The feel of her thigh in my mouth was soft, so tender, so fragile.
"Mmm, Torion?"
Mine.
I bit without thinking, groaning and shuddering with therightnessof her in my jaws, the little cry and sigh of her voice, her fingers soothing down the back of my neck. For a moment, all the man's doubts faded away. It did not matterwhymy witch had come to me, nor why she stayed. She was here because she was mine and it was as it had to be. Mate.
Brigid was mine. The flavor of her, sharp and tart and as sweet as heather honey, was too perfect to not belong to me. The low ache in my wings that faded said as much. The hard pulse of my knot growing full again was further proof. The way she softened and hummed, as if some irritation had been stolen away and she was at ease again, was right.
I lapped at the wound, a careful one, not too deep.Just enough, a heavy voice in my mind reassured.
I rose up, and the little red beads of my work—just next to her pretty, swollen pink sex—filled me with a satisfaction that was deeper than sexual. This woman belonged in my marrow, and I in hers.
"Torion," Brigid called, one trembling hand reaching for me.
The blood I'd drawn out slicked between our hips as I made my home in her once more.
Chapter Eighteen
BRIGID
Iwasn't meant to lose my mind this way. It had never happened before. Oh, a rut was fun, especially at the beginning, but exhausting too, and a bit of a chore by the end.
It had never been this…thisdemanding. This essential.
I couldn't stop kissing Torion. I was tired and my body was bruised, but the little strength I had only went to holding him closer, whispering pleas for more. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I held his face to mine, took his breaths for my own.
"Easy, now," he murmured as I whimpered, my legs too weak to hold his hips. He was massive now, almost twice as wide as before, too tall to stretch out against. His dragon was full in him. It was a wonder he managed to speak words at all. I sobbed as he pulled out of me, trying to scramble with useless limbs to draw him back.
"Your knot, I want?—"
"I want it too, little witch," Torion rasped. Our voices were ragged.
I whined as he bundled me and then turned me to stretch out on the bed, tucking a few pillows beneath my hips.
"You'll have my knot, my seed. You'll have all of me, and more than you can stand."
I sighed, realizing his goal, and gave up the struggle, falling limp into the cushion of the bed, moaning my approval as he filled me once more. Every time he entered, I was shocked breathless by the fullness, by the completion, pinned in place and so perfectly satisfied to be trapped there.
Torion groaned, rolling into me, my legs caged between his, making me tighter, him harder and deeper and bigger?—
"T-Torion!"
"That's it, rest now, just like this. I'll take care of you, I'll take care of us both. I'll fill you up, over and over like this while you catch your breath."
I wouldn't catch my breath, because every stroke inside of me stole it away again, but I would rest. Torion's hand held my head into the pillow as he thrust, and I shook as he settled his knot inside of me, delirious with how it pressed to every nerve, creating a sensation that rose and rose and rose and never fell.
Claws draggedlike fire down the back of my thigh, and I woke with a garbled shout, trying and failing to sit up as my stomach burned with the effort.
"You never stretch, do you? You're damn tight, witch. If I'd realized— Well, no, I didn't have the patience when it arrived, did I?"
I groped the bed, grabbed something soft in my fist—likely a pillow—and threw it at Torion in an attempt to shut him up. I deserved sleep. Another decade of it, at least.
His hands on the back of my thigh shifted, warm and gentle, until they were forcing my knee toward my chest, the taut andtired muscles from thigh to ass and even back screaming in protest.
"Shh, just another moment. Try to breathe," Torion soothed as he tortured me.
I took a breath to scream at him, then realized I was too tired for that too, and released it. Some of the tension and tug in my body settled into something resembling more of a stretch, and less of a string about to snap apart.
