Page 18

His hands found my waist—slow, hesitant—and pulled me in. Not roughly. Almost reverently. My breath caught in my throat.

Then his mouth caught mine.

It started as a whisper of contact, testing.

Searching. But the moment my mouth parted beneath his, the hesitancy shattered.

Heat surged between us. His hand splayed against my back, dragging me flush against him, and I gasped into the kiss.

My arms looped around his neck, tangling in the wet mess of his hair, pulling him closer.

He groaned into me—low and guttural—and the sound unraveled something deep inside me.

My skin burned. My heart pounded. That slow, pulsing ache between my legs bloomed and bloomed until it was all I could feel, all I could want. There was no cold left in me. Only him.

When we finally pulled apart, our breath mingled in the space between.

He rested his forehead against mine.

“I don’t know what this means,” I whispered. Air spirits didn’t experience these feelings—this want . “But I know I don’t want it to stop.”

His voice came ragged, almost broken. “I can’t now that we’re here.”

“Then don’t.” The words barely left my lips when the beast prince was on me again.

We fell to the rug before the fire, our limbs tangled, mouths still fused in a kiss that stole the air from my lungs and replaced it with him. The warmth of the flames was nothing compared to the heat of his claw-tipped hands sliding over my skin—rough, reverent, starved.

Each touch ignited something deeper, something that had lived buried beneath fear and silence, now rising with a roar.

I arched into him, fingers threaded through his wet hair, pulling him closer, anchoring myself to the solid weight of his body.

He touched me like I was sacred, like I was fire, and he’d lived his whole life in the cold.

Every inch of space between us vanished as our bodies explored, discovered, yielded.

I’d never known desire could feel like this—wild, aching, unstoppable.

And I didn’t want it to stop. Not here. Not with him.

Mavros reared back and sat on his knees, an imposing form between my thighs. Large, toned hands stroked my legs. Up and down, inching higher on each pass until they reached my knees. An indecent shiver rolled through my body.

“I love how you tremble when I touch you.” He gripped my knees before parting my legs.

“Yes.” It came out as more of a wanton sigh than a word.

“Such a good, sweet creature for me, aren’t you?” Those long fingers nearly wrapped completely around my thighs. He kneaded my flesh, tenderizing my muscles, and I keened and squirmed for more of something I couldn’t voice. “Relax, and I’ll make it feel so good for you.”

“Please, yes, please.” I begged him to satisfy a craving I didn’t know I possessed.

I scratched at the ground. I turned my head, breathing fast as his hands ascended the tops of my thighs.

Warm, soft, and powerful. Touching me with all the reverence of a sinner cradling a holy relic.

Frissons of bliss flashed over my skin and crackled along my nerves.

I bit my lip to muffle the strained whimpers at the back of my throat.

“So lovely,” he praised.

The beast skimmed his palms over my hips, briefly pausing to rub his thumbs over my hip bones.

His digits tapped along the ladder of my ribs while his thumbs massaged up my stomach.

Moving with an agonizing slowness bordering on torture.

He roamed up and down, teasing me from the space beneath my breasts to the apex of my thighs, never lowering far enough to caress where I throbbed.

“Such beautiful skin.” Palms briefly cupped my breasts before sliding to my neck. I sucked in a quick gasp and my back arched. The sharp tip of claws danced across my throat, my shoulder, then up to my cheek. The chill from his metallic rings clashed with the heat of his hands.

“Mmm… ah.” Mumbles and soft sighs passed through my lips.

The beast continued touching, exploring.

He smoothed a hand over my shoulder, the other up my neck to my face.

He mapped out the curves and planes of my body as if committing them to memory or carving my image into himself.

The fire in my blood flooded to my core an d coalesced into an inferno between my hips.

“You look so good. So perfect.” He grabbed my face, thumb roughly swiping over my bottom lip. “What I wouldn’t give to take a bite out of you.”

A monster , a phantom voice whispered in my mind. Do not forget the shadows bear monsters. The shadows have teeth.

But how could a monster have such a gentle touch? What sort of monster kneeled before you as if you were a shrine and he was a devotee to a forgotten god?

“I could do it, you know?” he growled. “It would be so easy to sink my teeth into your flesh and swallow you down. I would feast on you.” The words morphed into an agonized groan. “Gods, how I would feast.”

I jerked reflexively, as if some part of my mind still knew to flee from a predator. A desperate whine lodged in my throat, and my eyes clenched against the prick of needy tears. I wanted. I wanted so badly. Yet I didn’t know what I wanted.

Orange-red eyes hovered over me, piercing me with their intensity. Embers in the dark floating overhead, burning and burning and, oh gods, I was so hot. I was burning. Uncertainty gripped me, holding me in place as those eyes lowered and the beast’s hand descended back down my body.

“You smell mouthwatering.” A hot puff of air tickled my inner thigh. My legs shivered and my core pulsed. “I try, I really do try to resist, you know. I’m sorry that I can’t. ”

“What?” The question slipped out inaudibly, vanishing with the wind in the woods. I locked eyes with Mavros and my abdomen tensed with a foreign anticipation.

He moved slowly, as if restraining himself. As if under duress from an internal battle. A thunderous growl rumbled through his broad form, and it had the oddest reaction on my body. Slick liquid dripped from the center of my thighs.

A fist gripped my ankle and nudged it aside, widening my legs.

I yelped as he dropped between my parted thighs.

Warm air caressed the sensitive, wet part of me and a ripple of aching emptiness tore through me.

My heart lodged in the base of my throat as Mavros panted over my dripping core.

And the look in his eyes—like a feral beast preparing to tear into a wounded, vulnerable animal.

Large, he was so large. Not even the fading sunlight through the windows gave an accurate size.

It was unfathomable, mind-bending. The beast could squish me, envelop me, crush me, tear me apart, rip my flesh from my bones and suck down the marrow.

I’d never felt smaller than I did in the moment when the despicable embodiment of my carnal cravings dipped its head between my thighs.

Alarm spiked my blood, and my heart hammered against my ribs.

Despite the terror flooding me, my legs dropped open further to accommodate the beast. And a choked groan pulled from me when a wide, flat tongue licked over my inner thigh.

My head dropped back, my nails dug in the rug, and my hips rolled forward to chase when his mouth retreated.

A condescending, almost victorious growl vibrated through him.

When his tongue licked higher to the soaked, throbbing part of me, a keening cry flew past my lips.

His mouth was obscured in darkness, but I felt it.

The hot, wet warmth of his mouth opened wide to converge on my core.

The flat, textured muscle of his tongue swiping through the buzzing, tender slit between my legs.

And the blinding rapture ripping me apart and shattering my foundation. I felt it all.

How had my dreams managed to capture this foreign act and feel so real ?

A floating sensation took over. There was something freeing about submitting to the darkness buried between my thighs.

Giving in and relenting a part of myself that had never been explored before.

To have lived all my life in the light and now finding euphoria in the dark.

It was unhinged and wicked, but it was wonderful.

A stuttered whining-moan scattered my thoughts.

The beast’s tongue probed at my center, delicate at first. Exploring the folds and licking up the slick liquid dripping from me.

The flexibility of that tongue astounded me as much as it sucked the breath from my lungs.

A sudden jolt of golden bliss in my core had my back bowing off the ground and a strained whimper choking me.

Tension zapped as vibrant as lightning across my skin as that expert tongue flicked, circled, and sucked that bundle of nerves.

I’d never experienced anything like this before.

In all the lives I’d lived, all the worlds I’d seen come and go, I didn’t know what was happening to me or how I had dreamt about such a thing.

It was new, and strange, and primal, and so, so wonderful.

So deliciously frightening yet thrilling it provoked a repeated moan to belt from my lungs and a greedy rocking in my hips.

Claws pricked at tender flesh. Sharp teeth scraped sensitive nerves.

My center throbbed as a war of pleasure and fear spread through my core.

The beast’s huge hands hooked under my thighs to cradle my hips, holding me in place as he devoured his meal.

Delirious heat seeped through my blood and my head spun.

I balanced on a delicate precipice between terror and euphoria.

My galloping heart bullied my ribs as the writhing tongue licked from my nerves to my entrance. I had enough time to suck in a breath before he filled me. So thick and long, his tongue filled every crevice of my delicate center. And when Mavros growled… it vibrated inside of me.

Oh, gods.

A vicious shudder swept over me, and my legs clamped around his head.

My nails ached from ripping at the ground in search of balance, but nothing could contain me as pleasure left me adrift in a sea of ecstasy.

Stars exploded behind my eyes, blurring with the gloaming light through the trees.

Lightning sparked along my skin in gentle bursts before circling around to crash in the center of my being.

“Don’t run away from me,” he growled against me, mouth dripping with saliva and my own bodily fluids. His claws gripped harder, holding me down before returning to his meal. And he feasted and devoured until I swore I felt him reaching my heart from within.

The shlick noises of his tongue entering me, tasting me, drove me wild.

Sensation overwhelmed me and I succumbed, melting into the warm, golden light flooding me.

My thighs tensed and my hips squirmed, but Mavros kept his possessive hold as he thrust his undulating tongue into my inner channel repeatedly.

Something primal and astounding was building inside of me.

Cosmic dust coalescing into the explosion that would birth the universe.

Each stroke of his tongue on my inner walls, seeking, teasing, pleasing, struck raw and untouched nerves just waiting for him to light the spark.

The pressure of a thousand suns built within me, expanding ever outward in a great rush of celestial power.

The world darkened as my eyes rolled back in my head.

My back vaulted off the ground, and a cry ripped from my throat.

His tongue shoved deeper, faster, harder.

My hips snapped against his mouth. A keening wail fled my lips.

Every fiber of my being shattered apart as I was ripped to shreds in the explosion and snapped back together with a blinding, bright clarity.

Darkness, imposing and hungry, rose over me. Only his fire-eyes reached me through the shadows obscuring his frame. A small voice whispered that he would eat me. One small taste of me wasn’t enough. He would want more, need more. All of me, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

“Beautiful light.” Delicate claws brushed through my hair.

A soft glow illuminated my hair and skin, and he caressed his dark, dangerous hands over my shining body.

Slow, gentle, reverent. A moth worshiping the light of the sun, amazed that he held the center of his world in his unworthy hands. “My light. All mine.”

“Yours…” I meant it as a question, but heady satisfaction and leaden fatigue crushed me. I slipped into subliminal darkness once again as swiftly as I’d almost drowned.