Jassyn seized the back of Lykor’s neck and hauled him into another brutal kiss. Their mouths collided—biting, gasping, scraping—stealing breath and giving it back until Lykor no longer knew where his body ended and Jassyn’s began.
Only the impact between them remained—the grind of hips, the heat of their locked fists, a crucible of want breaking and remaking the space between their palms.
The noise Jassyn made slammed through Lykor, carnal enough to leave him reeling, primal enough to tighten his grip. He stroked over slick skin and the cool catch of metal, chasing those sounds. To make Jassyn tremble. To watch him come undone. To give him whatever he needed to break.
Pressure climbed fast—scalding, inexorable, coiling low in a razor-tight knot that threatened to snap.
Lykor’s thighs locked, his hips bucking into Jassyn as control bled out of him. His hand moved faster—wilder—driven by an overwhelming need to drag Jassyn into the same oblivion.
Heat gathered deep, a pull hammering into him with every unsteady breath Jassyn spilled against his lips.
Lykor felt it in Jassyn too—the shudder in his chest, the twitch of wing talons angling toward him, the frantic pulse beating against their joined grip. It set Lykor blazing, fed the furnace of his desire with every ragged gasp.
Reaching blindly, he drove his claw through the dark mess of Jassyn’s curls and tugged—just enough to make him arch. To keep him close.
Jassyn leaned in, his breath hot against the shell of Lykor’s ear. His mouth grazed the curve, drawing a growl from Lykor as he tugged the pointed edge between his teeth. His lips burned a path, unhurried and claiming, and it struck Lykor harder than any lightning he’d ever taken.
He broke with a snarl, and Jassyn’s name scattered with it. Light flashed behind his eyes and pleasure detonated through him so violently that the world disappeared. No couch, no room, no shape but the white-hot shock thundering up his spine.
Each pulse that followed struck like a cataclysm, his cock jerking helplessly in Jassyn’s grip until rhythm dissolved and he was nothing but sensation—strung taut between ache and release, undone from the inside out.
Jassyn followed a heartbeat later, catching himself against Lykor’s chest as his body seized. His voice fractured as heat spilled between them, wings snapping wide with the force of it, fire spiraling across the membranes.
When the final shudder chased down their lengths, Lykor didn’t know where he was. Who he was. Only that Jassyn remained wrapped around him, their locked hands slick between them in the aftermath.
For a long, breathless moment neither moved. Tremors still shivered through the narrow space where their bodies pressed together.
Jassyn eventually sagged forward, his forehead finding the curve of Lykor’s throat.
Lykor untangled his fingers from Jassyn’s curls and slid his palm down to where wing met shoulder, holding him close.
In the hush that followed, something fierce and unfamiliar took root behind Lykor’s ribs. Not rage or instinct or thesharp edge of survival, but something quieter. Terrifying in its softness.
Jassyn’s breath warmed the hollow beneath his jaw as if he had no intention of ever moving.
And for the first time, Lykor let himself lean into that warmth and simply exist.
CHAPTER 41
SERENNA
“She-elf!” Fenn’s voice rang through the nursery cavern, a salt cave carved high into the cliffs above Asharyn’s lake. “She’s doing it again—watch!”
Serenna turned just as a flicker of gold puffed from Vasharax’s tiny jaws, more steam than flame. The hatchling spread her wings, chest thrust forward as though she’d unleashed the wrath of an elder wyrm.
“Oh, she thinks she’s terrifying,” Serenna said, a grin breaking free.
“Sheisterrifying,” Fenn insisted, crouching low in the sand as he gestured theatrically around the chamber. Sunlight filtered through honeycomb vents in the stone overhead, casting shifting hexes around them. “Utter menace. Nearly incinerated that moss. Gnawed a crack in that rock. I nearly perished when she pounced on me.”
Vasharax trilled, the chirrup cracking into a growl as she hurled herself at him—frills flared, jaws open, every ounce of her ferocity bent toward the charge.
Fenn vanished in a warp and reappeared sprawled in the sand behind her. “A valiant attempt,” he chuckled as she spun to face him.
Hissing, Vasharax descended on him, clamping his hair between her fangs and thrashing her neck in a wild shake.
Fenn’s laughter broke off into a wince as he fought to pry her loose from his braids. “Vicious instincts.”
Serenna shook her head. While Vasharax couldn’t yet press her voice into their minds like Cinderax, the hatchling communicated in other ways. Primarily with fangs and claws.
