Page 22 of A Bond of Ice and Glass (Crowned By Wings #2)

W e kiss like we’ve waited a lifetime for it.

It feels like I’ve waited a lifetime to kiss Erax again.

To remember him.

His mouth falls on mine again, hot and bruising. He twists his fingers in my hair, and I grip his shoulders. There’s no tenderness to the kiss. Only deep, burning hunger that sears through my whole body.

He lays me back on the bed. I let him, but then I use my strength to push him off and straddle his hips. His shirt rips, and the buttons pop one by one as I tear the fabric off him. I need to see him, feel him.

He groans underneath me. His hands move down my waist, squeezing and caressing me, like he’s trying to remember every inch of me. Like he’s been starved of me as much as I was of him.

I pull his lip between my teeth and bite him. He bites me back, and I moan, raking my nails down his chest. He groans into my mouth like I’m the only thing in this world keeping him grounded. Then he pulls me down and keeps me pinned against him, our foreheads pressed together.

For a moment, he just holds me there. He’s never held me like this.

I don’t think anyone has.

It shatters and heals something inside me at the same time.

“This is real,” he whispers, as if talking to himself. “This is finally real.”

“Yes,” I breathe, kissing his cheek. “I’m real, Erax.”

His grip tightens, and in one swift move, he pins me underneath him again. His eyes have darkened. Even the green one seems to be glowing with flecks of gold. My breath hitches as I look up at him watching me, studying me.

“Every night I’ve dreamt of this,” he murmurs. “Of your voice. Your eyes. The way you looked at me before they took you.”

He leans down, his forehead resting against mine again.

“I spent every moment wondering if you’d remember me. If you’d hate me for not stopping them. If I’d even recognise you once I found you.”

I can hear the pain in his voice, and it breaks me.

“But gods, Maelena—you’re still her. You’re still mine .”

His hands find my waist again, and mine twist through his hair. He slides down my hips and wraps my legs around him, anchoring me to him like he’s afraid I’ll disappear again.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he rasps against me. “Not tonight. Not after everything.”

I tighten my legs around him. “You won’t, but I need to feel you. Don’t hold back, Erax. I need it. I need you .”

Something snaps inside him. A growl rumbles from his throat, low and raw, as if my words have undone him.

He yanks my dress up over my hips, and his cock presses hard against me, thick and hot through his trousers. He grinds into me once, and I gasp, the friction enough to make my back arch and my breath stutter.

“So wet for me already , ” he breathes against my throat, but his voice trembles.

“Erax—”

“Shh,” he warns, dragging his lips down my neck, across my collarbone. “Let me taste what they tried to take from me.”

He kisses lower. My breast, my ribs, my hips, and then?—

Oh gods.

His mouth is on me, hot and starving . I cry out, clutching the sheets as his tongue slides slowly through my folds. His grip is bruising on my thighs, spreading me wider, grounding me like I might vanish beneath him.

“Gods, I’ve missed this,” he rasps against me, voice ragged with hunger. “The way you taste. The way you melt for me.”

He licks again, slowly, then sucks my clit into his mouth with maddening control. My legs tremble around him as my breath shatters.

“You still open for me like this,” he groans, dragging his tongue in lazy circles. “Like your body never forgot who it belongs to.”

I choke on a moan. “Please… don’t tease me.”

I’m going to go insane if he keeps teasing me like this.

I just want him inside me.

He rises, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, his eyes burning. “You begged like that the first time too.”

He frees himself, and my breath catches. He’s so thick and hard. He’s perfect. Then he’s above me again, lining himself at my entrance, rubbing against me in slow, torturous strokes.

“I should take my time with you,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Really make you beg for it.”

“I already am ,” I pant. “Please, Erax … I need to feel you.” My voice breaks, and tears sting my eyes. “I need to remember us.”

He stills, his thumb brushing my cheek. “I never forgot us, Mist.”

And then he thrusts in, hard and fast, like he’s reclaiming a lost part of him.

I cling to him as my body stretches around him, welcoming him back like it was always meant to. He groans low in his throat, forehead falling to mine.

“You feel like home,” he murmurs, holding inside me.

He stays there for a moment, his breath shaking against my cheek like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he moves too fast. But I need him to. I tilt my hips, and we both gasp.

“Move, Erax. Please, just… move .”

His control shatters then. I feel it in the way he pulls back and slams into me, hear it in the sound he makes when he buries deep inside me.

He moves with the hunger of a man who’s clawed his way through fire and blood just to taste me again.

I meet every thrust with a hunger of my own, pulling him deeper as I drag my nails down his chest and back, clawing and grasping at him.

“Mine,” he growls, each thrust harder than the last. “You have always been mine.”

My back arches as he thrusts deeper. It’s like I’m burning from the inside out, every thread of me catching fire from his touch. My body trembles, coiling tighter as my orgasm builds and builds, the peak so close I can barely breathe.

“Say it,” he demands, his voice wrecked with need. “Say you’ll always be mine.”

“I’ll always – be yours,” I pant against him. “I always – have been.”

He groans again and thrusts harder. Deeper. His eyes darkening.

“Now say you remember.”

“I remember!” I cry out, my voice shattering. “I remember you —oh gods, Erax, I’m going to come!”

He kisses me then, wild and rough, like we’re both about to unravel.

And then it hits me, my release crashing through me in waves that tear my breath away.

My body tightens around him, and with a shattered groan, he follows me.

He buries his face into my neck and shudders as he comes, holding me so tightly I almost forget where I end and he begins.

His heartbeat races against me, the one that haunted my dreams. But it’s in sync with my own while we stay tangled in each other’s arms.

For the first time in what feels like forever, I feel whole again.

He brushes a hand down my thigh, his touch soft now, his hunger sated.

“I don’t want this moment to end,” he whispers against me.

I lift his head and press my lips to his neck, my fingers resting over his thrashing pulse.

“It won’t,” I promise him. “We’re together again, and nothing’s going to tear us apart.”

His eyes harden, narrowing into slits.

“If it does, I’ll burn this realm to the ground, Mist. I promise you that.”

I reach up and kiss him on the lips, smiling against him.

“Always so dramatic.”

He doesn’t speak. He just holds me like he’s still afraid they will take me from him again if he lets go.

Let them try.

If they come for me again, I won’t just burn the realm.

I’ll burn the gods themselves.

I must have fallen asleep in Erax’s arms, and I’m almost mad at myself for doing that.

I don’t want to fall asleep or miss any bit of the time I have back with him now.

Living a life without my memories of Erax was like living only half a life, not real or right.

Something always missing. I will not go back to that. I can’t go back to it. It’ll break me.

I also can’t believe I didn’t recognise him in my dreams.

Speaking of… How did Erax even reach me in my dreams? I know he has new powers now, such as the fire, but slipping into my dreams? Controlling them? That is one hell of a power. I need him to tell me everything—about how he’s alive and how the dragons helped him.

He’s no longer lying beside me when my eyes open to the sun setting over the inn. No, he’s under the covers, between my thighs. I can feel him, his hands brushing up my thighs, pushing up his shirt I’m wearing, which has fallen just below my waist.

Erax…

No words leave my lips as I lie back, trusting him completely to have me any way he wishes.

Erax would never hurt me, and I want him.

I want him in every way I can get him. I moan at the first flick of his tongue.

It slides straight up my core and around my clit, circling and teasing me, blowing light breaths.

My back arches from the pleasure building inside me.

Ciagid above, this is how I want to wake up forever.

His giant hand presses my stomach down in a firm grip—a warning not to move.

I don’t. Not even when I want to squirm from the pleasure, the need to finish.

He holds me to the mattress with a growl anytime I do try to move.

The growl echoes out of his throat and radiates straight through my body, and fuck do I love when he does that.

The orgasm is shattering. I moan loud enough for anyone in the inn to hear me, and some part of me might have been embarrassed about that once, but right now I’m definitely not.

Not when his tongue is inside me and I’m seeing the gods.

He knows exactly how to tease me, how to make me want to beg, how to rip me apart with an orgasm that’s ground-shattering.

If he ever lets me get there. Erax loves to drag my pleasure out and control my ending.

I thought he would have gotten enough today, and I’m slightly sore from the many, many times he’s been inside me.

The even more times I’ve orgasmed, like he’s making up for every day that we were apart.

Knowing my Erax, he’s doing exactly that.

But I’m very glad that he’s not gotten enough of me.