Nails still buried in his back. Teeth still resting against his throat, though I've stopped biting—just breathing there, tasting his pulse against my tongue, tasting three hundred years of death and guilt and desperate, clawing loneliness.
The pleasure fades slowly. Reluctantly. Leaving behind bone-deep satisfaction and exhaustion so profound I can barely keep my eyes open.
But the knot isn't fading.
Still locked inside me. Still pulsing occasionally, little aftershocks. Still keeping his release trapped where he put it.
We'll be here for a while.
The thought should make me panic. Should make me fight, make me rage, make me do anything other than lie here in his arms like something tame.
But I can't move. Can barely breathe. The orgasms took everything I had and then some. Left me hollowed out and trembling and absolutely wrecked, an empty vessel filled with nothing but him.
His arms tighten around me. Gentling now, the violence bleeding out of him. Supporting my weight instead of restraining it.
"You're alive," he whispers, and there's so much wonder in his voice it makes my chest ache despite everything. "You survived. How did you?—"
"Shut up," I mumble into his throat.
He shuts up.
Just holds me. One hand in my hair, gentle now, fingers threading through the bloody tangles like he's trying to memorize the texture. The other on my lower back, thumb tracing circles through the mess we've made of each other.
The knot pulses again. The pressure shifts inside me as more of his release finds room somehow, filling spaces I didn't know I had.
I make a sound. Something between a whimper and a groan. Overwhelmed and oversensitive and still so full I feel like I might burst.
"I know," he murmurs against my temple, lips brushing my skin. "Almost done."
"You said that three pulses ago."
His chest rumbles with something that might be a laugh if laughter could sound that broken. "Dragon biology. We're... thorough."
"Thorough." The word comes out flat, exhausted. "That's one word for it."
Another pulse. Another flood. My belly is visibly distended now—I can feel it pressed between us, round and taut, proof of how much he's filled me.
"Fuck," I breathe, and I don't know if it's a curse or a prayer or just an observation of fact.
"Already did," he says, and there's a hint of dark humor in his ruined voice. "Quite thoroughly, I think."
I bite his throat. Not hard. Just a reminder that I can. That I still have teeth, even if the rest of me is too wrecked to use them.
He hisses. His cock twitches inside me, the knot giving one more pulse, and then?—
Finally.
Finally.
It's done.
The pressure stops building. His release stops flowing. Everything goes still except for our ragged breathing and our racing hearts and the fine tremors running through both our bodies.
We're locked together still—the knot shows no signs of going down. But at least he's stopped trying to fill me past my limits.
I let my head fall forward against his shoulder. Close my eyes. Just breathe.
"You survived," he says again. Quieter now. Reverent, almost worshipful. "Forty-seven didn't. But you did."
