CHAPTER FORTY-SIX #2
He laughed under his breath, turning away, the rigid planes of his back tightening under the moonless dark.
“Ronan, you know we can’t—” I began, but the confession died on my lips.
In a breath, his hands were leveled beside my head, pinning me against the wall so that the world narrowed to the space between us. His eyes were stormwater. Dark, fathomless, and utterly not mine to meet. Heat coiled along my spine, my skin humming with it.
“Do you think I can’t smell you?” His voice dropped until the gravel was gone, and only hunger remained.
“That sweet, dangerous wanting that I know is yours.” Every part of him leaned into me, until his lips ghosted over my mouth.
“Do you think I don’t hear every filthy thing that crawls through that beautiful head of yours? ”
The words slipped between us, an accusation braided with desire. For a sliver of a second, an impossible, vulnerable instant, I wanted to tell him everything. To hand him the mess of me and see if he could hold it without burning.
Instead, I swallowed it all.
Heat crept up my neck, my cheeks flaming, the intimacy still feeling too foreign. I slammed my shields into place, suppressing the need that had unfurled in my ribs, but the bond shrugged them aside. His smile softened then, eyes heavy.
“Please stop scenting me,” I said. But my want spoke louder than my sense, my body leaning back into him.
He moved with me, his mouth grazing the shell of my ear. A shiver charged through me as his breath trailed down my neck.
Boots crunched over stone nearby, a merciful interruption. Everyone in this camp was immortal, with ears sharp enough to indulge in every whisper if they lingered too long.
Ronan didn’t seem to care as he murmured, “With the aroma you’re radiating right now, I’d wager you don’t mind.” His arm dropped, skimming mine, bumps flaring in its wake.
I cleared my throat. “It’s just...”
The next words lodged under my tongue. I’m fated to death.
I’ll end up destroying us both. The last man I’d trusted in such an affectionate way had become my tormentor.
That memory tightened my chest. I let it sit, unspoken, as Ronan’s nose traced down the line of my jaw, lips brushing against the hollow of my throat.
My breath hitched, and then, in the distance—
“Have you seen Verena?” Killian’s voice, muffled but far too close, lurking through the canvas walls.
Ronan froze, head snapping toward the veil, eyes burning like he could cut through it.
“I thought she was with you, doing patrol?” Ford answered.
Ronan’s fingers slipped lower, daring, curling along the inside of my thigh. The sound that escaped me was swallowed by the night.
“She was earlier. If you see her, tell her I need her.” Killian’s voice drifted off, footsteps fading.
The pause that followed was brutal.
Ronan turned back to me. “What is it, huh?” His voice roughened.
“Is it still your false hatred that keeps your denial so sharp?” I hadn’t spoken, but my mind had.
The bond tugged, the truth spilling down it while his mouth curved.
“Do you know what it does to me,” he murmured, the vein in his throat pulsing, “to watch you and Killian?”
I pushed against his chest, but he only traced his thumb along my hip, grounding me to him. “There is nothing between me and Killian,” I snapped.
His smirk deepened. “I can smell him on you.”
Heat burned up my neck, shame and fury mixing into one. What exactly did he think he smelled? Lips curling, I bared my teeth. “Are you sure it isn’t your own jealousy?”
I reached for him, fingers outlining the scars etched across his chest. Some he could have healed, I realized.
Others must have cut too deep to ever fade entirely.
My eyes drifted lower, unbidden, to his thigh, where my blade had once found him.
Then up, catching on the nick along his ear, the mark I’d left on my second attempt.
The scar on his leg was hidden. But the mark on his ear could be seen faintly in the light.
“I keep them as reminders,” he said when he noticed. His hand lifted, knuckles trailing the curve in my hip. “Each mark. To remember I gave them a chance before ending them.”
Melodramatic bastard.
A spark shone in his eye as his head shot up, brow lifting as if to scold me. He definitely heard that.
“What do you want, Verena?” he muttered.
The smirk was gone as his head dipped again, lips moving to my throat, then softly back up to my jaw. My eyes answered what my voice could not, rolling toward my skull when his hand slipped higher, fingertips skimming the edge of my waistband.
The air thinned, breaking apart inside me as wings erupted, each scale catching what little light dared to still linger. They unfurled above us, folding inward until the tent became nothing but shadow.
Without warning, I was back in that cell. Back in that lost well of my mind. Instinct and panic surged as one, my gut plummeting, the bond fraying as my shields buckled. His wings stilled, retracting slowly, feeling the break inside me.
“Breathe,” he spoke. “It’s for privacy. So you don’t feel any shame admitting it out loud.”
He thought it was shame?
His chest was stone beneath my palm and though the wounds had mended, what they took from him lay visible still. “I don’t feel shame,” I admitted.
The ache that had bloomed in my core throbbed with each heartbeat as every inch of him pushed closer.
His body spoke what neither of us would, the hardness straining against me a promise that I wasn’t the only one unraveling.
His wings shuddered, releasing a cool mist, brushing my overheated skin.
Mint threaded the air between us, claiming it. Claiming me.
My eyes widened. “Did you just...mark me?”
His expression froze. “Not intentionally.” The mist thinned, leaving only the heat now.
“You might as well have pissed on me, you dog.” I shoved him away, hating how I ached for the comfort I’d just banished. “I am not a possession to claim.”
The exhale he let out was slow, frayed. “It’s not a performance, Verena. It’s instinct. Primal, even”
I used my own arms to hold in the last of his warmth, wrapping them around myself. “So, what? You flap those monstrous wings and I’m supposed to swoon?”
The corner of his mouth curved, not in humor, but in grim truth.
“It means my blood has already chosen. That my soul recognizes yours, whether or not my mind allows it.” His wings shifted slightly, the very thought stoking them. “It means every dragon within five hundred miles will know you’ve been touched by me.”
My stomach flipped. “That sounds a hel of a lot like possession.”
“No.” He crossed the space between us in a single stride, until there was nowhere else to look but him. “It’s protection. It tells them you are mine to defend. Mine to guard. And gods help the one who tries to take you from me.”
I swallowed, voice breaking into a whisper. “And if I don’t want it?”
For the first time, his expression split, the dragon yielding to something unbearably tender. “Then I’ll burn it out of myself.” He exhaled. “Even if it kills me.”
My thighs pressed together, a forbidden swell gathering low.
I should have been furious. Should have shoved him again for having the audacity to brand me with instinct he claimed he couldn’t control.
But there was an intoxicating pull in it.
That he couldn’t hide, that the most volatile part of him had answered me with such primal certainty.
“You will never be a possession. Not anyone’s. I swear it.”
I believed him and still, at that moment, all I could think of were his hands.
How badly I needed them back on me, how badly I wanted to feel the intensity of them against my skin.
One found me again, delving between my thighs, pressing over the maddening barrier that kept me from truly feeling him.
“Verena...” His voice broke on my name. “Let me touch you. Let me feel you.”
My head tipped back, words tumbling out on a jagged breath. “Why do you want to touch me, Prince of Wraith?”
A low, rueful chuckle rolled from his chest, vibrating over my throat.
“Prove me wrong,” he murmured, smoke curling over the places his fingers didn’t reach.
“Prove to me that this sweetness isn’t real.
That it’s all in my head. That it's only hate between us still.” A single wisp of smoke lifted my chin before his hand replaced it, knuckles dragging over the base of my throat.
“I could worship you. With my hand,” his fingers dipped below the hem of my pants but didn’t dare move any farther.
“On my knees.” His mouth replaced his other hand then, brushing my jaw, dragging down the side of my neck. “With my mouth.”
Oh gods.
“Say the word,” he breathed.
I didn’t want to cave so easily. Didn’t want to hand him this victory. But the ache honed itself into something ravenous, desire taking shape where restraint had once been, and I couldn’t deny him. Couldn’t deny myself.
My face tilted up, hips shifting toward his heat. “Then worship,” I whispered.
His teeth caught his bottom lip, a groan tearing loose from his throat as he rasped, “With pleasure.”
Before I could brace myself, his mouth, once tentative, grazing, claimed me with purpose as our lips collided in a slow, inevitable crash. The bond flared as recognition roared in response to our souls aligning themselves into each other.
He was gentle at first, fear splitting down the bond over what his greed might do. But it quickly forced through, becoming eager and consuming, tasting me like I was everything he’d been denied at once.
His lips trailed down my throat, slow and punishing, teeth grazing just enough to make me shiver while his hand drew slow, agonizing circles lower, past my hips.
“You’re trembling,” he growled, moving his mouth back against my lips. “I love that. Now,” his teeth nipped gently. “Open for me.”
Without thought, I obeyed, parting, letting his tongue find mine as it swept into my mouth.
His kiss was fire and smoke, and gods, I wanted to burn in it.
Fingers slid lower, pressing against the fabric that shielded my ache, thumb circling the bundle of nerves that pulsed beneath.
The pressure was just enough to undo me.
I pushed harder into his palm as his fingers slipped past the barrier, dragging aside the fabric.
Then he was there, sliding through the slickness he found, coating his touch in proof of my betrayal.
He trapped my wrists above my head with one hand while the other slid with brutal patience, making me arch despite myself.
“You feel how desperate you are?”
His eyes dropped to my mouth just as mine slid closed, my nails digging into his shoulders as my legs trembled, threatening to give way.
“Tell me,” he purred, sinking inside. “Is it still the thought of turning my blood to venom that makes you wet?” His palm ground firmly against my sweet spot, his words searing as hot as his touch. “Or is this, all of this, for me?”
Our lips crashed again, tongues colliding, messy, consuming. A raw, throaty sound broke free of me, unrestrained. The bond sang with it, dragging my truth to him whether I spoke it aloud or not.
All for him. Every pulse, every shudder, every desperate drip was his to claim.
“This is where I belong.” He wrapped a hand around the hollow of my throat. Firm enough to restrain, careful enough to breathe. “Holding you, shaking and soaked, until you forget how to stand without me.”
My toes curled, the world narrowing to the press of his palm, the scrape of his thumb, the slow, worshipful rhythm of him. Pleasure tore through me in a glorious wave as the room tilted and the air left my lungs. He held me through the falling, fingers steady at the base of my skull.
When the tremors subsided, his grip softened, sliding from my throat to cup my jaw. He kissed me again, not a taking, but a vow pressed to my lips. “I don’t have to claim you to know you’re mine,” he whispered. “But know, I have always been yours in return.”
The implication in his words imprinted along my spine, dangerous and tender all at once. Everything I had both longed for and feared.