Page 28

That word, whispered from some deep part of my heart, seemed to feed her fiery passion like dry kindling to a bonfire. I couldn’t do much more than hold onto her hips as she rode me, gritting my teeth to keep from making too much noise. I had already given up enough. Haron’s enchanting eyes bore into mine, hardly blinking like a predator with its prey in sight. Every place her skin touched mine felt like it was a second from catching fire with how hot she burned.

Maybe that was it. This wasn’t sex. Haron wasdevouringme, and I would gladly sacrifice myself in that fire.

“Mmmm…” Haron’s voice cracked on a deep groan and her head fell back again, loose on her elegant neck. The way her back arched was so tantalizing, some of the joints along her spine cracking from the stretch. “I want to hear you, Irin.”

She lifted slowly, the muscles in her toned thighs quivering with the effort, and lowered just as deliciously, achingly slow. The way everything in her pelvis seemed to clench around me almost to the point of pain drew another moan from somewhere deep in my chest. I made to pull Haron over and reverse our positions when her hands slammed back into my chest and shoved me back to the bed.

“Where are you going?” The question was poisoned—deadly if answered with the wrong antidote of an answer. Her head had tilted up so her piercing stare could pin me in place. “Not comfortable having a woman on top?”

I laughed, completely breathless, as she kept her slow pace up and down. “Actually, my ass is starting to cramp in this position. I was hoping you’d be a little more cooperative with a switch.”

Haron blinked. I tried and failed to smother an awkward chuckle. Then, the most glorious sound I ever heard burst from her lips and shook her whole body. Her laughter filled the whole bedroom and jostled the bed, giving more unneeded stimulation to my already painfully stiff cock.

“Such a charmer,” Haron teased lightly. She rose off the cradle of my legs, and I immediately mourned the loss of her wet warmth. “Here, move up a bit. There, with your back to the wood.”

She remained kneeling high enough for me to slide my legs higher on the bed until I propped my back against the carved headboard. With a smirk sexy enough to fry what parts of my brain hadn’t already melted, she crawled the short distance back into my lap. Her arms bracketed my head on either side to grip the edge of the wood tightly. Just the slightest brush of the soft skin on her forearms drove me wild all over again.

Gods, she was everything I never knew to ask for in a woman.

I lifted my hands from where they clutched the bed sheets on either side of my hips, moving to grip her again, when Haron shook her head. We were so close, the tip of her nose brushed against mine.

“No sir, no touching. Just sit there and take it.”

I had to bite my lip to keep the hungry whimper from creeping out. “Gods, Haron…”

I didn’t even know what to beg for at this point. My teeth dug into my bottom lip hard enough to taste blood when she placed one fingertip on my chest, gliding it down ever so slowly until the warm skin of her palm wrapped around my length. Her hands had calluses along its arch like my own, gained from regularly gripping and swinging a sword, and they added just theslightest edge of roughness against the most sensitive part of me. That contradictory sensation sent another wave of shivers up my spine.

I didn’t think it was possible to be this tortured during sex. But like everything else regarding Haron, she was more than happy to blow my beliefs right out of the water.

A particularly rough twist of her wrist pulled another whimper from me. “Haron… Haron… Gods, I can’t—”

“Oh, but you can.” She leaned forward, her hand and the insides of her thighs against the only parts of her touching me, and lightly brushed her lips against mine. “You can be a good boy for me, can’t you?”

Haron nipped my bottom lip, pulling it slightly as she pinned it between her straight teeth, and something in me snapped from its mooring.

The beastwalker form I usually kept under tight restraint broke its chains, bringing on a partial transformation so fast I couldn’t catch it in time to pull back. The world shifted to the more vivid colors of its enhanced sight, and I could feel my jaw crack and begin to shift to take on an elongated shape. It stopped just short of a full shift, bearing a mouth full of fangs growing over the normal teeth and I snarled loudly. Fur began to sprout along my arms, chest, and the tops of my thighs in a thick, black pelt. The claws blessedly didn’t grow in, but my hands grew in proportion to the rest of my body, stretching out and taking more space on the already large bed.

Through it all, Haron watched with a kind of excitement not found in a normal, rational person. Even as a half-beast, it felt more likeshewas about to eatme.

“Ah, there he is,” she cooed, running her hands down my chest before moving them back up to bury her fingers in the thick fur that had already sprouted across my shoulders. “I was hoping to see this side of you. I don’t want a tame little princeling in bed.”

“It’s… dangerous,” I managed to say, although the words were becoming garbled by the resounding growl that started low in my throat. Combined with the alcohol already taking its toll on my mind, this was the worst possible situation I could be in for sex. At least, sex that didn’t end up with someone getting mauled.

Haron had the audacityto roll her eyes. If she wasn’t so damn attractive, I’d wring her neck for her recklessness.

Instead of proceeding with caution, the woman buried her hand in my hair and wrenched my head to the side, eliciting a much louder growl from the slight discomfort. Then she pressed her face to the crook of my neck and bit down on the strained muscle even through the layer of fur. It was in that very moment I came to a very important, disturbing realization about us both.

Haron was possibly more feral than me in this form, and I was thoroughly enjoying it.

“Haron…” Her name was a rumble in my chest. I panted heavily as she continued to bite her way up my neck and along my jaw toward my mouth, even as my teeth were clenched tight in a last effort to maintain control. “Don’t.”

She caught my mouth in a brutal kiss, nipping my lips until they opened to let her in. My fists twisted so tightly in the sheets I could hear them ripping, and she took that brief moment of distraction to sink onto my cock again. The moan she breathed into my mouth was swallowed up by my responding snarl, and all my heightened senses narrowed to focus on her smell, her heat, the feel of her slick pussy almost strangling me with how tightly she clung to every throbbing inch. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed my eyes until a dark chuckle from her lips made them snap open.

Finally, I had enough of being the underdog in this bed.

A surprisedoofleft her smiling lips when I flipped us over, both of our heads now closer to the foot of the bed as I loomedover her sprawled body. I managed to stay inside her and used the extra momentum to shove myself as deep as her body would allow. Haron gritted her teeth against the pain I’m sure she felt when I drove deeper, but we were already far past gentle touches and considerate murmurs of praise.

“Just remember,” I brought my face closer to hers, ruffling the loose pieces of hair around her face with my heaving pants of hot air, “You started this.”