He crosses the rest, two steps, and his hand is on the side of my face and his mouth is on mine, and the kiss is not gentle and not careful and not anything like the first time. The kiss of a creature who has been holding back for weeks and just heard his own worst fear named out loud, and the fear isn’t bigger than the wanting anymore.
I seize the back of his skull and kiss him back, hard, my hands shaking, not the blue-ringed tremor. The anger and the wanting are braided together and I don’t try to separate them.
He lifts me, both hands under my thighs, my back against the cave wall, cold stone behind me and furnace heat in front, and the contrast makes me gasp.
“Tell me what you’re reading,” I say against his mouth.
“Want.” His breath is rough. “Anger. Both.”
“Good. Don’t stop reading.”
I pull my shirt over my head. He holds me against the wall with one arm while I work the fastening on his vest with both hands, his scales against my bare skin, the vibration of his venom humming through every point of contact.
He bites my shoulder, and I feel him hold back. The warmth enters and STOPS, like a door opening halfway and catching, not the full flood, not the warmth that pools and spreads and makesmy body open. The controlled version. The version that keeps the bonding from advancing.
Even here. Even now.
“Let go,” I say.
“I can’t.”
“The bite. I felt you hold back.”
“If I don’t hold back, the bonding accelerates. Every bite at full strength takes more of your tolerances.”
“I know.”
“Then you know why I’m holding.”
“I know WHY. I’m telling you I don’t care.”
His whole face locks, the discipline holding, and the fact that he can maintain that restraint while his body is pressed against mine and his hands are shaking and his hips are grinding me into the wall makes me furious and desperate and so aroused I can barely think.
“Fine,” I say. “Hold the bite. But give me everything else.”
I push off the wall. Push HIM. He goes back, lets me, and I follow, my legs wrapping around his waist, and he catches me without effort, my weight nothing to him, his hands closing around my thighs and tightening.
“Sit down,” I say.
He sits, stone floor, back against the wall, me in his lap, thighs bracketing his hips. I rise on my knees and push my trousers down while he works the fastening on his wrapping.
The urgency between us is physical and real, his hands as impatient as mine, and when the fabric clears and I press against him, the ventral slit opens. Both shafts. Already extended. Hot, the ridges catching the glow-stone light.
I wrap my hand around the nearer one and he makes a sound that fills the cave, his head dropping back against the wall.
“Tell me,” I say. My hand moves. “What you’re reading?”
“You’re everywhere.” His voice is raw, stripped to the wire. “I can taste, you’re, Ruelle... please...”
“Please what?”
His gold eyes open and find mine. “Please don’t stop.”
I lower myself onto the first shaft, slowly, his hands on my hips guiding, and when the first ridge catches inside me the sensation jolts through my whole body. I take another inch. Another ridge. The width stretches me open, and the burn edges into something better. I take the rest, my hips flush against his, both of us breathing hard.
He’s hot inside me. Not warm.
I move, and he moves with me, his hands on my hips, not guiding now but gripping, his hips rolling up to meet mine, each thrust pushing the ridges through me, the drag of them sending a pulse of sensation that builds on the last one.
