Iona #2
The change is immediate and unmistakable. The muscular flare broadens inside me and seats at the entrance, locking our bodies together. I cannot lift away. He cannot withdraw.
Fear flashes through me.
The bond is not open yet, but he sees it in my face.
His hand leaves my hip and covers mine.
Still.
The word is not spoken. He cannot speak with his fangs embedded. His body tells me instead. He braces all his weight above and around me. He stops thrusting. He holds the exact angle so neither fang tears the wound.
A second venom pulse enters.
Heat becomes pleasure so intense it feels like pain changing its mind.
My body clamps around him.
The full swell pulses inside me.
His cock is trapped in every contraction. The pressure drags a broken sound from his throat, but he does not move.
A third venom pulse.
Something opens behind my ribs, as real as the bite itself. A place that did not exist a heartbeat ago fills with him.
Torgan’s hunger floods into me first.
A hundred years of it.
The nail in his jaw. My heartbeat in his fangs. His terror that wanting me would make him a creature who took.
Then his relief.
It is so enormous I begin to cry.
He feels the tears.
I know because his grief enters me in answer.
The bond moves both ways.
My fear on the wall. My fury at the council. The exact thrill of hearing him behind me in the garden. The moment I saw him rise beneath Osk’s riders and knew there was nowhere else I intended to go.
All of it enters him.
His claws punch through the furs.
He remains still.
The venom spreads deep through my belly and pelvis. The lock pulses again, heavy and inescapable.
My climax begins at the bite.
It moves down my body in a long seizure. Throat. Breasts. Stomach. Cunt tightening around his swollen root.
I cannot move away from it.
Neither can he.
My pleasure pours through the bond and enters him.
His answering climax enters me before his body releases.
For one impossible moment, I feel both sides.
The tightening in his spine. The pressure at his base. The helpless need to thrust even while he holds himself still to protect my neck.
Then he comes.
His release enters in several heavy pulses. The full swell contracts with each one, held deep inside me. My body grips him harder. My orgasm returns through him and feeds his back into me.
The last private edge between our bodies disappears into pain, venom, pressure, and pleasure.
I hear myself sobbing his name.
He cannot answer. His fangs remain set. His mouth is sealed to my blood.
He holds me through every pulse.
When the venom glands finally stop clenching, the bond settles from fire to heat.
His cock remains fully swollen inside me.
We are still locked.
He does not withdraw the fangs immediately.
He waits until my body stops convulsing around them.
His hand stays beneath my head. His other palm covers my hip, claws curved away.
Only when my breathing steadies does he open his jaw.
The fangs slide free slowly.
Pain pulls through the wounds again.
He licks the bite at once. Tongue over blood. Once. Twice. Again. Venom and saliva seal the torn edges while his hand keeps my neck from turning.
The marks pulse with my heartbeat.
He lifts his head.
There is blood on his mouth.
His eyes are gray again.
Wet.
“Iona.”
I feel the word before he speaks it.
“I’m here.”
His forehead drops to mine.
“My jaw.”
“What?”
“It is quiet.”
Wonder moves through the bond, huge and unguarded.
I touch the hinge beneath his ear.
No tension. No tremor. The fangs remain long and sharp. Only the pain is gone.
He laughs once.
The sound catches halfway and becomes something else.
I pull his face into my neck.
He braces me against his chest because we are still joined.
The full swell has not begun to ease.
When I shift, it presses deeper and a shared aftershock tears through both of us.
“Still,” he says against my skin.
“I know.”
“You cannot pull away yet.”
“I noticed.”
A flicker of satisfaction crosses the bond.
I lift my head. “You are pleased.”
“No.”
Amusement warms the bond despite his denial.
Despite the bite, the blood, and the fact that his body has locked us together, I laugh.
The movement squeezes the swell.
We both groan.
“Do not laugh,” he says.
“That may be the least reasonable command you have ever given me.”
He reaches for the water cup without separating us. One arm supports my shoulders while the other brings it to my mouth.
“Drink.”
“Bossy.”
“Mate.”
The old voice makes the lock pulse again.
He feels my response.
“So do I,” he says.
I drink all the water.
Then more.
Time passes strangely while we remain joined.
The fire settles. The bath stops steaming. His breathing slows. The venom heat moves through my body in waves, each one weaker than the last.
He tells me what he can feel.
My heartbeat without pain.
My soreness.
The strange new awareness of his own pleasure reflected inside my body.
I tell him what I feel.
His fear of hurting me. His astonishment that I stayed. The quiet in his jaw. The physical ache of holding his hips still while my body remains clamped around the swell.
The lock lasts long enough that urgency becomes intimacy.