A shudder quivers through me at his words, the image they create one of him spreading me wide after he’s finished with me, his molten gaze hungry. It’s a brave move, but I lower my mental wards so he can hear what it’s doing to me. What it’s making me want.
Gripping fistfuls of linen, he helps me tug his tunic off his broad back and over his head. I’m not surprised when he stands and picks me up, forcing my legs around his waist as he carries me toward the bed. He all but warned me with a thought a moment before.
I’m still dressed, I tell him.
He laughs low in his chest.I’ll deal with that issue soon enough, little bird.
He lays me down and crawls onto the bed between my legs. Only one glance is spared at my day gown, a glance that says it offends him, before he grabs hold of the material at the neckline and jerks, ripping it clear down the center of the bodice. The effort is powerful enough to jolt a breath from my lungs.
When the tear catches on the seam, he growls in irritation, then pushes up to his knees and finishes destroying the dress, muscles rippling as he tears it away from me, revealing nothing but nakedness beneath.
Utterly roused by the animal in him, I take in the view. The curves of muscle across his shoulders and down his arms. The sweeping fullness of his chest. The veins traveling the length of his forearms, leading to the strong hands and fingers gripping my thighs.
My attention drifts lower, though, and my mouth, parched before his blood soothed it, now waters as I linger a look on the outline of that thick, long cock pressing against the laces of his trousers, straining them apart.
Hungry as ever, I meet his gold gaze, which darkens to the color of whiskey as he looks down at me. Slowly, he leans in and drags those fangs along the inside of my thigh. He exhales, and a warm breath caresses my skin, forcing a thought into my mind.
Gods, I need your mouth closer.
He answers that plea by burying his nose in the small triangle of hair at my apex and inhaling deeply. “Fuck, Nephele. The things I’m going to do to you are absolutely depraved.”
With my pulse skittering, he drapes that big body over me, his forearms resting on either side of my head, and stares into my eyes.
Finally skin to skin, I see the wolf in him staring back at me with a look that promises a calculated attack. Ready to become his prey, I sink my fingers into his hair.
“Are you certain you want this?” he asks, his deep voice low and rough with need.
I roll my hips against him. Against all that hardness pressing between my legs. “Yes. You don't know how much.”
“Or was it the blood?” he adds after a moment of hesitation.
When I blink out of the haze surrounding me, I notice his contemplative expression. But though the answer feels as though it should be obvious, it isn’t so easy to reply. Because now that he’s asked, I honestly don’t know. I questioned this very thing about him just moments before.
Neri rests his forehead against mine and sighs. “Have you had birthbane recently?”
That question hits me like a hammer to the temple. How had I not considered that? Had I been that caught up in the moment—or in a blood haze—that I would take such a risk?
“Not since before we left Winterhold,” I answer honestly. “I often don’t need it. My body just doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. And I didn’t need it for anything else at the time.”
“All right. That’s okay.” He takes a deep, calming breath. “As hard as it is to fucking say this, we probably need to figure things out before we do this anyway. It wouldn’t be right for me to take you until we know if what just happened had anything to do with the fact that you ingested blood or if it has something to do with our curse. And I fear it did.”
My body all but screams as he makes to get up, and I hold him to me. “You get a conscience now? Now that I could die from want?”
It’s weak, but a smile curves the corner of his lips. “I don’t want you to regret anything with me. And you certainly don’t want a godling in that little belly of yours. Understand that, like it or not, once I give in and join with you, I’m going totakefor as long as I can, which is more extensive than you realize.” He leans into my ear. “I’ll be running down your legs when it’s over, Nephele. I will have consumed you.”
My heart trips over itself, and a chill races over my skin. “You can’t talk to me like that and then just leave, wolf.”
He crooks a dark brow. “This coming from the woman who set me up for atestthat left me raging hard. You had no intention of finishing things, you little trickster. It wasn’t until this” —he holds up his healed finger— “that you decided you needed my cock inside you no matter what. So perhaps it’s my turn to test things.”
Gasping, I shove him back and sit up, grabbing his finger. The deep red gash is gone.
We look at one another.
“It worked. It took you longer to heal after your fight with Alexus, yes?”
He studies his unmarked fingertip with a frown. “Yes. It took days for the bruising to go away. But this could be a result of time as well. I was newly resurrected then.” He lifts his stare and lowers his hand, casually resting it on my very naked hip, as though it belongs there. “We do need to test things before we’re standing in front of everyone tonight looking like fools because we don’t go anywhere when the aether is called. If I can sift at all, then I suppose I’m going to need to eat a fucking bucket of Mari’s blood sludge.” He glances at my lip, where there’s nothing left of the cut save for a tender place, and I hear the words that would naturally come after that.Or your blood.Only he doesn’t say them. Instead, he adds, “We need to test a location with at least a little distance to make me feel somewhat better about this. Somewhere we can return from on foot if the aether doesn’t hold around me, and if you, for some reason, can’t sift us back.”
I sigh, thinking, and the answer enters our minds simultaneously. “The secret room at the barracks,” we say in unison.
