11. Cassia #3
The denied impulses, frustrated arguments, and almost-moments that burned themselves into my memory ignite all at once.
His mouth demands, and mine answers with equal ferocity, teeth and breath and the taste of blood and smoke and a heat that belongs to him alone.
His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my braid and pulling until my head tips back and his mouth finds the line of my throat.
A sound tears out of me—raw, involuntary, embarrassing in its desperation—and the growl that rumbles through his chest in response vibrates against my collarbone and liquefies my spine.
"Tell me to stop." He drags the ruined words against my neck, right by my ear, his breath hot against my collar. "Tell me now, Cassia, because in about thirty seconds that option disappears."
"Keep going," I gasp, yanking at his vest. My hands find the heavy magnetic wing-clasps at his shoulders, snapping them open before violently shoving the fabric sideways, peeling it off his skin.
Because I've spent so long holding the world at arm's length, measuring boundaries and determining the risks, and for once in my life I want to stop measuring and just feel. "Keep going, Rhykor. All of it."
His self-control snaps.
He lifts me off the floor like I weigh nothing—hands spanning my waist, fingers nearly meeting around my ribcage—and my back hits the wall with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.
My legs wrap around him on instinct, ankles locking behind the base of his wings where the membrane meets the dense muscle of his back, and the position rubs every inch of me against every inch of him, heat and hardness and the overwhelming scale of his body surrounding me completely.
He kisses me again, harder, his tongue sliding against mine while his claws score faint lines down the wall beside my head, concrete dust raining onto my shoulders.
His hips pin me in place, and I feel him through the remaining fabric—thick, rigid, straining against the structured material—and the realization of his size sends a bolt of heat through my core that makes my fingers dig into the ridges of his shoulders.
"You're shaking," he rasps against my mouth.
"So are you."
His laugh is a broken, quiet thing against my mouth.
Then his hands are everywhere, sliding fabric away with agonizing care while his mouth remains a violent anchor against my pulse.
The touch is reverent—unhurried, purposeful, worlds apart from the battlefield efficiency of his usual movements.
Each piece of clothing he removes earns another pass of his hands across newly exposed skin—fingers tracing my collarbones, my ribs, the curve of my waist—learning the geography of me with the same methodical intensity he brings to everything.
His palms leave trails of warmth across my stomach, and when his thumb grazes the underside of my breast, I arch into the touch with a gasping curse that makes his entire body go rigid.
"Do that again." The command grinds out of him. "Make that sound again."
Grabbing his horns with both hands, fingers curling around the obsidian base where horn meets skull, I pull his head down to mine.
The effect is devastating; a full-body shudder rips through him, his wings flaring wide enough to slam into the walls on either side, and the sound he makes is animal and guttural, a noise that has no translation in any civilized language.
"Sensitive?" I manage against his mouth, breathless and savage with the power of it.
"You have no idea." Each syllable vibrates through his chest and into mine.
Claws dimple the skin of my thighs as his hands grip tight.
He rolls his hips in a measured, devastating grind, dragging his hard length directly against my center.
Vision whites out at the edges. Biting down on his lower lip draws blood, the taste dark and metallic, while a growl drops from his throat into frequencies that vibrate through my bones.
With more urgency than grace, we strip each other of our gear, kicking my boots aside and tossing his vest onto the heap.
The tactical pants require cooperation and creative cursing from both parties, and when the last barrier falls away, the reality of him makes my breath stall in my throat.
I've seen his chest, his back, and his shoulders—treated the wounds and mapped the old wounds with professional detachment.
But professional detachment requires context, and this context burns away completely.
He is fully bare and massively built, his skin full of marks radiating a heat that pulses against my own bare skin.
The sight of him steals the air from my lungs in a way no medical examination ever has.
His cock is proportional to the rest of him, which is to say, intimidating.
Thick and ridged along the underside in a pattern that follows the scale markings across his hips, it flushes darker than the surrounding skin and is already leaking at the tip.
My hand wraps around him, fingers barely spanning half his girth, and the moan that rips from his throat when I stroke fills the maintenance room like thunder.
"Cassia," my name sounds like a prayer dragging across broken glass. His forehead drops to mine, his breath coming in ragged, open-mouthed bursts against my lips. "If you keep doing that, this will be over before it starts."
"Then don't waste time." I guide him lower, positioning him between my thighs, and the first brush of his cock against my pussy tears a groan from our throats, his guttural, mine high and needy.
He lifts me higher against the surface of the wall, adjusting the angle, his hands gripping my hips with a meticulous strength that leaves bruises I'll memorize later and regret never.
The head of him pokes against my entrance, thick and hot and impossible, and he pauses, trembling, his jaw clamping tight, the tendons in his neck standing out against crimson skin as he fights the instinct to drive forward.
"Look at me." It releases rough and wrecked. Through the golden haze, his gaze catches mine. The hunger on his face is raw, but beneath it is a fragile, aching need so intense it sears itself into my memory, marking me like a hot iron. "I need you to look at me when I?—"
Grabbing his jaw, I pull his mouth to mine. "I'm looking, Rhykor. I'm right here."
His hand slides from my hip, trailing fire down my thigh before his fingers find the slick heat at my center.
The sound that tears from my throat is unrecognizable, a desperate and raw noise that is completely beyond my control.
He strokes through the wetness with a groan that vibrates against my collarbone, his thumb circling my clit while two thick fingers slide inside me, stretching, testing, preparing me for what's coming.
My hips roll against his hand, chasing the friction, and the needy whimper that escapes my lips makes his fingers curl in a way that whites out my vision.
"You're soaking," he growls against my ear, and the ruined awe in those words makes my inner walls clench around his fingers. "Tell me you're ready."
"I've been ready," I gasp, grinding down against his hand. "Stop teasing and?—"
He withdraws his fingers and replaces them with the blunt, thick head of his cock, and whatever clever thing I was about to say dissolves into a moan.
As he pushes in, the intense stretch brings a slow, burning fervor.
Guiding himself deeper inch by inch, the thick, ridged length of his cock stretches me so full I whimper.
"Take it," he murmurs, his voice a dark, wicked rumble against my collarbone.
"Take all of it, Cassia. Stretch for me.
" Each heavy ridge drags against oversensitized nerves, his breath sawing through fangs against my throat.
My fingers score lines across his shoulders, gripping the muscle through his skin, and the sounds I make—the gasps, the whimpers, the moans, and the bitten-off curse when the thickest part of him works past my body's resistance—seem to undo him further.
"Fuck," I gasp, my head falling back. "Rhykor—God, you're?—"
He sinks another inch, and the fullness is overwhelming, bordering on too much while simultaneously demanding more. "Tell me what you feel."
"I feel everything. You're so deep; I can feel you in my chest?—"
A groan tears from him, sounding like it originates from the core of the earth.
We both cease breathing for a singular, suspended moment.
Foreheads press together. Claws dig into the concrete on either side of my head as he grips the wall, holding himself still with a restraint that costs him visible, shuddering effort.
Inside me, the fullness pulses with his heartbeat—every ridge, every inch of him waking a deep, consuming fire I'd forgotten existed.
"Move," I whisper. "Please—move."
The first thrust drives the air from my lungs.
Pulling back slowly, he pushes in hard, a rhythm that builds gradually, each stroke deeper and more agonizingly slow than the last, his hips rolling with a power that pins me to the wall and makes the concrete groan behind my shoulder blades.
The ridges along his cock drag against me on the withdrawals, catching and rubbing in ways that send white-hot sparks cascading up my spine, and within minutes I'm making sounds I’ve never made, releasing fractured, desperate, keening noises that seem to feed directly into whatever primal engine drives him.
"You're so tight." He grinds the words out through his teeth, each syllable driven home by a thrust that hits the base of me, hard enough to send my world spinning into a haze. "Like you were made for this—made for me?—"