Chapter 25 #2
My heart is going to burst. I reach for him, but Zan redirects my hand to his hair.
I blink at him, not understanding.
Until he kneels down in front of me.
“I’m going to make you soar, Yora,” Zan promises in a low, fervent voice.
I shudder—at the sound, at the sight—
Zan’s lips curve, and I actually see my nipples tighten at just the sight of it, not to mention what I feel my core doing.
And then he uses his hands to shove my legs apart, baring me for him.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs, kissing one inner thigh and then the other.
My hands tremble a little, and I grip his hair tightly with both of them. He’s barely even touched me, and I’m aching for him.
“So are you,” I manage.
Zan glances up at me.
His eyes are completely white and glowing.
The sight of him being himself, comfortable with his power, at my feet, is enough to make me catch my breath.
When he licks me, I gasp.
If Zan were human, the sound would be lost in the rushing water behind us. But he’s not human, and his fingers tense on my thighs in response.
He can see all of me. He can hear me, no matter what. He can smell how much I want him, touch me—
Taste me.
His tongue laps at my center again and my legs jerk slightly.
Zan holds them in place.
But I am a creature made for movement, and though he can hold me open for him, he can’t make me still.
My fists clench in his hair as I hold onto him like my anchor in truth, my body undulating with every stroke of his tongue as it learns what his fingers learned before. But there is no touch from him I don’t love, and all too soon I feel an orgasm cresting over me.
A small one. Lovely, but—
Zan laps up the taste of me like I am ice cream to him and keeps going.
And it feels so good, so much with every sensation heightened after my mini-orgasm, but not enough, not when I know how much he can make me feel.
I snarl, trying to yank him up by the hair to me—
Only for him to gently scrape his teeth over my clit.
I freeze.
Zan’s eyes roll up to look at me; gauge whether that was good for me—
Then while he has my entire undivided goddamn attention, he thrusts a finger inside me and at the same time sucks my clit with his mouth.
I surge off the ledge.
Zan’s other hand pins my hips back down again, his finger pressing into me again as I try to catch my breath.
He doesn’t let me.
The finger brushes against my inner wall in exactly that spot, and as I gasp, he scrapes his teeth over my clit again at exactly the same time.
This time the orgasm catches me by surprise, tearing through me like a flame, and it’s only Zan’s care that keeps him from biting me through it.
That’s what it is in part, I realize—the edge of danger.
Zan grins at me smugly as I come down, gently biting my inner thigh.
My core clenches around the finger still inside me, liquid leaking out of me.
“Hmm,” Zan murmurs, his breath ghosting over my entrance and making me shiver. “I suppose I shouldn’t clean you up just yet. You’re going to need that wetness in the water.”
His tone is so regretful that even though I want more of him than his tongue, I can’t help asking, “Why? Isn’t water—”
“Not lubricating,” Zan explains shortly, turning off the pipes behind me. “It will chafe. In fact, we might need—”
My hand shoots out and grabs him before he can blur into motion.
“No,” I growl.
Zan smiles. “I’m just going to get—”
“No.” He’s absolutely not leaving me like this, not even for a second. The combination of wrath at the very notion and want hit me like a lightning bolt of inspiration, and I twist my hands into a new shape.
My entrance glows faintly pink, which, okay, that’s a little weird, but—
Zan’s utter stillness at the sight of my center highlighted for him—made ready with magic for him—makes it worth it.
“I’m not just any woman,” I remind him.
He drags his gaze back up to mine. “No,” he says. “You’re certainly not.”
Zan straightens up and steps into the enormous pool of water first. Shakily, glad that I don’t actually need to stand up right now, I slide in after him, facing him.
I reach for him, and with a strangled snarl he gathers me on top of him like this is what glory feels like to him. Kissing me like he will never let me go, like he will kiss me like this forever.
I slide on top of him, feeling his length between us and reach for him only for Zan to surge up and bat my hand away.
“Don’t,” he says harshly. “I’m— You don’t need to—”
“I want to—”
“No. I—” Zan breathes heavily.
I withdraw my hand slowly, only for him to take it in his.
He doesn’t say anything more, though.
“We only mate for the first time once, right?” I ask lightly. “Whatever you want is fine. I just... want it to be good for you, too—”
“Gods damn it,” Zan growls. “Yora, it is already— You are already—” He shakes his head. “I want to come inside you. I need to. If you touch me now—”
Oh.
I break out in a relieved smile. Talking! Sometimes more effective than punching.
And he just needed a second because saying what he needs is hard, but he’s doing it anyway for my sake. And I’ve scrambled his brains, so.
The sight of my brilliant smile causes Zan to mutter something under his breath that I don’t catch, and he pulls me back to him and kisses me fiercely.
When he finally draws back, he opens his mouth to say something and I put a finger on his lips, momentarily silencing him.
“Whatever you want, Zan,” I tell him simply. “This is your mating, too.”
He growls, “It’s also yours, Yora.”
“Yes, but I don’t know anything about sex, and anyway I’m super confident that whatever makes you happy is going to make me happy.”
Zan glares at me. “What if I want to possess you entirely?” His hands slide up to my breasts, palming them like they belong to him, and I arch into the touch. “What if I want to claim you, on your hands and knees—”
“Yes,” I breathe, moving so I’m just over him, so that when he decides to—
Zan thrusts straight up into me.
He doesn’t get all the way in, but even the tip of him inside me, beginning to enter me, makes me gasp.
And it is unforgiveable that I should have to wait a second longer for him.
I twist my hands, increasing my aura between us as he slides in a little deeper, and I moan at the sensation.
Zan’s hips jerk beneath me, withdrawing, and before I can protest, he has rolled them beneath me, slowly, pressing in once more, his hands pinching my nipples at the same time.
I arch, trying to take him deeper, and my legs oblige, sinking me down further onto him.
“I thought you were beautiful the first time I saw you,” Zan says, working himself into me, inch by inch.
“Untouchable, but beautiful. But my idea of you was so laughably insubstantial faced with the reality of you. All these years, I didn’t know what you’d be like, I didn’t know if every moment would be a fight with you—”
“It will be,” I whisper.
I am who I am.
“And I want it,” Zan growls in a voice that has me opening a little more with a small gasp.
“I didn’t know that a challenge to pick blackberries could make me hard.
I didn’t know that matching you on purpose—whether it’s with feeding or flying or fighting or fucking—would make me even more godsdamn feral for you. ”
I can’t form words. The feel of him penetrating deeper into me, combined with his words washing over me, is too much.
“You make me sound like I’m selfless, but it’s the opposite, Yora,” Zan says as he begins to thrust with a steady pace, driving inexorably deeper as his words do the same.
“Everything I do is to hold you closer, to try to make you as obsessed with me as I am with you. Because everything you do, the unbelievable reality of you, sharpens me.”
Zan thrusts into me again, harder.
“You never back down from a fight that needs to happen, whether it’s trying something new or risking your own self.”
Deeper.
“You don’t shy away from who you are and all that means, and you look at everyone else like we are exactly as we should be, not broken or lesser or insignificant.”
Stronger.
“You refuse to accept less for anyone else, and you’re so incandescent you make them believe they deserve better too.”
Oh. Oh, now I see.
He wants me because of my wrath. Not in spite of it.
Wrath isn’t just part of me, it’s me, and he wants all of me.
Not to mitigate, to lessen.
He wants me to be more of myself, even in this.
“I may not deserve better,” Zan whispers hoarsely, “but if you want me, I’m going to take it.”
He withdraws all the way, and before I can cry out at the sheer loss of the feel of him, with one more powerful thrust, he slams all the way into me.
I throw my head back, gasping around the sensation of him seated fully inside me.
And there, Zan pauses.
It feels uncannily like the entire world hangs in the balance of this moment.
I finally manage to bring my gaze back to his, breathing through how this feels, how completely right—
“You’ll never be free of me, after this,” Zan murmurs, holding my gaze. “You’ll feel me inside you—”
I find my words; my clarity.
I touch his face gently, and see his eyes flicker.
“I’ll never be alone, and you won’t be either,” I say. “Isn’t that what mating really is?”
The feeling, tangibly, that someone loves me. Knowing that we’re not too much for each other, that we can’t be, because we can feel it.
Oh. I haven’t said it out loud yet, have I?
Zan is deep in me, but I’m not as deep in him. Physically, anyway, but...
I lean forward, changing the angle between us to something even sharper, my face almost touching his, close enough to kiss.
And then I turn my head and bite him on the neck.
Zan bucks beneath me with a shout, and I hold on, my teeth digging deeper into his flesh with our movement as the sensation makes Zan begin to move again at last.
He might be slow on the uptake, but I’m not.
I seize his lips in a fierce, fast kiss.
“I love you, Zan,” I tell him, the vision of his eyes widening in wonder and disbelief filling me with fierce joy. “Now take me.”