Page 23

“I can’t…” I’m gasping. Shaking. My hands are fisted in the sheets. “Silas, I’m going to…”

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t change pace. He holds me open and works me with his tongue and I shatter. The orgasm hits me like a wall. My whole body clenches, my back arched, my toes curled so hard my calves cramp, and I scream into the mattress and it goes on and on and I feel him licking me through it, steady and relentless, and when it finally recedes I am boneless and trembling and my vision is spotty and I think I briefly left my body.

His mouth lifts. His hands smooth up my back. He presses a kiss to the base of my spine. Gentle. Almost tender, which is insane given what he was just doing.

“Stay just like that,” he says.

I hear him. Shirt over his head. Belt. The rustle of trousers. The mattress dips behind me. His hands find my hips again and his skin is hot, burning, and I feel him against me, hard and thick, and he positions himself and pushes in and I groan.

He fills me completely. One long, slow stroke, until his hips are against me and he is as deep as he can get and my fingers are clawing the sheets and my body is still pulsing from the orgasm. The stretch of him is almost too much and exactly right.

He pulls back. Pushes in again. Harder. His hands grip my hips and he sets a rhythm that is not gentle. It is something raw. Something primal. I can feel the heat of his hands, too hot, not quite human, and when I glance over my shoulder his eyes are solid gold and the scales are bright on his forearms and his jaw is set and he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

“You,” he says, and his voice is stripped. “The way you look right now. The way you feel around me. Nothing in all my years.”

“Harder.” I don’t recognize my own voice. “Please.”

He gives me what I ask for. His hips snap against me and I brace my hands on the headboard because the force of him is rocking the bed. The headboard knocks the wall once and neither of us cares. His hand slides up my spine, over the sticky traces of honey still on my skin, and grips the back of my neck and holds me and I feel dominated in the most perfect sense.

The knot starts to build. I feel it at the base of him, the thick pressure expanding, and my body responds to it not with resistance but with want. Biological, absolute, my omega recognizing what she was designed for and readying for it.

“Tell me,” he says. He is breathing hard. His voice is breaking at the edges. “Tell me you want it.”

“I want it. God, Silas, I want…”

He pushes home. The knot catches and locks and the fullness of it triggers a second orgasm that blindsides me. I come so hard my vision whites out and I hear him behind me, a sound that is barely human, low and broken and reverent. He comes inside me and his forehead drops to my shoulder blade and his teeth graze my skin and he breathes my name like it’s the only word he has left.

We stay like that. Connected. Locked. His body curved over mine, both of us breathing hard, the fire popping, the rain. His hand releases the back of my neck and slides down my arm and finds my hand and laces our fingers together against the mattress.

My knees are starting to protest. He feels it. He wraps an arm around my waist and rolls us onto our sides, still locked together, and pulls me against his chest and I can feel his heartbeat against my shoulder blade. Slow now. Steady.

“There is honey on the sheets,” he says.

I start laughing. I can’t stop. I am lying in his bed, knotted, sticky, wrecked, and he is making an observation about the linens with the same tonal register he uses to discuss vendor invoices.

“There is honey on both of us,” I manage.

“Yes.”

“And the pillows.”

“I am aware.”

I settle against him. His hand spreads over my stomach, warm and possessive. The knot pulses between us and I feel a lazy aftershock of pleasure roll through me and my toes curl again.

“Silas.”

“Yes.”

“Your dragon told you to bring the honey?”

“He did.”

“What is your dragon saying now?”

A pause. His thumb traces a slow circle on my hip.

“Honey tastes better on mate.”