Page 21 of Purring for Her Lion (Harmony Glen #5)
LIANA
The dream washes over me like warm honey, thick and sweet and impossibly real. His scent comes first—pine and musk and something wild that’s uniquely Roarke—followed by the weight of him, the heat of his massive body hovering over mine.
In the hazy space between sleeping and waking, I reach for him, my fingers finding fur and warm skin, and the rumbling purr that vibrates through his chest when my hand connects makes my entire body shiver with anticipation.
“I’ve missed you,” he growls, his voice lower than I’ve ever heard it, rough with need. “Missed this.”
My brain tries to make sense of his words—when did we ever do this before?—but then his mouth finds my neck, hot and wet, and I remember. Yes, we have done this before. In another dream.
The slight rasp of his tongue sending electric pulses straight to my core, and rational thought dissolves like sugar in hot coffee.
“Roarke,” I whisper, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears, breathy and desperate.
He responds by grazing his teeth along my collarbone, just enough pressure to make me gasp. “Say it again,” he demands, his massive hands sliding beneath my shirt, claws carefully retracted as they skim over my ribs.
“Roarke,” I repeat, louder this time, more urgent.
His hands find my breasts, and I arch into his touch, shameless in my need. He peels my shirt away with practiced ease, his golden eyes glowing in the dreamlike darkness as he looks down at me, pupils blown wide with desire.
“So beautiful,” he murmurs, lowering his head to take one nipple into his mouth.
The wet heat of it makes me cry out, my hands flying to his mane, fingers tangling in the thick golden strands. He sucks, hard enough to make me see stars, then soothes the sting with gentle laps of his tongue.
“I’ve been waiting to taste you again,” he says against my skin, his words vibrating through my chest. “To feel you come apart beneath me.”
Again? My mind struggles to remember, to understand what he means, but then he’s moving to my other breast, lavishing it with the same attention, and I lose the train of thought completely.
His hands seem to be everywhere at once—stroking my sides, cupping my breasts, sliding down to grip my hips with possessive strength. I’m wet already, embarrassingly so, my thighs slick with desire as I press them together, seeking friction.
“None of that,” he rumbles, easily pushing my legs apart with one knee. “I want to taste all of you.”
He moves down my body with excruciating slowness, dropping open-mouthed kisses on my stomach, my hipbones, the sensitive skin where thigh meets torso. His mane tickles my skin as he moves, the sensation both maddening and perfect.
“Please,” I hear myself beg, hips lifting off the bed, seeking his mouth.
He chuckles, the sound vibrating against my inner thigh where his face is now pressed. “Patience, little mate. We have all night.”
Mate? The word registers dimly, but before I can question it, his tongue makes contact with my center, and coherent thought becomes impossible.
“Fuck,” I gasp, hands fisting in the sheets as he licks a broad stripe up my slit.
“So wet for me,” he groans, his voice muffled against my flesh. “So perfect.”
My toes curl when he goes in again, ravenous, this time insatiable, French-kissing my cunt and sucking on my juices as his tongue slithers into my hole, so deep.
I’m seeing stars and I thrash and I’m crying out as though in pain.
But it’s so good, so fucking good. I’m losing the threads of my thoughts and I’m terrified I’ll soon forget my name.
His massive hands grip my thighs, holding me open and in place as he devours me with single-minded focus. The rough texture of his tongue against my clit sends shock waves of pleasure radiating outward, building and building until I’m certain I’ll shatter.
“I knew from the moment I scented you,” he murmurs between licks, “that you were mine. My fate mate. I’ve waited so long for you to be ready.”
I want to ask what he means, to follow the strange, dreamlike logic of his words, but his tongue is circling my clit now, applying just the right pressure, and all I can do is moan his name like a prayer.
“Come for me,” he commands, the vibration of his words against my sensitive flesh pushing me closer to the edge. “Let me taste your pleasure, little mate.”
When he sucks my clit between his lips, applying perfect suction while his tongue flicks rapidly against the sensitive bundle of nerves, I explode. My back arches off the bed as waves of pleasure crash through me, my thighs trembling violently on either side of his head.
“That’s my girl,” he purrs, licking me through the aftershocks. “Soak me, my mate.”
I’m still pulsing with pleasure when he moves up my body, his massive frame covering mine completely. I feel the hot, hard length of him pressing against my thigh, impossibly large.
“I need to be inside you,” he growls, his eyes almost entirely black now, just a thin ring of gold around the edges. “Need to feel you stretched around me.”
“Yes,” I breathe, spreading my legs wider in shameless invitation. “Please, Roarke.”
He positions himself at my entrance, the broad head of his cock parting my folds.
Even in the dream-haze, there’s a moment of uncertainty—he’s so big, too big, surely I can’t take all of him— but then he’s pushing forward, stretching me deliciously, and my body yields to him like it was made for exactly this.
“So tight,” he hisses, his jaw clenched with the effort of restraint. “So perfect for me.”
He fills me inch by glorious inch, the slight burn of the stretch only enhancing the pleasure. When he’s fully seated, our bodies flush together, he stills, giving me time to adjust. His forehead presses against mine, our breath mingling in the small space between us.
“I’ve needed this,” he murmurs, his voice strained. “Needed you. But I would have waited forever until you were ready.”
Before I can respond, he begins to move, pulling out almost completely before driving back in with a force that makes me cry out in ecstasy. The rhythm he sets is relentless, each thrust hitting places inside me that I didn’t know could feel so good.
“Mine,” he growls with each snap of his hips. “My mate. My Liana.”
I wrap my legs around his waist, urging him deeper, my nails digging into the fur of his back. The coil of pleasure tightens again, impossibly fast, building toward something even more intense than before.
“I can feel you getting close,” he says, his voice rough with exertion. “Come for me again. Let me feel you squeeze my cock.”
His words, filthy and perfect, combined with the sensation of his massive length hitting just the right spot inside me, send me over the edge again. I clench around him, wave after wave of pleasure washing through me as I cry out his name.
“Yes,” he snarls, his thrusts becoming erratic. “That’s it. Take every inch of me. Take all of it.”
With a final, powerful thrust, he stiffens above me, his cock pulsing inside me as he finds his own release. The sensation of his hot seed filling me triggers another small climax, my inner walls milking him for every drop.
As we lay tangled together, his weight a comforting pressure on top of me, he nuzzles my neck, placing gentle kisses along my jawline.
“Rest now,” he murmurs, his voice fading as the dream begins to dissolve around the edges. “I’ll be here when you wake. I will always be here for you.”
But even as his words echo in my mind, I can feel myself drifting away from him, from the dream, to a deeper place where there is nothing but a comforting darkness.
I cling to the sensation of his body against mine for as long as I can, trying to memorize every detail before it slips away like water through my fingers.
A week after my fever breaks, and I’m still having trouble looking Roarke in the eye. Not because he took care of me—though the memory of him spoon-feeding me arroz caldo while I was half-delirious is embarrassing enough—but because of what my fever-addled brain conjured up while I was sick.
The dreams were so vivid, so explicit, that for a horrifying moment when I first woke up without a fever, I was convinced I’d actually done those things with him.
Said those things to him. It took me a solid five minutes of mental gymnastics to confirm that no, I had not, in fact, had several nights of mind-blowing sex with my lion-man neighbor while running a 102-degree fever.
Small mercies.
As soon as I was coherent enough to operate laundry machinery, I’d stripped his bed, washed everything twice, and fled back to my own house like I was being chased by rabid pineapples.
That was two days ago. Since then, our interactions have been limited to him checking if I’m okay (I’m fine, totally fine, absolutely nothing weird happening in my brain at all), and me thanking him profusely for taking care of me yet again (while studiously avoiding eye contact and hoping he can’t somehow read dreams through my forehead).
I’ve become exceptionally good at ignoring things I don’t want to deal with. Like the fact that Nugget, who was the size of a German Shepherd last month, is now officially in pony territory. At this rate, by Christmas I’ll be able to saddle him up and trot into town for supplies.
Right now, he’s giving the chickens their daily tour of the yard, Chestnut perched on his head like a feathery general directing troops, and Buttercup riding his tail, which he’s learned to keep perfectly level for her comfort.
The rest of the flock struts alongside him, occasionally darting off to investigate bugs before rejoining the procession.
“That’s right, keep it steady,” I call from the porch, where I’m sketching out designs for my Harvest Festival display. “Buttercup gets motion sickness.”