She didn’t speak, but those whimpers began again, in time with my thrusts, and she hadn’t looked away. Our eyes locked and she reached for me, one hand curled around my forearm, the other at my neck, her mouth open and lower lip slack.
I pounded into her so hard my thighs slapped, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Oh, God,”she breathed.
“Tell me what you want.”
“You.More.”
Shit. Her eyes rolled back as I thrust with a groan, my toes digging into the quilts, and I had to bring my other hand up to fist the quilt, wrist braced at her shoulder to give myself some leverage.
“Hold on,” I rasped.
Bren’s grip on my arm and neck tightened, then her eyes rolled back as I picked up the pace, my breath breaking in grunts.
I should have been tender tonight. Should have soothed her and reassured her. But I didn’t have it in me. Theneeddrove me forward—and now that she lay in my arms, her skin flushed, lipscurling up, and her body tightening on me as another orgasm loomed, I thought maybe that wasn’t what she’d needed either.
Sometimes the venting we needed wasn’t words. Sometimes it was toact.
Teeth gritted, praying for enough control to bring her to another climax, I called her name and a rush of delight and need washed through me. Bren arched once more, her nails digging in as she cried out, again and again, gasping my name, until both of us collapsed in a tangle of limbs and sweaty hair, panting like we’d run for hours.
She clung to my neck with one arm, every exhale puffing against my neck as we lay there, catching our breaths.
Turning to nuzzle her jaw, I kissed that sweet, salty skin and told myself I should roll off of her. But she embraced me so tightly I thought perhaps there was time.
“God, I hope we make it through this,” she whispered.
“We will,” I murmured back, stroking her hair.
For a time we simply lay there, heartbeats slowing and breathing beginning to sync.
Then, when we did part, I kept her tight against my chest. Curled my body around hers and fell asleep with the scent of her hair in my nose.
And as her body finally relaxed and she slipped into sleep, I prayed for her. Prayed for both of us. Because even though I wanted to fill her with confidence, though I believed she could excel at this, I was desperately aware that I feared for her as well. Notherfailure—mine. We had no time. No matter what tools we handed her in these last days, the truth was, she’d face this mission with little more than her survival instincts and the expectations of others playing in her favor.
In pure skills, she was a sheep among wolves. I just had to pray God saw fit to protect her from their sharp eyes. Because it wasn’t only her who went down if someone learned the truth.
And I’d follow her into hell before I’d leave her in their hands.
Duty, be damned.
18. The Eeyrie
~ BREN ~
“…It should be full of eggs, at least twenty or thirty. We have fifteen, including two we’re not sure are viable.”
Lieutenant Barak stood below us on one of the boulders that made the floor of the cavern, hands on his hips. He’d crawled into the dragon Eeyrie first to make certain it was safe—if an egg was soon to hatch, the mother would be close and might attack if a stranger touched it. But none of these were due soon.
The cavern had been chosen by the dragons because heated pools made the air warm and steamy, and kept the rocks warm even in cooler weather.
In my leathers, I was already beginning to sweat as I followed Donavyn over the rocky lip of the cave mouth and dropped down to the stony earth below.
It was a sprawling space that narrowed at the back and snaked deeper in a wide tunnel. Barak had warned me never to come here without him, unless Akhane brought me.
“Hopefully, it will be her turn to lay soon,” he said easily.
A little trill of excitement, and some fear, twisted in my chest, but I kept moving forward, towards the Furymaster, following Donavyn as he weaved between rocks and…oh.
