Chapter 16 #2
“I wish I could spend the rest of my life connected to you,” he said against my skin.
“I would gladly die with you in my arms and with your happiness coursing through my veins for as long or as short as it lasted. I’d lose my mind and my life, and I wouldn’t regret any of that.
But it’s not about me, Elaine. What would happen to you if I turned into a mindless idiot like Ray?
What if I can’t fight them off when they come for you next time?
Because they will come again, no matter how many I kill.
The comfort of true pleasure is worth dying for, and someone will always try to steal you from me even if that means risking their lives.
I need everything I have—all my strength and mental clarity to protect you.
I can’t die until you’re ready to survive on your own.
I can’t leave you unless I know your life is safe, your freedom is certain, and your future is secure.
Can’t you see, my sweetest darling? You have become my life’s one true purpose. I live for you. And only you.”
He cupped my cheek gently, peering into my eyes so intently as if trying to read all my emotions in them. And I had so, so many emotions. My heart overflowed with tenderness, gratitude, yearning, and deep sadness that brought tears to my eyes.
“Just…keep on living, please?” I smiled to keep my tears at bay. “Please stay with me, because I don’t want to be without you ever again.”
I took his face between my hands and kissed him. He went completely still but only for a moment. Then his lips parted. His arms tightened around me. His hands palmed my backside, moving me closer.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he growled against my mouth, “how to keep resisting you. I’ve been through a mating fever.
I’ve stood on the threshold of death. But I never knew true torture until I met you.
The agony of seeing you, touching you, breathing you in, but constantly having to deny myself having you is the biggest torment of all. ”
He didn’t seem to be denying much to himself now, sliding a hand under my towel. Anticipation skittered through my body with light shivers. He’d touched me before, mostly for the pleasure of others, but I had always enjoyed it.
Now that we were alone, desire flared through me easily. With Timur, arousal had become comfortingly familiar. There was no fear, no apprehension, just joy.
He kissed down my neck, tasting my skin. His claws skimmed around my back under the towel. Pleasure rippled through my belly in their wake. His left hand gripped my shoulder, keeping me in place as he kissed along my collarbone, then down my chest to the swells of my breasts.
I moaned, straddling his thighs, and rocked my pelvis against him in search of the familiar bulge of his cock.
“Sweetheart…” he groaned, gripping my hips.
I reached for the closure of his skirt but stopped short from opening it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, as he tensed under me.
“If I don’t stop now, I won’t be able to stop later.”
His erection jerked, reaching up to me through his skirt. Its contact with my throbbing clit was too delicious to ignore.
“Why would you stop at all?” I moaned.
His grip on my hips tightened, his claws piercing my towel.
“Because I don’t know what would happen if I don’t stop. I don’t know how hard I’ll fuck you or for how long… I don’t know what it’ll do to you.”
I should’ve paid attention to his words. They should’ve alarmed me. But I’d already found that sweet spot of pressure while rubbing myself against the hard ridge of his shaft through his skirt. Need pulsed full force through my lower belly, making it hard to focus.
“But we’ve done this before.” I ran my hands up his chest, savoring the sensation of his warm skin and hard muscles underneath.
He’d touched me many times, always gently, always caring, and always giving me an amazing orgasm.
“Not like this.” He yanked on my towel, opening it.
The warm air inside the cave brushed over my naked skin, pebbling my nipples. His right eye flared hot red. His claws closed around my breast with his hand underneath it. He lifted my breast, inspecting it like a fine jewel.
“I’ve never had you like this before,” he murmured. “All to myself, in a safe place where no one can stop me from doing whatever I want to you.”
His tongue flicked between his fangs, stroking my nipple. Desire zapped through me with a flash of heat. With his other arm tightly wrapped around my waist, he shifted me higher, bringing my breast to his mouth. He ran his tongue around the tip, then sucked the nipple between his lips.
I arched my back with a moan, curling my hands in his hair. Tearing his mouth away from my body, he looked up at me.
“I want it all, Elaine. Everything.”
“Then have it all. It’s all yours, anyway. I am yours, Timur.”
His wings unfurled, and he lifted into the air, taking me with him.
“Timur!” I squeaked, hugging his neck as the world around me lurched with our flight.
With a yank at his waistband, his skirt opened. The dark material fluttered to the rug on the floor. He ran his fingers up my thigh then under my butt cheek, slipping the tips between my legs in search of my opening.
My head was spinning, and I wasn’t sure if the dizzying sensation was from the flight or from my intense desire.
Timur lowered me onto the bed. Leaning over me, he drew one of the knives strapped to his thigh.
“What are you doing?” I asked carefully, watching the golden glow of the cave catch in the dark blade with red sparkles.
He pressed the handle of the knife into my hand, then curled my fingers around it for me. “Take this. If it gets too much, use it.”
“What are you saying?”
He brought my hand with the knife over to his back.
“Right here.” He pressed the tip of the blade to his skin. “Under my shoulder blade on the left where I’d be least likely to reach and pull it out myself. Stab it here and leave it in the wound. Don’t pull it out—”
“I’m not stabbing you.” I yanked my hand with the knife from him, but he wouldn’t let me drop it.
“If it gets too much. If I’m hurting you and I can’t stop. You’ll have to stop me. Do you understand?”
“You want me to hurt you back?” I repeated, stunned by the thought.
“Yes.” With that word, he opened my thighs and yanked me close to his mouth.
Whatever I was going to say next died on my tongue, replaced by a moan. He dipped his tongue inside me, then swirled it around my clit, sucking and lapping like he couldn’t get enough of me.
I rose on my elbows. My hips shifted a little, and he growled like a dog with a bone. The vibration of the sound reverberated through my lower belly with a wave of arousal, sending me back into the pillows.
He kissed up my belly, nibbled on my breast, licked my nipple, like he wanted to do all of it at once.
“Fuck…” he groaned, rising over me on his elbows. “I need you, my sweet.”
The thick head of his cock pressed against my opening, and something in his expression changed. His blue eye darkened. The red one burned brightly, its vertical pupil narrowing into a hair-like slit. With a strangled groan, he pushed into me.
Soaking wet, and more than ready, I still hissed a breath at the stretch of his cock.
I remembered the ridges along its length that I had sensed through the fabric of his skirt before.
Now I felt all those ridges slipping inside me, tugging at the edge of my opening and pressing against my most sensitive spot on their way in.
“Oh God…” I breathed out, overwhelmed by the sensation of intense pressure combined with a new kind of pleasure rippling through me.
Timur growled like a real beast, thrusting into me so hard, he shifted me up the bed.
A gasp lodged in my throat. His invasion was absolute.
I felt stretched to the limit, spread open, and laid bare.
His ribbed cock felt amazing inside me. He tilted his hips at the angle that brought his hard abs down on my clit.
“Yesss,” I hissed. “Oh, yes.”
He thrust again and again in a relentless, punishing rhythm. And I rode it with him, clinging to his arms.
His tail lashed. It hit the stone floor, then knocked down the silk screen with a crash. Neither of us paid it any attention. My arousal spiked, then crested. My orgasm crashed into me like a storm, blurring my vision and rocking my body with bliss.
He came with a body-shuddering roar, slamming into me and pushing me into the mattress.
The wild thrusts stopped, letting me catch a breath for a moment.
He bent his head over me, his long hair draping like a dark, silky curtain on one side.
The scent of sun, summer, and field flowers drifted through the air as his release filled me.
“You smell so good,” I murmured, looking forward to those sweet, soft moments that come after even the wildest sex when the two people truly care about each other.
But those moments never came.
His cock never softened inside me. The tension never drained from his body. His muscles remained stone-hard. And the wild need only burned brighter in his expression. He rose on one knee, gripped my hips tightly, and thrust again.
He fucked me hard, with brutal determination, as if chasing something he couldn’t catch. The knife had long dropped out of my fingers. I struggled to get hold of something…anything to ground myself. With my back arched, my head tossed back, the world spun around me.
“Timur!” I called to him, but he seemed to be lost to the animalistic need that consumed him. “Look at me.”
I rose on my elbows, trying to catch his gaze. But with him raised on his left knee, his head was too high for me to reach. And he was not seeing me. He looked right through me.
He bared his fangs in a growl, coming again. His seed filled me, then spilled out of me, running down my thighs in a warm trickle. The pleasant, sweet scent grew stronger.
I didn’t know where my knife went, but I wasn’t going to search for it. I didn’t want to hurt or even stop Timur. I just needed him to hear and understand me.
I feared his second orgasm didn’t mean he was done. He dropped his head down for a moment, waiting for the shudders of his climax to subside. His cock softened a little, but his grip on my hips didn’t loosen at all.
He stood on his left knee, with his right leg stretched out behind him. I believed he didn’t have much control over that leg, with very little mobility left in it if any. Using the moment, I twisted to one side, sat up, and shoved my hands against his chest, pushing him sideways.
“Listen to me!” I demanded.
He swayed, his arms flailing. His wings snapped open, too late to help him regain the balance. He fell on his side. His wings closed and disappeared, melting into his spine again. Straddling his hips, I rolled him onto his back, then cradled his face in my palms.
His eyes looked like the eyes of a stranger. The blue one was dark and unseeing, the red one ablaze and glowing with feral lust.
“Can you hear me?” I asked. “Are you still in there, Timur? Or have I already lost you?”
My heart ached with sorrow and fear.
Had the dragon won? Had it taken over my man completely?
He stiffened under me. His hands grabbed for me again. His mouth opened with a snarl, but no words came out.
“Timur, come back to me. Please,” I whimpered softly. “I need you. I…I love you.”
Pouring out my deepest emotion felt like opening my heart raw for him to see. He couldn’t feel me, he didn’t appear to even see me, but I needed him to know this one thing, even if it was the last thing he could comprehend.
I kissed him, swallowing his ragged breaths and breathing the three little words into him again, “I love you.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, bringing him close.
“I love you, Timur. With all my heart. You can’t leave me. You can’t ever leave me.”
His hands searched for me blindly, like he truly couldn’t see or even comprehend me being right there with him. His claws and fingers scraped against my back, finding no purchase.
Then I sensed a much softer touch. It tickled my upper arm, like a stroke of a feather. A single tendril emerged from his left arm, its unraveled shadowy end searching for an opening in my leilatha.
I didn’t ask him to feel me this time. I didn’t coax the tendril out. It came on its own, and since the dragons didn’t have tendrils, I believed it was Timur who released it, searching for me.
“I’m here. I’m right here, my darling.” I repositioned my arm, aligning the leilatha with the searching filaments of Timur’s magical shadows.
Finding its goal, the tendril slipped in promptly. The moment felt like grasping an outstretched hand. Once the connection happened, I could finally breathe again.
“There you are,” I exhaled, resting my head on Timur’s wide chest. “Stay with me. Just like this.”