He leans down, feathers his nose against my cheek. Breathes in hard as he tugs my legs wider, lets his cock press against my entrance. He kisses me softly, then searches my face with eyes that have gone summer hot, sea deep. They hold mine as he pushes inside me.
He doesn’t do it gently. He’s inexorable,inevitable. His hips press forward, stretching me open as he makes room for himself in a way that has my breath tripping over nothing, my eyebrows snapping together. My spine lifts from the bed, and he takes the opportunity to slide a hand beneath me, his palm spanning my shoulder blades, his fingers notching into the grooves between my vertebrae.
He doesn’t stop, though. Doesn’t even slow.
And I don’t want him to. Because it doesn’t hurt. At all. It feels like…like…completion. Like bliss.
The bond explodes between us. Not just emotion, but everything—thought and memory, feeling and fulfillment, a maelstrom of sensation my body can barely hold. Somehow, I can’t remember what existed before this moment. Before him. And when I gasp, it comes from both our throats.
He doesn’t relent, doesn’t give me time to adjust. He just yields to adesperate urge to claim, to bury himself so deeply I can never escape. The bond crashes over us, a storm that might leave no survivors.
I have all of him, now. There’s no space left between us, no separation. We’re one body, one breath, one pulsating, needy heartbeat thundering in the dark.
He pulls back, the friction exquisite, and tilts his hips forward again, driving me into the mattress. Pleasure detonates along every nerve—my pleasure, but also his, doubling back on itself through the bond, an endless circuit that only amplifies itself. I can’t think, can’t resist, can’t do anything but ride the shockwave of every thrust.
A growl emerges from the deepest part of him. “Shadows below, Princess. Sariah. My mate. Oh,fuck.”
I cling to him, and he dives into another kiss, taking my bottom lip between his teeth. He sucks gently, even as he drives deeper—forceful on the way in, languid on the way out, angry and gentle, punishment and pleasure. Each snap of his hips shakes the foundations of my body, my soul.
My fingers dig into his back. I fall into him, or fall apart, maybe, become nothing but one long surrender as he delivers this beautiful punishment. He finds a spot inside me I didn’t know existed, one that makes my vision go dark at the edges, then celebrates his achievement with a thick grunt of satisfaction.
Goddess. I need more. I can’t understand how I ever feared him, how this could possibly be the same man who terrified me in my father’s throne room.
He tangles his hands in my hair—hands that have ended a life right in front me. He kisses me with lips that have lied and cursed and sinned. Pleasures me with a body that has fought and killed and suffered.
But none of that has any place here. None of it even touches us. He gets as lost as I do, caught in the same current, swept away by the same overwhelming tide. He cares about nothing but this,us, and I can scarcely believe he has all this devotion inside him. That this purity has somehow survived, against all odds, alongside the brutality and pain.
It’s as unexpected as finding a tree springing from barren earth. It’s wondrous. It’s a miracle.
So much that I’m falling to pieces, right here beneath him. My eyes burn, tears overflowing, a few escaping to streak down my temples.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “You’re not hurting me. The opposite. I’m only crying because?—”
“Shhh.” He drags his mouth from mine, kisses each tear before it can disappear into my hair. “I know why. I know why.”
A wet sound of need cracks me open. “Don’t stop.”
“Never.”
His rhythm quickens, his strokes becoming more insistent. My body clenches around him as we somehow move beyond thought. We become nothing but slices of sensation, caught in a spiral of ecstasy.
There’s the rhythmic flex of long muscles beneath my fingers. His scent, rushing down my throat. His lips, finding mine again, fusing our mouths together, a clash of tongues and want and heat. His hand beneath my back, crushing me to him.
And that spot, inside me. Goddess, thatspot. I angle my hips, giving him better access, and he takes it, coiling me tighter with every thrust.
Oh, goddess. Oh, shadows below. This is even better than promised. Better than prayer, than wine, than devotion, than the most satisfying fight he’s ever had in his life.
The pleasure builds and builds and builds. My fingers go numb, my entire life force gathering in my center. Until suddenly, it’s exploding outward, a hot wave that has me convulsing beneath him, around him, with him.
I can’t tell if I’m shouting or if he is. Can’t tell whose hands are digging into whose skin, whose heart is about to burst. We’re just one indrawn breath, one shattered cry, one endless peak of ecstasy that seems to have no end.
It lasts, feeding itself, my bliss driving his driving mine, and I cling to him like he’s the only solid thing in the universe. Right now, I think he actually is.
When I finally come back to myself, I’m shaking, Amriel is, too, his face buried against my neck as he drinks in my scent, his breath coming in great heaving gasps. We stay like that, locked together, neither of us willing to move. Out past the window,stars flower in the sky.
He finally lifts his head, looking down at me with eyes that have gone dreamy and sated. “I told you I’d show you.”
I blink up at him, or try to. I don’t seem to have authority over my body right now, not even my eyelids. I’m too drunk, too full, toocomplete. “Show me what?”
