He stripped away the last scraps of lace, baring her completely. She was wet—soaked—her arousal glistening in the low light. He pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, then another, working his way toward the heart of her.
“Not yet,” he murmured against her skin. “One more thing first.”
His tongue found her clit, and she screamed.
He worked her with mouth and fingers, learning the rhythm that made her shatter, the pressure that pushed her toward the edge. She came against his tongue once, twice, her magic surging with each climax, lightning flickering in the cabin’s windows.
“Aero.” His name on her lips was half plea, half demand. “I need?—”
“I know what you need.” He kissed his way back up her body, pausing to worship her breasts, her throat, the sensitive spot beneath her ear. “I’m going to give you everything.”
Only when she was boneless and trembling, too pleasure-drunk to form coherent sentences, did he finally position himself at her entrance.
“Cassia.” He waited until her eyes focused on his. “Look at me.”
She looked. And he slid home.
The sensation was overwhelming—her tight heat surrounding him, her magic tangling with his, his dragon roaring triumph beneath his skin. He stilled, buried to the hilt, fighting for control.
“Move,” she breathed. “Aero, please?—”
He moved.
Deep, deliberate strokes that built friction and need. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, demanding more. Her nails scored down his back, leaving trails of fire that made the beast in him keen with satisfaction.
“Harder,” she gasped. “I won’t break.”
He gave her harder. Drove into her with a force that rocked the bed against the wall, that tore cries from her throat, that sent their combined magic spiraling into something wild and perfect. The cabin shook. The windows crackled with lightning. The air itself seemed to hum with power.
The claiming mark built beneath his palms—dragon fire rising, lightning crackling through his veins. He could feel it gathering, the brand that would mark her as his forever.
“Cassia.” His voice came out rough, barely human. “I’m going to—the mark?—”
“Yes.” Her hands found his face, pulling him down for a desperate kiss. “Do it. Claim me. Make me yours.”
He pressed his palm to her hip—right at the curve where waist met thigh, intimate and hidden and permanently his. The fire built. The lightning gathered. His dragon roared its approval.
“Yes,” she breathed against his mouth. “Yes—do it?—”
He let the fire loose.
The brand seared into her skin—dragon fire shaped by centuries of instinct into something beautiful. A dragon in flight, wings spread, body coiled in mid-launch. Lightning-pattern details branching through and around it, marking her unmistakably as the mate of a storm dragon.
The pain was exquisite—sharp and hot and somehow perfect. Cassia cried out, her inner walls clenching around him as pleasure crashed through her. The climax rolled through her in waves, each one more intense than the last, her magic surging wild and uncontrolled.
Lightning crackled through the room. One of the windows shattered. Neither of them cared.
Aero followed her over the edge, burying himself deep as his release crashed through him. Eight hundred years of control, of isolation, of carefully maintained distance—all of it dissolving in the face of this. Her. Them. The bond snapping into place with an almost audible click.
Just… awareness. The steady pulse of her presence settled into his consciousness like a compass point. She was there—warm and alive and unquestionably his—and he would feel her there for the rest of his existence.
He collapsed beside her, gathering her against his chest, both of them breathing hard. The claiming mark glowed faintly on her hip—dragon fire settling into permanent scarring, beautiful and savage and perfect.
“Well,” Cassia said after a long moment. “That was…”
“Worth the wait?”
“Worth everything.” She shifted to trace the brand on her hip, her fingers gentle on the raised skin. “It’s gorgeous. I can feel it—something warm, right at the edge of my awareness. You.”
