“I can’t hold on. Fuck, I can’t hold on,” I gasp.
“Give me your cum,” he repeats.
“I’m trying. Rath, baby—you have to pull off me if you want?—”
“Give me,” he hisses and snarls, “your cum.”
It’s only then that I realize what he’s demanding. What he’s begging for. My head drops back, and I begin to jackhammer my dick into his slit. My orgasm hits like a tidal wave, crashing over me, stealing my breath, my hearing, my sight.
I’m nothing more than rolling waves of pleasure as his body drinks what I have to give, and somewhere in the chaos, I feel him let go. He lets out a sharp cry, his claws digging into my skin as he holds me closer to him. He shudders around me, pulsing, milking me for every last drop the same way he does with his mouth.
I have just enough sense to look at him one more time before my eyes slam shut, and exhaustion takes me.
He holds me gently, touching the wounds he left on my body. The mark on my neck. The scratches on my skin. The nick on my lip from his fangs.
It will all be healed with the herb, but I’m not ready for those marks to fade, so I don’t take it yet.
“I missed this.”
“I did too…my days and nights have not been pleasurable without you in them.”
I peer up at him lazily, too tired and worn out to fight this anymore. “Same.”
He doesn’t say anything after that. I want him to beg me to come back, but he doesn’t. I lie there, letting myself feel him against me, memorizing each moment so I can replay it in my darkest hours.
I have no idea where this ends, but I really don’t want to find myself broken. I don’t know if my fragile heart can handle it. My finger drags over the metal band encircling his forearm.
“When do you get this off?”
“Tomorrow at the tribunal.”
“What happens at the tribunal?”
“They will decide my punishment.”
I close my eyes against those words. Hispunishment. “Do you have any idea what that will be?”
“I do not.”
I lean up and stare down at him. “I’m really sorry, Rath. I wish…” I wet my lips, and his eyes soften. “I wish we’d never met sometimes, you know? Everything would be easier for you.”
“Do not speak this.”
“Too late.”
His lips curl up, and his finger brushes against my bottom lip. “I am glad I met you. My life was rigid before, boring. You brought new meaning to my every day. You made me understand what it is to be human. Truly human.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was an insult,” I tease.
He huffs and drags a touch along the shell of my ear, making me shiver. Then he moves his fingers to my jaw, up to circle my eyes, and then over my lips. I realize then he’s touching me in all the places I’m so visibly human.
And he’s not.
“I do not think I understood or appreciated beauty until I met you.”
That feels important. It feels like a lot. Like three words I’ve wanted to say but have been too afraid that he won’t understand the weight and gravity of them.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
