Chapter Twenty-Eight
Stubble scrapes across my jaw as Talen’s mouth devours mine. There’s nothing careful about it, nothing precise, just raw hunger and desperate need.
“Thorn,” he growls when my fingers finally find his hair, soft waves slipping through my hands while his hold me up, keeping me anchored against him.
His arm has to hurt, but he gives no sign of it as he lifts me closer, the slow, delicious friction between our bodies drawing a broken sound from my lips.
“Are you okay?” Breaking the kiss, his breath uneven, he rests his forehead against mine. “Your back?”
“It's fine.” I pull at him, already missing his taste. Smoke and something bittersweet, something that feels dangerously like home. “Your leather jacket is thick enough.”
“Mmmm.” His mouth curves against mine as his body leans back in, pressing me harder against the tree. “Fuck, I love seeing you in my jacket.” The words drag across my lips. “Knowing everyone can see it. Knowing they know you’re mine.” A rough exhale. “God, you have no idea what that does to me.”
There’s a possessiveness in his tone I haven’t heard before. It slips straight under my skin and settles there, hot and intoxicating, only making my legs tighten around him more.
Groaning against me, he answers with his hands, one gripping my arse more firmly, while the other begins to roam.
And lord help me, I let him.
Calloused fingers drag up my thigh, sparks chasing beneath my skin as they gather up the thin fabric of my nightdress. Higher and higher, until he stops, hovering at that sweet, torturous precipice right between my legs, close enough to make my breath hitch.
“Tell me you want it,” he murmurs against my lips as he parts his fingers and drags them teasingly along the sensitive skin on either side of where I ache for him most. “Tell me you want me to touch you like she did.”
My hips shift before I can stop them, shameless and needy, chasing the touch he’s deliberately denying me.
“Fuck, god, yes.” Sucking his tongue into my mouth, I feel the hard length of him pulse against me, only making the wait that much more unbearable. “I want you. Just you. Always you.”
A rough, satisfied sound leaves him and I gasp, my whole body arching up to meet him as he sinks both fingers into me.
“Talen—” My voice is barely a whisper but it earns another deep groan from his chest, the vibrations rolling through me as he thrusts his fingers in again, deeper this time.
Instinctively, I clench around them, every muscle in my body pulling taut as the campsite around us fades until there’s only him.
Only the sweep of his tongue against mine, only the perfect, maddening rhythm of his fingers inside me, stealing every coherent thought and leaving me trembling because it's too much but not enough all at the same time.
“I can't wait for you to come around my cock.” He moans as he works me with devastating precision.
Hell, I’m not going to make it that long.
I’m already so pent up, the pulse between my legs no longer a dull throb but something fierce and demanding.
And he knows it too, adjusting without a word and never breaking the kiss, he slips his fingers free, trailing them higher along me before finding that precise place that sends a sharp jolt straight through my spine.
“You feel so damn perfect.”
His voice has my toes curling inside my boots and my hands fall from his hair, finding the solid muscle of his chest. Heat bleeds through as I dig into the fabric of his uniform, holding on as his fingers start to move in those punishing relentless circles.
A small strangled cry escapes me.
“If you want me to stop—”
“Don’t you dare fucking stop.” I bite down on his lip and a smug sound leaves him as my hips start rolling faster, begging for more.
But he doesn't change the rhythm. Doesn’t change the pace.
That’s what ruins me.
Not harder. Not faster. Just exact.
The same exact tight circles, the same merciless pressure, coaxing me higher and higher, until my whole body goes rigid beneath him.
I clamp down on a scream that threatens to break free.
“Let go for me.” His lips fall from my mouth, tracing my jawline before moving down to my neck. “No one can hear you, my shields are up. Let me hear those sounds I dream about every night, the ones I wake up rock solid to. The ones I think about as I stroke myself.”
God, the thought of him touching himself sends my Threads surging through me, awakening all at once, a restless pull blooming under my skin as though every part of me is trying to draw him closer.
My head falls back, giving him better access to my throat, and he takes it, his mouth hot against my skin as his fingers keep moving.
Scraping my nails over his shoulders, I hold on because it's too much, too good. Every kiss, every shift, just makes the pleasure building inside me even harder to bear.
My eyes slam shut.
Every muscle draws in.
Tighter.
Too tight—
I feel like my lungs are going to burst and my thighs clamp around his hips.
Then—
Gone.
The next sound that tears from my lips isn't even a word.
The orgasm crashes through me in hard, blinding waves, my magic flaring so fast I feel like it might break me apart, but he doesn't stop. He holds me there, and just when I think I can't take any more, the pleasure swells again, building straight into the next wave.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he moans, teeth dragging rough against my neck as his fingers slow, gentle now, guiding me back down. “I could die listening to those sounds.”
I can’t even think, let alone reply, all I can do is stay there—wrecked, loose-limbed, held up by the heat of him and the rough bark at my back.
Then I open my eyes.
And the expression on his face ruins any chance I had of recovering.
His jaw is stiff, his breathing is worse than mine. But it’s his gaze that undoes me—fixed and almost savage with restraint. Like something feral pacing behind bars that's just waiting for one word before letting itself loose.
My pulse, which had only just started to settle, kicks up all over again.
Because he doesn’t look satisfied.
He looks starving.
I don’t wait for him to ask. I don’t wait for him to think. I don’t want to give him even a second to change his mind.
With my legs still wrapped around him, my hands move between us, frantic and clumsy, dragging up the soft cotton of his top and the second I find the bare muscle of his stomach my Threads answer in a hundred places at once, spreading and multiplying until every part of me is bright with them.
Beneath my touch, his abs tense and the restraint in his face fractures.
Then his mouth is back on mine. Hard and consuming while his hand slides along my neck, up my cheek and into my hair, tugging back to deepen the kiss.
Unbuttoning his trousers with shaking fingers, I pull him free.
There’s no teasing. No waiting. No room left for either of us to be careful.
His hips snap forward, and he takes me whole in one powerful thrust.
The blissful shock tears a breath from both of us and my magic is pulsing now.
Bracing one hand behind my head, he hooks his other under my thigh, lifting me higher, changing the angle and driving back into me again. I gasp.
“I don’t know how to stop wanting you,” he murmurs, easing out of me. “Tell me I get to keep you.”
Holding my gaze—the gold in his eyes still just as unnaturally bright—the same unsettling thought from before threatens to seep in, but I push it back and lean forward.
“You never have to stop,” I whisper, nipping at his ear. “I'm yours.”
The words land and his grip on me falters as a shudder runs through him.
“Say it again.” His command comes out strained, dragged through gritted teeth as he holds himself back, every muscle in him trembling with the effort.
“I’m yours.”
“Fuck.” His gaze darkens, and whatever self-control he'd been clinging to snaps as he buries himself into me with one long, powerful thrust.
My head falls back against the tree.
“I’m yours,” I repeat, and cry out as he slams into me again.
Day old stubble drags along my neck, as his lips find that soft, vulnerable place just below my ear.
My body answers before I can think, arching back into him, and that’s all the invitation he needs.
Both hands catch my arse, gripping hard enough to pull me back into him, sinking himself in deeper until I stretch around the full, solid size of him.
Dropping my hands to his biceps, I latch on to the flexing muscle as he sets a brutal, perfect rhythm, and my Threads do the same—spreading out like vines, grabbing hold of anything they can find and pulling, pulling, pulling.
God, I’ve never felt this way before, this insatiable hunger, power.
He’s here, inside me, all over me, the pleasure is overwhelming, all-consuming, and filling me whole, but still I need more.
“Talen,” I plead as a gust of wind punches down overhead. “I need—”
“I know.”
Before I can finish the thought, his weight shifts, one arm hooks beneath my knee, lifting my leg higher against his side. The change is immediate. My hips tilt, my back presses harder into the bark, and when he drives into me again, the angle hits so deep my whole body seizes around him.
“You’ve no idea how many nights I’ve laid awake dreaming of fucking you like this.” He moans against me.
I can’t answer. I can’t do anything but whimper, my fingers digging into him hard enough to sting as though he’s the only solid thing left in the world.
The moment my grip tightens, his breath catches and turns ragged, and the sound that leaves him is almost pained, sending a bolt of pure need straight through me.
I never want this to end. Not the heat of him. Not the stretch. Not the way he holds me against the tree like he could keep me here all night and still not be finished with me.
His next thrust catches high and forward, pressing right into that sensitive front wall, and my eyes roll back before I can stop them.
Panting now, my own inhales start to fracture into small, helpless pulls as the remnants of my last orgasm reignite.
And it isn’t only the thrusts.