Page 54 of Flameborne: Fury (Emberquell Academy #2)

SOUNDTRACK: Surrender by Natalie Taylor

~ brEN ~

I’d always loved Donavyn’s kiss, but in that moment he sipped at me like I was a fine wine. His kiss was soft but insistent, delving. And his touch… He held me like I was precious. Breakable. To be protected.

The bond glowed.

I’d been so afraid when that hollow space appeared in my chest, so terrified when Kgosi said I’d severed our connection, to have it back, to feel him again was a relief so deep I would have wept if I hadn’t already spent my tears.

But the moment we kissed, and Donavyn sighed into my mouth, the moment he believed that I wanted him, the glow of that cord between us became a spark.

Then a crackle.

He started so slowly, tilting my head to deepen the kiss, leaning into me because I straddled his thighs. But he moved slowly, cradling the back of my head when he had me leaned back over his arm, and always, always tasting me—lips, tongue, breath.

As he leaned me back, I wrapped my arms around his neck to keep myself held into his kiss, while his hands traveled down my sides to my hips, holding me there.

His kiss grew more insistent.

My breathing rasped and my heart thrilled as I felt him tremble, holding himself back.

But I didn’t want him restrained. I didn’t want him careful.

I’d been violated. I’d been coddled. I’d been seduced—by a man who never loved me, but used his words to convince me that he did so I’d give him what he wanted.

I could see that now.

There was no part of me that wanted anything to do with Ruin ever again.

But every part of me wanted every part of Donavyn.

Donavyn’s touch wasn’t a violation. It lit up my skin like fireflies dancing. I shivered with joy, rather than fear. My heart raced with anticipation, not anxiety.

Being in his arms, covered by his body, I felt safe. Protected from the world.

Not revealed for someone else’s pleasure.

When his hands slipped under the waistband of my jacket to slide against my skin, I sucked in a breath and kissed him harder.

When I unbuttoned his jacket, celebrating when I found his skin because he had no shirt on underneath, he shuddered.

I still straddled him when he got my jacket open, and my shirt.

There was a split second when he drew back, sitting up straight to look down on me, that a tiny flutter of fear niggled in the back of my mind.

But his eyes were avid with love, not lust. His gaze bright with need, not hunger. And his touch…

God, he touched me like I was precious. Fragile.

Whispering to me to rest back, he pulled up his knees to support me, then slowly, with shaking hands, peeled my shirt and jacket away until they lay against my sides, while my chest and stomach were bare to the morning air.

His gaze warmed my skin, then his eyes snapped up to meet mine. “Bren, are you sure—?”

I sat up quickly, kissing him hard, taking his hand and placing it on my breast, arching into it. If I’d needed to, I would have begged.

But Donavyn groaned, cupping the weight of my breast in his palm, teasing my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and kissing me like I was air to breathe.

I lay back against his knees again, let my head fall back, gasping when his hand slid up from my breast, to my collarbone, then lifted to trace fingertips from my chin, down my throat, and back down to my breasts.

I panted and arched, watching him touch me with both hands, his expression one of wonder and delight as he teased my nipples and kneaded my breasts.

He was already hard. I could feel him straining against his leathers, and it made want jolt through me.

For a time, we both panted and writhed, touching and sliding, breathing each other’s names as I peeled his jacket back off his shoulders, and he released my arms from mine.

But then he pulled me up to his chest and kissed me hard again, as he lifted me and shifted, picking me up and carrying me, his steps hurried, to a spot near the creek where the grasses were lush and the morning sun filtered through leaves.

He paused for a moment, staring down at me, shaking his head slowly. “You amaze me, Bren,” he croaked.

I felt myself growing shy under his eyes—not because I was naked to the waist, but because of the intensity in him. But he growled and set me on my feet, whispering.

“If you feel afraid—even uneasy, you tell me.”

“I don’t.”

He gave me a searching look, then let go of me enough to yank off his jacket and shake it out over the grasses, before laying it down, then rushing back to my side and gathering me into a new, frantic kiss.

I giggled against his lips, but it quickly turned to panting as the bond surged, and the urge to be joined with him, to be one, became overwhelming.

The dragons raised their groans over the forest and my skin prickled, every hair on my body standing on end as I wrestled with the buckle of his belt, struggled to get it loose, then yanked the buttons of his leathers open.

We kissed and stroked, whispered and sighed. He stripped me bare so that I stood in the golden light of the morning sun, then gathered me against him so I wasn’t alone in it.

We tumbled to the ground together and I wrapped my legs around his thighs, hands in his hair, back arching, pulling him closer.

I needed him closer.

Donavyn kept trying to slow me down. But when I opened my mouth on his and rubbed myself against him, he shuddered.

“Bren. God,” he groaned as he arched his back and drew himself against me.

I gasped, twitching at the explosion of sensation, of him. “More, Donavyn. I need you.”

Eyes dark with desire, he descended on me, sucking my tongue, stroking my body, delving down, kissing his way down my neck until his teeth grazed my shoulder and I twitched as my skin came alive, sending waves of goosebumps down my spine.

I clawed hands into him, pulling him harder against me, lifting my hips to find him, desperate for him to fill me, but he braced his elbows on the ground over my shoulders and loomed over me, close enough that our breaths mingled, and I could see his lips curling into a heated smile.

Close enough that my vision was filled with the sparkle in his eyes—and the question.

But I’d already told him I was certain. And now I was frantic.

There was something within me, something only he could touch, a hollow only he could feel. With the bond alive again and coiled around my heart, I needed proof. I needed connection. I needed him.

Then he slid a hand under my neck, his thumb stroking the corner of my jaw, his fingers cradling me.

His eyes never left mine as he nipped at my chin, then kissed me—little more than a brush of his lips.

Then a teasing slide of his tongue. Then an invasion that left me breathless and gasping, bucking hips, pulling him closer with my heels.

When his hand drifted down to my breast, I arched into it. “Please.”

When his belly brushed mine and all of his hard slid against my soft, my jaw dropped as everything in me came alive and the bond bucked and coiled, yanking him closer.

“Donavyn, please!”

He gave a low, breathless chuckle and pressed himself harder against me, teasing me as he slid over my core.

I was about to claw his back, to demand more, when he lifted his head, his hair falling in tousled strands around his handsome face.

Then I saw the awe in him—and the shadow pass behind his eyes.

Still rolling his hips to pleasure me, still stroking my body, he locked eyes with me and his brow furrowed.

“Don’t,” I whispered, the first threat of tears returning. “I’m not scared of you. I want you. The bond—”

“I know. I feel it, too,” he croaked.

I slid a hand under his hair to cup his stubbled jaw, rocking with him, my breath catching every time he pressed just right, and pleasure burst in my core.

“You were made for me,” I whispered. “I felt it. But I didn’t see how perfect you were for me. You make me feel safe, Donavyn. No one else does that.”

“You’re safe with me,” he graveled, then flexed his hips and both of us sucked in.

My head fell back for a moment and he dove to kiss my neck, but then spoke there, his lips traveling up my throat, to my jaw, then my lips.

“You’ll always be safe with me, Bren. And if it doesn’t feel that way, you tell me. You tell me immediately.”

I nodded hurriedly, my grip on his shoulder tightening when he teased the underside of my lip with his tongue.

“My mate,” he gasped.

I whimpered, arching, desperate for him. “Yes!”

“Mine, Bren.”

“Yes! Always—”

“And if any other bastard even thinks he can touch you, he’ll learn. By my hand. I love you, Bren—I fucking love you.”

“I kn— oh, yes!”

My back bowed as he entered me in a single, hard thrust, and the pleasure ripped through my body from the point where we joined, in bursts and sparks in my belly, pulling air into my lungs and pebbling my skin until he’d seated himself to the hilt and I felt it all the way to the soles of my feet.

I hung there, in the balance of ecstasy and joy, mouth open and eyes filled with the sight of his gritted teeth and tight throat because he’d thrown his head back, when those bursts of pleasure reached my chest and sent the bond up like a fuse.

A dazzling flame that rode the cord that joined us, but instead of burning it up, sent flame rippling up and down, curling under my skin and into his, then back until we writhed in the grip of an effervescent heat together.

When he drew almost entirely out of my body, I cried out and clapped a hand to his back, the panic born of need—closer. Always closer.

But he buried his hand in my hair, his face in my throat, and took me again, rasping my name against my skin as we joined and another wave of bliss coursed through me.

The world disappeared.

The wind, the trees, the dawn sun, everything.

There was only him—his weight pressing me down, his warmth covering me, his voice guttural and heavy, his shadow the safety that hid me.

Healed me.

“Donavyn… oh God.” I whimpered as he took me again, clawing a hand through my hair and down, his body tight and tense, rolling, seeking.

I clung to him, locked my ankles behind him and pulled him to me, cried his name.

Not enough. It wasn’t enough.

“God, Bren. Can you feel that?!”

I nodded desperately. He shuddered in my arms and we both gasped as the fire within burned through, lighting up our skins. Shame and fear sloughed from my heart, those flames between us burning them away. Those awful memories had tarnished my skin, but his love scoured it clean.

“Donavyn… Donavyn.” I clung to him, frantic for more, filling with light and air until it seemed that without him I’d float from the earth.

He rasped my name, over and over, as we were buffeted by the bond, burned and blistered, seared and sealed, climbing higher and higher, closer and closer, until every fiber quivered on the edge of something impossible.

Donavyn’s jaw went slack, his eyes wide and dark with need as he braced over me, taking me, wanting me, every thrust bringing us closer, yet leaving something untouched.

“Look at me, Bren,” he rasped. “Look at me.”

There was a split second when those words shattered in my chest—an echo of a memory I wished I’d never had. But his voice was the safe place and I obeyed, and the moment my eyes flew open and our gazes locked, something in the bond shifted.

Donavyn hovered over me, shuddering, fighting for control, but his hand clawed up to cradle my head and hold me there, locked with him. My heart leaped against my ribs, and the noose of that cord, the bond, tugged tight, stopping my breath.

The jolt of adrenaline, that hint of fear was scoured away as I dove into that gaze—those eyes, swimming with love and need and joy for me.

I cracked open like an egg.

All the whispers of words and voices that had tried to destroy me blew away like smoke in the wind.

All the dark memories of men with sneering faces, or avid eyes, were burned away because the light of his love for me blazed.

All the fear of giving myself, surrendering, trusting myself into someone else’s hands blown out like a little flame, a candle.

And in place of each, him.

His love. His desire. His trust. His need.

The bond sang. I was clean. New. Worthy . I gasped in ecstatic shock as he plunged into me again and reached something no man had ever touched before.

Me.

The world disappeared. The dragons, the trees, the wind—everything.

I held his gaze, his precious, loving gaze and I gave myself.

‘I love you, Donavyn. I love all of you with all of me.’

Donavyn cried out and pulled me to him, our bodies tangled, our souls entwined. He gasped and rocked, groaning, desperate, as we were rolled and buffeted, melded together.

Something inside me gave way. A door opened that had been locked, and light poured in. The light of him. His love, his protection, his value.

His light tore open the dark inside me, chased it down and beat it dead.

I gasped, my back bowing, eyes flying wide as something inside me screamed and died. But it was the death of pain. And in its wake, I found peace.

My eyes locked with Donavyn, and a smile of sheer joy broke from me as I offered him everything.

He bellowed, his face red, eyes tight and trembling, but he didn’t retreat. He clapped a hand to my head and held me down, covered me with his bulk as the bond scoured us both and threatened to wash us away.

But he fought.

He fought, and the more I threw myself wide open, the greater the bliss.

My heart. My memories. My joy. My soul. All of it. I offered all of it because it was safe with him.

‘Bren!’

I gasped as his voice came alive in my head, like Akhane’s had the day she Chose me.

‘Donavyn?’

‘I’m here—don’t let go!’

‘I won’t. I can’t. I love you!’

Akhane screamed with joy, and Kgosi roared.

We were whipped and tilted, rolled and somersaulted—bathed in light and the song of our dragons.

Four souls.

Four minds.

Four bodies.

One heart.

Everything went still, my body poised on the cusp of ecstasy. I heard nothing but my heart thrub-thrub-thrubbing in my head.

Then him.

‘Bren? Bren, can you hear me? I love you.’