Page 28

Twenty-Eight

Ayna

Myron doesn’t give me the opportunity to stumble back as he pushes away from the door, the hard lines of his body pressing against my curves, his arm sweeping around my waist as he spins us around so my back is against the carved wood.

“I’m ready to honor any promise I ever made to you,” he growls an inch from my face, so close his features blur, the scent of him remaining an anchor as the rest of my senses strain to feel-feel-feel.

The powerful beats of his heart sound through me, urging my own heart into a frenzy, and as he skates his lips against mine in a kiss that I know he wants to be a question but brims with primal need, I let go of anything human still left in me.

I delve my hands into his hair, savoring the texture running between my fingers like liquid silk. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined I’d live to see this moment, to breathe each other in.

Myron’s answering groan as I lick along the seam of his lower lip makes my bare toes curl on the smooth tiles, his hand tightening at my waist while the other grasps my thigh as he grinds into me right where I need it. My shirt slides up as I lift my knee to give him better access, and he adjusts his hand on my thigh, his calluses scraping along my skin so deliciously I moan into his mouth as he opens for me, devouring the sound. His tongue slides against mine in a dance as old as time, instinct guiding me in a clash of teeth and tongues.

Within a heartbeat, my hands are on his shirt, fumbling with the buttons, but my new fae body doesn’t do well with patience, so I end up ripping the fabric off him, hands exploring his body anew, tracing the muscles of his chest, his shoulders, his back, all the way to the waistband of his pants. They linger there, sliding to the front, to the hard proof of his desire straining against the leather.

Myron beats me to undoing the laces of his pants before I can tear those off as well, and when his cock springs free, I marvel at the velvet feel of the hard steel between my palms. He goes still as if waiting to see what I’ll do, but his patience seems to spread as thin as mine, so all it takes is a nip at his bottom lip, and he lifts me by the backside, fingers digging into my flesh with delicious strength. I hold onto his shoulder with one hand, the other one guiding him to my entrance while his mouth roves my neck, licking down my chest where my shirt hangs open to the middle of my sternum. Through the fabric, he sucks at my nipples, teeth scraping slightly until my throaty, needy moan escapes into the sunlit room. My head is against the door, back arching to give him better access. But I need him inside of me more than anything else. I need that relentless abandon, the luxurious heat of him filling me. I need any space between us gone, and I need it now.

As if he hears my silent plea, Myron thrusts into me, a hard and thorough stroke drawing a scream from me. I don’t recognize my voice, don’t remember I own a voice, because it doesn’t matter. Right here, right now, nothing matters but Myron’s body moving against mine, the strength of him enveloping me as I meet each of his thrusts with a roll of my hips. The violent, tossing sea of emotions gushes through my chest as the mating bond spreads and spreads until there is no place within me that doesn’t belong to him.

A fulfillment of a promise, but also a claiming. His mouth is back on mine, moving with demand and affirmation as pleasure builds and builds in my core.

I don’t have words, don’t need words as long as this doesn’t end. As long as he keeps driving into me, wild and breathless. An unleashing for both of us.

All those weeks since Erina tried to un-mate us, all those weeks of being trapped in my bird form—I let them go as Myron increases the pace and my mind goes blank from a spike of pleasure. I might have moaned, might have screamed his name as I climax, Myron following a heartbeat later, but we’re not done. In no way are we done.

Myron gently sets me down, his mouth never leaving mine as his fingers trail my sides, the curve of my hips, along my back where I braced myself against the wood as if searching for injuries.

That costs me a chuckle. “I’m a real Crow now,” I simply say as I run my hand over his arm, guiding his own to meet it, lacing our fingers when his palm slides against mine. “I’m no longer that breakable.”

It’s not entirely a lie but not a truth either. My legs are wobbly from the force of my release, and I can feel the tingle of my healing skin where my spine rubbed against the door. But my bones, my muscles, my very essence is that of an immortal Crow now, and if anyone can break me, it surely isn’t the male who would wreck himself for me. Over and over again.

Myron’s breath heats my neck as he sweeps my hair aside, turning with me as I guide him away from the door to the chair beckoning in the corner of the room. The emerald velvet cushion is still where it last was when he sat me down and pinned me against the high backrest carved from dark wood.

Myron’s grin turns wicked as he takes in the chair, and he makes to gently shove me into it when I twirl so fast even I am surprised, pushing him into the seat instead and landing on his lap with my legs astride but catching myself with one hand against the backrest.

“A real Crow indeed,” he purrs, lifting his hands to my shirt and tearing it clean down the middle so it exposes all of my chest, my stomach, lower where my spread legs graze the outside of his knees. He spreads them wider, drinking in the sight of me as I brace one knee beside his hip, then the other.

Slowly—so painfully slowly, he drags a finger across my abdomen, up my chest, between my breasts, along my collarbone, up the side of my throat, along my jaw, gaze following where he touches until he ends at my mouth. For a split second, his eyes find mine, his finger gliding along my bottom lip. My core turns liquid all over again at his silent request, and my mouth falls open, allowing him entrance. I moan as he slides in, the pad of his finger both rough and gentle along my tongue, and it’s his turn to moan as I close my mouth around his finger, taking him deeper, then slowly pulling back until his fingertip rests on my bottom lip once more, tugging it down. His finger isn’t enough.

I’m about to tell him when he grabs my hips, pushing down until he’s poised at my entrance, and not even the best of intentions can keep me from lowering myself onto him, luxuriating in his growl of approval as he sinks into me.

My mate. I don’t wait for him to start moving but pull back up before plunging down again so hard I take him in to the hilt. Myron swears, eyes shuttering and closing as he rests his head against the carved wood.

“You’re fucking perfect, Ayna,” he murmurs, fingers tightening on my hips. The muscles in his abdomen quiver with every time I slide up his shaft and drop back down again, and I can’t help the smile spreading on my lips as I trace my fingers over his chest, and a deep, hungry breath heaves beneath my palm. But it’s not there that my eyes catch on.

It’s the palm-sized cluster of glowing lines appearing on Myron’s skin, right above his heart where my own hand was lingering before, when we were both still dressed and our breaths even, our hearts beating as one, not the frenzied hummingbirds they are now.

Like starlight beneath his skin, the lines weave together, alive with each motion, becoming symbols and formations I have never seen in my life.

I want to pause to take a closer look, but I can’t get enough of the way our bodies fit together, the way each stroke brings me closer to the bliss that’s our joined release, so I keep moving, thighs shaking, not from the effort of lifting myself after each deep plunge but because of the pleasure coiling in my belly, the tightness of my core where Myron fills me so perfectly I can barely remember my own name.

“Myron—” His name is barely a breath falling off my tongue as I place my palm over his heart, covering the mark that could mean our demise or our salvation, something I can’t worry about now when I ride him into oblivion.

A few hard thrusts meet my hips, and I splinter, genuinely falling apart at the seams as Myron climaxes with me, his roar filling my entire being like an awakening call. I don’t know how long I tremble around him, don’t care. All I need is right here with me, and I never want to let go of this complete satisfaction.

“Mind, body, and soul,” Myron whispers as I slump against his chest, palm still covering the spot above his heart, and I kiss the side of his neck as he cradles my head with his hand, the other wrapping around my shoulders as we catch our breath.

Only when the sun reaches its highest point do we finally pull apart, my fingers tracing the glowing lines on his chest, and Myron notices them too. I lean away to get a better look at the mark when Myron catches my right hand and turns it over to reveal a matching one on the inside of my palm. And as Myron guides it to his face, brushing a featherlight kiss along the pale, shimmering lines, I feel his love pouring into me through our mating bond, strengthened with this new body, and and just as immortal.