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Thirty-One

S he had no words.

Even if she'd had them, she couldn't have spoken. All that left her lips was breathless sound—soft gasps, broken cries, the kind born from something deeper than sensation, something primordial .

Karian was inside her, around her, everywhere.

She had never felt anything like it—couldn't have imagined it in her wildest dreams, not even in the haze of lust that sometimes overtook her on lonely nights back on Earth. This wasn't lust. It was something far more elemental.

His body moved with devastating control, but it was the delicate caress of the smaller tendrils—curious, gentle, and yet insistent—that undid her completely. They circled her most sensitive places, stroked and teased with an alien grace, as if he knew her better than she knew herself.

And when they found that perfect rhythm...

She shattered.

Her body convulsed in waves of pleasure that rolled through her like a tide—overwhelming, relentless, divine. She sobbed his name. She didn't even care how loud, how vulnerable, how utterly exposed she sounded.

There was no space for shame. Only awe.

The ecstasy stole her thoughts, scattered them like stardust across the vaulted ceiling of his sanctum. All she could do was feel .

She didn't know if it was minutes or hours later when she floated back down from that blissful edge, cradled still in his silken limbs, his massive form pressing into hers with quiet, reverent power. Her skin glowed with sweat and satisfaction. She couldn't move. Didn't want to.

He held her as if she were the rarest, most precious thing in the universe.

And for one strange, surreal, staggering moment...

She believed him.

She belonged to him now.

And somehow—impossibly—he belonged to her too.