Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
KASTER
We find shelter as the afternoon lengthens.
Not because we need protection—the valley holds no threats—but because my instincts won’t accept sleeping in the open. Too many years of combat readiness. Too many ambushes survived by choosing defensible positions.
The shelter is a natural formation: an overhang of rock creating a space large enough for two, protected from wind and rain, with clear sightlines across the valley floor. I approve of the tactical advantages even as I recognize they’re unnecessary.
“Old habits?” Soreia observes my inspection with visible amusement.
“Survival instincts.” I duck beneath the overhang. Check the interior for anything that might have claimed the space before us. Empty. Clean. The rock still holds heat from the day’s sun. “They’ll take time to fade.”
“I’m not complaining.” She follows me into the shelter. Settles onto the stone floor with the ease of someone accustomed to sleeping in worse conditions. “Defensible positions make me sleep better too.”
“We’ve been hunted too long to trust open ground.”
“Maybe eventually.”
“Maybe.” I settle beside her. Close enough that our shoulders brush. “For now, I’ll take the compromise.”
The sun drops lower. Light shifts from gold to amber to the soft orange of approaching evening. Birds quiet as the temperature cools. The valley fills with shadows that are simply shadows—no threats hiding within them, no corruption warping their edges.
Ordinary darkness. Ordinary quiet.
Boredom should set in. Restlessness with the absence of purpose, the lack of enemies to hunt, the empty space where constant threat used to live.
Instead, I’m aware of her.
Her breathing. Her scent—clean now, no blood or fear-sweat, nothing except the combination that registers as hers in my predator senses. Her body heat radiating through the narrow gap between us. Her magic, quiet but present, like a banked fire waiting to be stirred.
“What are you thinking?”
The question arrives soft. Almost intimate.
“About you.” I don’t see the point of dissembling. “About the fact that I can think about you now without simultaneously tracking threats.”
“What conclusions have you reached?”
I turn my head. Look at her directly. She’s watching me with attention that mirrors my own—analytical, curious, present in a way that has nothing to do with survival.
“That I want you.”
Her pupils dilate. I track the response with predator precision.
“You’ve had me.” Her voice stays steady despite the visible reaction. “The mating—”
“The mating was survival. Necessity. The only option that might keep you alive long enough to see the god dead.” I shift position. Face her fully. “This is different.”
“Different how?”
“Different because nothing is trying to kill us. Different because I could be hunting or scouting or establishing perimeter and instead I’m here, in this shelter, focused entirely on you.
” I reach for her face. Cup her jaw with pressure that stops short of bruising.
“Different because this is choice, not crisis.”
She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t flinch. Her gaze holds mine with the same steady intensity she brings to anchoring death.
“Choice.”
“Yes.”
“And what are you choosing?”
My thumb traces her cheekbone. Her temple. The pulse point beneath her ear where blood beats against skin.
“You.” The word drops as fact. “Everything that comes with you. The magic and the way you refuse to yield and the way you look at me when you think I’m being unreasonable. The permanence we created by necessity becoming permanence I’m claiming by preference.”
Her breath catches again. More audible this time.
“Kaster.”
“Soreia.”
“You’re not usually this articulate.”
“The circumstances are unprecedented.” I lean closer. My forehead touches hers. Our breath mingles in the narrow space between our mouths. “I’ve never wanted anything this way. It requires understanding.”
“Does it?”
“Apparently.”
Her hands find my shoulders. Grip with pressure that would leave marks on a lesser creature. “What if I prefer action to explanation?”
I consider her words. Evaluate the invitation implicit in her grip, her posture, her eyes fixed on my mouth.
“Then I’ll demonstrate instead.”
This is slow. Deliberate. Every touch chosen rather than compelled.
I start with her mouth. Not gentle—I don’t do gentle—but thorough. My tongue slides against hers while my hands work the fastenings of her clothing. She helps, fingers fumbling with buckles and laces, both of us stripping away layers until skin meets skin.
The heat I carry bleeds into her. She gasps against my mouth when my palms flatten against her bare stomach, dragging upward.
“Hot.”
“Always.” I watch her face as my hands find her breasts. Cup them. Learn their weight, their shape, the way her breath catches when my thumbs brush across her nipples. “Does it burn?”
“No.” Her back arches into my touch. “It’s—” She loses the word when I lower my mouth to her throat.
I take my time there. Teeth grazing the pulse that hammers beneath her skin. Tongue tracing the tendon that stands out when she tilts her head back. She tastes like clean sweat and magic and a taste underneath that registers as…
mine in every predator instinct I possess.
My mouth moves lower. Collarbone. The hollow at the base of her throat. The slope of her breast.
When I close my lips around her nipple, she makes a sound that shoots straight to my cock. Her fingers dig into my scalp, holding me there, demanding more. I give it to her—sucking, grazing with teeth, switching to the other breast while my hand continues working the first.
Her hips roll against nothing. Searching for friction I haven’t provided yet.
I make her wait.
This isn’t desperation. This is claiming. And claiming requires thoroughness.
I map her body with attention I couldn’t spare before. Learn the places that make her breath hitch—the curve of her neck, the inside of her wrists, the dip of her spine above her hip. The soft skin of her inner thighs. The way she trembles when I drag my mouth across her stomach, heading lower.
“Kaster—”
“Patience.” I press her hips down when she tries to arch toward me. “I want to learn you.”
“You know me.”
“Not like this.” I settle between her thighs. Look up at her flushed face, her dark eyes, her lips parted around uneven breaths. “Not without death waiting outside.”
I lower my mouth to her.
She cries out. Her hand flies to my hair, gripping hard enough that lesser creatures would flinch. I don’t flinch. I hold her hips steady and work her with my tongue—long strokes, then focused pressure on the spot that makes her thighs shake.
She’s responsive in ways I anticipated and ways I didn’t. Vocal in ways that fill the shelter with sounds I want to hear again. Her hips fight my grip, trying to grind against my mouth, and I let her have enough movement to chase the sensation while keeping her from rushing.
I slide two fingers inside her while my tongue continues its work. She’s wet enough that the penetration draws a moan rather than resistance. I curl my fingers, searching, and find the spot that makes her back bow off the stone floor.
“Fuck—”
I file the curse away. Add it to the inventory of responses I’m building. She doesn’t curse often. I want to make her curse more.
My fingers pump steadily while my mouth stays focused. Her sounds climb higher. Her grip on my hair turns painful. Her body tightens around my fingers in rhythmic pulses that tell me she’s close.
I pull back.
“No—” Her protest is immediate, desperate. “Don’t stop, don’t—”
“Not stopping.” I crawl up her body, letting my body drag against hers, letting her feel the heat radiating from my skin. “Relocating.”
I position myself at her entrance. Watch her face as I press forward—slow, controlled, letting her feel every inch.
Her mouth falls open. Her eyes flutter but stay locked on mine. Her hands find my shoulders and grip with pressure that would leave marks on lesser creatures.
I’m not lesser.
I bottom out inside her and hold there. Let us both feel the completeness of being inside her. Her body grips me like she’s afraid I’ll pull away.
Not a chance.
“Move.” Her voice comes out shattered. “Please—”
I don’t make her beg twice.
The first thrust is slow. A full withdrawal that makes her whimper, then a deliberate slide back in that punches a moan from her throat. I establish a rhythm that’s unhurried but relentless—the way I hunt when I know the prey can’t escape.
Her legs wrap around my hips, heels digging into my ass, trying to pull me deeper. Her nails score my back—dragon skin healing the marks almost as fast as she makes them. The sting of each scratch feeds the fire building in my blood.
“Harder.”
I comply. Shift the angle to hit the spot my fingers found earlier. Her reaction is immediate—a sharp cry, her internal muscles clamping around me, her nails raking new lines down my spine.
“There?” I know the answer. I ask anyway.
“Yes—god, yes, right there—”
I give her what she wants. Harder thrusts that rock her body against the stone floor. Deeper angles that make her voice break on every impact. My hand finds her thigh, hitches it higher, opens her further.
The shelter fills with the sound of flesh meeting flesh. Her moans. My rough breathing. The wet evidence of her arousal with every thrust.
Heat builds in my core—not only the fire I carry, but the coiling tension of approaching release. I fight it back. I want to watch her shatter first.
My thumb finds her clit. Circles with pressure that makes her sob.
“Come for me.” The command emerges rough, more growl than words. “Now.”
Her body obeys. She breaks apart beneath me—back arching, voice cracking on a scream, internal muscles gripping me in waves that destroy my control.
I follow her over. Bury myself to the hilt and let the release tear through me, emptying into her with a groan that echoes off stone walls.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. I stay inside her, braced on shaking arms, my forehead pressed against hers. Her breath comes in gasps that match my own.
“That was...” She doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Deliberate.” I press a kiss to her jaw. Her throat. The corner of her mouth. “Chosen.”
“Thorough.”
“Attentive.” I finally ease out of her, rolling to the side and pulling her against me. “Maximum impact.”
She laughs—quiet, genuine, satisfied. The sound settles in my bones with unexpected weight.
Mine.