Chapter 21 Mira #2
The same man, the same words and the overwhelming certainty that I’d stood exactly here before, that he’d looked at me exactly this way, and I’d taken his hand, crossing over into a life I couldn’t remember losing.
The déjà vu crashed through me and settled in my chest, enough weight to steal my voice.
He saw it and the smile faded.
“Mira?”
“Say it again.”
He went still. “What?”
“What you just said. Say it again.”
His eyes searched mine. I watched him connect the dots.
“Come inside,” he repeated, quieter. “Mira.”
My eyes burned from the collision of two timelines, one I lived and one I lost.
“You said that to me before.” My voice came out rough. “During the week I forgot. At this door. You were smiling, and you held out your hand, and you said...”
“Come inside.” His voice had dropped to a rasp. “Yes.”
The morning was too bright. The porch railing dug into my back and I hadn’t realized I’d stepped away from the sheer force of what I was feeling.
“Lucian.”
He waited, the smile gone. Replaced by an openness that cost him.
“Why did you distance yourself from me? After the fire. After I forgot.” My voice trembled on the last word. “Unlike Solomon and Percy, you... you pulled away.”
His hand dropped from the frame. He turned so I couldn’t see his face, one hand gripping the railing, knuckles pale against the wood.
The silence lasted long enough that I thought he wouldn’t answer.
“Because I was terrified.” The words came out low, scraped raw. “Of getting too close again and losing you a second time.”
My heart clenched.
“I lived in a fantasy of happiness that made me forget about my duties. The crown, a kingdom waiting for me. Because of you.” His shoulders rose with a shuddered breath. “And then you suddenly changed and looked at me as if I’m a stranger.”
He turned. His eyes were gold at the edges, the wolf bleeding through, and the vulnerability in his expression was devastating.
“I would rather keep you at arm’s length and survive it than hold you again and have you ripped away. That was my logic.” A rough exhale. “Selfish. Cowardly. And wrong.”
I crossed the porch in two steps.
My hands found his face. Thumbs against his cheekbones, fingers curling into his hair, and I pulled him down to me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said against his mouth. “And I’m done playing the long game with you.”
Lucian broke.
His mouth crashed into mine and his arms locked around my waist, lifting me off the ground. My legs wrapped around him on instinct and the kiss was nothing close to gentle. Teeth and tongues and biting.
“Shit,” I cursed as he bit my lip hard enough to bleed. I noticed his canines protruding a bit before it retracted. He was losing control.
And I loved it.
My fingers fisted in his hair as he carried me through the doorway.
We didn’t make it to the stairs.
His knee hit the arm of the couch and he corrected, pressing me against the nearest wall instead. My back connected and his hips pinned me there, and the sound that tore from my throat was loud enough to echo off the timber walls.
“Upstairs,” I managed between kisses.
“No.” The word vibrated against my throat. His mouth traced a path from my jaw to my pulse, teeth grazing, and my entire body arched into him. “Here. Now. I can’t... I need...”
“Okay.” I pulled his shirt over his head. He let me go long enough for the fabric to clear his arms and then his mouth was on mine again, stumbling backward in a tangle of limbs and discarded clothing.
My cardigan hit the floor by the door. His shirt followed. My tank top landed on the couch. His belt buckle clinked and I yanked it free while his hands found the waistband of my jeans and peeled them down, making my thighs clench.
The fireplace was lit. The rug was soft beneath my shoulders when he laid me down, his body hovering over mine.
Lucian paused. His chest rose and fell against mine, breath ragged, pupils blown wide with the gold ringing them.
“Are you sure?”
I reached up and traced the line of his jaw. Watched his eyes flutter at the contact, his hundred years of restraint on the edge of shattering.
“I’m sure.” My thumb brushed his lower lip. “I’ve been sure since the festival, even if I can’t remember it.”
His control dissolved.
He kissed down on my body, making my vision blur. Mouth against my collarbone, my sternum, the curve of my ribs, each point of contact deliberate and unhurried, as if he were memorizing me through taste.
When his mouth reached my hip, I was already shaking.
“Lucian.” His name came out fractured.
“I told you once,” he said against my skin, his breath warm, his fingers curling around my thighs. “That when I was healed, I’d take my time with you until you couldn’t remember your own name.”
There was that familiar glint in his eyes.
“Well, I’m healed now.” He pressed his mouth to the inside of my thigh and my back arched off the rug. “And I’m a man of my word.”
He made good on his promise.
Lucian sucked and licked all over my skin. My head flinging side to side in pleasure. It was as if he was actually eating me, consuming me.
By the time he moved back up my body, I was boneless and trembling and had, in fact, forgotten my own name.
My fingers found his shoulders, nails digging into muscle as he settled between my hips, and the weight of him against me, the heat and the pressure was everywhere, sending a wave of need through me.
Lucian paused at my entrance. Forehead pressed to mine, eyes burning.
“This will seal the bond,” he said. “You’ll feel me after. Always.”
“Good.” I lifted my hips. Felt his erection press forward. “I want to feel you. Always.”
He pushed inside me. His thick cock stretched my pussy wide, filling me inch by inch with a slow, deliberate thrust that made my walls clench around him.
I gasped at the burn, the delicious fullness that bordered on too much, but he held still, letting me adjust to his size.
His hands gripped my hips firmly, pinning me in place beneath him, his dominance clear in the way he controlled every movement.
“Fuck. That’s it,” he murmured, his voice rough. “Take all of me. You’re so tight, so wet for your king.”
The bond flared between us, and I felt him. Not just his body, his emotions.
His arms trembled. His forehead pressed harder against mine.
“Mira.” Just my name. Wrecked.
He leaned down, capturing my lips in a deep kiss, his tongue thrusting into my mouth in time with the subtle rock of his hips.
I pulled him closer. “Move.”
He did. The firelight painted his skin in gold as we found a rhythm, slow at first, his hips rolling against mine with a precision that built the pressure in my core with agonizing patience.
Each thrust dragged his cock along my inner walls, hitting spots that made sparks ignite behind my eyelids. My nails raked down his back and he groaned, the sound guttural, pulled from somewhere primal.
His hand found my thigh and hitched it higher, and the angle changed and I cried out, loud, unrestrained, as he drove deeper, his cock slamming into my cervix with just enough force to make me see stars.
“Again,” he said. His voice was a command.
Lucian didn’t wait for my response; instead, he pulled back almost all the way out, leaving me empty and aching, before plunging back in hard and fast. The slap of his skin against mine echoed in the room, mingling with my moans and his heavy breaths.
“Gods, you’re doing so well,” he growled, his gold eyes locked on mine as he set a punishing pace. “I want you to beg for it, Mira.”
The rug burned against my shoulders and I didn’t care. His teeth grazed my throat and I tilted my head back.
“Please, Your Majesty,” I breathed, and the sound he made was inhuman. Lucian’s hips snapped forward, his grip bruising on my thigh as he buried himself to the hilt.
“Say that again,” he growled against my throat, “and I won’t be gentle.”
“Your Majesty.” I dragged my nails down his spine. “Don’t be.”
“Fucking hell, you’ll really drive me mad.”
I arched into his touch, my body his to command, and he rewarded me with another deep thrust, grinding his pelvis against my swollen nub.
“Lucian, I’m...”
“I know. I feel it.” His hand slid between us, fingers finding my clit and rubbing firm circles that had me trembling on the edge.
Sweat slicked our skin. Lucian shifted his weight, hooking my leg over his shoulder to open me wider, exposing me completely to his relentless pounding. His cock pistoned in and out, stretching my pussy with every stroke, the wet sounds of my arousal obscene and intoxicating.
I could feel every ridge, every vein, as he claimed me.
“You’re mine,” he rasped, leaning down to bite at my neck, not hard enough to break skin but enough to mark me with his teeth. “Say it. Tell me you’re mine while I fuck you senseless.”
“Yours,” I whimpered, my hands clutching at his ass, urging him deeper. “All yours, Your Majesty. Please… please don’t stop.”
He chuckled darkly, the sound vibrating through his chest into mine. “Such a good girl when you’re not being a brat.”
My heart hammered at his words, heat burning through my veins.
Lucian’s thrusts grew erratic, harder, as if he couldn’t hold back much longer.
“Come for me, Mira.”
The pressure built unbearably, coiling tight in my belly until it snapped.
I shattered around him, my orgasm crashing over me in waves, my walls fluttering and clenching as I screamed his name.
He didn’t let up, fucking me through it, drawing out every pulse until I was sobbing with overstimulation.
Then the knot swelled. I gasped.
“What the... Lucian, what is that?” My voice pitched high, panic cutting through the afterglow as the base of his cock expanded inside me, stretching my entrance in a way nothing in my human experience had prepared me for.
My hands flew to his chest, pushing on instinct.
“Something’s... you’re getting bigger. That’s not. .. that’s not normal.”
“Breathe.” His hand found my face, steady despite the tremor in his arms. Gold eyes held mine, burning with restraint. “It’s the knot. It’s part of the bond. Part of me.”
“Part of...” I squirmed and the pressure shifted, sending a jolt through my oversensitive body that blurred the line between too much and not enough. A strangled sound escaped me. “You could have mentioned this before you were inside me.”
“Would you have believed me?”
Fair point. I inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth, and forced my body to stop fighting it.
The stretch burned at the edges but beneath the burn, a fullness was settling into place that felt less invasive with every breath.
As if my body was learning a language it had never spoken but somehow already understood.
“There you go, sweetheart.” Lucian caressed my body with ghostly gentle hands as the panic ebbed into something quieter. “Just breathe.”
His knot inflated at the base of his cock, stretching my entrance to its limit, sealing us together as he ground against me in shallow, desperate thrusts. Cum flooded me in hot spurts, his release triggering another aftershock in my body, making me whimper and writhe beneath him.
We were connected.
Truly, physically, inescapably connected, and his face hovered inches from mine, gold eyes burning, blood on his lips, my blood, and his expression was so raw.
“I feel you.” My voice was barely a whisper. Tears streamed down my temples into my hair. “Lucian, I feel everything.”
“And I feel you.” His thumb found my cheek. Traced the tear tracks the way he had during our fight, tender despite the animal intensity of what we’d just done.
“Mine,” he said. Not possessive, just true. A fact, permanent and unshakeable.
The knot held us there. Minutes or hours, I couldn’t tell.
His weight settled onto me, careful not to crush, face buried in my neck. Every few seconds his cock pulsed inside me, another aftershock, and each one drew a whimper from my throat that made his arms tighten.
When the knot finally released, the loss of fullness left me gasping. He pulled out slowly, his cum spilling from my pussy onto the rug, and neither of us moved to clean it up. He rolled onto his back and pulled me against his chest, his heartbeat slamming against my cheek.
“Ruined your rug,” I murmured.
“I’ll buy another.”
“It’s a nice rug.”
“You’re nicer.”
“That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”
His chest shook with a laugh that I felt in my teeth.
I stared up at him. This man… a king.
Five hundred years old, knotted inside me on his living room floor, firelight on his skin and the bond between us pulsing.
I’d really done it.
I’d let a lycan king claim me on a rug by the fireplace.
My life was officially the plot of one of my own books.
And the bond was already whispering that this was only the beginning.