Page 14 of Beast of Blood and Ash (Drakarn Mates #6)

REIKA

Where was I?

That was the first shock. I woke up without a scream clawing its way up my throat, my heart not thrashing like a caged bird punching through my ribs.

I just … existed. There, in the dark, warm and whole.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d opened my eyes without the world bracing for me to shatter it.

Heat and shadow pressed in close, a living wall against my spine.

The night came back with a serrated bite: Omvar, looming in my room, dripping blood, his voice a low command for me to come with him.

Omvar, leading me through silent tunnels where his shadow was the only shield.

Omvar, giving me those honeyed donuts I’d devoured like a starving thing.

Omvar. Again and again. He was the only thread left tying me to reality.

My eyes adjusted slowly to the yellow creep of the heat crystal overhead.

Its glow limped across stone walls and ragged textiles, painting Omvar’s room in bruised light.

The air was thick, heavy with his scent and the ghost of copper.

Blood, dried and baked into the seams between stone and flesh.

The platform was a nest of tangled blankets, and it radiated the kind of warmth you could almost mistake for safety.

The word “safety” surfaced, and my brain spat it up like poison. It tasted foreign, unfamiliar, almost sweet. The idea of it curled in my gut.

His arm was thrown over my waist. Its rough scales were hard and smooth in alternating lines against my skin. His wing was a near-weightless canopy draped over us both—yet it felt like the most solid thing I'd ever known.

I lay frozen, my chest tight, my awareness a live wire stretched between every point where his body held me.

My fingers trembled against his wrist, twitching along the ridges that ran over sinew and scale.

I half expected him to jolt awake and make me explain myself.

Half dared, stupidly, stubbornly, to believe this was allowed.

That I could want this, want him, for even a moment.

With the edge of my mind, I poked at the feeling, bracing for it to bite back.

Wanting had always been dangerous. Maybe deadly.

But here, now, nothing snapped or snarled.

Nothing chased me down for daring. Just Omvar, a furnace all around me, breathing slow and deep like he could sleep through a cave-in.

His heat was animal, alien, but it soothed the frayed edges of old panic.

Shouldn’t I be terrified?

Shouldn’t I run?

The instinct was there, a raw, twitchy thing, but something new was drowning it. Hunger. A wild ache in the hollow beneath my heart. I wanted to press closer. To see if the warmth I felt was real.

I let my fingertips brush over his wrist, mapping the intricate patterns of scales with a featherlight touch. They felt impossibly smooth, nothing like the rough, scabbed hands of slavers.

No.

This was a different kind of danger. Tempting. Inviting. Making promises I wasn’t sure my body was ready to test.

Slowly, uncertainly, I trailed my fingers up, letting them glide over the corded muscle of his forearm.

Omvar didn’t move. Just a steady mountain of heat, alive but untouchable.

I inched higher, over the rise of his elbow, the soft indentation where crimson scales faded to something almost like blush.

I kept going, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm in my ears, drunk on the audacity of it.

Wanting more. Wanting to know every inch of what the world said I should fear.

He began to stir. A ripple of movement went through him as his hand twitched, claws flexing just enough to send a warning through my skin. I jerked my hand back, guilt flooding me, sick with the certainty I’d broken some fragile peace.

But his voice came, sleep-rough, rumbling from the shadows into the cradle of space he’d made for me. “You don’t have to stop.”

He didn’t pull his wing away. If anything, it pressed closer, a pocket of warmth that felt like a world inside his world. I swallowed, the words thick and sweet as honey on my tongue.

I knew I shouldn’t.

Just looking at him most days made me shake, and not in a way I liked to admit. But there, cocooned in the impossible, I was weightless. Braver than I had any right to be.

My fingers kept wandering—this time with more certainty—skating up his forearm to his bicep.

It was hard as weapon-forged steel but underlaid with a living heat that pulsed against my palm.

My hand trailed along the curve of his chest, finding the faint rises and valleys of old scars, the texture as familiar as my own nightmares.

He grunted, a low, involuntary sound sharp enough to make me freeze.

He didn’t flinch. “Don’t stop,” he rumbled, softer this time, as if he was afraid I’d vanish if he spoke too loudly.

His encouragement went off in my veins like a shot of something dangerous and heady.

I let my hand drift farther, mapping the heat, the dizzying landscape of his anatomy.

Over the dips of old wounds, over the place where his scales faded to something softer above his heart.

His chest rose and fell, his breath stuttering.

I could feel it, a trembling under the surface, a coil of pleasure and tension, both vulnerable and terrifying.

His body wasn’t human. It wasn’t safe. But it wasn’t a threat, not right now.

My hand slipped lower, curiosity untethered from shame.

I found the ridged lines of his belly, the plates of scale giving way to something silkier, stranger.

My heart hammered. I half thought he’d stop me, but he stayed almost painfully still, his chest heaving, the only sign I wasn’t dreaming this.

I let my hand trace the instinctual line down, below his waist, toward the forbidden. I told myself I was only curious, only cataloging the alien. But the ache between my thighs told a different story.

My fingers found slickness, hot and silken under my touch.

His cock.

I should have recoiled. I should have curled away. Instead, I pressed in, exploring the strange anatomy. Scales at the base gave way to thick, ridged flesh, with thicker veins pulsing beneath the skin.

I curled my hand around him. Slick with his own fluid, hot and alive, the tip was crowned by a moving, fleshy lip that was almost like a tongue, twitching as I pressed my thumb along its seam. The head was wider than any human I’d known.

And a scent rose up between us, alien but magnetic: copper, smoke, a sweetness that made my mouth water and my core clench.

A part of me wanted to dive in and taste him. I was going absolutely fucking insane.

Omvar sucked in a shuddering breath. His hips jerked, a subtle but unmistakable movement. He was hard. For me.

I froze, shame and wonder warring for dominance. I couldn’t see his face, not in this dim light, but I could hear the way his breathing fractured, a guttural, helpless note buried under restraint. He tried to roll away, but my grip tightened. I didn’t want him to move. I wanted …+

god, I wanted this. The feeling scared me. It lit me up and unmade me all at once.

“You don’t have to,” I said, the words tumbling out, echoing his earlier. It shocked me how much I meant them. I wanted him to know I was choosing this. Just this once. Choosing him.

How long had it been since I’d let myself want something that wasn’t survival?

He was still, as if waiting for some final, invisible permission. I gave it with my hands. I stroked him, slow at first, learning his body by feel.

The slickness, the way that lip flexed and curled with every pass of my fingers, the way the scent deepened and thickened as his pleasure built. I pumped my hand, gentle at first, then harder, chasing the sound of his breath, the stuttering grunts and soft gasps that made heat curl low in my belly.

His hand covered mine, huge and careful, his claws just barely pricking the spaces between my fingers. The contact sent sparks through every nerve ending, a delicious, sharp brightness. I liked it. I liked the danger, the way he could break me and chose not to.

He jerked once, a sharp gasp on his lips, and then his body shuddered, a pulse of wet heat spilling through my grip.

He came in my hand, the fluid flooding my palm, the scent of him thick and wild, marking the air between us.

The slick, musky heat of him coated my skin.

It was both alien and achingly intimate.

He faltered, his body trembling against mine.

For a moment, all I could hear was the thundering of his heart, loud and uneven against my back.

I should have felt powerful. In control.

Remaking my body as mine, not just a cage of trauma.

Instead, I felt everything at once: arousal and fear, grief and want, all twisting together like molten metal.

Omvar leaned in closer, careful, reverent, his breath a hot whisper at my ear. “Let me give you this, thravena .”

The word was an invocation, hungry and gentle. I felt it in my bones.

A thousand reasons to say no avalanched through my mind. What if I froze? What if the pleasure tipped into panic? What if I couldn’t stop once I started? What if I needed this more than I wanted to admit? But the ache was bigger. I wanted to feel something that wasn’t fear.

I nodded. Maybe I whispered yes. Maybe I just offered my body, trembling and raw, to the moment.

He moved slowly, as if I might shatter. His hand brushed my hip, his claws tracing a whisper-light path down my thigh.

He guided me onto my back, his wing and arms caging me in a world apart from everything else.

He paused, his breath warm against my belly, waiting for the flinch that would end this.

Instead, I reached for him. I threaded shaking fingers through the coarse silk of his hair, giving him permission with the only language I knew.

He lowered his head. The first touch of his mouth at my inner thigh was so gentle it almost undid me.

His tongue, long and impossibly agile, tasted the inside of my knee, painting a slow, burning line up to where I ached for him.

Every nerve lit up, confusion and pleasure winding together until I couldn’t tell them apart.

He licked up, then down, circling, teasing, drinking in the shudders that racked my body.

When his mouth found me, truly found me, I bucked, a strangled gasp tearing from my throat.

He licked me open, his mouth hot and wet, his tongue working in slow, deliberate strokes.

He was infinitely careful, reading every twitch and gasp, flooding me with warmth and the sharp scorch-pain of wanting more.

I couldn’t see him. I could only feel. His mouth, his tongue, the strange, careful pressure as he worshipped me, mapping every inch with a devotion that felt like hunger. His breath came hot against my skin. His hands bracketed my hips, holding me steady but never trapping me.

The pleasure built slow, then faster, wound tight as a wire ready to snap. I let myself want, letting the pleasure unfurl in waves, trembling through me, knocking loose memories I’d locked away. Pain and humiliation, but also the faint ghost of being chosen.

Tears prickled behind my eyes, hot and unshed.

You are not broken, I repeated, my makeshift mantra. You are not broken. But maybe I was. Maybe that was all right.

He found a rhythm that drove me wild, his tongue flicking, his mouth sucking, closing around me. I let go, hips canting up, a sob torn loose by pure sensation.

My orgasm hit with the force of a landslide, overwhelming, blinding, cathartic.

It was a flood of feeling that wrenched a scream from my lips.

I shook, nerves sparking, my hands clutching at his hair like an anchor.

For a second, I was lost, adrift in pleasure tangled with old pain.

Everything tilted and broke and reformed.

Omvar held me through it, his arms bracketing my body, his mouth gentling as I rode out the aftershocks.

He murmured something I didn’t understand, words rough and calming, his voice a steady drum in the storm.

I let myself collapse, spent and shaking, into his embrace, too wrung out to move or speak.

I floated, tucked against his chest, caught between satisfaction and confusion. The air was heavy with his scent, with the ghost of honey on my tongue and the copper of old blood. My body thrummed, every muscle slack, every nerve alive.

I fixated on the strangeness of my own craving, the terror and want tangled too deep to unpick. Was this healing? Or was it just another surrender to something bigger than me, something that might own me if I let it?

Clinging to him in the silence, the question burned inside me. I didn't know if safety was a lie. I only knew I wanted to stay.