He was trying to remind me of what I had to live for.
I needed no reminding. I felt it with every breath—the love I bore for my friends, who I’d kept so carefully at a distance but had managed to worm their way into my heart anyway. My subjects, whose faces were written with awe and fear and adoration as I’d lead them through the mountains to safety.
And Arran.
A thousand years spent in his arms, even that would not be enough. Not when he was my world. He was everything.
He nipped at my clit again and I did exactly as he said. I tangled my fingers in his hair, pulling hard enough to tear, and threw back my head to the gray sky.
“I’m coming,” I moaned.
“Louder.”
“I’m coming. Ancestors, Arran, yes. I’m going to come all over your face, fuck. I need—”
I didn’t get to say it. He rammed two fingers inside of me, curled the tips, and I came in a flood of juice that covered his hand, his face, and splashed down onto the frosted ground. But he didn’t stop there. He sucked hard on my clit while his fingers went deeper, again, fingertips over that sensitive spot inside of me that I’d never been able to reach on my own, until another waterfall spilled from me, coating us both in my pleasure.
Arran lapped up every drop, licking the inside of my thighs, his fingers, the trembling lips of my pussy. “Good girl,” he murmured against my folds as he slicked his tongue along my slit one last time.
My thick thighs were powerful, but even they could not hold me after climaxes like that.
He rose, my skirt fisted in one hand and my glistening pussy bare to the cold. But he wasn’t gone for long, his body covering mine, his strong arms keeping me upright.
Pressed against my bare belly again, his cock was even hotter than before. I was desperate for him.
I closed my fingers around him, glorying in the thickness as I stroked from base to tip. He thrust into my hand, rewarding me with a moan of his own. His crown was already wet with the first droplets of seed. I smoothed it over his head, then liftedmy thumb and sucked it into my mouth, savoring the salt-tinged sweetness on my tongue.
But before I could guide him inside, he shoved my hand away.
The hand that had kneaded my ass rose.
His fingers closed around my throat. “You will live, Veyka.”
Even now, I wanted to argue. I opened my mouth. His grip tightened.
“You will live, because I say so. Because I will not let you go.” The beast spoke now. The wolf. The primal part of Arran that had earned him the name Brutal Prince.
He squeezed tighter. I tried to suck in a breath, but he cut it off.
Arran was in control. He would not let me go.
Black clawed at the edges of my vision. Tears squeezed out from the corners of my eyes.
“You will live,” he said again. He held me too tight, there were no words I could say. My lips formed the word.Yes.
Arran slammed me down onto his cock.
The second he was fully sheathed inside of me, he released my throat. “Breathe.”
I sucked in a desperate breath as Arran exploded within me. My inhale became a scream as his seed flooded my pussy, searing hot against my core. I came with him, clung to him as I rode out the waves of my orgasm.
Tears flowed freely down my face as I buried my face in his throat. “I love you,” I heard myself say. Sob. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
He lowered us to our knees before either of us lost the ability to stand. I knew he had no capacity to speak, but I felt the beast’s deep rumble in my soul.You are mine.
Usually, I was content to stay wrapped in Arran’s arms forever. But the human realm was fucking cold.
No one expected us to return to that hilltop. Not that I would have felt any shame in going back, Arran’s scent coating my skin, a potent reminder of the vows he’d made. But I knew most of them well enough. They would not waste time waiting around for a decision.
