Veyka’s voice slid through the mating bond, reaching out for me instinctively. My gaze snapped to her face, only to find her blue eyes wide and waiting. Glowing.
“You should still be sleeping.”
She stretched an arm overhead, lifting her breasts above the bedsheets. “Do you presume to tell me what to do?” The words were sharp, but her eyes were soft. She pulled sarcasm around her like a familiar cloak, shielding her from the torrent of emotion.
I did not miss the way she forced her lips to curve. But I also did not challenge her. She deserved to cope in whatever ways she could.
“Yes,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “And if you don’t listen, I will pin you to that bed until you exhaust yourself battling me and fall back asleep.”
The smile she’d forced began to fade. Without meaning to, I stepped closer to her, reaching out and cupping her face.
“What sort of battle are you suggesting?” she said quietly.
She arched her neck, tilting her chin so that her cheek pressed harder against the curve of my palm. All the while, her hand tugged the bed sheets down past her navel, exposing the rest of her glorious body.
“Not that sort,” I ground out, pulling my hand away, forcing myself back again even as my cock tightened. “Rest.”
“Stay.”Please.
Giving up my brooding by the window was easy when it was Veyka doing the asking.
I meant what I’d said. She needed sleep to replenish her strength after that enormous expenditure of power. She would need that strength to face the rest of this day and the war council to come. Our next meeting of the Knights of the Round table would be no less.
But when Veyka reached for me, I was powerless to resist her.
She hooked one arm around the back of my neck, pulling me down hard and fast. One knee landed on the bed beside her hip, the other leg stretching out to mold my body against hers.
Ancestors, she felt so fucking good. She arched her body into mine instantly, as greedy for the feel of me as I was for her. She didn’t go straight for my mouth, dragging her teeth over the line of my jaw instead.
She did not want tenderness.
She needed to know she was alive.
I could give her that.
I caught her wrists with my hands, pinning them down to the bed on either side of her head. Veyka’s eyes flared. I expected a saucy retort. Instead I got a feral mewl of frustration and fire.
With her hands pinned, I lowered my mouth to ravage her throat. Her skin was still cold; I’d warm it with my tongue. I licked the column of her throat where her lifeforce beat just below the skin, letting my sharpened canines drag just enough to send her hips thrusting up into mine. I caught those too, pausing only long enough to slide free my trousers before bracketing her hips with my knees.
My cock pushed urgently into the thick curls between her legs, but I did not thrust into her. While I held her hands, I let her control the pressure building between us.
Veyka seized that power readily. She circled her hips, each pass nestling my cock closer and closer to her entrance while my mouth moved down from her throat and began to worship her breasts.
With her arms pinned up overhead, the glorious white orbs lifted, her dusky pink nipples stark and firm against her pale flesh. I nuzzled each one, glorying in their heavy, fully weight before I sucked her peaked nipple into my mouth. Veyka groaned as I circled the sensitive bud with my tongue. When I nipped it between my teeth, she came off of the bed entirely.
The air between us heated with every passing second, thickening with the scent of arousal and silent demand. Veyka filled that space with moans, long and animalistic. She was no longer in her head, beyond grief or sadness or thought. Pure feeling, pure need, surged between us.
Surrounded by death, haunted by the promise of her own, Veyka needed to reaffirm that she was still among the living. Even if half her court was missing or dead or taken by thesuccubus, her oldest friend among them, we were still there. Together. Fighting.
I abandoned her breasts and slid lower, over her soft stomach, the need to taste her pussy on my tongue suddenly overwhelming.
“Arran,” she whimpered, thrusting up at me. “Now. I need you now.”
My needs could wait.
I surged up her body, burying my cock inside of her with one swift thrust.
Veyka cried out, locking her legs around my hips, and I let out a deep groan to match her.
