Page 72 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

The sound he makes is barely human, a guttural roar torn from his throat. He sinks home in one long, brutal push. The air is driven clean out of me. I am split open, impaled, so stuffed full of him that I can feel the thick ridge of his knot pressed against my entrance, my pulse hammering where we’re joined.

“Margot.” He says my name against my ear, low and reverent. Then, rougher, truer, the word he’s only ever half let himself have: “Mate.”

“I’m yours,” I sob, meaning it all the way down to my bones. “Yours.”

He moves. Long, deep, punishing strokes that drag over every nerve I have. He’s fucking me, owning me with his body, and I rise to meet each slam of his hips.

“Feel that?” His mouth drops to my ear, his fangs grazing my lobe, every word timed to a thrust. “All of my cock, right where you wanted it. You feel that knot? You’re going to take it for me. You’re mine now, Margot. Mine to fuck, mine to keep, mine to own.” His hand fists gently in my hair, tilting my head back. “Say it.”

“Yours.” My nails drag uselessly down the scales on his back, the sound like scratching stone. “I’m all yours, Daddy.”

The roar that tears out of him rattles the window glass, and his purr and his growl collide into one impossible sound.

“That’s my good girl.”

His purr starts again, deep in his chest, a tectonic rumble that I feel more than hear, rolling through him and into me, vibrating right against my cervix until I’m making noises I’d die of embarrassment over if I had any shame left.

He works a hand between us, his calloused thumb finding my clit and circling in time with the deep pounding of his hips.

“My good girl.” He says it into my hair like an answer and a vow, and his rhythm shatters, the purr cracking into a rough roar. “Mine. Come for me. Let me feel you strangle my cock.”

And I believe it. Not because he said it. Because I chose to be here to hear it.

I come apart around him with his name on my lips, my pussy clenching hard enough that his whole body goes rigid with the effort of holding back.

He presses his face against my neck, a growl rough in his throat. “If I knot you, the mate bond seals, Angel. Permanently.” His grip tightens as another shudder runs through him.

I pull him closer. “Knot me, Daddy. Make me yours, forever.”

He roars, loud enough to rattle the windows, and drives into me one last time. I feel the knot at his base swell and lock us together as he follows me over, spilling heat into me.

And then I feel him.

The connection snaps into place so suddenly that I lose my breath. Soren is still above me, still wrapped around me, but now there’s something beneath all of it that I’ve never felt before. His emotions hit me with startling clarity: the overwhelming relief, the love, the fierce tenderness, and beneath it all an almost disbelieving happiness that I’m here and I chose him.

My eyes fill before I can stop them.

All this time, he’s been trying to tell me what I am to him. Now I don’t have to take his word for it.

I can feel it.

Soren goes still as he feels the connection too, and when he speaks, his voice is rough with wonder.

“The bond.” He presses his forehead to mine. “There you are, Angel.”

For a while, neither of us says anything. I lie against him listening to his breathing settle, his hand moving slowly over my back as the heat between us eases into something almost comfortable. Eventually his knot softens enough that we could separate, but Soren makes no effort to move, keeping me tucked against him for as long as he can. I’m nearly asleep when a thought works its way through the haze.

“How long do dragons live?”

His hand pauses.

I lift my head. “Soren?”

“A very long time.”

“That sounds suspiciously like avoiding the question.”

“It is.”