“Does this feel like I’m afraid of you, daeyari?” Fi hooked herfingers in his trousers and pulled their hips together, relishing his growl against her neck. For all the foreignness of claws and antlers, she found familiarity in the delicious hardness between his legs.
Yet still he held back.
More than that. He pulled away.
“Tell me,” he said. If Fi had been thinking clearly, she might have called it distress.
They both fell too still. It was like standing on glass, the way he looked at her, waiting for a reply. Fi’s barbs were useless against that moment of quiet, the earnest hitch in his breath.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
Crimson eyes scoured every inch of her face. “You want this?”
“Fucker. If I have to tell you any more explicitly how to take this dress off me, I’ll—”
His kiss shoved her against the wall. Deep enough to summon a moan. A bruising clash of lips and teeth, his knee pressed firm between the waiting gap of her thighs. There went the crumbling remnants of her guard. Fi was falling so fast, she never bothered looking for ground below.
Let him consume her.
Their hands fought together to lift her dress. Cool fabric slipped up the flushed heat of her thighs, pooling in a silken bundle at her waist. Antal’s fingers ran the curves of her hips, the hidden garden of floral tattoos along her stomach. A taunting brush beneath her breast. Fi arced into his touch, not withholding an inch of bared skin, even if he was a…
She didn’t care what he was. She only wanted to feel him against her.
He turned his attentions lower. Fi tensed, only a moment to register the sight of claws slipping toward a place where clawsshouldn’tgo, a peep of protest before—
Antal’s palm pressed between her legs. One firm stroke curled Fi into another moan. No clawed fingers, but just as dexterous, dragging the heel of his hand across the most sensitive part of her. A bloom of energy fiercened his touch, not strong enough to burn or carve—heat that shuddered into her, sending every muscle taut. She had a few toys in her nightstand that employed similar Shaping.
Nothing as wild, as ruthless as daeyari energy. She wanted to melt into him, to rock her hips against his hand until it destroyed her. And his tail—that cruel, slender tail lashed around her waist, holding her dress up as he worked.
Merciless Void, why had she fought this for so long?
Fi’s hands were everywhere. She scraped nails down his strong shoulders, across the collarbone she’d admired from a distance. Splaying his shirt open, she relished every hard line of his chest, hot and humming beneath her palms, energy coursing beneath his skin.
She tugged the buttons of his pants. Her fingers turned to putty as Antal ran a knuckle through her center, hot and slick with her eagerness.
“What do you want, Fionamara?” he whispered, cruel, against her hair.
“You know what I want.” She could barely speak through clenched teeth. Tight breaths.
“Tell me.” He stroked his palm slowly over her clit, making Fi writhe.
Her fingers were talons on his trousers. She pried open enough buttons to lay him bare, to take him in her hand. Her curiosity, finally appeased: daeyari did, in fact, have cocks. And Void, his feltgoodin her hand. Fi stroked experimental fingers down his length. Claws and fangs might be foreign weapons, but here was something familiar, maddeningly hot and hard in her palm.
Claws struck the wall beside her head. Antal leaned hard on one arm to steady himself, digging black sickles into the woodgrain. She ought to chastise him for the property damage. Fi was too busy devouring his reaction to her, all of him taut as he pushed against her grip, a low and hungry sound in his throat.
Fi was hungry, too. She angled his cock against her entrance, the pressure leaving her breathless.
“You,” she hissed. “I wantyou.”
“How?” A rasp.
“Inside me.Prick.”
She cried out when he thrust into her, pressing her to the wall.
Fi’s breath hitched through every delicious inch.
When she was early in her twenties, a very rude man in a bar told her good girls always screamed. Since then, she’d formed the resolute opinion that if anyone wanted to hear her scream, they’d better fucking earn it. It was with great difficulty, then, that she clamped her mouth shut against the unbecoming sound threatening to escape her throat.
