Chapter 25 #3
For a moment, I think I might have overdone it, because he looks so thunderstruck that all he can do is stare. Like I’ve given him a gift so beyond his ken he doesn’t have any idea what to do with it, when I just told him what to do with it—
“Then hold on, my love,” Zan tells me with bright eyes, “and we’ll see how much feeling you can hold after all.”
Oh, he does know me, with a challenge like that—
I laugh wildly, only for it to turn into a moan as his mouth closes over one of my breasts, sucking the nipple between his teeth.
It feels like the tips of my breasts are hard points, sensitive almost to the point of pain as he flicks one with the edge of his nail while the other he scrapes with his teeth.
This time I buck over him, the feeling of him at my breasts like a line straight to my core, opening me further for him, and I want more.
And he gives it to me, beginning to move in earnest at last.
I thought he was as deep as he could go, before, but now it feels almost like he swells inside me, the feel of him pressing against all of my walls as he strokes inside me, slowly, inexorably, like we have always been moving toward this moment.
I try to move faster but Zan grips my hips and makes me feel him, just like this, at his speed; lets the moment build between us and build and build.
I’m so close to the edge, and it’s so good, and I have a moment to think that this is how it always is between us—so achingly, piercingly good, like we’re on a precipice and always on the tip of something more—when Zan’s nail scrapes over my clit and I tip right over into orgasm.
It rolls through me in waves of pleasure, flushing my whole body with it, and I have the vague sensation of my magical aura spilling out with it too.
Zan never stops moving, and I don’t either, even when the waves begin to slow and I look down with him in wonder and awe and the knowledge that no moment will ever be like this for me again.
This is the moment we chose each other, forever, and I love it.
My muscles are tightening around him, spasming a little with aftershocks, and it’s only then that I realize that Zan hasn’t come yet.
His muscles are stark with tension.
He’s holding himself back. But why—
“Are you ready, Yora?” Zan growls at me.
Am I ready now?
More emphatically than I have ever answered this question yet, I snarl back, “You’d better godsdamned well believe I’m ready, you—”
Zan lifts me off him.
I do cry out at the feeling of him leaving me, bereft, and anyway who said I wanted that, when he turns me in the air and commands in a hoarse voice, “On your knees then, Yora.”
Oh.
Oh.
That was... that was the warm-up?
Oh my gods.
How much sensation can I hold, indeed.
My aura pulses around me—at the challenge of him, at how much I want him to take me already, as I try to do what he’s asked.
We’re in water, though, and I hadn’t fully appreciated this, when I was the one on top, but, well... I float.
Zan strokes a finger up my slit from behind, and I grab the edge of the tub, looking back over my shoulder at him.
“It will be tighter at this angle,” Zan tells me, closing in between my knees. “Deeper.”
“Good,” I snarl.
He smiles faintly, a smirk that has me practically vibrating with need, and purrs, “Are you ready, Yora?”
“I have been ready for you for five hundred years—”
Zan slams home in a single thrust, and I scream.
Before I can catch my breath, he does it again.
He was right. I thought before he was as deep as he could go, but this is deeper.
I love it.
I love him.
I want to take everything he can give me and dish it back out in spades, driving each other to new heights that we never could have imagined for ourselves on our own.
I try to widen my legs even farther, and Zan helps, using his hands to open me even more for him.
I sob at the feeling of it, him, the immensity.
Nothing in my entire life has ever felt this good.
And he wanted to know if I was ready?
I wouldn’t have been, without him.
But now—
Now, I clench my inner muscles around him as he thrusts, clinging to him as hard as he is entering me.
Zan swears, his pace stuttering, and then he surges into me.
This orgasm is both slow and fast, like it’s been building between us forever and that nothing has ever been like this in the universe until this moment.
“I love you, Yora,” Zan whispers behind me. “I love you more than anything, more than the world, I love you I love you I love you—”
“I love you, and you’re mine,” I snarl back, and this time Zan yells as he slams into me with all his dragon strength, loosed at last.
And with mine, I meet him.
Zan gives me all of him, and I take it, just like he takes all of me, a loop that closes between the two of us until we are caught up in it—
And that’s when I feel it snap into place.
The mate bond.
I could feel the effects of it before—how I always knew him before anyone else, the rush of power moving between us—but not the bond itself.
But now, it’s like there was a cord between us that has been anchored deep in my soul; in my magic, in my wrath.
And we’re so close that it feels almost like a loop, overlapping and interposing ourselves inside each other.
In that instant, I feel Zan even deeper, because I feel him in my head, too. Feel what he’s feeling, the fierceness of his love for me, and I know he feels everything I feel for him and his wonder at it which finally thank fuck—
And then we’re both coming, and it feels like it will never stop, like we are going to be this deep in each other forever and I love it, I’m obsessed with it, with him, and he’s obsessed with my obsession, and me, and—
Zan grabs me around the middle with one arm and tilts us back, me above and him beneath, and we fall back into the water.
Our faces are still in the air, and as deep in each other as we are I realize Zan is supporting us.
And I remember: It’s my job to steer us.
There’s nothing we’re going to run into, not in a cozy bathtub—perhaps less cozy with the sheer heat we’re generating.
But we still move. We still need to move.
And as we move, my power grows, and with the bond so does his, and this, I realize, is my part in the dragon mating flight.
The magic spills out of us both, the pool evaporating with the sheer heat and I feel it like I once worked to feel the volcano beneath us.
But now, in this instant, the volcano responds to me like it was just waiting for me.
Waiting for me to have the fire.
But I don’t want us to actually melt together in a fiery miasma.
I love us together, but I love him—I don’t want him to become me or the other way around. I want us to both have a person, to be happier for it, not to be the same person.
I don’t want to break down all the walls between us; I want there to be a bridge.
I want to invite him inside, over and over, as deep as I can, for him to believe in his soul he’s always, always welcome.
Which means I need to do something fast, because the bath water is now literally gone.
And if it’s not destruction... I guess it’s the other thing, isn’t it?
But—no, not a shield. Not more walls between us. I don’t need to defend against all the power surging through me, because it’s Zan, and I want him here, and I’m a sage—I’m the most powerful sage who’s ever fucking lived and I can hold it.
No more suppressing who I am. Who we are.
We’re not holding back.
We’re reaching out.
We’re reaching farther and deeper and growing.
What else are sages for, after all?
The movement between us, the movement in my body and soul and mind is enough that I can channel the power between us directly.
I take Zan’s fire in my magic and make of us together something new.
Something that won’t burn us, or our house, or the world, erupting like a volcano and cascading beyond.
Zan is inside me, and it’s not about how much magic I can hold.
It’s about how much magic I can make.
And with him the wings beneath me?
There’s nothing I can’t do.
My vision is full of sparkles, and when I can breathe again, I don’t, because my breath catches at the sight above me.
I’ve made... bridges. They start above us, the center, like we’re the mouth of the volcano, and cascade down, shimmering like ice made of the colors of our magic, magenta and icy blue entwined together.
Together, they’d make a lovely purple... like blackberry ice cream.
I can’t feel Zan’s thoughts anymore, which I only realize because it evidently doesn’t matter as Zan, now resting beneath me on the bottom of the tub, asks in a low voice, “Are you going to make magic sex ice cream?”
You know what? “I absolutely am.” I snuggle back into him as he shifts us back upright, still inside me but soft, his arms wrapping around me and mine around him, holding us to each other. “Ice cream just for you.”
The ice doesn’t actually go in the ice cream.
But maybe when he tastes it, he’ll taste this moment between us.
His arms tighten, and I know he’s thinking the same thing.
“Ice cream for us,” he growls.
I shiver and smile at the same time. “Ice cream for us.”
He turns me, and kisses me like I am a god in truth to worship, and with the feeling of our love between us and still spilling out, all at once I know what to do.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How much sex do you think it’ll take for you to not feel like snarling at anyone else I meet?”
Zan’s arms spasm around me. “I’m not going to ever not feel possessive of you again, Yora.”
I smile, and his abrupt tension recedes slightly only to be replaced with suspicion.
Heh. He does know me.
“To my great regret I will nevertheless need to interact with some horrible people tomorrow,” I say cheerfully.
Zan nips my neck, and I shudder pleasantly. “You can’t wait to sic us on them,” he says.
“Sage of Wrath,” I agree. “But as it turns out, I don’t want to think about them tonight.”
Zan grunts. “And yet—”
“And yet, in some way, I will need to build power.” I smile beatifically. “Do you think you could help me with a new kata?”
Zan lifts his head from my shoulder to glare at me, which is somewhat undercut by the clear amusement I feel through our bond.
And isn’t that a wonder?
“You are going to ruin words,” Zan tells me sternly. “Now every time you even think about a kata—”
“I’ll think of you,” I say softly, and I meant that to sound like a joke but it’s the absolute godsdamned truth.
And Zan hears it, or maybe feels it, and his eyes start glowing again.
And so do I.
Oh wow, maybe I didn’t think this through after all. If we’re both going to be like this constantly, forever—
Zan stands up still holding me, lifts me off of him and out of the tub like I weigh literally nothing, sets me down on the edge, then steps out himself. “You want to test whether there’s an amount of sex that will sate my dragon instincts, then?”
I shrug, pleased both by the way his gaze is drawn to what that motion does to my breasts and then at the glare as he realizes I’ve turned his pretend noncommittal shrug against him.
Turnabout, my love.
“Well, I’m a sage, so I know I’ll never have my fill of you because I can’t ever be filled—”
Zan goes to hoist me over his shoulder and I lash out instinctively, which ends with me tussling with him in the air as he nevertheless walks us actually to his bedroom this time.
We fall onto the bed wrapped in each other, and then we both move as if to sit up, and I end up sliding into his lap and then right onto his already hard-again length and we both groan.
Zan made it sound like many women struggle to orgasm, but that’s clearly not going to be a problem for us.
I genuinely can’t imagine not coming apart around him any time he looks at me with that heat in his gaze, our eyes locked on each other, as we both move together, reveling in knowing each other as deep as we can.
Maybe it’s because, like I knew as soon as I woke myself up for him, he makes it finally, finally safe to.