Chapter 39 #2
The pleasure he stokes in me is merciless. Fast and hard and heavy, he works me with fingers and lips and tongue. He finds the spots that make me moan and writhe against him, and uses every skill in his arsenal to bring me to an abrupt, shattering climax.
Working me through every spasm, he’s all set to keep going, to draw out what would undoubtedly be more pure, unadulterated pleasure, but I groan and tug at him until he gets the hint.
He crawls back up my body until our mouths meet. I can taste myself on him, taste us together, and I almost get lost in the heady, delicious kiss until I remember why I brought him back up here.
“These,” I breathe, barely able to form a coherent sentence as I tug at his clothes. “Off.”
Gratifyingly, he obeys. Rolling off the bed and standing, he strips in full view of where I lay and watch him.
The firelight hits every sculpted muscle. Every dusting of coarse, dark hair. Every powerful curve of his wings.
I can’t take my eyes off him.
And he can’t take his eyes off me.
Crimson burning, he watches me watch him, watches my breathing get fast and shallow and a flush break out all over my body. It makes his own breathing speed up, makes him urgent and a little clumsy as he deals with the rest of his clothes and climbs back into bed.
Callum drops to his knees between my spread thighs, cock in one hand, the other braced on the mattress beside my head.
He strokes himself once, twice, and a strangled sound escapes his throat.
He’s there, right there. A tilt of his hips, a shift of our bodies, and he’d be inside me.
But he hesitates.
“We… don’t have to,” he chokes out, strokes again, squeezes his eyes shut like it’s too much to look at me. “Fuck, Seren. We don’t have to. You don’t owe me—”
“Stop.”
Goddess, this demon and his self-flagellation.
I’m in no mood for more pointless pleading, no mood to make him understand things he needs to understand for himself.
But I am in the mood for something else.
Callum is still wary, like he’s not sure if I’m about to kick him out of this bed entirely.
I push gently against his shoulders, and he obeys the silent command. There’s a question in his eyes as he sits back, still breathing hard as he gazes down at me.
“Sit there,” I order in a raspy whisper, pointing to the head of the bed.
Again, he complies, settling back against the headboard and watching me with a half-hooded gaze, waiting to see what I do next.
“Is that alright with your wings?”
He shifts slightly, gets comfortable, and nods.
“Good.”
His eyes never leave mine as I crawl forward, as I move myself on top of him, straddle his lap, take his thick cock in my hand and bring it to my core.
“I’m going to take your knot,” I murmur against his lips as I lower myself onto the first inch of him, the second.
Callum groans into my mouth, sounding almost pained, and I feel the argument rising in his chest.
“I’m going to try to take your knot,” I amend before he can make it. “If it’s too much, I’ll stop. I promise. But I… I want this.”
I want you. I want us. I want you to realize all the reasons you think you have to be so sacrificing and noble don’t mean shit to me.
But if I can’t have any of that, tonight I want us to be together. Really be together.
There are so many things I want to say. So many things I can’t say.
But none of them really matter. Or, maybe more accurately, all of them matter, but none of them would make a difference. None of them would change my stubborn, handsome mate’s mind, so I hold them back.
I take another inch, and Callum grips my hips to slow me down.
“Witch,” he growls, and I love it.
I love it when he calls me witch, like I’m the one who bespells him, ensnares him, like he can’t quite find that stubborn control he likes so much when he’s near me.
“Not so fast,” he mutters. “If you want my knot, you’ll slow down.”
My lips bump against his. A kiss, but not quite. Messy and open-mouthed, gasping and wet.
“I’m already going slow.”
“Not slow enough.”
I buck my hips and he grips me tighter, the tips of his claws pricking against my skin.
“Star,” he warns, then groans when I grab his horns, tip his head back, and kiss him deep and dirty.
But I’ve still got a little mercy in me.
I still my hips, give him time, give me time because fuck, he’s big. He’s barely inside and the stretch is already there. Not uncomfortable, not yet, but the thought of taking more, of taking his freaking knot, gives me a moment of pause.
“Too much?” Callum asks, stroking my cheeks and brushing my hair back from my face.
“When has it ever been too much?”
He smiles, and the devastating tenderness of it somehow makes me feel even more naked than when I stripped in front of him.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
True to his word, he rests his hands back on my hips and helps me take another inch, then another, until I’m seated on him as far as I can go without taking his knot.
One of these days, I’m going to learn not to be so cocky.
Today’s not that day, though, and all I can do is try to breathe through it while I get used to the stretch of him.
I move on him, rolling my hips, arching into him, raising and lowering myself on his thick length and trying to let my body adjust.
It’s not easy.
Even with as soft and wet as I am for him, it’s not an easy fit.
There’s just so much of him. And with each downstroke, when I feel the swell of his knot stretching me, I have absolutely no idea how the hell I’m going to take all that.
Maybe Callum and I weren’t meant to fit together after all.
Maybe there’s still too much about us that will just never fit, that we can’t make work.
With a strangled, desperate little sound, I press closer, forcing myself further down on his knot.
I earn absolutely nothing but a sharp twinge of pain and pointless frustration wrapping tight around my chest, stealing my breath.
“Easy,” Callum murmurs, hands on my hips to hold me still. “Slow down, Seren.”
“I need you—” I pant. “To help me. I’m—I can’t—it’s so—”
“I know, my star. I know.”
Gently, he flips our position so my back is on the mattress, sinking into the soft furs. He hitches one of my legs over his hip, shifts himself so the angle is different, so he slides deeper, so his knot presses right up against my—
“Callum,” I gasp.
“Just look at you,” he murmurs. “So pretty like this. So desperate to have me knot you.”
“Yes.” There’s quite literally nothing he could say right now that I wouldn’t agree to. Not with this magick running fast and heavy through my veins. Not when his knot is right there and I want it, I need it. If I don’t have it inside me, I’ll—
Another strangled cry leaves my throat as he grips my thigh, spreads me open, pushes forward. As the swell of his knot stretches me, close, so close, until he pushes again and—
My orgasm hits me with devastating totality. A delicious mixture of heat and fullness and the slight bite of sensual pain as my body adjusts for him, makes room for him, takes him deeper than I knew anyone could be.
I clench down on him hard, all my inner muscles pulsating in waves of unimaginable pleasure, and it throws Callum over the edge, too.
With a hoarse shout, he spills into me. His knot seats in me fully and it draws my orgasm out, sets off more tremors that rock me from the tips of my toes all the way to the crown of my head.
Wave after wave of it, so powerful it leaves me momentarily on another plane entirely. Ascended to the realm of bliss.
It’s only the soft, insistent glimmer behind my eyelids that brings me back, and I blink in wonder at what I see.
All around us, magick bursts into sparkling, effervescent light.
A slow cascade of golden filaments wraps close and cocoons us, creating our own little world of peace and pleasure.
Overwhelming and all-encompassing, that magick settles against my skin and deeper, nestling itself into every inch of me.
Foreheads pressed together, both of us still trying to catch our breath, we stay that way until most of it settles, leaving only a faint glow on both our skin.
Callum kisses me soft and slow, then pulls away and gives his head a rueful shake.
“We’re going to be here for a while. Like this. Until, uh, until my…”
He shifts his hips and I catch his drift. Even though he already came, his knot is still hard as ever inside me.
“How long does it last?”
A bit of color on his cheeks. “I don’t know. I’ve never knotted anyone before.”
“Never?” Something warm and satisfied blooms in my chest. Good. I’d fucking hate it if he’d ever shared this with someone else.
“Never. It’s something that only happens when a demon finds their mate.”
More magick, sparking deep in the center of my chest.
Warm and soft and right, it curls around my heart and stays there.
“I think I like that,” I whisper, and his face melts into a smile that makes all that magick glow even more brightly.
“I do, too, star.”
Later, when Callum and I are half-asleep in the enormous, sunken tub in the room’s attached bath, I feel it again.
That pang in my chest. That tug near my heart. The shiny, golden, wonderfully tender thread connecting me to him to the Goddess and the whole world. The whole universe, right here between us.
He carried me here while his knot was still hard and heavy inside me.
He lowered us both into the water and ran his hands up and down my back, through my damp hair, over my face and my hips and every inch of me he could touch.
While he did, he murmured endearments and praise, telling me how well I did, how good it felt to knot me, how he’d stay in me forever if he could.
Between those lovely little bits of whispered filth that did absolutely nothing to help his knot subside any faster, we had a quick and slightly awkward—considering he was still buried inside me—conversation about how witches use birth control, and how we have nothing to be worried about in that department.
I’ve got a potions master for a sister, after all. She taught me how to brew a contraceptive tonic the first time a boy ever asked me out on a date.
I suppose I’ll have to be forever grateful if it means I can have my demon just like this, without the potential of any little winged, half-demon babies running around anytime soon.
We both relaxed until we were in a near-trance, letting the lap of the water and the press of our bodies soothe away any worries of tomorrow—for now, at least.
And now, after he’s softened and slipped out of me, neither of us has made a move to disentangle.
I certainly won’t be the one to make the first move.
If it means putting off the inevitable for even a little longer, I’ll stay here all night savoring it. I’ll stubbornly pretend this is the only thing in any of the thirteen realms that’s real.
Me. Callum. Nothing else matters tonight.
It’s easy enough to believe as I close my eyes and let the warmth of him, the strength of him, the pure, simple pleasure of being here, right here with him, lull me to sleep.