Chapter 12 #2
He stroked my back soothingly, silently, letting me work through the motions on my own or ask for his help if I couldn’t deal with it alone.
Then my sorrow spread wider, encompassing not just my entire being but this entire world that would be so, so much worse without Timur.
Timur didn’t deserve this. From the moment we met, he’d been respectful and supportive of me in the city fueled by cruelty. He could’ve coaxed, lied to, manipulated, or even forced me for his own gain, and no one in Ashgate would’ve stopped him.
But instead, he treated me as his equal.
My throat tightened painfully, and I swallowed a sob.
“It’s not fair,” I muttered against his neck. “You don’t deserve this.”
He remained silent, letting his hands comfort me because he had no words of hope to give me. I pressed my body to his. Tasting salt on my lips, I realized I’d been crying into his neck. I leaned back and wiped my tears from my cheeks.
“It’s not fair…” I breathed out again.
I tried to wipe my tears from his neck too, using my hands first, then my lips, tasting the salt of my sorrow on his warm skin.
He kept unnaturally still under me, only his left hand traveled up my back with his fingers sinking into my hair on the back of my head.
“Elaine…” he rasped, his voice strained. “You need to get off my lap.”
I leaned back quickly, pushed away from him by a flash of mortification.
Did I do something wrong? Then the reason for his rejection became clear.
With my knees on each side of his hips and my legs spread wide, my core pressed against a hard ridge under his skirt—his cock.
He really had one, and it didn’t feel like anything that I’d heard about the shadow fae’s mating cluster.
Instead of a knoll of undulating appendages, a solid, oblong hardness pressed against me through his skirt. I rocked my hips forward, feeling raised horizontal ridges along the length of his cock. I could tell that it was neither human nor fae. It was something else entirely.
I held my breath in shock, unsure what to do.
“Please,” Timur begged, dropping his forehead to my shoulder. “Please get off me, sweetheart.”
My doubt melted, only the memory of his fingers between my legs and the tantalizing sensation of his claws gently running over my back when he was giving me a bath remained.
Timur might look like a monster, but he didn’t act like one with me.
“What if I don’t?” I asked breathlessly.
“Then I don’t know what the dragon inside me will make me do to you.”
“What if I…” I tripped over my words, but found my footing quickly, finishing the sentence in a strong, confident voice. “What if I don’t mind you doing that to me, whatever it may be?”
He lifted his head, finding my eyes. I didn’t shy away from his gaze, facing both the questioning look from his blue eye and the hard stare from his red one.
The dichotomy of this man had never been as apparent to me as it was now.
A red eye and a blue one.
An ink-black skin and a chalk-white bone.
A fae and a dragon.
A man and a beast.
The two halves of him that were at war with each other yet somehow had to find a way to co-exist in the same body.
What torture this war must cause him every single day?
“You want to know what I’ve been dreaming of doing to you?
” he gritted through his teeth, holding my gaze with his otherworldly eyes.
“I want to grab your hips, hike up your skirt, impale you on my cock, and make you ride it hard while I fuck you raw. This isn’t a mating fever, my sweet Elaine.
It won’t pass in a few days. My lust stays, festers, grows stronger, driving me insane.
I’ll fight it. But I can’t win if you keep rubbing your soft, wet cunt over my cock like you’re doing right now. ”
He hurled the crass, crude words like rocks, probably meant to repulse and repel me. But I knew him too well for that to offend me. On the contrary, his words, said in that gruff, deep growl, excited me even more.
“I thought I’ve already shown you tonight, how much I enjoy your touch. Do you still not get it? I want you, too, Timur.”
I rocked my hips once more, wrapping my arms around his neck. Dragging my core over the hard circular ridges of his cock, I sucked in a breath as a hot flush of desire pooled in my lower belly.
“Elaine.” He gripped my hips, looking torn between stopping me and moving me faster. “You can’t play with the dragon. It’s…I’m…”
His words dissolved into a guttural growl. His claws pierced the fabric of my skirt, pressing into my skin with a sting of pain.
It should’ve scared me into stopping. But I felt no fear, only the need for more. Fisting the hair on the back of his head, I turned his face to me.
“Don’t fight it, Timur. Control it. Keep it at bay. Keep me safe while I play, and I’ll make it feel good for both of us.”
I knew he would keep me safe from both the hostile world out there and the wild beast inside him. Whatever war had been waging inside him, he never let it touch me. I couldn’t help him or save him. I couldn’t win the war for him, but maybe I could make it one less battle for him to fight.
Desire spread in a warm swell through me, waking every nerve in my body.
“Lust doesn’t need to hurt,” I whispered against his lips. “Feel me, Timur. Feel everything that I’m feeling for you.”
I reached under his cloak, stroking his upper arm. But I felt no whisper of the emerging tendrils against my fingers, only the bumpy bone and the hard scales over his right arm.
Did he even have tendrils?
“There is very little left of a fae in me,” his words echoed in my ears in rhythm with my beating heart.
Even he didn’t know what he’d become.
How lost must he feel?
How lonely a life that must be.
With a rumble of a groan under his breath, he wrapped his arms around my middle, pressing me to him. His mouth landed on my neck, his sharp fangs scraped against my skin as his gentle lips caressed it. His left hand found my breast, his thumb hunting for my nipple through the fabric of my dress.
I rubbed harder against him. He moved his hips in response, but in his own wild, desperate rhythm.
I matched him, chasing the promise of an orgasm that fluttered deep in my core already.
Unlike my first orgasm of tonight that had come fast and easy with only a soft coaxing of Timur’s fingers, this one demanded something stronger, firmer, harder.
And Timur gave it to me in spades. He grabbed my ass firmly, his claws digging into my flesh.
The powerful thrusts of his hips glided the hard bulge of his erection against my throbbing clit with punishing force, making me forget about all the layers of fabric between us.
I found just the right point of the delicious friction that had my body trembling in need.
“Feel me, Timur,” I begged, needing him to share all these amazing sensations with me.
A deep, animalistic growl was his only response. No tendrils emerged, and I could no longer hold it back. Orgasm rocked me. It might be less nuanced but more powerful than the first one, making my whole body shake.
Timur gripped me in a muscle-aching hug. His frame seemed to solidify into a rock for a moment before he came undone with a wild storm of roars and cascading shudders. His hands flexed on my hips with the sound of ripping fabric, and he jerked his hands away from me.
“Did I hurt you?” Horror tinted his voice.
I was relieved he’d found his words again after all the feral animal sounds he’d made. With the dragon satisfied for the time being, the man had returned.
I stretched against him, enjoying every point of contact between our bodies. Afterglow flooded my veins with languid warmth.
“No. I feel no pain, darling. Only pleasure. So much of it, we could’ve made a fortune if we had a client with us here,” I said with a soft laugh.
“No clients, my sweet.” He shifted in his chair, adjusting me on his lap so that my curves aligned with the softer left side of his body. “This was for you and me only. For us.”
“For us…” I echoed. “Just for you and me.”