47 #2
Panicked, I nearly shouted, “Wait, I—”
He pressed his finger against my mouth and looked to his right, where that small and circular door resided in the stone.
My heart sank.
Looking back at Voran, I pointed at the door that must have led into the mountain. “Is he…?”
He nodded once.
Raxon was there. Listening. He was waiting until we were done—until this trial was done—and he could emerge with me before letting the wolves in to collect their evidence. But the king wasn’t here in this cave because he wasn’t a wolf.
Which meant he couldn’t hear us whisper through steel.
Understanding, I lowered onto the bed.
“Ready?”
I wasn’t sure I was. I also wasn’t sure I would ever be ready for this. For all of him. Regardless of our history and his uncle’s plans. Still, I whispered, “I think so.”
Another twitch of his lips. “You’re ready.”
Knowing he’d scented as much, I glared again.
He lowered to whisper against my mouth, “So open your sweet thighs and let me in.”
As soon as I widened my legs, he settled between them. His cock prodded close to my opening.
I tensed.
He groaned as it encountered my slick flesh and reached between us. “Tell me, broshklin…” He dragged his nose across my cheek to my ear. “Does it feel like I’ve been lying to you now?”
Again, his cock touched me. Began to enter me, I realized when the slow thrust blistered and his hand pushed into the furs beside me.
My head tipped back. An airless scream scraped my throat.
Voran took advantage and kissed it. Murmured something in the old language as pain seared through me in waves that tightened my body. Groaned long and low as I curled my fingers and feet into the bedding.
Then he pulled his cock out of me and pushed it back in.
I winced and gripped his upper back. Maybe halfway in, he stiffened, then jerked. The action caused more of him to slide into me. As I struggled for air, an utterly animalistic noise escaped him, washing over my neck with his harsh exhales.
Then he dropped onto me. His back heaved beneath my hands.
Breath sawed between my teeth. My body trembled, and my ass felt a little damp. He could scent it, so I croaked, “Am I bleeding?”
“Yes,” he said to my skin. “But what you feel is my seed.”
I blinked, then bit my lips.
The pain dulled as we lay there. He was squashing me, but I didn’t mind. I wanted him closer still. But a mere minute passed before he braced on his forearms to drag his mouth over my throat.
At my chin, he murmured, “Ready.”
I almost laughed. “Already?”
“Mm.”
Then he plunged farther in, and I gasped—clawing at his upper back.
“Almost there.”
I didn’t care. My nails dug deep into his skin. “Voran, I can’t.”
“You can,” he said. “You are.”
Tense all over, I shook my head.
“Breathe for me, Ayla.”
Ay-lah-g.
Breath flew from me in a noisy burst.
He watched me. Beneath sooty lashes, brightened blue scrutinized my heaving chest and flushed face.
“Good.” He nipped my upper lip. “Now take me.”
With a growled groan, he sank all the way inside me, and I again ceased breathing.
I felt aflame. Too full.
Stinging everywhere.
But then his head fell back. Muscle corded in his throat as his body jerked once more. A bead of sweat ran down his temple. He muttered something in the old language before exhaling a coarse, “Fuck.”
Transfixed, I panted and stared. A shiver shook his formidable frame. His head lowered. Those blue eyes drank me in.
Then he kissed me.
And the burning between my thighs was forgotten. The reason he’d sought me out at the archives was forgotten. His refusal to warn me about my fate was forgotten. As his lips pressed hard against mine, all I felt was relief.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and fought tears.
I wanted to tell him so many things. That I’d missed him. That all I’d wanted for moons was him. That all I still wanted was him. Was this. But he knew. He knew when a tear escaped my eye, and he eased back to scowl at it.
“Ayla.” An abrasive admonishment, as if he were horrified.
I was tempted to laugh. Instead, I swallowed and closed my eyes to keep more tears from leaving.
Lips brushed my cheek—right where the tear had slid—and he whispered, “Brave little bird.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about taking all of his cock.
Although tears now flooded, I opened my eyes. I let him see them. Two more escaped. He didn’t kiss them. He licked them. Pressing his forehead against mine, he muttered words in that old language. To hide them from his uncle or me, I didn’t know. I was just happy to hear their thick cadence.
A groove formed between his lowering brows.
I reached for his face, hesitant when that groove deepened and his jaw clenched. But I placed my hand over his cheek, swept my finger down the tiny bump in his nose, and traced that dip between his brows until it smoothed and his shoulders slumped.
Inside me, his cock twitched. Those eyes darkened as his pupils expanded. When I touched his lips, he snatched my finger with his teeth.
I laughed but sobered as he drew it into his mouth. He bit it, then sucked.
My nipples hardened. All of me came alive in a way that made me moan when he rocked his hips.
Voran watched me with that lupine focus. With that same intensity I’d seen numerous times before. One that said he was listening, learning, and longing to please me. When he slowly withdrew from my body, a breath squeezed through my tightened teeth.
Pain flared, the sting slight yet sharp. But I ran my hands over his shoulders.
He shivered once more, hips bucking instinctively when my fingers feathered across the dips of his clavicles. I spread them over his pectorals, the tickling sparse hair a pleasant distraction from the sting.
Voran groaned. A barely-there whisper accompanied a harsh exhale. “I’ve missed your tiny hands.”
“They are not tiny.”
His smirk lit his eyes and warmed my chest. Leaning down, he caged me within his forearms to kiss each cheekbone. His nose nudged mine, and I caught his face, pushed some of his silken hair behind his arched ear.
Then I brought his lips to mine. I kissed him softly at first—relieved that I finally could. But when he moved, eased in and out of me slowly, I kissed him harder.
His groans rumbled against my lips. Wanting to taste them, to taste more of him, I parted his mouth with my own and wrapped my legs around his waist. It made him slide deeper inside me, shocking us both. We gasped and stilled.
He tore away to look at me.
His strain was evident in the twitching slope of his clenched jaw and in the breaths that flared his nostrils. His hooded gaze searched my face.
But I just moved my hips.
He muttered something. A curse, I surmised. Then he eased out of me once more, watching me as he pushed back in.
Pain sparked. So did a spreading pleasure.
Noticing, Voran did it again and again. He fucked me with careful precision until I was struggling not to moan. Struggling to care about his uncle listening from beyond that steel door. Breathless, I grasped at the furs and his cheek.
My fingers slid down his face to the bed.
Useless yet desperate, I rocked—gasping as I began to meet his thrusts. As melting heat grew in potency.
Lowering onto his forearms again, Voran kissed me. Continuously, he drew back to watch me, then kissed me again while murmuring things I couldn’t understand. I didn’t need to. The rasped, rushed words flooded my chest with the same warmth his touch and kisses gifted.
The pleasure soon became too much and not enough, sweeping through me like a trapped storm.
Untamable moans turned into panted whimpers that made Voran curse in both languages. My thighs shook. With his next thrust, he lingered—pressing deep enough to hurt before he rocked his hips. I reached for him, nails scoring into his sides.
The heat burst in a violent flare.
“Yes.” He dropped his forehead against mine. “Come, myishla.”
I clung to him, certain I drew blood with my nails but unable to let go as he moved in and out of me—as he prolonged the onslaught of pleasure while chasing his own. Five thrusts, then he plunged as deep as he could and tensed.
All of him turned to trembling stone. A growled groan escaped his gritted teeth.
I gazed up at him in a daze and stroked his sides.
Voran shivered. He cracked open an eye. A harsh breath widened his nostrils as another shiver wracked his giant frame. “Better than every imagining I’ve had of you while milking my cock.”
I laughed.
He gently withdrew. Then he rolled, taking me with him until I was draped across his chest. Shocked, I laughed harder. He caught my face in both hands and quietened me with a bruising kiss. He kissed me over and over. Harder, then softer.
Again and again.
I wondered if he felt the same way I did—like he couldn’t get his fill. Like he needed to kiss me until our lips couldn’t take it anymore.
I let him, kissing him back whenever he let me. Then I moved over his body until I felt his erect cock between my legs. I rubbed against it and hummed against his mouth.
His hands drifted down my arms.
I moaned.
He trailed them down my sides, and my breath fractured. Staring up at me with drowsy eyes, he swept his hands back up my body to grasp my breasts. Callused thumbs brushed my nipples, and I shivered.
Teeth catching my lip, I leaned back on my knees to admire how my breasts fit just right in his large hands.
Then I noticed his fingers. Namely, the inked scars on them.
I snatched his hand. “Are they…?”
“I keep my promises.”
I will wear your tiny mark with pride.
I touched the marks on either side of his finger. Marks I’d made at the archives. Marks that should have long healed. That would only have remained until he returned home and tattooed them if he’d reopened the scabs.
I gripped his finger. “Voran.”
“Never much liked my name,” he said absently, as if unaware of what he’d done to me with these inked teeth marks—scars he’d given himself. “Until you said it.” The hand still at my breast squeezed. “I am now convinced that nothing sounds better.”
Just like my heart, my stomach fluttered.