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I would not allow it.

He tilted his head to the side, letting me caress his ear, then his neck and shoulder. Until I was toying with the edge of his wool tunic.

Arran turned his face toward my hand, nipping at my palm. “I am surprised you still have your clothes on.”

I let him sink his canines into the soft mound of skin at the base of my thumb. “Someone thinks a lot of himself.”

“I meant the faerie pools.”

Faerie pools.

Yes, that was an apt name.

I stepped backward, already hooking my fingers into my belt. But Arran caught me, dragged me back. The soft growl in his throat said what he wanted clearly enough—mine.

And I was.

I was his.

My body. My soul. And my heart.

“What do you want, Brutal Prince?” I said, echoing back the words he loved to say to me.

He caught me against him, burying his mouth in my neck. His words rumbled against the delicate skin of my throat. “I want to hear my name on your lips.”

I tilted my head back, giving him better access.

He took it in a second. His mouth fitted over my throat as if he would tear right into the pulsing artery and drink my lifeblood. I was so lost to need, I’d probably let him. He’d tasted my blood before and been driven nearly feral for it. I wanted to see him like that again.

The scrape of his rough, unshaven beard wasn’t enough. Neither were the canines he dragged over me, nor the sucking pressure of his mouth. He’d leave a mark on my pale skin, and I’d wear it proudly for all of the faeries to see.

But it wasn’t enough.

“Bite me, Arran,” I moaned.

His moan reverberated through the mating bond, through my body until it reached my pussy. Until my pussy was quivering in time with the tremors of need racking his body.

“Not yet.” He tore his mouth away from my neck, sending terrible shivers of need and loss through him. I clung to him, afraid I’d lose control. Lose myself.

Had already lost myself to him.

Arran caught me, let me press against him for the space of one long breath. Then he was pushing me away. It was the most interminable loss.

But his hands were on me.

His huge hands, hot hands. Seven feet of hard steel, that’s what my mate was. And his hands were a perfect extension of him. Palms as large as my face, fingers as thick as any other male’s cock. All other males were nothing before him. Those powerful fingers skated across my tunic, and all I could think about was burying them inside of me. Riding them.

“Arran,” I moaned again. He’d wanted his name from my mouth. He’d have it, a thousand times, if only he would—

“Greedy thing tonight, aren’t you?”

I was grinding myself against his leg. I hadn’t even realized. My thin skirt did nothing to disguise my wetness. My arousal was already dripping down my thighs, wetting the top of Arran’s thigh.

“I can’t wait.” Urgent demand. I wrenched the fabric closure of his leather vest, hearing the buttons pop and fall. I’d sew them back on myself. I needed his skin. His chest. His cock.

Arran caught my hands in a steel vice. “Yes, you can.”

I snarled in his face. If there was a secret beast inside of me hiding alongside my ember of void power, if I had some remnant of harpy blood, it would have exploded out of me right then.