He spins me around before I can draw breath, my palms slamming against the bark, my cheek pressed to rough wood.
“Hands on the tree.” The words vibrate through me, more growl than voice. “Don’t let go.”
I grip the bark until splinters bite into my palms.
Not because he told me to.
Because I want to see what happens when I obey.
His foot kicks my stance wider. His hand slides down my spine, pressing until my back arches, until I’m presented to him like an offering.
A sound rumbles through his chest. Not quite a growl, not quite a groan. Something in between that makes my cunt clench around nothing.
“There we go.” His nose drags up the back of my neck, inhaling deep. Scenting me. “Finally caught you. Been chasing you for months, Thorn. Through the borderlands, through the wards, through every wall you put up.” He inhales again, and I feel his cock twitch against my ass. “And now I’ve got you. Bent over and dripping and mine.”
One hand grips my hip hard enough to bruise. The other guides his cock to my entrance, dragging the tip through the wetness there, coating himself in everything his mouth just pulled out of me.
“Feel that?” He notches himself at my entrance but doesn’t push in. Just holds there, letting me feel how thick he is, how badly I want him inside me. “That’s what you do to me. Make me fucking feral. Make me forget I’m supposed to be civilized.”
“Orion.” I’m begging now. Not ashamed of it. “Please?—”
“Please what?” He rocks forward the barest inch, then pulls back. “Tell me what you want, prey. Use your words.”
“Fuck me.” It comes out ragged. Desperate. “Stop teasing and fuck me. I want to feel you for days. I want?—”
He slams home.
I cry out. Can’t help it, can’t stop it. The sound echoes through the Dark Forest. Something in the trees stirs, and I don’t know if it’s the wind or the wildlife or the magic that lives in this place, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except the wayhe fills me, stretches me, hits something deep inside that makes my vision blur.
He doesn’t give me time to adjust.
His hips pull back and snap forward again. Again.Again. Setting a rhythm that’s brutal and relentless and exactly what I need.
“This.” He growls against my ear, teeth grazing the shell. “This is what I thought about every night in that forest trying to reach you. My hand on my cock, your name on my lips, imagining what it would feel like to finally catch you and bury myself so deep you’d feel me in your throat.”
I can’t respond. Can only take it. Only press back against him and meet his thrusts and let the sounds spill out of me without shame.
“You feel that?” His pace turns punishing. “Feel how hard you make me? How fucking desperate?” He bites the junction of my neck and shoulder. Not gentle, actual teeth. The sting makes me clench around him. “Spent a month starving. Now I’m going to feast.”
A sound escapes me. Not a moan. Something rougher, something feral that vibrates up from my chest and out my throat.
His rhythm stutters.
“Fuck.” His grip on my hip turns bruising. “Do that again.”
I don’t even know what I did. But I do it again anyway. Let that wild thing in my chest have a voice, let the sound tear out of me raw and unfiltered.
He snarls in response. Actually snarls, like an animal, and his hips snap harder.
“There she is.” His voice has dropped into something barely human, and when he yanks my hips back to meet his thrust we both groan like it’s punched out of us. “There’s my queen. Knew she was in there. Knew you weren’t just prey.”
His teeth find my shoulder and the bite sends lightning down my spine.
“Predator,” he growls against my skin. “Just been pretending to be tame.”
“Yes.” I don’t know where the word comes from. Don’t know why it feels like a confession.
“Then stop pretending.” He fists my hair, the silver-pink strands that keep shifting without my permission, and pulls my head back. “Show me what you really are.”
