Page 60 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion (Tales of a Monstrous Heart, #2)

As if sensing every single desire in me, Emrys bowed his head forward, kissing the valley between my breasts, seeming to drag in my scent. He drank in the sight of me, completely undone by nothing but him.

‘ Ala Eria .’ He pressed those words into a kiss over my heart, one hand at my waist to bring me closer as my arms curved over his shoulder.

He positioned himself, the head a firm pressure that slipped in the wetness. Making me curve my hips towards it. Needing more. He gently took hold of my hip, keeping me still. Jaw tense as if that restraint was costing him everything but he’d do it for me.

Yet with each small movement I urged him on. It was a pleasure tinged with the unknown pain. I didn’t know what to do. To arch closer or remain still. Too many feelings bubbling insistently beneath my skin. I grabbed his shoulders, breath stuttered with my helplessness.

‘Fuck,’ he whispered against my neck as he moved another inch deeper. So helplessly I had to laugh. It felt like a strange thing to do. How the motion made me feel every way we were connected.

It was something natural. Unbidden as I slid my knees up to cage either side of him, to let my hips fall wider in invitation. Wanted more of his weight on me, more of that fullness.

‘Kat,’ he half begged.

He was holding back.

‘All of you,’ I commanded, despite the strange foreignness of the sensation.

Letting my hand drag down to his hip, to his backside.

Fingers digging in. Letting my magic bite in warning.

Another deeper slide that sent a wave of pleasure through me, made my head fall back on the pillows, made me move helplessly.

Unable to keep still, my body knowing what it wanted. Unbidden.

I raised my hips to meet his next gentle, testing thrust. My fingers dancing along his side. Making a shiver run through him. His hand hooked at my knee, bending my leg and bringing it higher so each stroke was commanding and deep.

A new sensation washed over me, stealing all competent thought. Only he was still hesitant, tender as if he’d break me. Too slow. Not deep enough. Making me want to writhe and bite. To trap him like some wild thing in heat.

A feral urge consumed me and I used my Kysillian strength to roll him onto his back. Hands braced on his chest as he landed on the blankets. I gasped at the depth, at the burn of possessing him but it was a madness and I needed more.

‘Kat,’ he swore, hands digging into my backside, trying to lift me as if to give me some relief, but I didn’t want it. I trapped his hips between my thighs, feeling the dig of his fingers into the soft skin of my backside. Looking down at him. At us, how it was a pleasure all its own.

Then I understood what Alma meant about her heats. About the things she’d do in the Institute stables with the delivery boy or in the back cupboards with the maids. She needed it and I’d never understood until now.

That I needed Emrys. Needed to be consumed and undone just like this.

As I set a clumsy pace, relishing in the delicious, strange pain of it.

My head falling back, wanton sounds, half moaned, escaped me as my teeth bit into my lip.

My fingers digging into the hard muscle of his chest, greedy for something I didn’t fully understand.

As always, Emrys understood. Understood that fierceness in me and didn’t shy from it.

He sat up, making me whimper. His hands curling into my hair as he claimed all those sounds from my lips. As my thighs burnt and I forced myself further into the ecstasy of possessing him. My nails digging into him, biting his lip. Primitively wanting marks on him.

‘Fucking beautiful.’ His lips ran up the line of my throat, as the roughness of his words brushed my skin, his grip on my backside firmer, commanding in his pace. Whispering his devotion, and I turned my head to claim his words, to drink each one from his lips.

Wanting to taste it as I saw the burning lavender of my eyes reflected in the endless dark of his own.

My neck arching back so his lips could find my pulse.

To taste the passion of it before he rested his forehead there, so I could feel the harsh labour of his breath brush my breast as more of those dark words fell from his lips in some form of adoration.

‘Emrys,’ I half begged and, as if knowing every inch of my body, his hand slid between us. Right to where I needed. The cold bite of his magic demanding my pleasure from me.

Everything in me seemed to tense, seizing as my nails dug deep into his shoulder and back.

My breath caught as ecstasy rushed through me.

My body too tight and tense and loose all at the same time.

Emrys felt it. A curse slipping helplessly from his lips was my undoing as he watched every inch of me devour that pleasure he’d given.

Then I was on my back. He didn’t stop, drawing it out of me. My fingers digging greedily into the powerful contours of his back.

I was done and yet, I still urged my hips up for him. Still offered myself to more of that pleasure. Wanton, just as the stories said, and I didn’t care. Not here.

Such dark and unknown words he whispered against my lips.

Yet I knew all of them were nothing but complete devotion as I panted for breath, waves of it still remaining.

As he took his fill of me until his own breaths were shuttered against my breastbone with his release.

My fingers curling in his damp hair as I struggled to catch my breath.

‘You’ll be the death of me.’ He huffed those words against the curve of my breast.

I smiled deviously at the victory of it despite how spent I was. How breathless. Fingers running across his lips. ‘My poor lord.’

‘Yours,’ he offered darkly, nipping at my fingers, and perhaps it was the Kysillian in me that preened at the battle won.

‘Mine,’ I answered and he kissed me again.

His finger traced the curve of my ear and the pointed tip as I found myself wrapped in his strong arms, my legs tangled with his own, as the exhausting weight of everything finally caught up with me.

As I tucked my face against the curve of his neck and dragged in that forbidden scent of him.

Felt the racing of his pulse settle along with my own.

His fingers moved through my hair, so gently. Combing through all the tangles I was certain he’d made.

His lips traced the arc of my shoulder to my throat, right over the scar caused by the galmoth’s bite with such soft reverence that emotion clogged in my throat and his knuckles dragged up the curve of my thigh. Over the skin of my backside and to my waist. Right over the scarred skin of my back.

Every inch of me. He wanted every piece. Even marked and forbidden.

I tipped my head to see him. It was different now. In the aftermath of everything.

How his dark hair fell onto his brow, the softness of his satisfied smile, the transparent silver of his eyes as he took me in.

I eyed the red marks on his forearms, the indentation of my teeth and nails in his shoulder. How in disarray he was. Then I realised I didn’t fully understand my own strength.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ My sanity returned as my desire cooled.

His laugh was choked. Something so content in his smile. ‘You drove me to madness, Croinn, but you didn’t hurt me.’

I bit my lip, wondering if he was trying to spare me the embarrassment. I’d pinned him to the floor and had my way with him. The soreness between my legs evidence of it. ‘It wasn’t very … demure .’

No. I hadn’t lain shyly as the Institute girls whispered that you should. The stories of wanton fey coming to haunt me.

As if sensing that flicker of shame, Emrys caught my chin. The sheer size of him caged over me in a moment, such protective focus, as if he didn’t wish for me to miss a single word.

‘Watching you demand your pleasure is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Kat.’ He smiled, so satisfied and boyish it made my heart flip within my chest.

He kissed my hair, his fingers running through it. Spent and relaxed in his arms, my palm still resting over the mark over his heart, as I drifted to sleep. Only two words found me in my slumber.

Serus.

Mine.