“Spread your legs,” he commands, running his warm, rough palms over the curves of my ass. “Nice and wide.”
As I widen my stance, Alexus pulls my cheeks apart, exposing every hidden part of me. A wave of vulnerability and excitement washes over my skin and through my bones, two incongruent feelings at war inside me. There’s something about being taken from behind by Alexus, something that makes my heart beat harder with the knowing that, like this, I have no control. Like this, Alexus claims with animalistic need, a knowledge that makes my pulse pound like a drum in my ears.
For an excruciating moment, nothing happens. I can sense the starlights hovering at my hips, and feel their warmth. He likes to see me. Likes to take his time torturing me as he memorizes my body.
One hand leaves my ass while the other wraps itself in my hair, winding my locks around and around like a too-long rein. For a pregnant moment, I wait, thinking I will feel him at my entrance, that he will finally drive his cock into me after these many weeks without him. Instead, the hand in my hair tightens, and a stinging slap races across my backside. Then another, on the opposite side.
Gasping at the delicious pain, I go lightheaded, fists gripping the trellis buried beneath the soft jasmine. Every drop of blood in my body rushes to meet my skin where I’m certain pink handprints will form. Oddly enough, I want them to. I want to see evidence of him on my body, more than just the rune. I want to be so thoroughly marked by Alexus Thibault that anyone in the world could look at me and see him everywhere.
He leans into me, his erection nestled hard and warm against my ass, the soft hair on his chest tickling my shoulder blades as he gently draws my head back, angling my face to look upon his. Little starlights flicker between us, highlighting the golden flecks in his eyes and shadowing the strong planes of his handsome face.
“Mine.” He kisses me softly as he caresses my breast. “You know that, yes? You are mine, mon grah.”
I nod against his grip, tears dampening my eyes, because it’s true. It’s the last thing I would’ve ever imagined when I held the God Knife to his throat while Silver Hollow burned to cinders around us. But now it’s the one truth I know as well as I know my name, a truth that resonates so deep within I feel it in my soul.
“Now hold on.” He bites at my lip. “Because there’s no fucking way I can be gentle tonight.”
I stretch my fingers, and then clench the wooden slats covering the wall again, the vines cool and slick with sea mist rolling in off the waves. I brace myself for the assault I know is coming, but there’s nothing that could prepare me for the feeling that shatters through me when Alexus Thibault grips my hips and mercifully penetrates to the hilt in a single thrust that drives a bolt of tantalizing magick and relief through my core.
A deep groan leaves him as he tries to push in even deeper, causing a ragged breath to tear from between my lips, like he’s telling meSee? No one can reach you here. No one but me.
You. Are. Mine.
“I could stay just like this for eternity.” His voice is husky, the edges dark with desire. “Buried inside you. I fucking swear.”
Not that I would mind. He feels so good I can hardly think, so good I’m certain that with a slip of my hand between my legs and a few deep grinds on his engorged tip, I would fracture from bliss. There isn’t a part of me he doesn’t fill, not a place where my body isn’t tested and tempted by his sheer size. I feel stretched, filled to the brim with his throbbing cock—and his magick.
He circles his hips, still planted so deep, and another wave of magickal pleasure chases through my blood. “When I come inside you,” he says, the hand in my hair tightening, “you’ll feel this cliffside tremor as I roar your name.”
Oh, gods. There isn’t a single thing I want more than to see him ruined by me again, but the thought of him roaring anything sparks worry. What if someone hears us?
That thought is quickly dissolved as Alexus begins to move in and out of me in long slides, holding onto my naked hip with his free hand. It’s only slow for a few moments, just enough time to give my body a chance to prepare for the powerful onslaught that follows.
“Fuck, you’re so swollen for me,” he groans, grinding and thrusting, the hard slap of our skin resounding through the night as his tempo increases. “So tight and warm and wet I can barely stand it, Raina.”
He slows again to temper his orgasm, but I push back against him and pump along his length, hard and fast. He said he couldn’t be gentle, but I still feel the ghost of his restraint, and I want him undone. I want this to be utterly destructive for us both. I want to wake up come morning sore and aching and bruised only to see claw marks down his back, crescent moons carved into his biceps.
He curses, over and over, remaining still as I ride him, the bite of pain at my scalp from his grip on my hair driving me to fuck him as brutally as I can.
Again, the heat of the starlights brush over my ass, their warmth then radiating across my sensitive flesh. “I need you to see this,” he says, his voice almost pained. “I need you to see how godsdamn beautiful you are.”
My stomach clenches, and my core aches. I can only imagine what he’s seeing, the view of us united, of my body taking all I can from him. Before I can even form the image in my mind, he pulls out and turns me around, pressing me back against the jasmine. I slide my hands over the curved, thick planes of his chest, over the mass of bulging muscle at his shoulders, and up into his hair. I’m hyper-aware of the chills on his skin, and the way his trousers sit low on his hips, his hard cock twitching between us.
Alexus folds a brawny arm around me and lifts. Instinctively, I wrap my legs around his narrow waist. It isn’t until he works one arm under my knee, followed by the other, that I realize what he’s doing. Suddenly, I’m being held in the air, my shoulders pressed to the flowers, my legs spread wide open for the ancient sorcerer standing between them.
His starlights twinkle and flutter, gathering into a soft orb of golden light between us. “Put my cock in your pussy,” he orders, and I, as ever, obey.
He cups my ass and curves my hips upward as I angle him toward my entrance. The feel of him pushing inside me is overwhelming, our magick and our bond humming with the sweetest vibration through every part of me. But I am wholly unprepared for what seeing him pumping in and out of my body does to me, how the sight of his stiff, unyielding cock, slick with my desire, completely annihilates me.
I move my hand to my clit, tugging upward so he can see as I chase the need building there. Alexus watches with that green gaze pinned to me, but not for long.
“Gods, Raina. I can’t…” He lifts his eyes, and I see the plea there.
He’s begging for mercy.
His mouth crashes into mine so hard our teeth clash. Neither of us even hesitates. We plunder each other’s mouths as he pounds into me almost violently, exactly the way I wanted, hard enough to bruise. In seconds, though, even that is not enough.
“Arms around my neck,” he says, just as he’d said our first night here when he carried me from the thermal pool.
