25 Fight me harder, stubborn beast #2
Earlier that morning, he’d had her against a wall.
Unfinished. An ache, yearning to be satisfied.
Fi barred herself from fear, from weakness, from useless prey instincts.
She focused on the pressure building in her core.
The thrill of claws in her hair. The heady draught of how much he wanted her, a different kind of battle they’d honed.
Antal pulled the silviamesh down her thighs.
Still restraining her, he reached around to drag his knuckles over her navel.
Not a tease. An unflinching attack, straight down to the most sensitive part of her, thumb pressing hard against her clit.
Fi moaned and bucked against his grip, delighted when he didn’t soften.
Fuck, she was so angry at him. Fuck, she wanted him so badly.
“This is how you want to fight?” Antal asked, a low taunt in her ear.
Not a want. She needed this, the shouting and the claws. All this pent-up fury finally breaking free.
“You promised me this morning.” Fi’s words slurred as he stroked her. A carve of knuckles through the slick heat between her legs, a palm dragged over her clit. She tilted her hips for more. “You promised… you’d finish me later… before you left me.”
Antal’s snarl crumbled as he grinded against her. The claws clamping her hair, the hungry rock of his hips said he needed this, too.
“We had to leave. The other daeyari were waiting.”
“And you want to be part of that world again—” Fi whimpered at his next stroke, knees digging into the bed as he found the spot she wanted. “Abandoning it isn’t fair to you.”
“I’ll do what I have to—”
“And it’s not fair to me!”
He paused, claws ghosting her inner thigh. “To you?”
“You think I want to feel useless?”
“I never said—”
“You act like it. Trying to keep me from your family. Trying to keep me from getting hurt. I’m done running away. You helped me do that—”
Fi gasped as he resumed his work, carving knuckles between her legs. Merciless Void, he was so damn good with his hands. She squirmed her hips in protest when he stopped, shifting to drag claws over the curve of her ass.
He parted the cheeks, brushing a different entrance than expected.
A new ache shuddered through Fi’s core.
Oh, he wanted to have her. Or to see her balk.
They’d had a year, enough to explore most parts of each other.
The first time Antal had taken her this way, he’d asked hesitantly, his movements cautious until he’d earned the assurance of her moans.
Now, he knew what she could take. What she enjoyed taking.
He circled pressure over the tight opening.
An added thrill as he held her on her knees, unable to fight back.
He twisted the tip of a knuckle into her. A teasing delve, and fuck if it didn’t feel good. Fi moaned and strained her wrists against the tail still binding them.
He pushed harder, wider, plying her open slowly. It hurt a little. Left her dizzy, a jolt of need raking up her spine. A lower coil of his tail swept over her clit. Fi’s knees dug into the bed, breaths shallow, enduring the torture until she could bear it no longer.
“Are you going to stick it in me or not?”
Antal’s growl only made her squirm more.
Her heart sped at the sound of him removing pants. He leaned sideways, a shelf beside the bed where she’d collected some of her own toys, grabbing a vial of oil. A whimper escaped her as he tilted his hard, oil-slicked cock behind her, angling for the thrust.
“Stop,” Fi ordered.
He stopped.
Immediate. No hesitation. Because after all the shouting and snarling, this beast was still hers.
He still worshipped her. Fi felt the depth of his reverence in the tightness of his hand holding her hip.
The trembling claws in her hair. The shallowing of his breath as he leaned over her, cock paused against her ass, commanded to stillness.
He was just afraid. Making stupid decisions because of it.
But still hers.
Holding him in suspense for even that short moment, Fi clawed at her power. A return to equal footing. Even if she had to fight for it.
She shifted backward. They shared a ragged gasp as she guided his cock into her, taking him at a pace she could handle.
Fi gritted her teeth at the initial throb of pain.
Then, a bloom of deeper euphoria that swept everything else away, laid her out soft and moaning beneath her lover’s grasp.
Antal groaned as he sank into her, thumb massaging circles on her ass.
Fi paused to breathe. To adjust to him, hard and full inside her.
“Move,” she rasped.
She cried out at the first plunge, ache melding with pleasure. Antal gripped her by the hair, a clawed hand at her hip, driving into her. So much of him, that Fi shook. When his tail brushed against her clit, a feral sound escaped her, a snarl slipping to a plea.
Antal moved in her, rougher than he’d ever been. Fi felt his frustration in each thrust. The echoes of their argument, tangled into the desperate movements of their bodies together.
Fi took as much as he’d give.
Void, she still loved this fickle creature. She still wanted to be here with him. That was the reason she was so angry.
Now, with her body bared raw, her heart had no bristles to hide behind. A deeper dread surfaced, the bone-aching fear she’d not yet put to words, buried beneath her previous shouts.
“You said you wanted me,” Fi gasped between groans.
“You said—” A pause to brace her trembling knees.
“You said you’d marry me.” Her heart raced at the tension building between her legs, twisted at the thought of Antal dressed in his daeyari finery, the reverence in his eyes as they spoke their vows— “But how could I ever marry someone who doesn’t trust me? ”
Antal jerked to a halt.
Still holding her down. Still buried inside her. Fi fought a swift moment of panic as… no, certainly she hadn’t cockblocked herself a second time in one day.
Then, a hard thrust left her shrieking.
Antal returned to work with dizzying earnestness. “And how could I marry someone who keeps putting her life in pointless danger?”
“You think helping you is pointless? I’m trying to be the partner you deserve.”
Her words fractured. Her heart, spilled out on their bed.
There was so much of him. Not enough.
“More,” Fi demanded.
“Greedy woman.” He didn’t sound like he minded.
His tail unwound from her wrists. Fi clawed her hands into the sheets, shuddering as the slick coil moved between her legs. The wide, blunt tip teased her other entrance, a question.
Her plea of “yes” fell out in a whimper, hips tilted to take all of him.
She cried out as he sank a second length into her.
The world was fog. Fi, incoherent. Just fullness and heat and her limbs like putty.
“I want… to be here… with you,” she panted.
Antal’s thrusts pushed hard. His tail twisted soft. Fi was combusting.
“You have to trust me, Antal. You have to…”
She argued until she couldn’t speak. Until there were no more words to say, and her need for him took over. Fi called out his name. Begged for the release they both craved.
When she came, it was oblivion. All the world melting away. Only the feeling of him inside her, moving to her every command. Faster. Harder. Still not enough.
“More,” she pleaded, even as her first wave was still ebbing.
He gave her more, until Fi was spent and wretched, fingers aching against the bedsheets.
And for all his faults, all his shitty decisions, she still trusted her heart with him here.
She still preened a final time when he finished inside her, claws digging into her waist, his snarl claiming victory and defeat.
They fell to the sheets together.
Tangled together.
Still better together.
Fi couldn’t say how long they lay there. Long enough for her breaths to turn less haggard. Long enough for the world to creep back in slow clarity. She’d been so furious. So simmering.
Now, her muscles were spent. Soft aches bloomed at her scalp, at her hip where Antal had gripped her, in deeper places where she may have pushed too hard. Sweat cooled on bare skin, and she felt… cold. All the fight spent. A different feeling remained, something cracked and exposed.
Antal was the first to move.
He shifted onto his knees, knelt beside her with tail swishing the blankets. His eyes smoldered in the dark. His growl came soft. Tentative. Asking if they were still fighting.
Fi reached up and laid a soft hand on his cheek.
No more fighting. For now.
Antal slumped in relief. A new nemesis, this raw space between them, pried apart by all the things they’d shouted in the heat of the moment. Now, the question of whether they could piece themselves back together.
Fi wanted to. She didn’t want these threads to fully fray, to lose this life they’d just begun to build. To lose him.
She didn’t fight when Antal lifted her against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck, nestling into his heat. So soft, compared to what he’d just been.
Always soft when she needed him to be.
Black flashed across her vision.