Greedy, I shift my hips and push back against him, taking more andmore until he’s buried deep. My reward ishim,the lewd curse that trips off his lips, and his shuddering gasp.
Gripping my waist, he begins to move. His thrusts are shallow at first, but they grow longer and slower, plunging deeper and harder. He rolls his hips, taking his time with me, as if learning my body with his cock.
He reaches around and touches the most sensitive part of me. My body clenches tight from the sensation, making him moan as he flicks his fingertip back and forth, pleasuring me while he fucks.
But again, my orgasm rises, threatening to end this. And again, as though he senses the change in me and my body, Alexus slows, then spreads his knees and sits back on his heels.
With my heart pounding, he curls his arm around my waist and lifts me up against him, my back to his front, his cock still buried inside me. The rune on my chest warms as he lifts his hand to that gentle heat, delicately touching my mark as he moves his hips.
“There is magick even in this,” he whispers against my ear. “If you close your eyes and search, you’ll see the threads of my desire for you. We’re connected now. You just need to draw those threads inside you, and we can tangle our magick. Even though my power is weak, it will still make this night like nothing you’ve ever known.”
Gods. Tangling our magick? I have no idea what that means, but I do as I’m told.
The threads are easier to find than I imagined. They burn brightly as a star, and when I reach for them with my mind, they seep into me like sunlight.
“Got them?” he asks, and I nod. “Good. I’m going to kiss you now,” he whispers, tilting my head until his breath is on my lips. “And I swear to every god who has ever lived, you’re going to feel me everywhere.”
He brushes his mouth over mine, the taste of our sex sweet on his lips. Hungry, he sweeps his tongue deep, kissing me with the same passion as when he kissed me between my legs.
A glimmer of magick and pleasure skitters over my skin, making my body clench around Alexus’s hardness. The intensity almost shatters me, the binding of our power, tangling and twisting like lengths of silver silk.
I hadn’t thought two people could be any closer than the intimacy that happens during lovemaking, but I feel Alexus Thibault throughout every speck of stardust that makes me,me.
He turns my chin forward. Our glistening reflection and his penetrating emerald gaze stare back at me in the arched window across the room.
“Look how breathtaking you are.” He traces the witch’s marks spiraling around my breast, then lowers his hand to my clit again. “Watch what you do to me.”
Then there’s nothing in the world but us. Nothing but the way we fit together—bodiesandmagick—the way he takes me so thoroughly. One moment he’s clutching my breast, and the next, he’s teasing me between my legs, his magick singing in my blood. It’s a cruel dance, one he prolongs, sending me to the brink of rapture again and again, our every movement captured in the glass across the room.
I am clay beneath his skilled hands, changing, as though he’s molding me. Not back to the woman I was, but to someone new—someone damaged but unbroken, wounded and yet healed. I’d feared how he might change me, and yet he reminds me of who I am and who I can be with every caress, every kiss, every thrust, our magick entwined, bright as a beacon, showing me parts of myself long-buried, parts of myself unknown. I like who I am with him.
Who I’m becoming.
Arching back, I wrap my arm around his neck and writhe on him, that ache inside me building to a final breaking point. Alexus moves harder, murmuring my name like a holy enchantment.
This time, he doesn’t stop touching me. Masterfully, he rolls his fingertip across my clit and lingers. Those merciless circles and his pounding rhythm begin to unravel me.
He moves faster, thrusting so hard and so deep that I taste his magick, sense it gliding across my skin, until I don’t know where he ends and I begin.
He’s too much. Too consuming.
He’severything.
“Come for me, Raina,” he begs on a shredded breath, touching me. Touchingus. “Let me feel your sweet pussy coming for me.”
Gods above and below, my body obeys. Pleasure cuts through me, lightning flashing like fire in my veins, my core filling with liquid heat as I spasm around his hardness. It’s as though I slip outside myself, the connection to ecstasy so intense and thrilling that—for those long, wonder-filled moments—utter bliss is all I feel.
No sooner than I begin the quivering fall back to reality, Alexus grips my breast, his other arm tightening around my waist. There’s so much power in him, though contained. Even now, it’s almost unbearable, but I still want to set it free. I want to experience what it’s like when he’s inside me and brimming with magick.
“Stop me if I hurt you,” he whispers against my neck.
My stomach tightens with anticipation. I shake my head—because there’s no way I’ll stop him—and again, his smile tickles my skin.
He lowers his strong hands to my hips, and euphoria rises once more. His release builds, throbbing so hard inside me.
Dark desire washes through my veins as I train my eyes on the window. The fierceness of his claiming is stunning to behold, his muscles tensing and flexing as he thrusts and thrusts, each onslaught jolting my body, stoking my arousal anew.
“Fuck, Raina. Fuck, yes.” His fingers bite into my hips, and in the window, with snow falling beyond, he tips his head back and moans so loudly I’m certain someone has to hear it. All that silky black hair slips over his shoulder as a strainedgodsleaves his lips.
