I roll her onto her back again.
I spread her legs with my knees, settling between them with a sigh of contentment.
I look down at her, my expression unreadable in the flickering firelight.
“You are beautiful,” I say, and the words are a surprise. A raw, unexpected vulnerability. “So beautifully human. So fragile.”
I lean down and kiss her.
It is a slow, deep, possessive kiss. A kiss that claims, not just her mouth, but her breath, her thoughts, her very soul.
When I pull back, my golden eyes are burning with an intensity that makes her breath catch.
“I will never let you go,” I say, and it is a promise.
Then I begin to move again.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
A deep, grinding rhythm.About reminding her body who it belongs to.
Her body, traitorous, wanton thing, responds. A soft sigh escapes her lips. Her hips lift to meet me.
A low growl of approval rumbles in my chest.
“That’s it, my Veli,” I rasp. “Take your King.”
I move inside her for a long time, a slow, inexorable tide of pleasure and possession that wears down her last defenses.I watch her face, my gaze intense, possessive, as if I am memorizing every expression, every gasp, every shiver.
I am not just fucking her.
I am claiming her in the most fundamental way possible, carving a place for myself inside her body and her soul.
Chapter 24
Keandra
The quiet after is what breaks me.
Not the words themselves. Not at first. In the moment, everything moved too fast and too hot for me to sort it. The force of him. The certainty. The way he held me like nothing in him doubted where I belonged. I had felt wanted. More than wanted. Claimed in a way that lit up my whole body and pulled answers from it before my mind could slow anything down.
That is what makes this worse.
Because I did enjoy it.
I cannot even lie to myself about that. I liked the weight of him. The intensity. The way he took control so completely that for a little while, I did not have to think. Did not have to choose. Did not have to hold myself together with both hands the way I have for years. I liked how he pinned me inside his attention until there was nothing left in the world except heat, breath, and the rough certainty of his voice.
That should have made the rest easier to bear. Instead, it leaves me open for it.
Now the fire is lower. The tent is quieter. His arm is around me, heavy and warm, his body settled into the deep satisfaction of a male who has taken something precious and means to keep it. He kisses my temple and murmurs again about daughters. Sons. Beautiful daughters. Strong sons. The words slide into me now that everything else has gone quiet enough for me to hear them properly.
And they do not land the way he means them to.
They land like proof.
Proof that every road here leads back to the same place. My body.
