“It’s a pack house,” Rath says, snagging a wool blanket off the back of a couch. He wraps it around my shoulders even as he turns and lowers me onto a kitchen table.
Looming over me, he slides his hands down my arms, ghosting his thumbs across the sides of my breasts and pulling a shudder out of me. His hot mouth covers mine again, tongue coaxing me to tangle with his as he shoves my wet dress up my thighs, then tugs off my underwear. I cling to his shoulders, already panting and trying to pull his body back to me, back fully against me.
“Zaya?” he asks, shifting his lips and tongue to my neck as he checks again that I’m with him.
“Please, please,” I whimper, arching my neck to give him access. I’m completely overwhelmed yet somehow not full enough. Not yet.
I plaster my lips over his, running my hands over every part of him that I can reach. He captures the back of my neck but doesn’t try to tame the wildness of my kiss.
Sliding the fingers of his free hand up my inner thigh — causing more shudders to rack through me — he presses the tips of those fingers against my soaking-wet pussy, swirling over my entrance, then coating my clit in more of my own lubricant.
I tremble under his touch — under the press of all the essence radiating from him — but I still need more. More skin, more contact. I reach for the zipper of my dress, trying to get it off me while still kissing him.
Rath slides one finger inside me, pressing the pad of his thumb to my clit. He pumps once, crooking his finger up on the way out. Then he repeats that, but with two fingers.
Trembling, I nearly fucking come. I’m right there, teetering on the almost-painful edge, but it’s still not enough. I’m half aware that it’s fear and frustration suddenly fueling this desire to anchor a bond separately from what’s been stolen from us. I have the dragon, but I want the man too. I want the bond, and some part of the future held within it, that was tucked away in my aunt’s armoire like a fucking trophy that she —
Fingers stilling, but thankfully not withdrawing from my core, Rath deliberately snags my gaze with his.
I don’t make him check in with me a third time, whispering, “We can be slow next time.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. Essence shifts through his words, as if even only for this moment, he can command that future into being. “And neither are you.”
“But …” I almost sob. “Please … I …” I try to palm his cock, but he’s tall enough that even bent over me, I can’t quite reach.
Desire deepening his voice even further, he says, “I need you to come first.”
“Together,” I pant, almost pleading.
Shaking his head with a growl — still obviously trying to control himself — he tugs my half-open dress off my arm, then roughly yanks it down to expose my breasts. He shifts his hand down from my neck, pressing up between my shoulder blades to get me to arch my back.
I do so eagerly. And I’m rewarded by that hot mouth closing over my breast, tongue rasping against my nipple.
Wrapping my legs around him tightly, I dig my heels into his ass. Then I slowly lower myself fully onto the table. Rath follows, his mouth on my other breast now, and his fingers resume teasing my clit.
Still too slow, way, way too slow.
I lift, shimmy, and twist — and apparently the universe is on my side today, as I manage to get the tip of his jutting cock notched at my entrance.
Desire shudders through him, forcing him to brace the hand not working my clit on the table beside my head.
Using the underside of that arm as an anchor, I slide farther onto his cock until my ass is hanging off the table.
He growls.
I moan, arching up into him in an attempt to align our bodies, panting into his chest. “I need you. There’s this empty space in me. I need —”
Rath shifts his arm fully under my back and thrusts into me, stretching me, filling me, and igniting all my sensitive nerves. I garble relieved but nonsensical words into his skin.
He thrusts a second time, getting me better situated on the table as he does. Still so careful not to hurt me, even as pleasure aches between us.
Rath presses his face against my temple. “You don’t beg me, Tempest. You never have to beg. I thought you were playing.”
“I was, but …” I lose my words as he drags the length of himself almost completely out of me and then slowly pushes all the way back in.
He presses his thumb to my clit again, shifting his other hand to my breast, tweaking and rolling my nipple. I collapse onto the table, unable to hold myself up as he steadily and very thoroughly fucks me exactly how I want. Caging me in, surrounding me, shutting out the rest of the world.
I sink into the pleasure sharpening, then radiating through my lower belly, wrapping my hands around each of his wrists to anchor myself, to hold onto him at three points.
