“Then find a place.” I pull back just enough to meet his eyes. Gray and turbulent, filled with something hungry and barely controlled. “I don’t care where. I just need—” My voice catches. “I need to know we’re alive. I need to feel it.”
He doesn’t answer with words. His hand closes around my wrist, and then he’s pulling me—not toward the keep, but along the shore, toward the tumbled rocks of the Eastern Collapse where boulders have fallen from the cliffs above to create a maze of shadowed alcoves.
I stumble after him, my boots slipping on wet stone, my heart pounding in a way that has nothing to do with fear. The rocks close around us—black volcanic stone worn smooth by centuries of waves, cold and damp and utterly private. The sounds of the keep fade behind us, replaced by the rhythm of the sea against rock.
He backs me against a boulder. The stone is freezing through my wet clothes, rough against my shoulder blades, and I don’t care. I pull him down, and when our mouths meet, there’s nothing gentle about it.
This is hunger. Pure and raw. His tongue slides against mine, tasting of salt and survival, and I open for him with a moan I couldn’t stop if I tried. His hands frame my face, tilting my head back to deepen the kiss, and heat floods through me despite the cold—pooling low in my belly, making my skin flush beneath my wet clothes.
We break apart, breathing hard. His eyes are wild, dark and burning with something that makes my breath catch. I’ve seen him fight. Seen him face down the dead without flinching. But this—this raw need etched across his features—is more dangerous than any battle.
“Tell me to stop.” His voice is a growl against my throat. “If you want to stop, tell me now.”
“Don’t you dare stop.” I yank at his armor, fingers clumsy with cold and urgency. “If you stop, I’ll kill you myself.”
FOURTEEN
AVIORA
Asound rumbles from his chest—half laugh, half something darker. His fingers work at the laces of my borrowed leather vest, loosening them with a dexterity that surprises me. The wet leather falls away. Then the shirt beneath, peeled up and over my head until I’m bare from the waist up, my nipples pebbling in the cold air.
He goes still. Just looks at me—chest heaving, hands hovering an inch from my skin, his gaze traveling over me with an intensity that makes me want to squirm.
“Zoric.” His name comes out breathless. Impatient. “Touch me.”
His hands close over my breasts. Rough palms, calloused fingers, and the contrast of his scarred skin against my softness sends a shudder through me. He cups and squeezes, thumbs brushing over my hardened nipples, and the sensation arrows straight to my core.
“Fuck.” The word escapes me on a gasp. His mouth finds my neck—kissing, biting, sucking marks I’ll feel for days—and I arch into him, my hands fisting in his hair. He’s still mostly dressed, his armor and leather between us, and suddenly that feels unbearable.
“Off.” I tug at his straps, his buckles. “I want to feel you.”
He pulls back long enough to shed his armor, his shirt. Scarred muscle and weathered skin, covered in the history of violence, I want to map with my tongue. His chest is broad, his stomach ridged, and lower—I follow the trail of dark hair that disappears beneath his waistband, see the thick ridge straining against the leather.
My mouth goes dry. My thighs clench.
He catches me looking. His expression changes—vulnerability bleeding through the hunger—and then he’s on me again, his mouth claiming mine as his hands work at the laces of my pants. I return the favor, our fingers tangling and fumbling until finally, finally, we’re skin to skin.
He lifts me. Like I weigh nothing. My back presses against cold stone as my legs wrap around his waist, and the feel of him—hard and hot and pressed right against my center—makes us both groan.
“Aviora.” My name comes out broken. Reverent. He says it like a prayer, like a curse, like something he’s been trying not to say for days. His hips rock forward, sliding his length through my wetness, and pleasure sparks through me.
“Yes.” I pull his mouth back to mine. “Please. Zoric. I need?—”
He reaches between us. Positions himself. And then he pushes inside me with one long, slow thrust that steals the breath from my lungs.
I bite down on his shoulder to stifle the cry that tears from my throat. He fills me completely—stretches me until pleasure blurs into something sharper. He’s big. I knew he would be. But knowing and feeling are different things, and the reality of him inside me, splitting me open, is overwhelming in the best possible way.
For a moment, neither of us moves. We just breathe. Hold each other. Feel the reality of our impossible survival written in the place where our bodies join.
Then he starts to move.
It’s not gentle. I don’t want gentle. I want the bruising grip of his hands on my hips, the scrape of stone against my back, the way each thrust sends shockwaves through my entire body. He fucks me like he fights—ruthless, relentless, with a single-minded intensity that leaves no room for thought.
“Harder.” The word tears out of me. “Zoric—harder?—”
He growls against my throat and obeys. His hips snap forward, driving into me with enough force to shove me up the boulder, and the new angle makes me see stars. I cling to his shoulders, my nails raking down his back, leaving marks that match the ones he’s sucking into my neck.
“So fucking tight.” His voice is ragged. “You feel—gods, Aviora?—”
