18. Zuri
ZURI
He comes down over me, taking his weight on one arm, and the whole bed leans me into him. He kisses me deep and patient, and this time neither of us is going anywhere.
He gathers my nightgown up my thighs and my hips, and I lift my arms so he can pull it over my head. My underwear follows it off the side of the bed. Then I’m naked under him, all the way naked. I wait for the old urge to cover myself. It doesn’t come. He’s staring at me so hard I warm up under it.
Somewhere beneath everything, one clear thought surfaces.
“Jalen. Your family. They’ll—“
“Smell it. Yes.” He drags his nose up the side of my neck. “And every dragon in this mountain will know you chose me.”
I find out right then that I’ve quit caring. Let the whole mountain know.
His mouth works down my neck, and I feel the press of his fangs behind his lips, careful points that never break skin. He wants to. A tremble runs through him. He doesn’t. He’s leaving that choice for me, and knowing it undoes me more than his hands do.
Then his mouth closes over my nipple, hot and wet, and I arch up off the bed.
He takes his time, deep lazy pulls I feel low in my belly, one hand full of my other breast while his mouth works.
I run my hands down the long muscle of his back, and when my fingers cross the twin ridges where his wings live, he shudders all over and groans against my skin.
I file that away. Wing roots. Good to know.
I slide my hands lower and grab two handfuls of his ass through his pants, pulling him hard against me, and the growl that rolls out of him passes clean through me.
He kisses a line down my body, my chest, my stomach, the crease of my hip, and then he hooks my legs over his shoulders and looks up the length of me. “Tell me to stop if it’s too much.”
I grip the back of his head. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He spreads me open with both thumbs and takes a long look before he ever touches me, and the filthy sound he rumbles at the sight doesn’t embarrass me at all.
The first pass of his tongue is slow and flat, all the way through me, and everything in me pulls tight.
Then he quits teasing. He buries his face in my pussy and eats me sloppy and loud.
His tongue circles my clit, drags flat against it, and pushes inside me as deep as it reaches.
The wet sounds coming off him are nastier than anything I’ve ever imagined for myself, and he moans while he does it, steady and greedy, into my skin.
He pulls back an inch. “Burnt caramel everywhere,” he says, his voice gone rough. “Sweetest thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”
I ride his mouth with no shame at all, and he grips my thighs and holds me spread exactly how he wants me. He seals his lips over my clit and sucks in long pulses, and I come screaming into the dark with my fingers buried in his quilt and my thighs clamped tight on his ears.
He lifts his head, chin shining wet in the moonlight. “One,” he says. “Give me another.”
He slides two thick fingers into me and curls them, and finds a spot I half believed was a myth. His mouth goes softer on my clit, patient now, and I can hear exactly how wet I am every time his fingers move. So can he.
“Listen to that,” he murmurs against me. “All that’s mine.”
This one comes up from somewhere deeper, heat stacking on heat, until I’m chanting his name at the dark and grinding against his face with no dignity left and no use for any.
When I break, it rolls on and on, and he growls his approval into me and works me through all of it until I have to push at his head to make him quit.
I have never come like that in my life, not with anyone and damn sure not by myself.
He wipes his mouth against my thigh and climbs back up my body, dropping kisses as he goes. When his lips close over my nipple again, I move.
I plant a hand on his shoulder and roll him. He goes over easy, because he chooses to, and we both know it, and I don’t care about that either. I end up straddling him with my hands flat on his chest, and his green eyes are burning up at me.
He’s been in control since the balcony. His turn is over.
I work my way down his body and drag his pants off, and his dick comes free heavy against his stomach.
I sit back on my heels and take a good look at what the mate bond assigned me.
He’s big and thick enough that my hand looks small wrapped around him.
He runs hot there the same as everywhere else, and a bead is already sliding from the tip.
I catch that bead with the tip of my tongue, and the salt of him spreads across my mouth. My mouth waters for the rest, and there’s no sense pretending otherwise.
I take my time to be mean about it. I drag my tongue up the underside of him, base to tip, and watch his stomach jump. I close my lips over the head and suck. My tongue works the spot just under the crown, and my hand twists up to meet my mouth.
Above me, the mouthiest dragon in Shadow Wolf Creek starts talking. He says my name, some cussing, and a whole broken sentence with God in it.
Then I relax everything and take him down.
All the way down, until there’s nothing left between my lips and his body.
My throat flutters around him, my eyes water, and I stay right there until my lungs make me move.
I pull off with a wet sound and a shining string still connecting my bottom lip to him, and I look up so he can watch me not be sorry about it.
His head drops back. “Gah damn, Zuri—“
I go right back down and swallow around him on purpose.
He makes a sound I’m going to be smug about for years.
His hand hovers near my head. “Can I— your hair—“
I hum my yes around him, and the hum alone nearly finishes the job. His fingers slide into my hair, careful even now, holding on without steering one thing I do.
I find my rhythm and get filthy with it.
I make a mess of him on purpose, and spit runs down to where my hand twists.
I use every bit of it, wet, loud, and shameless.
I take him deep, pull off to breathe, and go right back down.
Smoke starts curling off his ears in two thin streams. I’d laugh if my mouth wasn’t full.
“Look at you,” he chokes out, hips fighting to stay still under me. “Taking all of me like you were— fuck—“
Whatever I was made for, he doesn’t get to finish saying it, because I hollow my cheeks and pull another sound out of him instead.
The headboard pops under his free hand.
“Zuri— baby, I’m—“ He tugs light at my hair, giving me every chance to pull off.
I take him deeper instead.
He breaks with my name cracking in half in his mouth, and I swallow every hot pulse of him and keep sucking him through it until he’s begging me for mercy. I don’t spill a drop.
When I pull off, he’s ruined. He has one arm over his eyes, smoke is drifting off both ears, and his big body is still heaving.
I wipe the corner of my mouth with my thumb and feel like the richest woman in this valley. He tries to say something. It comes out as half my name and no other working parts. He narrates this whole town for a living, and I just took every word he had.
Then he moves, and there’s nothing wrecked in that move.
He sits up in one surge with his dick still standing hard against his stomach, and his hand wraps around my neck. His eyes have gone wild, green burning too bright. His dragon is talking now.
“That nut you just swallowed,” he says, low and wrong and beautiful. “Let that be the last time.”
I blink at him. “Wha— huh?”
“It goes in you.” He slides two fingers into his own mouth, wets them slow while he watches me, then reaches down and pushes them deep inside me. “It goes in you. Here.”
Then he flips me onto my back.
He pushes into me in one long stroke that turns into a whole event.
He’s a lot. My body burns around him, stretches, gives, and we both groan out loud when his hips finally meet mine.
Then he starts moving, and there’s nothing careful left.
He folds my knees back and fucks me deep and hard, the bed talking loud underneath us, his eyes locked on my face until my legs shake.
I come with my nails in his shoulders and my scream bouncing off his ceiling.
He doesn’t even pause. He flips me onto my belly and drags my hips up until my knees find the bed. I’m face down and ass up, with nothing about me hidden from him.
“Look at all this,” he says behind me, and his big hands pull me open and hold me that way.
His tongue drops onto my ass first, one flat drag right over the center of me, and I make a sound into the mattress that I will deny until I die.
He does it again slower. Then he points his tongue and works me there in filthy little circles, groaning while he does it.
Spit runs down to my pussy, and he chases the drip with his whole mouth.
He eats me from behind with his entire face.
He licks deep into me, drags back up to my ass, and goes back down, with no pattern to any of it and no mercy either.
“Sweetest woman alive,” he says into me, muffled and filthy. “I could live right here.”
I claw the sheets. I push back against his face with no home training left anywhere in me, and he rewards me with a growl and two fingers curling up inside my pussy while his tongue stays busy on my ass.
Somewhere in it I hear myself say please.
I don’t even know what I’m asking for, but he does, because that’s when he rises up behind me.
He slams into me, and what he does next empties my head all the way out. I’m drooling into the sheets. I’m panting hard.
“Ohhh,” I get out, understanding at last exactly what I invited.
He reaches under me, fingers finding my clit, and I come so hard my elbows quit holding me.
He pulls out, flips me over, and hauls me up into his lap while he sits back on his heels.
He stuffs himself back inside me and drives me up and down his dick in deep, punishing strokes, the kind of hurt I’d beg for.
He kisses me through it. His teeth graze the side of my neck, sharp points dragging over my skin.
He fills his hands with my breasts and quits chasing anything for himself. He’s watching me. Only me.
This angle puts him somewhere no one has ever been, and the orgasm that builds off it scares me a little on the way up. When it hits, I scream, and I flood, hot fluid gushing out of me and soaking us both.
“Did I just—“ I’m shaking. “Did I just squirt?”
He growls something proud into my shoulder, still guiding me, and that’s when it arrives.
My mouth starts watering. It floods so fast I have to swallow, and I can’t stop staring at his neck. No one is taking him from me.
“You’re mine,” I say.
He pulls back enough to look at me, and he smiles. “Of course I’m yours, baby.”
He doesn’t understand me. Everything in me goes narrow and hot.
His brow furrows. “Zuri—“
“MINE.”
I sink my teeth into the meat of his neck.
He comes instantly, deep inside me, a shout tearing out of him. He doesn’t push me away. He pulls me closer, holds me tight against his body, and keeps me moving on him in a slow roll, moaning into me.
His blood spills warm over my tongue, and it’s nothing like blood. It’s sweet. It tastes like his scent, smoke and honey, and every swallow spreads through my whole body like the first sip of something I’ve been thirsty for my entire life.
“Yes, baby,” he breathes. “Yes. I’m yours. Take what you need from me.”
I do. I come on his dick again with my teeth still in him, and he collapses back onto the bed and lets out the softest sound, and I ride him and drink until I finally feel full.
I lick the bite clean with long passes, and the wound is already closing under my tongue.
I sit up on him. He looks up at me, weak, wrecked, and shining, and runs one hand up between my breasts.
“Zuri.” It’s the most peaceful I’ve ever seen his face.
Then my eyes roll back. The room tips sideways and goes small, and the last thing I hear is my name in his mouth again.
Everything goes dark.