I reached under his cloak, stroking his upper arm. But I felt no whisper of the emerging tendrils against my fingers, only the bumpy bone and the hard scales over his right arm.
Did he even have tendrils?
“There is very little left of a fae in me,”his words echoed in my ears in rhythm with my beating heart.
Even he didn’t know what he’d become.
How lost must he feel?
How lonely a life that must be.
With a rumble of a groan under his breath, he wrapped his arms around my middle, pressing me to him. His mouth landed on my neck, his sharp fangs scraped against my skin as his gentle lips caressed it. His left hand found my breast, his thumb hunting for my nipple through the fabric of my dress.
I rubbed harder against him. He moved his hips in response, but in his own wild, desperate rhythm. I matched him, chasing the promise of an orgasm that fluttered deep in my core already. Unlike my first orgasm of tonight that had come fast and easy with only a soft coaxing of Timur’s fingers, this one demanded something stronger, firmer, harder.
And Timur gave it to me in spades. He grabbed my ass firmly, his claws digging into my flesh. The powerful thrusts of his hips glided the hard bulge of his erection against my throbbing clit with punishing force, making me forget about all the layers of fabric between us. I found just the right point of the delicious friction that had my body trembling in need.
“Feel me, Timur,” I begged, needing him to share all these amazing sensations with me.
A deep, animalistic growl was his only response. No tendrils emerged, and I could no longer hold it back. Orgasm rocked me. It might be less nuanced but more powerful than the first one, making my whole body shake.
Timur gripped me in a muscle-aching hug. His frame seemed to solidify into a rock for a moment before he came undone with a wild storm of roars and cascading shudders. His hands flexed on my hips with the sound of ripping fabric, and he jerked his hands away from me.
“Did I hurt you?” Horror tinted his voice.
I was relieved he’d found his words again after all the feral animal sounds he’d made. With the dragon satisfied for the time being, the man had returned.
I stretched against him, enjoying every point of contact between our bodies. Afterglow flooded my veins with languid warmth.
“No. I feel no pain, darling. Only pleasure. So much of it, we could’ve made a fortune if we had a client with us here,” I said with a soft laugh.
“No clients, my sweet.” He shifted in his chair, adjusting me on his lap so that my curves aligned with the softer left side of his body. “This was for you and me only. For us.”
“For us…” I echoed. “Just for you and me.”
Thirteen
Timur
Finding clients for Elaine had become much easier. I no longer had to go through my short list of acquaintances or beg, guilt, and coerce the few people in Kalmena who still talked to me.
Now, the nobles came all the way to the edge of the desert to find me, begging me to name my price and take their gold. They paid us a fortune just to have dinner with Elaine. And they paid even more if I was at dinner with her. According to them, Elaine enjoyed everything far more acutely in my presence.
“Oh look, halva!” she’d exclaimed the other night.
She was sitting on my lap while a servant of a highborn lady and her husband who paid for the dinner that night brought a tray of food to us.
“I haven’t had it in ages,” Elaine marveled. “I had a craving for it just a day ago.”
I knew she did because she’d mentioned it to me, and I made sure to pass her wish on to our clients. Everything Elaine ever wished for, she got. She should be used to it by now. Yet shestill looked so adorably surprised squinting at the dessert on the platter. She’d said once that squinting while looking at things through her eyelashes sometimes brought objects into sharper focus for her, marginally improving her impaired vision.
“Hmm,” she moaned, after taking a bite of halva. “It’s even better than I remembered. You have to try it.”
She brought a piece to my mouth. I’d told her many times that I felt no pleasure from food, but I obliged because I knew it’d bring pleasure to her, which was what really mattered. I took a bite, tasted the sweetness, sensed the texture that melted on my tongue, then swallowed it.
“And?” She gazed at me expectantly, waiting for my verdict.
“It made me thirsty,” I said.
