Chapter 31 #2
“What do you want, Seren?” he asks, like it’s a matter of utmost urgency. “Tonight, in this room, what do you want?”
It’s not a matter of want.
It’s need coursing through me.
No. Stronger than that.
It’s as if every instinct I possess has been turned up until the dials broke. All those seeking tendrils pouring from me. Unstoppable. Unrestrained.
Callum sucks in a sharp breath.
Can he feel it, too?
Or maybe it’s been like this for him all along.
Maybe this is what he felt that first night in the Middle, when I was so damned determined to run away from him. Maybe he’s always known and has just been waiting for me to catch up.
But here, now, there’s no more questions.
This is right.
This is inevitable.
This is what I want.
He is what I want.
I close my eyes and let my magick free.
It cascades from me in waves, pulling me toward him, filling me up from the inside out. It tangles with the threads of the bond I haven’t been able to bring myself to look at, amplifies them, makes them bright and incandescent and more real than anything I’ve ever felt before.
“Star,” Callum breathes. “You’re magnificent.”
I open my eyes.
There, in the scant space between us, magick glows. Gossamer threads connecting us, pulsing with the beating of our hearts, fragile and golden and wondrous.
“I’ve never… it’s never been like this. My magick.”
He cups a gentle hand around the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair. “It’s always felt like this to me. Since the moment I saw you, I’ve felt your magick like this, tying us together.”
I kiss him.
It’s not even a choice.
Between one breath and the next, the space between us disappears. The magick lingers, lighting up the dim of the room and drawing in tight, cocooning us, cradling us, binding us together.
Callum groans into the kiss and tightens the grip he has on my hair. He tilts my head back, sweeps his tongue over my lips, and groans again when I let him in.
But after a few delicious moments, he pulls away with a harsh inhale. “I asked you a question, star.”
Goddess, I like stern, grumpy Callum. And kind, concerned Callum. And turned-on-out-of-his-mind Callum.
“Did you?” I tease.
A growl slips out as he drops his mouth to my throat. He presses a sucking kiss there, and I hope it leaves a mark.
“You know I did.”
Two big hands explore me. From the dip of my waist to the curve of my back. Mapping a path up my spine to bury themselves in my hair.
“You know what I want.”
“Aye, I do.” His lips on my skin, hot and urgent. “But I want to hear you say it.”
Heat flashes through me. Magick crests. Pure, liquid need pools between my thighs. I try to press myself closer, but he holds me back, the bastard.
“I want…” I lick my lips and his eyes trace the movement, the black of his pupils almost overtaking the crimson of his irises. “I want to finish what we started this morning.”
Before I can even blink, Callum has me in his arms.
He crosses the room and deposits me on the bed, my back sinking into the plush duvet. He follows me down, stretching the length of his body over mine, the weight of him hot and delicious and… not enough.
His mind seems to follow the same train of thought as he leans down and catches the tips of his fangs lightly on the collar of my shirt.
“If I recall correctly,” he murmurs, pulling the fabric a couple of inches away from my skin. “You were wearing far less this morning.”
“Huh.” I arch into his mouth, back straining off the bed. “Seems like someone should fix that.”
Callum’s chuckle rumbles against my collarbone.
He takes his time making his way down my body, kissing me over the shirt, dragging his fangs, teasing and going so tortuously slow. When he reaches my navel, he nudges the hem up, exposing my midriff and peppering that with kisses, too.
It makes me squirm. I clutch at his horns and buck into him, a silent demand he stop playing with me and get to the point.
“This is the point, Seren.”
Oh. Damn. Maybe I said that out loud.
“You’re the whole point,” he murmurs, inching the shirt even higher, exposing my stomach, the dips of my ribs, all the way to the lace cups of my bra.
A deep rumble of approval echoes in his chest when he pulls the fabric high enough to see how it cups me, how I absolutely, positively didn’t choose the best bra I had to wear on this trip, just in case this very moment happened.
Unable to be as patient as he is, I reach down and tug the shirt up and off me. Good riddance.
Callum’s not complaining. His crimson eyes darken with pleasure, and he exhales a small groan as his hands find my breasts and plump them together. He dips his head and kisses the swell of one, then the other, then takes a deep inhale through his nose that rumbles through his chest in a low growl.
I prop myself up on an elbow to look at him. “Are you… sniffing me?”
Callum—entirely unashamed—inhales again.
“You have no idea how delectable you smell, star. You have no idea how crazed it makes me when I can scent your arousal, when I know you’re thinking about me, that you want this just as much as I do.”
“I might have—” I gasp as he dips his face into the hollow between my neck and shoulder, as he grazes the tips of his fangs along my skin. “—some idea.”
Whether it’s my scent or the idea of just how hot he’s making me, Callum’s iron-clad control is slipping.
Over the next few moments, he goes from determined to tease me out of my mind, to just this side of unhinged.
We scramble together to get me out of the rest of my clothes, chucking them off the side of the bed into a haphazard pile on the floor.
When he has me bare, Callum pulls back.
He kneels on the bed and stares down at me. With his crimson eyes wide and searching, his wings draped elegantly behind him—the sheer, utterly un-human beauty of him—he looks like some kind of fallen angel.
Handsome. Powerful. Mine.
I reach for him, and he comes back to me, pressing me into the mattress and claiming my mouth again.
He doesn’t stay there long.
Callum kisses and licks and nips a path from my mouth, over the curve of my jaw and lower.
He stops at my breasts, lavishing attention on one, and then the other.
Wet laves of his tongue and long, slow draws between his lips, teasing and torturing me until both my nipples are standing in hard, aching, flushed peaks.
His thick beard abrades my skin in the best way, and I already know I’m going to be covered in beard-burn tomorrow, but I couldn’t give a single shit.
If it’s the price I have to pay for having him like this, I’m absolutely happy to pay it.
But there’s something else I want to pay, too.
Payback, to be more precise.
With a firm tug on his horns to get his attention, I smirk down at his handsome, pleasure-drunk face.
“Didn’t I say I wanted to finish what I started this morning?”
“Star,” he groans, already moving like he’s going to dip his head back down and continue on his merry way devouring me.
“Uh-uh.” I tug on his horns again, and he finally relents, climbing back up over me until I can reach his lips with mine. “Sit on the edge of the bed.”
Gratifyingly, he follows the hastily kissed order, moving himself to the side of the mattress, wings settling behind him.
I can’t help but linger for a moment as I scoot across the bed after him, fingers trailing again over the miracle of them, the power of them, the absolute impossibility of them.
It sends a tremor through Callum’s entire body. “If all you’re going to do is tease—”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk.” I dip my head to nip at the strong column of his throat as I maneuver myself on top of him.
Straddling his hips, I take a long, indulgent look. From the broad stretch of his shoulders and the strong column of his neck, over the planes of his chest—dusted with coarse brown hair—and lower. To the ripple of his abs and the mouth-watering vee pointing straight to…
“These need to go,” I murmur into his skin, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of his shorts.
Callum obeys immediately, one muscular arm wrapped around the underside of my ass so he can lift me up, and the other tugging the offending piece of clothing away.
When he sets me back down, the hard length of his cock settles against my core, and I can’t resist the temptation. I rock myself against him, sliding him against my slick pussy, grinding down hard to get the friction I need.
Callum groans into my neck. Gripping my hips, he helps me, moving me against him and canting his pelvis just right so he hits my clit on each upstroke.
Over and over, with the tips of his claws making dents in my skin, the incredible power of him moving beneath me, the strength and the heat of him driving me nearly to orgasm after only a few strokes.
“You’re distracting me,” I pant.
“Seems like a wonderful distraction to me.” Another stroke, and little fires ignite low in my belly.
A small, greedy, selfish part of me wants to finish just like this.
It wouldn’t be hard.
Just a few more seconds and I could—
“No,” I moan, as much to myself as to him. “I told you what I want.”
“Your body says otherwise.” He rocks into me again, and I wonder if he can feel it. Feel the magick pulling taut between us, feel the tremors running through me, the pleasure just this side of bursting.
“My body can wait.”
Shifting myself further back on his thighs, I reach down between us and take the thick, proud length of him in hand, fingers curling around his shaft and sliding down to…
Oh.
Well, that’s not something I—
“My knot,” Callum says, pressing open-mouthed kisses to the tops of my breasts, hips bucking into my hand.
“And it goes—”
“Inside you.” His fangs, this time, delicious little pinpricks of pain at my nipple.
“Oh.”
He pulls back far enough so he can see my face, and whatever he finds there makes him smirk.
“You don’t have to take it tonight. Or ever, if you don’t want to. But I think you’ll like it.”
“Do you?” I give it a tentative squeeze and he moans.
“I do. Goddess, star. I do. You’ll love it.”
That promise is given in such a desperate, graveled rasp that I believe him. I believe I’ll love to take that wickedly large knot, to figure out how the two of us fit together.
But that’s not what I want tonight.
Tonight, I want him to burn just as hot as he made me this morning.
I want to hear how loud he can be, what sounds I can wrench from him.
Kissing a path from his mouth, down the strong column of his throat, over his collarbones and pecs and lower, Callum’s breath gets shallow and quick. His pupils are deep, dark pools of need as he watches me explore my way down his body through half-hooded eyes.
He truly is incredible.
Power, so much power in the firm ridges of his abs, the taut skin dusted with coarse hair, coiled and gathered, ready to erupt.
When I finally make it to my knees—glancing up at him from beneath the fan of my eyelashes, fingers wrapped around his cock—Callum is almost trembling with all that tension, with that need, that hunger.
Goddess, it’s a power trip.
Even more so when I dart the tip of my tongue out and lap at him. When I lick the bead of moisture poised right on the tip and he growls low in his chest, head tipped back like looking at me is too much.
I kiss a trail down his shaft, suck lightly on his knot, and he groans again.
“Fuck, star.”
I bite back a triumphant smile. “Too much?”
His laugh is ragged, broken, and strained around the edges. “Yes. But don’t stop.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I murmur, and open to take him deeper.
He threads his fingers into my hair, guides the stroke of my mouth on him, and true to his word from this morning, he makes no secret of how much he’s enjoying this.
My demon mate is vocal.
Vocal in the sexiest, most gratifying way.
His growls and groans of pleasure fill the room, beautiful and otherworldly and all the encouragement I need to take him deeper.
The broad head of his cock hits the back of my throat and I hollow my cheeks around him, lips pressed against his thick knot every time he bottoms out.
Inspired by how much he seemed to like it when I touched him before, I cup his heavy balls in one hand and use the other to squeeze his knot.
Gentle at first, and then with a little more pressure when he moans his pleasure.
His hips nearly lift off the mattress, his grip on me tightens, and it’s all so damned delicious I have to pull back for a moment and savor it.
Savor him. The expression on his handsome face. The force of his breath coming fast and hard in his lungs. The dazed bliss in his eyes when I smirk up at him.
“Good?” I tease, like I don’t already know the answer.
“There’s not a word—” he pants, “—that can express—how good it is, star.”
Praise will get me every damn time, and, deciding to reward that praise with a little mercy, I dip my head back down.