Cloaked in shadows once more, he dropped his prisoner belly-down on the forest floor. Kicking him to rouse him from his battered state, so he wouldn’t miss a moment of what came next.
The hunter settled back against a boulder. Claiming a throne in the wood, his mate draped over his thighs, lashes fluttering. Eyeballs flicking back and forth.
Dreaming.
A tiny, uncomfortable smile ticked at the edge of the hunter’s lips and he dragged her closer. Laving her cheek with the flat of his tongue, he pressed her essence to the roof of his mouth. Where it might linger and blend, infused with his sinuses, she would be in his every breath.
With a groan, she stirred, but it wasn’t enough.
Capturing her wrist, he lapped away the blood staining her palm. First left, then right. Pausing to savor. To remember the unique mix of spices used to create such a perfect creature. A zing pulling from the back of his brain, forward. Melting down his spine and spreading lower, he saw her outlined in shimmering color. A shifting cloud that danced all around her. Thick to the point of pain, his tail bristled and stood proud. Mane shivering, standing on end, he tasted her lips next.
Her breath.
When pleasure burst behind his eyes, his throat began to twitch.
Slow at first—the muscles unused to the movement, atrophy making them weak. But when he tipped his head back, filling his lungs with a greedy breath that had gone tender with contentment, a rattle reverberated through his chest. Starting low, deep inside his diaphragm, it traveled up. A bubble of sound fluttering and rippling to life. Tripping through his throat, where it was given voice, he felt his airway spasm. Faster and faster, escalating until a deep, throbbing rumble spilled free.
Ecstasy. Pure and frenzied euphoria.
The creature in his arms squirmed, and he looked.
Hungry for more.
Ravenous.
Black, glossy pools of liquid desire met his stare. So deep, he could swim and drown without ever taking another breath.
Little fingers lifted to touch his face. Utterly enthralled by the sound vibrating the very air between them, she traced his lips before he sucked her fingers inside and sampled every millimeter of skin he might reach without swallowing her whole. Tempted to devour her flesh so she’d be with him forever, close as he could get her.
A part of him, always.
Her lips parted on a gasp, and he abandoned her fingers. Uttering that soothing, perplexing drone that bled through his chest, he lifted her. Eyes tripping over the swollen peaks of nipples made raw by abuse, he spread her thighs across his own. Made her stretch to accommodate his width, even as he scooted lower and bumped her up.
Straddling his lap, he had access to every piece of what belonged to him.
Baggy pants now taut across the tight swells of her ass, he set her core against his need for her. One massive hand locking her tightly in place, he drove narrow hips that worked without direction. Guiding her to seek her relief across his aching girth.
All while those luminous, glassy eyes never left his face. He held her entranced. Mesmerized by the throbbing sound spewing from his lips.
Enslaved to a simple vibration. A song he hadn’t known to sing until she’d come to him and begged with her scent and her eyes.
Tongue rolling over the tight peaks, he sucked and soothed. Washed tender skin clean and grinned at the helpless sounds he drew from her throat. As he cleaned her wounds and saw to her, first. Wounds that drew his gaze back to the damage circling her throat.
That sound grew in pitch as his fury bled through. Laced with a growl that made her eyes flutter and roll back, she presented an enticing feast he couldn’t abandon even to serve her the crumpled body of the male who had done her harm.
Claws extending, he traced the seam of badly stitched leather re-purposed to suit her diminutive size. Watched as she panted above him, hands braced against his chest, jaw slack.
Not an ounce of fight left in her, he held her freedom in thrall and found he liked the way it felt. Obsession festering behind his ribs, he drank deep of the intoxicating pleasure, instinctively knowing just what he’d done. An impulse he had no intention of fighting.
To own another so completely?
It was magnificent.
The beginnings of an addiction he would never bother to moderate.
He took another breath and forced his will into that sound, just to watch her melt. Her brows slanting up, wonder and pain blending across her brow.
A wicked grin spread over lips that quivered, and he palmed the globes of her ass. Driving his cock between them, he humped the fabric of his tattered pants and pressed his weeping dick against Hathorian heat.
