I feel my body quake around the stretch, eyes fluttering closed, head tipped back against the wall as if I am trying to escape it.
“No,” he growls, another tug at my hair. “Look at me.”
I do. Gods I do. And it’s holy.
He looses his hand from my hair and caresses my cheek. I turn and press a kiss to his palm, eyes never breaking from his as his fingers move in rhythm with the subtle rise and fall of my hips. When I feel as though I might break, his hand wraps around my throat, as delicate as a silk ribbon, it keeps me held in place, our gazes fixed on each other as he takes me to the knife's edge of pleasure. His fingerscurl, his thumb brushing the delicate bundle of nerves that has been aching since the first moment he touched me. He doesn’t move quickly. He doesn’t need to. My body remembers and it's ready to unravel. I break. Utterly, completely, at his touch, at the way he looks at me. My thighs quake, and my ragged breath manages one word. “More.”
His smile undoes me. Lifting me up, he carries me toward the bed. Helping me find my footing, I stand before him. I turn my back to him and pull my hair aside for him to undo the bodice. The beast in him takes over; he rips the garment falling to the floor in tattered shreds. I claw at his clothing, peeling it off before he lowers me to the bed. He towers over me, parting my thighs with his leg as he leans into me. The amber pendant around his neck matches the glow of the firelight across his naked body. Every inch on me is piqued in anticipation.
He meets my lips first but doesn’t linger. Mapping the curves of my body, he makes his way down. His tongue plays with my pert nipple as his hand cups more breast. I moan and feel the pleasure rolling through me. Lower still. He traces invisible lines across my abdomen.
Every tremble in my limbs, every flutter in my chest—it’s not weakness. It’s the residue of power handed over with intent. And he honors it just as he rushes it. My legs fall apart, not limp, not spent.
Offering.
A prayer without words. And he is the one who kneels.
He presses a kiss to my inner thigh. Then another. Then higher, slowly enough that my hips rise of their own accord, chasing his touch like it’s the air I have been starved of.
“I could bite,” he teases. “I should bite. Just to remind you who this belongs to.” His teeth scrape against the supple flesh as his name breaks from me in a moan. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to. I have already given him myself completely.
He responds with worship. His mouth claims me, his tongue parting my folds, slow and deliberate. Taking every drop of what I have given him. He doesn’t lap, he doesn’t lick. He devours.
I reach for the bedding, knowing full well it won’t save me from going completely adrift.
His tongue curls around my clit, sucking just enough to make mylegs spasm. Then deeper. Flattened. Insistent. He moans into me as if I am the only thing that has ever tasted right on his tongue.
My fingers claw at this hair and my whole body trembles.
He doesn’t stop. He gives me no rhythm to chase, no pattern to rely on.
Only sensation.
Only him.
Until my body tenses again and he feels it building.
The flood.
The quake.
His mouth seals to me as my cry splits the air. “Vale! I need you. ALL of you,” I say with urgency. He rises, a man as powerful as the very mountain the Hold is nestled in.
No teasing, no delay. One deep, brutal striking thrust to the hilt. Not just his body. All of him. His hunger. His devotion. I vow that we belong to no one but each other. Worship painted in skin and heat.
My nails tear at his back, carving truths into flesh as he moves. Every stroke is carved with purpose. “You were made to be mine,” he rasps, “and I was made to make you burn.”
I cry out his name, yes, but also a sound beyond language. A sound born in the deepest part of me where no one has ever touched.
He thrusts harder, the bed shaking beneath us. The air is thick with sweat, need, love, and the sacred heat of annihilation. My legs lock around him, hips rising to meet every perfect, punishing thrust.
We are fire. We are ruin.
When my body clenches violently around him, the final break, he follows.
With a roar, with a kiss, with his entire self poured into me.
He collapses atop me. Spent. Shaking. Still inside me. Still one.
