Page 15 of Flameborne: Fury (Emberquell Academy #2)

SOUNDTRACK: Love Me Harder by Steven Rodriguez.

~ brEN ~

Donavyn stared down at me, scanning my body, drinking me in. I was fully-clothed, yet I was naked under those eyes. Naked and desired and necessary. Instead of self-doubt and self-consciousness, his hungry gaze made my body flush and bloom.

Donavyn didn’t stare at me like a choice cut of meat to be torn and chewed for his own gratification. His gaze was awed. As if I were prized.

I wanted his eyes on me.

Then he closed the space between us and touched my cheek, a low groan rolling in his chest as he trailed trembling, featherlight fingertips down my jaw, raising goosebumps like cold comets, skating down my spine.

I shivered and bit my lip, but he shook his head and used his thumb to stroke my lower lip, teasing it out from under my teeth.

“Don't hide from me.” His voice was ragged. His eyes alight with need.

“I'm not,” I breathed. “I don't know how to... I want... so much.”

Donavyn nodded and closed his eyes, tipping his forehead against mine, his chest heaving rapidly. “Me too,” he rasped.

He cupped my face, then turned and dropped his chin, his breath thundering across my cheek as he let his lips play from the corner of my jaw, down my neck, pressing me into his hand cupped at my other cheek.

“God, Bren. I've fought it,” he murmured against my chilled, damp skin. “I didn't know...”

“What?”

He froze.

Slowly, like I was a startled horse who might bolt, he drew back until he met my eyes again. His were tight with worry, his breath rushed and heavy.

“The dragons, Bren. Kgosi and Akhane... They're mates.”

I nodded, though my breath rushed out at the words.

Donavyn's heated gaze tightened. “This draw we feel. This drive. You understand what that is? What it means for us?”

A thrill detonated in my chest, spiraling down to a heated pool behind my navel. Nerves mingled with need and I gave him a shaky smile.

“It means... this.” I reached for his chest, his wet leathers that I'd already half unbuttoned, and slid my hand between the wet cotton of his shirt and his broad, firm chest, shivering again when I felt him tense under my palm.

He cursed and swayed closer, but as the thrill in my belly rose to meet his kiss, he caught himself. Muttering, sliding a hand into my hair and holding me as he tipped his forehead against mine again, panting.

“Bren, it's not just the dragons,” he rasped, swallowing audibly, his fingers curling into my scalp and sending another wave of delicious tingles down my back. “It's us. Me and you. This is... this need is us.”

I blinked, but didn't want to keep my eyes open. I wanted to sink into the electric snap of his touch, and electric crackle spearing through my belly.

I reached for his buttons, nodding. “I want this,” I hushed. “I want you—”

“No, Bren,” he said hoarsely, grabbing for my hands. “You have to understand.” Then he swallowed and locked eyes with me, holding my face, his gaze intense, blazing like the sun. ”You're...” he swallowed again. “You're my mate.”

My breath caught on the word, as it echoed in my ribs and sent my heartrate to the sky. A torrent of emotions suddenly tangling like snakes in a pit, fighting for dominance in my heart.

“I... we...”

“Yes,” he hissed. “Mate. My mate. Bren, you're mine.”

The word sang in my chest and for a moment I was gripped, hanging on that word.

Mate... mine...

Suddenly, the draw to him, the grief when he had turned from me, the hole he left when he grew distant. It all made sense. Instinctively, I grabbed for him, my hand on his chest, nails clawing into his skin.

He groaned again and gripped my arms like he'd pull me close, but then he stilled. “Bren... I want you—”

“I want you too—”

“—but I know... I know you've been hurt. If you need me to stay away—”

“No!”

“—I'll wait. I'll... I'll find a way. I can't have you look at me with fear in your eyes. But this is a war. I need you to tell me—”

I grabbed his head and pulled him down, kissed him with all the urgency and desire doing war in my flesh.

The moment our lips touched, that pressure in my chest burst forth and shot through my veins in sparkling, gleaming trails that raced under my skin to meet every place he touched—my chest pressed against his, his knee between my thighs, his hands sliding over my shoulders, down my sides, my thighs, clawing into my ass to pull me harder against him until we both clung and gasped.

The dragon’s calls rose, echoing through the storm and there was a flash in my mind of them, tangled together in the forest, a rush of desire from Akhane—

“Bren—”

“Don't stop.”

“Are you—?”

“Please!”

Something in Donavyn unraveled. I felt it.

With a desperate hiss, he grasped at my clothing, scrambling to free the rest of the buttons on my jacket, my shirt, my leathers.

Frantic myself, I wrestled with his clothes, near sobbing in frustration as triangles of flesh were revealed and I dove to kiss them—the flat plain of his chest, the rippled ladder of his abdomen—but then he grabbed my arms and cursed, whipping me around so my back was to his chest and grabbing for the now-open sides of my jacket and shirt, both wet and clinging to my skin and yanked them back over my shoulders, baring me to the cold, damp air.

A surge of hot need rocked through me and I arched back, trying to press into his hands as, with his face buried under my jaw, lips, tongue, and teeth scraping, fueling the rush of tingling pleasure under my skin, he tugged the wet, sucking fabric and leather from my limbs, throwing them aside with a wet thwack as they landed on the dirt, leaving me shivering with both cold and arousal.

Still sucking at my neck, he dragged his hands down my damp, pebbled body, kneading my breasts, then continuing down to the buttons at my leathers.

It took precious, frustrating moments for his large hands to free the wet leather from my skin.

Donavyn groaned and latched onto my neck and slid both hands inside the waistband, letting it catch on his wrists.

My body thrilled. I trembled as his calloused hands shoved my leathers down—and when the wet leather resisted and he stroked both hands to my inner thighs to loosen them, I bucked into his touch, gasping his name.

Donavyn growled and I felt his teeth at my neck in the same moment the dragons flashed in my head, necks and tails entwined, Akhane’s chin tilted to the sky and her mouth open, screaming her joy.

That pressure in my chest had rushed through my blood, heating and burning, to ignite my limbs. I shook and gasped, barely aware of the cold air, only of the heat of his chest against my back, his breath rushing over my skin, and the deep, aching hunger at my core.

Finally, my leathers surrendered their grip on my damp skin and dropped to the ground.

Donavyn followed them, leaving me staggering as he knelt, cursing, grasping at my boots and pulling them free.

I leaned on his back as he tossed one of my boots against the wall of the cave, then started on the other.

I should have been self-conscious with him kneeling while I was naked, but I could only urge him to hurry. Then, finally, he groaned and his hands clawed back up my body as he straightened behind me and I kicked my leathers away.

“Bren.” He spun me around me to face him again, his eyes raking down, gaze burning on my skin.

We wrestled together with his clothes, the urgency in my belly pressing me forward, faster, yearning .

Trembling hands, shaking breaths, Donavyn kissing me as he toed his boots off with a muttered curse, until finally, finally he was bare too and we fell together.

I shook when his arms circled me and pulled me into his chest, when every steel roll of his body pressed against mine.

The dragons screamed again and a jolt of desire speared through me.

I gasped as Donavyn plunged his hand into my hair and fisting it, lifting me, pulling my head back as he devoured the sensitive skin under my ear and carried me a few, staggering steps to where I’d thrown my bedroll down on the cave floor.

Dragon heat, the embers alive, rippling from within, reaching out. Dragon need, the bestial drive closer , ever closer—

When Donavyn lowered me to the bedroll, the fur at my back brushed my sensitized skin, sending more sparkling pleasure coursing from my neck to my knees.

I writhed, gripping his thick shoulders, pulling him down to me, gasping into his mouth, swallowing his groans—then arching when his knee nudged mine wider.

Devouring him, sucking on his tongue, I clawed nails into his back and pulled him down, wrapping knees around his waist and locking my ankles at his back, gasping at him, pulling, needing, shaking like a leaf when the thick length of him slid to rest against my heated, swelling skin. But still not within me.

With a sob, I dropped my head back to the fur, lifting my hips to bring him harder against me, my body flooding with the promise of pleasure.

“God, Bren—” he croaked, then rolled his hips so he pressed against me, sending a burst of hot, tingling want through my belly.

My nipples, already achingly hard, rubbed on his chest, the pleasure crackling through me to meet the waves surging between my legs.

Donavyn had both hands in my hair now, holding me down, elbows braced over my shoulders, and his body rolling to find me. A whisper of fear, a shadow of the past flickered in my head, but, no.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and clung to him.

Then I felt him right at my core and cried out, pleading as he dragged over me, almost taking me.

“Please, Donavyn,” I gasped, trembling from head to toe, my body so desperate I feared I’d weep if he didn’t take me soon.

“Bren,” he rasped, lips hovering over my open mouth. “Are you sure?” He arched his back and pressed against me with such a delicious, thrilling slide, I sobbed.

“Yes. Yes!”

But then he stopped moving. I panicked. My eyes flew open to find him staring at me, flame and need and fear in his blazing gaze. In the distance, the dragons roared, the resonant calls rolling into the cave to hum through the walls and underneath us.

Donavyn relaxed his hips and drew away, and I swore and clawed a hand into his hair. “You’re my mate,” I hissed. ‘I need you. Please, Donavyn. Please, don’t—”

“I’m not,” he rasped. Then, with a tormented moan to compete with the dragon’s call, Donavyn dropped one hand to grasp my hip and hold me as he plunged into me, filling me so fully my breath stopped, and the pleasure shuddered all the way to my toes.

Then he took my mouth as surely as my body, and I was alive.