2 A Fateful Summons
Fionamara tasted like spiced flame.
Antal dragged a hand through her hair and pulled her into him, savoring every note of her lips: the tang of lipstick, the sweetness of her mouth. Sweeter, for the moan in her throat.
Then subtler, that snap of cold where the Void had marked her. A spark of the eternal on her skin.
Her fingers hooked his jaw, possessive, even without claws. She purred against his mouth, “I don’t recall any daeyari folktales going this way.”
“How unimaginative.”
She nipped his lip with flat teeth. At his growl, she laughed.
“And you’re more imaginative?” she taunted.
A hundred. A thousand. He could think of endless ways he wanted to touch her.
Especially now, with an unspoken weight crushing his chest. Antal had received the news while she was away. A single letter, enough to shake his immortal core. He’d have to tell her about it. Devise some way this latest hurdle wouldn’t be their ruin.
Later. Now, Antal ached for Fionamara’s touch, the balm of her heat against him, even as a temporary escape.
He dragged his canines over her jaw. The tightening fingers in his hair goaded him to bite harder, but Antal was careful never to harm. A narrow line. He nipped her chin, skin soft beneath his fangs.
A question.
Her pulse quickened. The scent of her deepened, heat simmering beneath flushed skin.
Fionamara unfastened his shirt buttons with ruthless efficiency.
She couldn’t smell what he could, his energy prickling everywhere her knuckles brushed his chest, pulsing hotter than the Void-ether blood in his veins.
“If that role doesn’t suit you,” she said, “we could try another?” She pulled his shirt off, laying his chest bare to the carve of her fingers. “My fierce and handsome Lord Daeyari. How may I please you tonight?”
Fuck. Either one would do.
She bit his jaw, hard. Antal had taught her that daeyari gesture for consent, employed with a relishing hitch to her breath. And his. Yet he was truly undone when she licked her lips, testing the lipstick he’d smeared with his mouth.
She’d be more of a mess once he was finished with her.
Fionamara yelped as he gripped her ankles. Laughed, as he dragged her across the floor.
“What’s this?” she demanded. Always taunting.
Antal thrilled at the bite of it, an anchor amidst a year of doubt.
The struggle of reclaiming his territory from Verne.
The labor of rebuilding it into something worthy.
Months of repairing energy conduits damaged during the coup, and restructuring his government, and coaxing his mortal citizens not to shrink in his presence.
The weight of this latest news that could bring all their progress crumbling down.
But her. Always her. Smirking, as if even the depthless Void couldn’t daunt her.
“I’m playing the beast,” he said. “Isn’t this how the story would go?”
He pulled her onto the bed, collecting his prize in a nest of hare and aurorabeast fur. Her lashes batted, deceptively innocent.
“Do I make a good damsel?” she asked.
Antal scoffed. “You cuss too much to be a damsel.”
“Fucking right I do.”
He removed her coat—black with crimson cuffs, exquisite colors on her. Beneath it, her sweater was buttery cloth, pulled over her head to bare pale skin, flowers tattooed down her right arm and the tantalizing slope of her hip. Her breasts puddled soft atop her chest.
She tried to kick him again.
Antal caught her leg then flipped her over, peeling off skin-tight pants as she snickered. Her lower back dipped a delicious arc, sloping up to the dimple above her ass. No tail. Such odd creatures.
Antal pulled her up, naked and wriggling, her back pressed to his chest. His hand wrapped her throat, claws pinning tender flesh.
She laughed again. The sound stoked fire beneath his skin, stoked something else lower in his trousers.
“So gentle, Lord Daeyari. Am I meant to be frightened?”
She loved to complain. Not long after their return to Thomaskweld a year ago, she’d heckled him about the challenges of claws in sensitive places.
Do daeyari ever file their claws down? How do they manage without functional fingers?
As if a daeyari would ever dull their claws, as disgraceful as filing off an antler.
As if fingers were the only tools for the task.
Now, Antal swept the blunt tip of his tail across her collarbone.
A brush over peaked breasts. He dragged the full length down her hips, coiling tight around a soft thigh, tugging her legs open.
The hitch in Fionamara’s breath nearly undid him on the spot.
Her fingers dug into his arms until he felt a dull ache.
Desperate. Just the way he liked her.
His tail slid between her legs, parting her slick center—as precise as any fingers. And much thicker.
When Antal pushed his tail into her, she cried out, all of her taut against him.
Her fingers clawed higher, grasping at his shoulders, his neck.
Her energy crackled, wild as a snarling predator, body arching to open herself to him.
He pushed his tail deeper, filling her as much as she could take.
Fionamara clenched hot around him, a ruinous whimper as he twisted the length inside her.
“Touch me,” she ordered.
“Impatient,” he growled.
He ran a claw down her navel, relishing her shudder.
In two hundred and fifty years, Antal had fielded many partners.
Some, he’d tangled with because he needed something, not an uncommon negotiation tactic among daeyari.
Fewer, he’d tasted in these tender ways.
He enjoyed the hard lines of his own species, the lithe predator muscle.
Fionamara was a different feast. Her human curves were rounder. Her skin, a rosier flush beneath his touch. He cupped a breast, soft and warm and full in his palm, drawing a hiss through her teeth as she pushed into his grip.
Her ass dug into his lap—deliberate.
“Wicked creature,” Antal growled, savoring the grind of her hips against his cock, distractingly hard in the tight confines of his pants.
He’d not succumb to her taunts so easily.
Another twist of his tail inside her, and Fionamara’s fingers threaded with his. She moaned, the most insistent she’d get without begging.
Antal wanted her to beg.
“Ask nicely,” he coaxed to her ear.
She tilted to look at him, lips parted as she panted, dark eyes lust-glazed. He’d be weak. He’d give her anything she wanted without hesitation—if she didn’t love the fight.
“Sazny,” she said. Please, in daeyari. “Kvaen yzri.” Touch me.
The breathy syllables unraveled Antal’s flimsy attempt at composure.
He circled a knuckle around her clit, his other hand holding her chest as she bucked. Then a firmer stroke, matched to the thrust of his tail. Fionamara buried her face in his neck. Her rainbow hair smelled like woodsmoke. The sound from her lips turned ragged, her movements desperate.
Until she came with a shout.
He brought her down slowly, firm strokes as she rocked against him, softer caresses as her shudders settled. His hunger, only building. Normally he’d take his time with her. He’d delight in drawing out her pleasure again, and again.
Not tonight. Antal’s own need was too desperate, this craving to lose himself in her warm oblivion. He gripped her waist, twisting to send her onto the bed.
Faster, she grabbed his antler.
The beast tackled Antal to his back, leaning over him with her knee pinning his thigh. Her cheeks were flushed, breaths haggard from what he’d done to her. Her dark eyes glinted, a warning not to resist.
Antal considered resisting anyway. He, too, liked the fight.
The thought vanished when she pressed soft lips to his chest. When she dragged her teeth down his abdomen. When she unfastened his trousers, finally freeing his cock, painfully hard and in need of—
Antal groaned as she took him in her mouth. A different kind of oblivion. His eyes closed, claws digging furrows into the bed.
He remembered vividly the first time he’d felt a human’s mouth.
The shock of it. The delight. A rare act among daeyari, tongues and tails less perilous tools than fangs.
Human mouths were… different. The vice of her lips.
The flat scrape of her teeth. That firm tongue, sucking him down as if she could devour him whole.
“Kasek aza,” Antal hissed. “Yzex’vu ik fys se yzri…”
Fionamara hummed in delight, her mouth too preoccupied to speak.
She was greedy with her mouth. And with her hands, gripped around the base of his cock.
Her hair draped as she worked, a vision of divinity, an achingly light brush of curls against his thighs.
Antal wound his tail around her waist and submitted, trusting her to bring him to the end he craved.
It felt good, trusting her.
Merciless Void, he needed this. He needed her to—
His release was all-consuming. Antal came in her perfect, vicious mouth, emptying himself with a snarl. Then a gasp. Then a shudder as his hips fell spent to the bed.
Fionamara collapsed beside him, armed with a triumphant grin, a devious lick cleaning her lips. She nestled into his chest, leg wrapped possessively around his waist.
Antal hugged her against him, nose nuzzled to her cheek as he panted.
This woman was all barbs. Tongue like a whip and eyes hard as onyx. Never a slip in her armor when she didn’t will it, and Antal devoured the unrelenting force of her.
And yet, he was even more ravenous for her softness, the languid brush of fingers down his arm. Her contented hum, a velvet blade to his heart, a delight to drown beneath warm skin and ember-rich hair.
He’d worried. Of course, Antal had worried in those first few months that she’d change her mind. That with Verne’s death, their common enemy vanquished, Fionamara would come to her senses and see him as a beast once more.
Yet here she was. Still his. Still smirking.
“Pour me a bath,” she said.
“Always demands,” he complained. Rougher than intended.
She ran a finger down his chest. “Sazny?”