13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
MIRO
His hands are on my face before I can draw another breath. Warm and smooth, the pads of his palms sliding over my skin. He cradles my jaw like I’m something breakable. Like I’m something he’s afraid to drop.
“You’re certain.” It isn’t a question the way he says it. It’s a last chance.
“I’ve never been more certain of anything.”
He lowers his lips to mine, his tongue tracing my lower lip before I open for him.
The sound he makes vibrates against my lips.
I swallow it. His hands slide from my jaw down the sides of my throat, over my shoulders.
He breaks the kiss just long enough to find the waistband of my pants.
His claws whisper against my skin as he works the fastenings, the points dragging slow, never breaking through.
He doesn’t rush. He kisses me through every motion, his lips returning to mine between each piece of clothing he removes.
My pants slide down my legs and I step out of them.
His palms skim back up my thighs, my hips.
He hooks his fingers into the last thin layer between us and draws it down slowly, his mouth pressing a kiss to my hip bone as the fabric clears it.
Another kiss to the soft skin below my navel.
His breath is warm and uneven. The scales at his cheekbone catch the low light as he looks up at me.
His voice scrapes. “Sit. Please.”
I sit on the edge of the bed. He kneels before me, and the sight of him there, this powerful male on his knees, sends a pulse of heat straight through my core.
His hands find my thighs and he lifts them, opens me, drapes my legs over his shoulders.
The position exposes everything. Warmth climbs my cheeks.
My thighs twitch, a reflex to close, to hide.
He’s seen you now. All of you. No undoing that.
His gaze isn’t assessing me. It’s intent.
Absorbing every detail as though he means to commit me to memory.
His thumb traces the crease of my thigh. “You’re beautiful, Miro. Every part of you.”
His gaze drops to where I’m open for him and his pupils swallow the gold of his irises.
His palms smooth up my inner thighs. The fire of his hands on bare flesh jolts through me, sharp and spreading, settling into an ache between my legs.
He’s still fully dressed. Tunic fastened.
Trousers on. I’m naked and spread open. He’s the Crime Lord of House Sethrak and he’s kneeling before me like I’m the one who holds all of the power.
His thumbs trace the crease where my legs meet my body.
My stomach tightens. A pulse beats between my legs, steady and insistent, and he hasn’t even touched me there yet.
My hips tilt. I let them. I feel beautiful.
That’s the part that surprises me. Not just wanted.
I knew he wanted me. Beautiful. His eyes on my form don’t lie.
But the nerves are there too, a flutter low in my stomach that spikes every time his fingers move closer to where I’m wet and waiting.
He’s about to see parts of me no one’s seen in years.
He’s about to know things about this body I haven’t shared.
The nerves and the hunger tangle until I can’t tell which is which.
So close. Not close enough. His claws are retracted, only the pads of his fingertips touching me.
He leans in. His forked tongue flicks against my clit.
Two points of contact, each moving independently, one tip dragging up the left side while the other curls around the right.
My spine arches off the bed, yanked by a sensation I have no reference for.
The split tips are warm and wet and impossibly precise, finding nerve endings I didn’t know I had.
He does it again, slower, letting me feel the fork of his tongue cradle me from both sides at once.
Pressure on the third pass. The tips press and release in alternation, one flicking while the other holds, and the rhythm shorts out the part of my brain that forms words.
His tongue is longer than a human tongue.
It doesn’t just flick. It curls. It wraps.
The forked tips stroke both sides of my clit simultaneously while the center of his tongue presses flat against me.
Then one tip dips lower, tracing my opening while the other stays on my clit, and the split sensation has me fisting the sheets. I don’t know which signal to follow.
I drive my fingers through his hair, locking his face against my core as he curls and strokes my flesh. I’m reduced to pulse and fire and the wet sounds of him learning me.
“Gods. Zavin, I—.”
He seals his lips over my clit and sucks.
One finger slides inside me and curls forward.
He finds a spot against my inner wall and presses, holding steady pressure there while his mouth works my clit.
His finger within me. His lips on me. The dual rhythm of him sucking and stroking from the inside at the same time.
My climax slams through me in a fist of fire clenching low in my belly before releasing in a rush that floods my thighs, my stomach, and the soles of my feet. My inner muscles clamp around his finger, and each clench sends another spike of heat through me.
His lips stay sealed over my clit and his tongue presses flat against me through the strongest pulses, letting the clench of my body do the work.
I’m gripping his hair so tight my knuckles ache.
My thighs are locked on his shoulders and I can feel his scales against my skin, the texture grounding me even as the sensations keep rippling out.
The pulses finally slow. My frame goes slack.
He’s still there, his mouth gentle now, tongue lapping slow and soft like he’s reluctant to let the moment end.
He slowly withdraws his fingers and lifts his face, my arousal glistening on his lips.
When I stop shaking, I’m liquid. My bones have dissolved.
I’m a puddle of warmth and aftershocks on his sheets.
I didn’t know I could come like that. That my body had that in it.
The thought flickers through the haze. I did that.
My body did that, and there’s a quiet, astonished pride underneath the bonelessness.
But the pride doesn’t stay quiet for long.
It shifts. My body isn’t done. The aftershocks haven’t even faded and already I want him deeper.
I want the weight of him. I want to see what he looks like when he’s the one coming apart.
Sitting up puts us nearly eye to eye. I slide my fingers through his hair. Stroke his smooth cheek, over his sharp jaw. I’ll never have enough of touching him. Just him being here is almost a dream. But this dream has an unresolved edge.
“Stand up,” I tell him. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It’s lower. Surer.
He rises. His jacket is disheveled. His hair is a mess.
The strands at his temple are damp, the neat sweep he always wears broken into pieces that fall across his brow.
There’s a faint red mark on his neck above the collar, half-moon shaped.
My nails. He hasn’t said a word. He doesn’t flinch.
He just takes it and lets me ride it out against his mouth.
His pupils are still blown wide. His lips are still wet with me and he hasn’t wiped them away. He doesn’t seem like he wants to.
He stands over me and waits. Fully dressed. Rumpled. Waiting.
“Take off your clothes.” The words come out quieter than the first command. Shyer. But I don’t look away. I want to see all of him. Every scale. Every scar. Every part of him he keeps behind that immaculate suit and that unreadable face.
His full lips quirk. “As you wish.”
He reaches for the fastenings of his jacket.
His fingers move slowly. Not hesitation — he’s giving me time.
Letting me watch. The first clasp comes undone and then the next, his knuckles brushing the fabric aside as he works his way down.
The jacket parts. He shrugs it off and reaches behind his neck to draw off his shirt.
Amber light moves across his chest and shoulders, finding the ridges of muscle I only felt as pressure and warmth against my palms. His collarbone is sharp. His chest is broad and hard, muscle layered like he was carved for function, not decoration.
The scales begin at the sides of his ribs, small and fine, dark as obsidian.
Each scale is a tiny mirror reflecting gold and amber, the pattern shifting as he breathes.
The scales run in ridges down his sides and curve inward toward his groin, framing the flat of his stomach where the skin is still skin, smooth and warm and vulnerable between all that armor.
I follow the lines of him with my eyes and the shyness is still there but it’s crowded out now by something hungrier.
He is magnificent. The word arrives in my head and I don’t argue with it.
“Are you ready to see all of me, human?” My gaze flies to his face, pulling up from his groin where I’d been staring. I try to ignore the flush climbing my neck.
His fingers unsnap the catch at his waist. “If at any time you want to stop, tell me.”
His face is a mask of intent and seriousness. He means what he says. I swallow and nod. “I… that is… keep going.”
There’s no way I want to stop. I want all of him. To be consumed by him and consume him in return. He’s under my skin now, sinking into my bones. This male, who I hardly know, is one I don’t want to let go.
I don’t do this. Aching for a male isn’t in my wiring.
Solving problems is what I do. Give me a tangled subroutine or a corrupted data stack and I’ll lose six hours without looking up.
But give me a person who wants to get close and I’ll find three exit routes before they finish their first sentence.
Vulnerability is a bug. I debug vulnerability.