Chapter 17 #3
“I’m fine.” They hurt badly. My knot aches worse than it ever has in my life, but it doesn’t matter because I have a warm, happy Zenevieve lying in my arms.
Zenevieve strokes her fingers down my chest, and my breath shudders.
She runs her fingers across my stomach and then lower.
Dangerously lower. I tell myself to grab her wrist, but apparently I don’t tell myself very urgently because I go on watching her instead.
Her fingers wrap around my thickness through my underbreeches, and she strokes me.
I groan, closing my eyes.
“Why mustn’t we get carried away?” she asks.
“Because,” I begin, and then run out of things to say. “Because, um.” I glare at her. “I can’t think when you’re touching me like that.”
“Good. You think too much.”
I seize her face and kiss her. “I think exactly the right amount.” I kiss her again. “I know my purpose and my duty at all times.” Her mouth opens beneath mine, and I thrust my tongue past her lips.
Sweet little Beta…
I tell my Alpha to shut up. I’m only giving Zenevieve kisses because it makes her happy. It’s not for me.
And yet…
I caress her face and her throat, marveling at her beauty. The ache in my body that for once is sweet instead of torturous. “I’ve always hated my ruts, but gods, you make this wonderful.”
She opens her eyes. “But why do you hate your ruts?”
I press my forehead to hers, and confess my most painful, sad, and shameful secret. “Because they’re so lonely.”
“Oh, Stesha. I’m here with you. You’re not alone.” Zenevieve presses kisses all over my face.
I wrap her tightly in my arms and breathe her in. How I’ve missed her. Maybe now things can go back to the way they were. The two of us and our dragons, happy together. “You’re so sweet to me. You nearly died. If I’d lost you, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“I’ve missed you, Stesha. I hate not speaking with you. I just want to go home and be with you.”
“We’ll fly home as soon as the storm’s over. Our home.”
Tears fill her eyes, and she smiles more than ever. “Really? You mean that?”
“Of course I mean it. I just want you home with me.” I kiss away all her tears.
“But we can’t go yet,” she tells me. “I can still hear the wind. It’s too dangerous to fly right now.
” Zenevieve’s fingers caress my mouth right over my dragines, and I almost succumb to the urge to bite her fingers.
I mustn’t bite her. If I do it once, I won’t be able to stop.
Her touch roams my body, and she hums in pleasure.
She strokes her fingers down my bare chest, dawdling below my navel and just above the waistband of my underbreeches.
As her fingers skim my flesh, I can feel her looking at my knot.
She gives me a doe-eyed look. “You’re so hot and swollen. I’m worried you’ll die if we don’t do something about it.”
“Of course I won’t die. What are you talking about?”
Her lips twitch. She’s teasing me. I lower my head and kiss her, pinning her beneath me once more.
In this position, with my body heavy on hers, there’s friction against my knot.
Without realizing I’m the one moving, I slowly push my hips against hers, my knot rubbing against her sex through our underclothes.
She moans into my mouth, and my ache of need doubles.
Maybe I will die, my flesh splitting open from violent desire.
“Gods, I ache between my legs,” Zenevieve whimpers.
I lift my head. “You do?”
She sinks her teeth into her lower lip and nods. My dragines throb. I’m envious of her teeth in her flesh. I crave for it to be my teeth.
A distant part of my mind is telling me we’re taking things too far. That there’s a good reason why we should slow down, even stop. Wait out the storm fully clothed. She’ll survive the torment of sexual frustration, and so will I.
I can’t really make myself listen to reason.
I caress her waist, and then slide up and cup her breast, easing my thumb over her nipple, just to see what my touch might do to her.
Zenevieve cries out, tipping her head back and exposing her lovely throat to me.
Desire pours through me. I picture ripping the last of our clothes aside and sinking into her.
Fuck, it’s all I want.
I groan and press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
That darker, hungrier part of my rut is edging up on me, the part that makes me rip pillows open with my teeth, shred my belly and thighs with my nails, and fantasize endlessly that I have Zenevieve beneath me, and my knot is slamming against her as I fuck her hard.
Every rut since she left me I’ve thought of nothing but her.
“The storm is dying down, isn’t it?” I ask hopefully through gritted teeth.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Sweet little Beta.
“Stesha. Your scent smells different,” she whispers. “Stronger. Thicker.”
“I know.”
Sweet little Beta who wants to be so good for me. So willing. So needy for me.
I groan as my knot throbs even harder. My rut is reaching its peak. I haven’t spilled my seed yet, and I desperately need release. The storm is raging, and so is my Alpha. I can’t order Zenevieve to leave me, and I can’t leave either. I don’t want to go anywhere, storm or not.
There are so many old stories about dragonrider lovers sheltering under their dragons’ wings to make love. I feel like we’re in one of those tales. Outside, the wind howls. Nilak’s scales are basking us in warmth. Lenhale, the flare, my duties, all feel very far away.
Zenevieve kisses my feverish cheeks. “You smell like you need me, and I need you. You taste like you need me, too.” She runs the tip of her pink tongue over my lips, and then her own. I stare down into her parted, lush, inviting lips.
I slant my mouth over hers and claim them. My arms wrap around her, and her body is soft and willing in my arms. I cup the curves of her ass and slide my fingers between her legs, seeking her sex. Seeking the part of her that I want to sink into, right up to my knot.
She’s wet for me. I groan and find the line of flesh between her neck and shoulder with my teeth, and bite down. Bliss erupts in my mouth as my dragines finally test her flesh.
“I need to feel you,” I pant desperately.
“Please,” she breathes.
Together, we unfasten her breastband and drawers and I pull them from her body.
“Gods, you’re so fucking beautiful,” I growl, marveling at her.
Her full breasts with tight, dusky nipples.
Her slender waist and the curve of her hips.
Her soft thighs and the shiny pink of her sex.
I know that a woman has a tight bundle of nerves at the top of her sex where she can easily reach it.
I find it and gently roll it beneath my thumb.
Zenevieve’s face flushes red, and she clutches my shoulders, raising her head so she can watch me touching her.
“Oh, gods, Stesha,” she cries in a tight, high voice.
I explore lower, and find a concave, and the source of her wetness. Carefully, watching her face, I push my middle finger into her, marveling at her heat and the grip she has on me.
Zenevieve cries out and falls onto her back, her beautiful neck arching as I pump my finger slowly in and out of her.
“How does that feel?”
“Like you’re finally where you should be. I’ve ached for you, Stesha, for years and years. I’ve only ever wanted you touching me.”
Only me. All for me. I pant harder, my need for her growing stronger.
I roll on top of her, bracing myself on my elbow with my last shred of sanity, and look into her eyes.
I’m trying to stack words into order in my feverish mind to tell her how much she means to me, but before I can form a sentence, she reaches for the laces on my underbreeches and pulls the ties undone.
Zenevieve’s hand encircles my cock, and I sink my teeth into her shoulder as I thrust my fingers into her.
“Please, Stesha, I want you,” she whispers up my throat.
I slide between her thighs, planting kisses on her parted lips. She wraps her legs around my hips and buries her hands in my hair. I slide my shaft through her sex, making myself slippery, rolling my flesh against her clit, and delighting in her moans that I capture with my mouth.
Zenevieve reaches down between us and notches the head of my cock against her inner lips. Gods, I’m going to die from pleasure.
I kiss her once more, and surge into her.
Zenevieve’s gasp is filled with shock and delight.
She fits me like a glove, her inner muscles squeezing and rippling along my length.
I don’t know what I’m doing, but apparently it doesn’t matter because instinct takes over.
I pull back my hips and thrust into her again, my whole body lighting up in more pleasure than I’ve ever known.