Page 60

You taste as sweet as nectar, Little Ember, I send, unable to keep the satisfaction from the words.

“Don’t you dare sound proud right now,” he rasps above me, but the command breaks apart on a moan when I press my tongue more firmly against him and thrust all the way in, elongating it as I enter.

Gods, he tastes like my beginning and my end.

I crawl up over him with slow care, making certain every part of him feels the weight and warmth of me returning. He watches my face as I move, watches my mouth because the shape has not fully gone back. I feel the wrongness of it in my jaw, the sharper teeth, the tongue too heavy behind them, the skull-bone memory pushing beneath my skin. When I settle over him, his hands come up to my face again, shaking against me.

I lean down and kiss him slowly this time, letting him taste himself faintly on my tongue, and the reaction that moves through him nearly unmans us both. His hands clutch my shoulders as I press my body down enough for him to feel the hard length of me against his thigh, before I lower myself back down, kissing his stomach again as I go.

“Onyx,” he whispers, voice already fraying again.

I look up from between his thighs. Yes, Lucas?

His cheeks darken. I feel the words before he says them, filthy and shy and desperate enough to make my cock throb against the furs. He wants my mouth on him again, but shame follows the want close behind, trying to smother it before he has to own it.

I will not allow that.

Ask me, I say, firm enough to give him something to push against.

His eyes squeeze shut, and he chokes on a laugh that turns into a moan when I hold him open again. His knees fall wider this time, and the sight of it carves straight through me. Trust looks different in humans than it does in my kind—softer, more breakable, but no less brave.

Lucas drags in a breath that stutters twice before it steadies. “Use your mouth again. And the… the other part… the longer and thicker tongue. I want it in me.”

Pride hits me so hard my shape flickers.

My fingers dig into the furs beside his hips and come away clawed for an instant before I blunt them again.

Good little mate, I send, because he deserves the praise and because I am too full of him to keep it back. Brave for asking what he wants.

“Don’t call me brave when I’m askin’ you to put your cryptid tongue in my ass,” he mutters, mortified and breathless.

The laugh that moves through me is not a human sound. It comes out against his thigh, low and rumbling, and he jerks under it with a startled curse. Especially then.

He covers his face with one arm. “I hate you.”

No.

“No, I don’t,” he admits immediately, miserable with it. “Shut up.”

I kiss the crease of his hip. Never.

Then I give him what he asked for.

I keep it slow, even when his body begs me not to. My tongue drags over him, slick and warm, gentling the puffy ring of muscle until his thighs begin to tremble against my shoulders. When I press inside again, Lucas’s back arches off the nest and his arm falls away from his face. His eyes are wide, stunned, almost offended by pleasure this sharp. He says my name with a harsh twist, and I answer by sliding one hand up his stomach and pressing my palm flat over his heart.

His heartbeat hammers against my palm, but after a few breaths, the rhythm changes. It does not slow—there is too much fever for that—but it steadies. His fingers find mine against his chest and grip them hard.

I work him open with mouth and tongue and patience, learning the give of him, the points where pleasure turns too sharp, the tremble that means wait, the ragged inhale that means continue. His slick helps, his body preparing itself with each pass, but I still add my fingers when he can take them. One first, slicked by him and me, sliding in beside the fading pressure of my tongue. His whole body clamps down and then melts around it, confusion and need sparking through the bond.

“That’s—” He breaks off, hips shifting. “God, that’s weird.”

Bad?

“No.” He laughs once, helpless and strained. “No, not bad. Just new.”

New is not an enemy.

“Tell that to my nervous system,” he says, and then swears hard when I curl my finger slightly.