“I’ll take care of you,” he says into my mouth, the words guttural and half-swallowed. “I’ll take such good care of you.”
Anticipation explodes within me, a puddle of heat at the base of my spine. Amriel’s hand slides along the opening of my robe, first pulling aside one half, then the other. The brush of his fingertips across my ribcage is the sweetest torture I’ve ever endured, an excruciating counterpoint to the weight of his longing. Because behind this feather-lightcaress, a tide of desire roars through him, forceful enough to flatten me against the bedsheets.
I pause, breaking the kiss long enough to pull my arms free of my gown so I can spread myself beneath him. He’s the first man to see me naked, but somehow, vulnerability doesn’t touch me. Instead, power flushes through my limbs as Amriel stares down with glazed eyes, his breath ragged, his lips parted.
The bond lets me see exactly why. Need spins through him, multiplying, threatening to consume him, me, everything in its path.
It doesn’t matter that he’s lived for centuries, seen things I’ve never imagined. He’s never encountered anything like this before, never considered that he could want something with such intensity that the compulsion beats in his blood, in his bones, in the roots of his hair and the beds of his fingernails.
“Shadows below,” he murmurs brokenly. “You’re so much more than I deserve.”
A frown creases my brow, but a moment later, it ceases to matter, because he bends his head and closes his mouth around my nipple. The warm suction has me crying out, plunging my hands into his hair. The starlit strands feel exactly like I imagined—heavy and silken, slippery between my fingers.
He sucks and sucks, teasing my nipple with his tongue, his hand sliding up my side in a way that summons lightning beneath my skin. Heat swarms my insides, charting a direct path from his mouth to the ache between my legs.
Everything accelerates. I tug at his clothes, and he helps me, shucking off his boots, peeling away his shirt, whisking his pants down over his hips and onto the floor. When both of us are bare, he climbs my body and kisses me again, one hand gripping behind my knee, splaying my legs wide as he covers me with his weight.
The kiss takes over.Hedoes—his heat, his scent, the way his hair falls around me like a curtain. The room melts to a hazy glow of blue light and silk sheets, to a silence measured in desperate breaths, to this bulwark of muscle holding me down. Amriel grinds against me, sliding his arousal across the same spot I gave so much attention to in the bath.
Good goddess, it feels completelydifferent when he does it. Stars burst in my vision, my blood surging beneath my skin as if trying to lure him closer.
I gasp with every slide of our bodies, then glance down just long enough to see what he’s doing to me. A squeak escapes me, my eyes snapping up to his again.
No. No way can he fit that inside me. Where is it going to go? Wherecanit go without causing pain?
“I won’t hurt you,” he says, low and forceful and certain. The heat of his gaze pins me to the bed, his palm molding to my cheek. “I won’t hurt you at all.”
I stare up, helpless. “But how can you know?”
“Because. I’ll be touching you the whole time.”
My heartbeat gets all tangled up, snared by the intention in his look. I hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t considered the magic of the mate bond.
“I mean, there are ways, among mates,” he continues. “If youwantedpain, I could give it to you. Like my Shadow wanted, when you scarred us. But you, me, this… I won’t hurt you, Princess. Ican’t. Not tonight. Not ever, unless you need me to.”
Somehow, that makes tears form, bathing the backs of my eyes. A raw ache lodges in my throat and grows there.
Amriel must feel it, because he stops moving and stares down. The thing inside me swells and pushes, trying to reach him—a word or a promise or both.
I don’t know what to call it. I’ve never felt it before. I have no name for whatever this is, no frame of understanding.
I only know that it commands me to reach up and frame his jaw with my hands. He turns his face into my cheek, aiming a soft kiss against my palm, his brow creased as if in pain.
“Shadows take me,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
I smooth my thumbs along his jawline, the pads of my fingers scraping against the stubble there. “About what?”
He inhales against my palm. “That I’d be able to see myself. Through your eyes, I mean. That I’d be able to see how much you…”
I wait, but he only shakes his head, his eyes squeezed shut. I don’tneed him to finish, though. I feel what he feels, bend beneath its intensity, too. Beneath a beauty so bright neither of us can bear to look at it directly.
“I know I should wait,” he says, raw emotion thrumming in his voice. “Make sure you’re ready. Touch you first. Taste you. But I need you, Princess. I need to wreck you. Punish you. I need to fuck away every second I spent wondering if you were hurt.”
I cage my lip beneath my teeth. And widen my legs, granting him permission.
Because Iamready. I was ready the moment I kissed him, or maybe even at the dinner table. Now I’m nothing but a needy ache, a bed of tinder wanting for a single spark. I’m hungry and desperate and don’t want to wait another second. “Then do it.”
His eyes flare gold, brighter than I’ve ever seen. Neither of us acknowledges the enormity singing between us, the unstoppable force that joins our heartbeats and binds our breath.
