A single roll of my hips, slow and deliberate, adjusting to the fullness of him, and the sound that leaves his throat is not a growl so much as something dragged up from somewhere far deeper than instinct—primal, wrecked, barely human. His hands tighten on my hips hard enough that I know without looking the bruises will be spectacular. When he pulls back just far enough that I register the drag of him against every nerve ending inside me before driving forward again, the rhythm that follows is not gentle by any definition that has ever existed.
“Fuck! I’m trying not to break you.” He thrusts deep and punishing, each one slamming home hard enough to force the breath from my chest in sharp, involuntary bursts that I cannot control or soften.
“I can take it. Just don’t you fucking stop!” The sound of skin against skin fills the room, layered with the creak of the bed frame and the ragged, torn quality of my breathing as I match him, lifting my hips to meet every stroke, wrapping my legs tighter around his waist, pulling him deeper with each one until the impact reverberates through my bones and settles in my teeth. His grip shifts, one hand releasing my hip to slide up my side and fist in my hair, yanking my head back to bare my throat entirely, and his mouth finds the bite mark he left earlier, still tender, still raw at the edges, and presses his lips against it as he moves. The contrast between the brutal force driving through his body and the almost aching gentleness of his mouth against the wound cracks something open in my chest that has nothing to do with the physical.
Ice blooms across my skin in thin, intricate patterns wherever his fingers press, frost tracing the lines of his grip on my hip,skating along the curve of my waist, threading through the hair splayed across the pillow beneath my head. The cold should sting but it doesn’t, not when it is chased immediately by the heat of his body covering mine. The sensation of both at once, his dragon bleeding through every point of contact, marking me in ways that go far beyond bruises and bite marks, sends electricity jolting through my nervous system hard enough to make my thighs lock tighter around him.
“Harder!” I gasp, and the word barely makes it past my teeth before he delivers on it, adjusting the angle until every thrust strikes the place inside me that has been coiling tighter with every stroke, the one that whites out my vision and drags sounds from my chest that have stopped being words. Sharp gasps and broken cries are torn free by the sheer force of sensation building toward something that cannot be stopped, only endured, only surrendered to.
His hand releases my hair and drops to my throat, closing around it with a pressure that is not choking but absolute, claiming and possessive, holding me pinned beneath the full weight of what he is while his rhythm turns relentless and unforgiving. The ice intensifies around his fingers, frost racing up the tendons of his forearm as his control fractures further, the dragon surging closer to the surface with every thrust. The cold kiss of it against my pulse makes my heart slam harder against his palm until the pressure of it becomes its own kind of sensation, adrenaline and want flooding through me in equal measure.
I rake my nails down his shoulders hard enough to leave furrows that bleed freely, red lines that sear bright against his skin before frost traces their edges, and the sound he makes is satisfaction, deep, rough, and barely restrained. His grip on my throat tightens by a single, deliberate degree, and his hips drive forward with enough force to push me up the mattress,the friction of sheets against my back, a roughness that adds to everything else until sensation is layered on sensation, and there is no separating any of it.
“I’m so fucking close,” I manage, and the words come out wrecked, barely audible over the sound of him moving inside me. His response is to release my throat entirely and drive his arm beneath my hip, lifting me and changing the angle so completely that the next thrust hits deep enough to knock a sound out of me that borders on a scream. The new angle makes every stroke land harder, deeper, the pressure building inside me with a momentum that has stopped being something I can ride and become something I can only be carried by.
His free hand finds my wrist, then the other, and pins both above my head against the mattress with a single grip that makes it clear there is no pulling free. The loss of control over my own body should frighten me, but instead it unlocks something, strips away the last pretense that this is anything other than exactly what it is. I stop fighting to hold on and take everything he gives me, my body arching and shaking beneath his with a responsiveness that is not submission but hunger, pure, uncomplicated, and entirely mine.
“Eyes on me when you come, Roxy,” he demands, the ice traces the edges of the bruises his fingers leave around my wrists, branding me in a way that will still be visible days from now. The knowledge that I will carry these marks on my skin like evidence carved into me by three hundred years of denied wanting finally released, sends heat pooling through me so sharply that my hips buck against him involuntarily.
The pressure has been building for longer than I can track, coiling tighter with every stroke, every shift of his hips, every place where ice meets heat against my skin, until it is no longer building so much as vibrating. A tension so dense it has become its own kind of pain, sitting at the very edge of something thatwillnotease or release when it breaks but will shatter outright, taking everything with it.
It breaks.
Not gradually.
Not with a warning.
It detonates through me in a single, blinding wave that starts at my core and tears outward until every nerve in my body fires simultaneously. My back arches violently off the mattress, spine bowing until my shoulders leave the sheets, thighs locking around him hard enough to trap him where he is, and the sound that leaves my mouth is raw, uncontrolled, and devastating in its honesty. Every wall I have ever built, every defense I have ever constructed, every pretense I have ever maintained since the moment I stumbled into this place, is reduced to nothing in the space of a single breath that I cannot even hear over the blood pounding in my ears.
“Jesus, Raze!” I scream out his name as I climax, my pussy clenching tight around him when I shatter completely, coming undone.
His body reacts instantly, his hips jerking in response, when he follows seconds later. A single, brutal thrust that buries him as deep as his body will allow, and the sound he makes is nothing I have heard from him before. Not a growl, not a roar, but a simple breath dragged out of him by force, rough, ragged, and breaking at the edges in a way that strips away every pretense he has ever built around himself.
Raze’s body shudders against mine, a full-body tremor that runs from his shoulders to his hips, and the ice that has been threading across his skin all night flares bright for one instant and then dissolves all at once in a wave of warmth that floods outward from every point where his body touches mine. For one suspended, breathless moment, the cold that has defined him since the curse took hold simply does not exist.
“Mine!” he roars, then it’s like his body is spent as he collapses on top of me, breathing heavily as we lie here together in the aftermath.
The room holds nothing but our breathing, slowing in unison. Gradually, he pulls out, spinning us as he gathers me against his chest without a word, his arms wrapping around me with a tightness that borders on desperate, like he is memorizing the weight of me, the warmth, the steady beat of my heart against his ribs. His face presses into my hair, and the breath that leaves him is slow, shaking, and carries the vulnerability of someone who has just surrendered something he never intended to give.
Some things exist beyond words.
And without saying anything, we both close our eyes, falling asleep in each other’s arms.
The Next Morning
Gray light filters through the barred window in thin beams that land across tangled sheets and the bruises scattered across my skin like a map of everything that happened in the early hours of the morning. My body aches in ways that are entirely new, muscles protesting movement while something deeper hums with a warmth that has nothing to do with temperature.
As I shift on my bed, I open my eyes to see that Raze is no longer with me.
Am I surprised?No.
Am I hurt?Maybe a little.
Exhaling, I slowly move to stand, my body screaming at me as I take in all my fresh injuries from the incredible sex I had.
Sex with an ice dragon.
That was not on my bingo card for this year, I can tell you that much!
