Sweet merciful stars.
I feel him throb. Once. A slow, deliberate pulse that makes my clit answer in kind.
“Polly,” he warns, voice shredded.
“I’m cold,” I lie, wriggling back another fraction just to be evil. The movement grinds me along his length, and his hips jerk involuntarily, pushing him tighter against me.
He hisses something in his own language. It sounds like a prayer and a curse at the same time.
“Stop. Moving.” The words are ground out between clenched teeth. His mouth is at my ear now, breath scalding, fangs grazing the shell without breaking skin. “If you keep doing that, I will forget every oath I have ever sworn. I will pin you to this mattress and fuck you until you forget your own name, until theonly word you remember is my name screamed at the top of your lungs.”
My entire body clenches. Wetness floods me so fast I’m dizzy with it.
There’s a new sound now—a deep, subsonic thrum coming from his chest, rolling through his plating and into my back like a second heartbeat.
“Are you… purring?” I ask, breathless.
“Dermal resonance,” he grits out. “It responds to arousal. Ignore it.”
“Impossible.” It’s stroking me from the inside, a constant vibration that has my hips rolling in tiny, helpless circles I can’t stop.
His hand flexes on my stomach, fingers spreading wide, thumb brushing the underside of my breast in a caress so light it’s torture.
“It is scent marking,” he whispers against my neck, his voice rougher now, losing the civilized edge. “You understand that, don’t you? When my species sleeps this close to a compatible female… we do not just share heat. We share territory.”
“Territory?” I manage to squeak.
“Possession. My scent will be on your skin for cycles. Every predator who passes you will know you belong to a high house.” He presses his nose into my hair, inhaling deep. “You will smell like me. You will crave my proximity. You will know you are mine on a biological level that has nothing to do with logic or choice.”
The words penetrate the haze of sensation. “Mine? I don’t think so.”
“Your body thinks so,” he growls, his hand tightening on my stomach. “I can feel your pulse. I can smell your arousal. You want to be claimed.”
“I want to be warm,” I lie, though my heart is hammering a traitorous rhythm against his arm.
“Liar.” He nips the sensitive cord of my neck, not breaking skin, but close enough to make me shudder. “Then sleep, Polly. Before I stop pretending to be civilized and show you what claiming actually feels like.”
I try. I really do.
But every breath drags his scent into my lungs until I’m drunk on it. Every small shift reminds me how perfectly we fit, how little fabric separates us, how easily he could slide his hand lower and find out exactly how ready I am.
I don’t remember falling asleep. I only remember heat, and restraint stretched to breaking, and the low, constant thrum of his body telling mine a story in a language older than words.
I wake up burning.
At some point in the night, we moved.
I’m flat on my back. Rynn is half sprawled over me like a blanket made of muscle and bad decisions. His face is buried in the crook of my neck, lips pressed to my pulse, inhaling me like I’m the only oxygen in the sector. One heavy thigh is shoved between mine, pressing up against the seam of my pants with devastating accuracy. His hand is under my shirt, palm spread over my bare stomach, thumb stroking slow, lazy circles that make my hips chase the pressure without conscious thought.
His cock is a steel brand against my hip, thick and pulsing in time with the frantic beat between my legs. The plating on his chest is vibrating so hard the entire bunk is humming, a low, filthy song that has me soaked and shaking.
I should wake him up.
I should shove him off and laugh it away with some quip about personal space.
Instead, my traitorous hand slides down the ridged plane of his abdomen, tracing the burning scales, stopping just abovethe waistband of his trousers where the heat is fiercest. My fingertips brush the velvet-smooth ridge of him through the fabric, and the sound he makes—half snarl, half broken prayer—goes straight to my clit.
His hips jerk forward, grinding that thick length against my hand once, twice, a third time that drags a desperate noise from my throat.
