Chapter Twenty-One
Eryon
In the face of my declaration, she apologizes profusely, turning her head away as redness creeps up her neck and over her face.
I love when she turns as pink as the sunrise, but for some reason I cannot comprehend why she seems to be embarrassed.
As if she has done something shameful. As if she has not just rewritten the entire fabric of my existence.
My chest rises and falls with a deep, heaving breath as I fight the urge to snarl. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know that in a single, fated, instinctive moment—she has claimed me.
My body reacts before my mind can catch up. I rip her hands away from her face. I need to see her. Need her to look at me. To know.
Her scent—her essence—clings to my skin, so rich, so thick I can still taste it on my tongue. It sinks into my fur, seeps into my flesh. I drag a hand over my face, down my jaw, gathering every drop of her release into my palm like the precious gift that it is.
She watches wide-eyed, lips parted, unaware of what she’s done.
Of what I am about to do.
Still holding her gaze, I drag my soaked hand down my throat—pressing her nectar into my skin, letting it seep into me. Across my chest, over my heart, branding me. I coat myself in her, tracing it over every ridge of muscle, drowning myself in her scent.
Her breath hitches, but she does not look away. Something deep inside me shatters at the hungry way she watches me. I drag my hand down slowly, loving the way her tongue peeks out to trace over her lips as I reach lower, down my stomach, and fist my aching cock.
Hand slick with her release, I stroke myself in slow, punishing pulls, spreading her over my length, marking myself with her until there is no part of me she hasn’t touched. Until I don’t just smell like her, but until she is imprinted on my body just as much as she is in my soul.
She watches, and I see it. The flicker of understanding. The realization of what this is. Her cheeks burn hotter as her thighs clench together. She knows. And she wants.
The hunger in me is unbearable. I waited with barely contained restraint for her to choose me. It was an agonizing wait, but now that she has made her choice, it is done.
The thin thread of control that I have been clinging to since the first time I saw her in the mountains snaps, reverberating straight down my spine and into my cock.
It bobs and strains toward her, flushing a deep purple as my desire pounds with my heartbeat.
The beast within roaring that I finish this. That I lay my claim.
“My turn,” I growl.
She barely has time to gasp before I tear her pants apart and sweep her up into my arms. She is weightless in my grasp. Her lips are on mine before she can even exhale, my tongue stroking deep, learning every inch of her mouth. She tastes like me now. Like us.
Just as winter melts the snow from the pines, she melts against me. My harbinger of Spring, my Sruhnar.
She kisses me back just as fiercely, her small, clever tongue daring to explore my teeth, my lips, my jaw. She is not timid. She is curious. Bold. Unafraid. All of our kisses before this moment seem chaste by comparison.
Something violent pulses through me. I should not love her like this. So fiercely. So recklessly. So utterly, devastatingly mine.
I do not even realize I have placed her back on her feet until I am forcing her down to her knees, pushing her where I need her the most. I have dreamed of this moment from the first time I saw her beautiful face and those lush lips. I have ached to have them wrapped around me.
The look she gives me is devastating. Head tilted back, eyes glinting in the moonlight, cheeks flushed, and lips swollen from my kiss. A goddess of ruin, kneeling before me. Her breath ghosts over my length, her lips parting as I guide her face against me.
I drag myself over her skin, rubbing my scent into her, coating her. My musk will linger in her hair, her cheeks, her throat—so that if she dares to leave this mountain, if she dares to leave me—she will forever smell like mine.
She moans, and the sound is sacrilege. I have waited, but I can wait no more. My hands tighten on her head as her tongue darts out, tasting me. I hiss as her lips part wider, as she pulls me into her mouth, hot and wet and so impossibly small. It feels better than I dreamed.
I will not fit. And yet—she tries. She worships me with her hands, her tongue, her lips. Takes as much of me as she can. Sucks and licks and strokes, her little moans vibrating up my spine, rattling my very bones.
She does not just take me into her little pink mouth. She consumes me.
I cannot breathe. I cannot think. When she chokes on just the tip, some distant part of my mind tells me I should stop her. But my beast is mindless, clawing for more, panting and snarling as I hold her still and fuck her mouth with slow, brutal thrusts.
She lets me, relaxing and breathing through her nose, taking every inch I give her. I know I cannot fit, but she tries anyway. I feel her gag again, swallow, fight for air—but her hands tighten around my thighs, pulling me deeper, as if she wants to choke on me.
The sight of it—her watering eyes, my cock stretching her lips wide, her throat working as she takes me deeper—is too much.
I have dreamed of this moment for so long.
The very mountain could come down and take us and still I would not, could not, stop this claiming.
It is written in the very stars above us.
She moans around me, and the air thickens with the scent of her desire, like the first rain of Spring, and I lose control.
I yank myself from her mouth just as the heat explodes up my spine, her hair wound tight in one hand while the other fists my cock, painting her with my seed. I roar my release—a guttural, primal, possessive sound echoing back from the rocky mountain walls around us.
My body convulses, every muscle locking as wave after wave of pleasure spills onto her. Thick steaming ropes coat her lips, her chin, and drip down her throat to her breasts.
She gasps, blinking up at me, wide-eyed and wrecked.
I do not hesitate. I take the last of it into my palm and smooth it over her.
I mark her the way she marked me. I drag a heavy hand down her chin, over the rapid pulse fluttering in her throat like a butterfly’s wings.
Once my hand is coated, I caress the swell of each breast, making sure to circle each rose colored nipple.
Then, I rub my seed down the soft round slope of her belly and across each thick, creamy thigh.
The moonlight highlights my glistening touch, gilding her in perfection. She has never looked more beautiful. Finally, I reach up and swipe a finger across her lips, swiping up one last drop, and reach down to slip my fingers into her tight, welcoming heat one last time.
She whimpers as I press my seed deep inside her. Her body shakes and mine does, too. Because there is no going back now. She has marked me. And now I have marked her. She is not just mine. She is mine forever.
And she does not even know it yet.