Page 71 of Mane Rival in Store

He lowered his mouth to her inner thigh and bit—gently, a scrape of teeth that made her gasp—then kissed the spot. Moved higher. His breath was hot against her skin, each exhale a pulse she could track, and when he finally put his mouth on her, she grabbed the sheets with one hand and his hair with the other and his entire scalp rose under her grip and he groaned against her—deep, primal—and the sensation traveled through every nerve ending she had.

He was thorough. She’d expected that. He brought the same obsessive focus to this that he brought to everything he valued—methodical, patient, lethally precise with his tongue. He read her reactions like data, adjusting his technique based on what drew the sharpest response, noting (because he was a collector of details too, she realized, they were both compulsive organizers, they were both impossible) each sound she made. When she tugged his hair harder, he growled and the intensity almost finished her. When she said his name, he responded by sliding two fingers inside her and curling them and she stopped being able to form words in any language.

She came with her fingers tangled in his mane and his mouth still on her, the orgasm rolling through her body in waves that made her thighs shake and her back arch off the mattress and his hair rise in a full golden halo as if her pleasure was a current running through them both. He stayed with her through it—tongue gentling, hands steadying her hips, the hum in his body dropping lower until she could feel it in her bones.

When she could think again, she pulled him up by his hair.

“Take off your pants.”

He complied. Standing beside the bed, stripping with an efficiency that suggested he’d been given an instruction and the instruction was time-sensitive. She watched. She’d seen him naked on a SoHo sidewalk—she’d been too shocked to appreciate the view. She appreciated it now. Six-three of supernatural muscle, golden skin, the proportions of a Renaissance sculpture that some ambitious artist had decided to make anatomically generous.

“Note four,” she managed. “Proportional.”

“You’re making notes. Still.”

“You’re a lion shifter who looks like Michelangelo’s David had a growth spurt. I am absolutely making notes.”

He dropped over her. His body covered hers—the weight and heat of him over her, bearing her down into the mattress, his hips between her thighs, and the contact was electric. All of him against all of her, skin to skin, nothing between them. She wrapped her legs around him and his forehead dropped to hers and his breathing was ragged and the hum was everywhere—in his hands, in his ribcage, in the hair that framed both their faces.

“Lark.”

“I’m here.”

“I need—” His hips moved. The first press of him against her entrance and they both went still. His arms trembled. His eyes held a sheen that wasn’t entirely human—the lion so close she could see both of them looking at her through the same face. His voice was barely audible. “I need you to know⁠—”

“I know.” She pulled him closer. Tilted her hips. “I know.”

He pushed inside her.

Slow. The restraint it took was visible in every locked muscle—his arms shaking, his teeth clenched, his hair standing vertical, giving her time to adjust because he was not small and the stretch was significant and she half-gasped, half-laughed because of course the Lion King of Scandinavia was built like this, of course even this was an exercise in excess.

“You’re laughing.”

“I’m—” She shifted her hips. He slid deeper and the laugh became a moan. “I’m adjusting to the full scope of the situation.”

“The full scope.” His voice was shattered glass, bound by willpower alone.

“The scope is considerable, Your Majesty.”

The name undid him. He kissed her—hard, open, claiming—and began to move.

Not gentle. Not cautious. The restraint burned off like fog under direct sun and what replaced it was need—the focused, consuming need of an alpha whose mate was beneath him, around him, saying his name in a voice that kept breaking. His hips drove forward in deep, measured strokes that hit a spot inside her that made the Manhattan skyline blur. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Her nails raked his shoulders and a sound tore from his throat—raw, predatory, the kind that traveled through his body and into hers at every point of contact.

The pace built. His strokes deepened, angled, each one finding and returning to the places that drew the sharpest sound from her throat. She gripped his hair and the lion broke through—his eyes flashing reflective in the dark, and for a stuttering, breathless moment, she was looking at a man and an animal and the line between them was a distinction that meant nothing because both of them wanted the same thing, both of them were moving toward the same edge, both of them were hers.

“Rune—I’m⁠—”

His mouth found the curve of her neck. His teeth scraped—not the claiming bite, not yet, but the echo of it. The promise. His voice against her throat: “Let go.”

She did. The orgasm crashed through her and she cried out and her body clenched around him and his control—the last filament of it, the gossamer thread he’d been holding since the fourth stage—snapped. He drove into her once, twice, his rhythm shattering, his face buried against her neck, and when he came, he said her name—torn from a place deeper than language, his hair risen and humming against her cheek, his arms locked around her as if letting go was a physical impossibility his body wouldn’t permit.

Something shifted in his body. The intensity drained into a deep, rolling hum—like a bass note sustaining long after the chord resolved. She could sense it everywhere they touched. In her skin. In her bones. In the golden strands of his hair pressed against her face.

The silence after was the loudest thing she’d ever heard.

They lay on his sheets in the wreckage of clothes and reserve, his head on her chest, her fingers in his hair. The Manhattan skyline glittered through the uncurtained windows. The summer night pulsed against the glass. His breathing had slowed from ragged to deep, and his body—the impossible, supernatural, recently-a-lion body—was heavy against hers in a way that was less weight and more anchor.

She’d tracked the lifts. The stands. The involuntary rises. This was different. Beneath her fingers, the golden strands were vibrating. Not the agitated rise-and-fall of arousal or the bristling of threat. A steady, quiet hum that she could sense through her fingertips, consistent and soothing, like the idle of an engine settling after a long drive.