Page 107 of Demon's Bane

32

Rhett

I’m a ruin.

A Goddess-touched ruin.

A chaos of divine and damned, something earthly and exalted.

Something that belongs wholly to the woman in my arms.

With my knot embedded firmly in her hot, tight cunt and her body trembling with pleasure, I lean in and press my lips to her neck. My fangs find the mark of my claim and Joan tips her head back, tangling a hand in my hair and pulling me closer, silently begging for my bite.

Her blood is ecstasy on my lips.

I’ve never craved like this, wanted like this, needed like this. Never could have expected the utter destruction of tasting her this way.

Joan’s fingers squeeze and tug to an edge of sharp, scalp-tingling pleasure, and when I move my hips against hers, she gasps her bliss into the steam and shimmering light of the cave.

I rut into her, sinking impossibly deeper, so deep I might convince myself I’ll be imprinted here forever, a reminder she’ll carry across any realm she travels and any distance between us.

Pulling away from her neck, I work my way up her throat, her jaw, taking her mouth in a rough-tender kiss and letting her taste herself on my lips. I hope she knows hers is the only taste I’ll ever savor, the blood that runs as hot and essential in my veins as my own.

Joan holds me just as fiercely as I hold her. Melded to me, like she could soothe both our ragged, broken edges with each touch and kiss and breathless gasp.

“Yes,” she breathes when I tilt my hips to grind my pelvis against her clit. “Yes, please, Rhett.”

Her words are edged with a fractured moan, and I shatter it completely as I drive into her again, stretching her around my knot. She’s tight—so fucking tight, my mate—and I fight to keep myself sane, to keep from losing myself in her completely, as I work my hips over her. Once, twice, again, letting the growing desperation of her cries spur me on, driving her harder toward the peak that will shatter us both.

It hits her a moment later, her cunt spasming around my knot and her face buried in my neck, blunt little teeth pressing into my skin like she could mark me the same way I marked her.

I spill into her with a shout, driving somehow deeper still and branding her from the inside out, filling her so full there will never be room for anyone else.

Joan clings to me with a ferocity that threatens to break me in two and groans her satisfaction into my neck. Her hands work over my shoulders, the curve of my wing, my jaw as she tugs my mouth to hers for an open, messy kiss.

It might be minutes or hours before we both regain some semblance of sanity.

Cradled by the warmth of the water and the soft glow of crystallight around us, I lean back with my mate held firmly in my arms. I murmur to her—tell her how beautiful she is, howexquisite she feels—and cling to this peace for as long as it will last.

Because here, now, everything makes sense. We make sense.

How could there be anything but this, but us, but the magick keeping us bound closer than I knew it was possible to be to another being?

But as the euphoria fades, reality crashes in like it always does, like it always will.

The memory of our conversation crowds back into my mind. Joan’s soft words, her understanding, her strength and patience in the face of my obstinance, her willingness to hold her ground and hold me to account.

And maybe she’s right.

The thought lodges itself in the center of my chest with all the delicacy of a slicing ax.

Maybe she’s right.

It rips and tears at the reasons I’ve girded myself with, the guilt and grief I’ve wielded as weapons and clung to like a life raft to keep the weight of everything else from pulling me under completely.

In my arms, my mate stirs from her own stupor, leans back, and meets my gaze with a smile spreading across her face that looks like dawn.

Maybe the reason this feels so right is because itis.