mine. His breath came rough at my mouth.
The headboard knocked once against the wall. He didn’t bother to quiet it.
His control was still there. I could feel it. He watched me. His hand stayed at my hip instead of my throat. He kept checking my face even as the dragon in him pushed closer to the surface.
But the careful part of him was fraying.
“Dominic,” I breathed.
His hips stilled.
I dragged my nails down his back. “Don’t stop.”
The sound that left him wasn’t quite human.
Then he moved again. Harder.
The bond surged wider, too much and too close, and then the urge hit me: sharp, immediate, older than thought.
My mouth opened against the slope of his shoulder where the muscle ran into his throat. My teeth found the place before I understood I was looking for it.
Dominic’s whole body locked.
“Catalina.”
I was shaking. The instinct took me so fast there was no space to argue with it.
Claim. Answer. Return what he had given me.
The word slipped out before I could stop it. “Mine.”
Then I bit him.
Hard. Not careful or civilized.
His hand came to the back of my neck, firm. Every part of me went still. He didn’t pull me away. He held me there.
“Yes,” he said, roughly.
The word broke in me.
His control cracked, and the bond surged. Heat broke under my skin, brighter than anything that had come before it. His body answered mine, and the answer rose in me so fast I lost the edge of myself inside it.
I held the bite a second longer. I held until the bite changed. Then I released him, but my mouth stayed against his skin, open and hot over the mark I had made.
A claim.
His hips stuttered.
The next wave took me under. It stole the breath from my body and left nothing but the bond ringing between us.
He followed a breath later. His rhythm broke. He drove into me one final time and stilled, buried as deep as he could go. His whole body shook against mine, and the bond rang a long, dark note through both of us.
Then something changed.
A swelling at the base of him, thick and hot, grew inside me. Sealing us together. Holding him there. The pressure should’ve hurt, but it didn’t. My body knew the shape of him now, knew what to do with it, and opened around him like it had been waiting for this part too.
The new fullness pulled another orgasm out of me on a rolling, helpless wave that wasn’t separate from his.
His mouth was at my temple. His hand was in my hair. I could feel him pulsing inside me. I could feel him pulsing in my chest.
When I could breathe again, I said, in a voice that didn’t sound entirely like mine, “Dominic.”
“Yes?”
“What’s that?”
His face had the audacity to be composed while he was locked inside me.
“My knot,” he said. “It is part of the mate bond.”
His knot.
“How long does it last?”
“I am unsure.”
I stared at him.
Dominic’s jaw tightened. “I have never done this before. I have heard approximately twenty minutes.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“I am not.”
“The agency files were missing several chapters.”
“It would seem so.”
I started laughing. Real laughing. Not graceful. Not controlled. Not remotely appropriate to the situation.
I was pinned under a dragon enforcer who was physically locked inside me for approximately twenty minutes because dragon biology had footnotes the CIA hadn’t seen fit to brief me on.
Dominic looked down at me as if trying to decide whether laughter counted as distress.
I laughed harder and his mouth twitched.
He kissed me through it, warm and slow and unmistakably amused. “Do not laugh, little spy.”
“I’m absolutely laughing.” I tried to pull in the air to sound indignant and failed. “You knew this could happen and chose not to mention it.”
“There were other priorities.”
“Dominic.”
“Yes.”
“This is insane.”
His mouth brushed mine again, unhurried. He had nowhere else to be, and no intention of letting the moment end just because the mechanics had shifted.
“I disagree.” His hand moved into my hair, gentle now, almost lazy.
“Of course you do.”