Page 31 of Snag (Conduit #2)

I relax into that hold, gazing up at him.

I’m not prey. I cannot be dominated. But I relax so completely that he has to hold me aloft.

I press my hand against his chest, laying my palm over the heart tattoo — over the anchor point of our soul bond.

I hold his blazing golden gaze, not a hint of Rought’s blue-green visible in those glowing orbs.

The gryphon, and therefore Rought himself, is a demigod. Not just a mythical beast. He wields too much power to be anything else. The beasts of his brothers and their ties to me— a goddess of sorts— are further evidence of that.

The gryphon stares back at me, fierce and determined.

Something cracks open deep in my chest — as if I’ve held all my need and desire and love walled off around my heart. It floods through my system with a weird, amped-up joy. I sob against the onslaught of my own emotions, my own acceptance. Just once.

“You held the bond?” I ask in a teary whisper.

“Mine,” the gryphon rasps through not entirely human vocal cords. He raises his other hand, running the smooth back of a sickle claw up my neck, angling my head to give him all the access he wants. He tracks his nose across my skin, inhaling deeply.

My nipples tighten, almost painfully.

His … his … “Yours …” I murmur. “Separate from Rought? ”

He huffs, clearly not interested in exchanging words. “Yes. Mate.”

Two soul bonds? One to the man and one to the beast? And the one between Rought and me was severed —

He hooks those claw-tipped fingers between my breasts, curling the sharp points carefully away from me. Then he shreds the front of my nightgown.

“Oh … that’s not —”

I’m shocked, apparently speechless, as he hooks my necklace in one finger, then tugs it around my neck so it hangs down my back instead. He shouldn’t be able to touch it.

Still looming over me on his knees, he shifts his hold on the back of my neck, tugging my upper body into a deep arch to bring my breasts closer to his mouth. He licks around my left breast, then runs the flat of his hot, oddly rough tongue across my nipple.

A sharp spike of desire, verging on painful, rips through me. I moan, deep and needy. A noise I’ve never made in my life.

The gryphon switches breasts and repeats.

I twist my fingers through his hair, holding him with all my strength. Warmth pools between my legs. That raspy tongue does another pass over each breast.

I rub my thighs together, writhing against his hold. His grip tightens on me.

But I’m not fighting him.

“I want … I want …” I pant, feeling myself spiraling out of control.

I was trying to figure out the bond, trying to focus, but my essence is now pouring out of me.

Pouring through me, because I can feel the energy of the intersection point in the mix.

I can feel it, but I can’t seem to bring myself to stop it .

The gryphon tears the shredded nightgown from me, flinging it away as if it’s offending him. He shoves me back on the bed, bends my knees and presses them open. Then he just stares down at my exposed and seriously needy pussy.

For way too fucking long.

I groan, wiggling against his firm hold as if I might entice him to just fuck me. “Rought —”

“No,” the gryphon rumbles, still staring down at me as he slowly wraps his hand around his jutting cock and strokes it, almost experimentally. “Sleeping.”

Oh, fuck. Okay. “That’s … maybe we should wake him before we go any further?”

The gryphon lunges over me, caging me in with his body, then lowering his face until his golden eyes are blazing into my soul. “You want gryphon instead?”

I blink, trying to think through the haze of desire … does he mean …? “I’m not fucking the gryphon,” I say firmly.

The gryphon narrows his eyes, as if he’s actually contemplating fully transforming and fucking me in his beast form.

I reach for the cock currently jabbing into my thigh rather forcefully.

The gryphon grumbles, lifting one hand to pin my arm back in place.

I quickly and firmly stroke his thick length, twisting my hand over the tip. Then I repeat that sequence. Every muscle in his body tenses as he freezes in place, hand still suspended.

Wiggling and shifting — while keeping him distracted by jerking him off — I manage to slide off the bed between his legs, just enough to get my mouth wrapped around the head of his cock.

His entire body jerks, nearly choking me. Then he snarls, holding himself completely still over me, head angled to watch me suck him off.

I’m so amped up that even though I really need two hands to hold him in this awkward position, I slip my fingers between my own legs, teasing my clit. My orgasm is right fucking there —

The gryphon abruptly yanks his cock out of my mouth and hand, grips my hips, and hauls me back up on the bed.

He flips me, dragging me back into a kneeling position.

Then, pinning his knees to the side of the bed to even up our heights, he fucking lifts me up into some sort of half-suspended downward-dog position — just my hands now planted on the bed. Then he licks my core from behind.

Licks me right from my clit and up, ending in a swirl around the pucker of my ass.

I shout, scrambling for handholds in the sheets.

He does it again. It’s invasive. It’s overwhelming. I’ve never had anyone do that, touch or lick me back there, and it’s too intimate.

I open my mouth to tell him to stop.

The gryphon swirls his tongue over my clit again, then stuffs as much of his tongue into my entrance as he can, thrusting in and out.

His grip on my hips is punishing. All the blood not pulsing through my pussy is running to my head. I’m shaking, nerves on full alert even as my mind feels like mush.

He licks me again — the full flat of his tongue, no flicking or sucking — all the way from the top of my labia, over my clit, my entrance, and back to swirl up over my ass .

I fucking moan. Fucking wantonly. Like he’s reprogrammed my brain and I …

“I want …” I pant, trying to get my forearms under me, my knees on the bed. “I want.”

The gryphon lowers me as if he’s actually going to listen. But then he curls over me with one hand still holding my hip, settles the other hand between my shoulder blades, and pins me to the bed.

I open my mouth to protest.

He thrusts into me from behind, fully sheathing himself.

I scream, only partially muffled by the bedding.

I don’t intend to. I don’t want to. I’ve never been a screamer, not in any situation. But it’s torn from me.

The gryphon controlling Rought’s body holds me down and fucks into me, pounding thrusts.

It should hurt. It should be too much. But I take it, absorbing it.

He bottoms out against my cervix, and I usually don’t like that.

But every inch of him going in and out of every inch of me is fucking glorious.

Because something else is shifting between us now. Beyond the primal claim that the gryphon is obviously enacting, and which I’m most uncharacteristically allowing.

All the essence that poured through me comes surging back now, doubled in intensity. Swollen, robust, as if my essence reached out and collected streams of extra energy — from the intersection point and from the gryphon.

That essence floods into me, filling me. The pink diamond that has fallen on the bed beside me blazes with it. The purple of my eyes is reflected from the walls, as it seemed to light up the clouds above the estate when I claimed the intersection point.

Absorbing every joule of that energy, I press down into the bed with my hands and forearms. I arch my back against the gryphon’s firm hold. He gives into my press, either ceding it willingly or unable to force me back down without hurting me.

I lift my head, realizing that we’re reflected in the tall mirror on the back of the partially open closet door.

I moan at the sight of the two of us. Rought all golden-skinned, taut muscle, and tattoos thrusting into me from behind.

The golden gaze of the gryphon fixed to me, flicking between the mirror and down to where we’re joined.

And me on my hands and knees with the necklace swinging forward from my neck.

My breasts, no matter that they’re small, bounce with each thrust. And my eyes …

My eyes aren’t my eyes anymore. Purple nebulas of sheer power practically swamp my face.

As if the universe is gazing through me and into this moment.

I press my hands and forearms against the bed, then start meeting the gryphon pounding into me from behind, thrust for thrust.

It quickly becomes too much to hold, all that energy, all this pleasure. Too much to contain. My body convulses with it — pleasure and pain crashing through me. That mind-altering combination crests, then tumbles over into sheer pleasure. My eyes close. I lose control of my limbs.

The gryphon snags me around the ribs, right where he held me with the soul bond, and pulls me back against his chest. He bites the junction where my neck meets my shoulder, but through the bliss I’m riding, I feel no pain.

Essence twists and snaps all around us — I’m feeding into him, and he into me.

He thrusts into me once more, stiffens, and stills. He growls into my neck, into the bite. His hips stutter as he comes.

My heart pounds against my chest. My head feels light. And completely, blessedly empty.

The gryphon slowly withdraws his teeth from my shoulder. He hasn’t broken the skin, though I might bruise. Then he holds me aloft, limp in his arms with his face pressed to my neck, even as his cock slowly softens inside me.

As if he can’t bear to let me go.

I groan quietly in protest when he finally slides out of me, accompanied by a gush of come. But he just gathers me up into his arms, resettles us on the bed, and curls tightly around me.

Mate , he whispers in my mind. Mine .

I shiver from the press of that psychic touch, but I’m too fucking blissed out, too utterly content to worry about him apparently now having unfettered access to my mind.

We’ve fully bonded, I realize, with that immense exchange of essence. The demigod inhabiting my soul-bound mate must have telepathic abilities. Maybe fully realized only now, brought forth with the exchange of power, because he spoke out loud before, however begrudgingly.

“Mine.” I voice my claim on him out loud, overwhelmingly possessive about a connection I never thought I’d have, never even dreamed of having. “Mate.”

I understand that all of this — the soul bonds, the demigod mates — might simply be an extrapolation of being the Conduit.

Of holding an intersection point. I understand that I’m still not really a person who is allowed desires and whims. Lovers.

Anyone who I might place above my duty to the universe … but …

“My aunt didn’t have soul-bound mates,” I whisper. Maybe my aunt’s reality and everything she taught me, everything she made me become, doesn’t hold true for me. Me, Zaya, as the Conduit now.

Maybe this moment is just for me to savor, to celebrate. A gift from a fickle and capricious universe.

The gryphon’s chest rumbles behind me. It’s not a purr. More of a rattling coo. But with that gentle comfort vibrating against my back, I’m asleep before I form another thought.