“Feral—I’m?—”
She came hard, crying out, her whole body shaking as she clenched around my fingers. I eased her through it, slowing my tongue, gentling the strokes until she went limp, panting, her hands falling away from my head.
I stayed where I was. The fire had burned lower. The room had gone quiet around us, and I was aware of my own heartbeatin a way I usually wasn’t, steady, a little too loud, like it was trying to tell me something I hadn’t asked to know yet.
Before her, I knew exactly who I was. I was starting to think that was a tragedy because I’d known nothing.
“You practiced,” she said.
I bit back a smile. “Even better. I paid attention.”
“There’s a difference?”
“There truly is.” I kissed her inner thigh.
Her warm thighs were on my shoulders, and her breathing gradually slowed. My own pulse ran harder than it had any right to for someone who hadn’t been the one coming apart. I noted that and filed it away with all the other things I was collecting about her.
I kissed one inner thigh, then the other. Climbing back up, I braced myself over her, grinning.
I took in her flushed skin and the way she watched me with those careful eyes, and my chest tightened with emotions I wasn’t ready to name.
“You’re going to wreck me,” I said. “I’d burn everything I’ve built for one more night like this one.”
“Let’s wreck each other.” Her fingers teased up my sides. “I want all of you, Feral.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
VICTORIA
Iwatched him as he pulled away from our kiss, taking his time to look at me. The moment he stopped being careful was as clear as the moment when a chemical reaction turns a solution transparent. His expression shifted. The careful control he maintained dropped away.
I’d seen every version of him. The king who negotiated with Bastian. The alpha who commanded his pack. The husband who brought me breakfast and arranged flowers without knowing they needed water.
This was something else. The male he showed no one else.
I noticed it with a sense of discovery, filing it away in the part of my brain that cataloged all significant observations. His eyes had gone darker, his pupils blown wide. The tension in his jaw had released. His breathing had changed rhythm, now deeper and less controlled.
Data points. Evidence. Proof that whatever was happening between us had moved beyond strategic alliance into territory I didn’t have proper frameworks for yet.
“Feral…” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I planned to say.
He kissed me again before I could finish the thought, his hands moving to my hips. Stroking. The kiss was different from the others, less asking, more claiming. I found I didn’t mind being claimed by this male and in this way.
He eased me back onto the bed, the ancient frame creaking under our combined weight. The sound registered somewhere in my awareness but seemed unimportant compared to the warmth of his body pressing against mine.
“What’s this?” he asked, his mouth finding a spot on my belly I’d never given much thought to.
I glanced down to see him examining a small brown mark just below my navel. “It’s a mole.”
He traced the edge of it with his tongue, making my breath catch. “It appeared like that?”
“Lineages,” I said, my voice coming out rough. “Color deposits in the surface. Completely normal.”
He looked up at me with that almost-smile that made my heart spiral in my chest. “You’re giving me a lesson while I’m trying to seduce you.”
“You asked.”
“Fair point.” He kissed the mole again, then moved lower, his hands spreading my thighs wider.
