His mouth leaves mine with a wet, possessive sound, blazing a trail down my throat, over my collarbone. His teeth scrape my nipple before his hot mouth closes over it, sucking hard. I cry out, and my back arching, my fingers tangling in the dark silk of his hair. Gods, he is relentless. He moves lower, his tongue painting a line down my quivering stomach, through the damp curls at the apex of my thighs. His hand follows, a broad palm sliding down my trembling belly, and then his fingers are there, parting me, finding me slick and hot and open.
“Fuck,” he growls, the word a rough vibration against my inner thigh. His finger slides through my soaked folds, gathering my wetness. “So fucking ready. Dripping for me. All for me.”
He doesn’t tease. One long, thick finger sinks into me, curling upward immediately, seeking and finding. My hips jerk off thebed as he presses against that perfect, hidden spot. Stars explode behind my clenched eyelids.
“There!” I sob, the word tearing from my throat. “Oh, gods, Zeidan, right there, don’t stop!”
He adds a second finger, stretching me with a delicious, burning fullness, pumping in a slow, torturous rhythm. His thumb finds my clit, circling it with perfect, maddening pressure, not gentle, not rough, but exactly right. The dual stimulation, combined with the deep, throbbing echo of his claiming bite on my neck, sends me hurtling toward the edge. I clutch at the powerful arches of his wings, my nails digging into the sensitive membrane. He groans, a raw, animal sound, and his hips jerk against the mattress where he kneels between my thighs.
“Enough,” he snarls, the control in his voice shredding to nothing. “I need to be inside you. I need to fuck you. Now.”
He withdraws his fingers, and I whimper at the sudden, empty loss. He moves with a speed I have never seen from him, a mix of shadow and muscle. His remaining clothes are shed, tossed aside without a care. And then he is there, fully naked, kneeling back between my spread thighs. His cock is thick, heavily veined, and rigid in his own fist, the broad, flushed head glistening in the low light. He guides himself to my entrance, that hot, hard tip nudging against my soaked, willing opening.
He pauses, his dark eyes holding mine, burning with a fire. No psychic bond is needed here. Everything is in that look. Primal hunger. Possession. A forever kind of certainty that steals my breath.
Then he pushes forward. The stretch is exquisite. A full, burning, perfect pressure that steals my air. He fills me completely, deeply, impossibly, until his hips meet mine with a solid, final slap of skin. He holds there, buried to the hilt, letting my body stretch and adjust to his size. His whole body trembleswith the effort of holding still, the muscles in his arms and wings corded tight.
“You feel…” he begins, his voice choked, but words fail him. He shakes his head, his gaze dropping to where we are joined.
Then he begins to move. A slow, deliberate withdrawal that drags every inch of him against my inner walls, followed by a relentless, deep slide back. Each stroke is a claim. Each thrust drags mercilessly against that perfect spot, building a coil of pure, white-hot pleasure deep in my core. His pace is steady, deep, consuming. Not frantic, but utterly possessive. I wrap my legs around his narrow waist, locking my ankles at the small of his back, pulling him even deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust.
“You are so fucking tight, baby. So fucking perfect. Your pussy was made for me.”
“You feel so good inside of me, Zeidan.”
I can feel him shudder.
“Say my name again. Say who you belong to.”
“You, Zeidan. I am all yours.”
It’s like all his restraints snap in that moment. He starts to fuck me harder and stronger. The sounds are filthy, beautiful. The wet, rhythmic slap of his skin against mine. The ragged, open-mouthed gusts of his breath. My own sharp, pleading cries. It all echoes in the private canopy of his wings, which have curved forward around us, sealing us in our own sweaty, scent-filled world. He lowers himself onto his forearms, caging me in, and his mouth finds mine again. This kiss is all tongue and teeth and shared breath, messy and desperate.
The angle shifts, just slightly, and he hits a place that makes my vision whiten at the edges. A broken scream is torn from me.
“I’m close,” I gasp against his lips, my nails scoring down the sweat-slicked planes of his back. “So close, Zeidan, please…”
“Look at me,” he commands, his voice guttural. I force my eyes open, drowning in the stormy darkness of his gaze. “Come for me. Let me feel you come on my cock.”
His thrusts lose their steady rhythm, turning harder, faster, punishing. His own control is shattering. The tight coil in my belly snaps. Pleasure erupts through me, violent and radiant, wracking my body with convulsions that clench around him like a fist. I scream his name, the sound muffled against the hard muscle of his shoulder.
Feeling me clamp down around him is his undoing. With a roar that is part victory, part pure, raw surrender, he drives into me one last, brutal time, hilting himself, and spills. His release is endless, hot pulses that brand me from the inside out, syncing with the fading, shuddering waves of my own climax.
We collapse together, a tangled, sweaty heap of limbs and slack wings. He is still inside me, still shuddering with the aftershocks. He nuzzles the fresh, tender claiming mark on my neck, his breathing gradually slowing from a gallop to a heavy, satisfied rhythm. His weight is a comfort, pinning me to the reality of what we have just done.
“I see you,” I whisper, utterly spent, my hand coming up to stroke the sensitive, silken edge of his nearest wing.
He flinches at the touch, a shiver running through him, then sighs, a deep, contented sound that rumbles through his chest into mine.
25
ZEIDAN
Morning in Nytheria never arrives cleanly. It seeps in through stone and root, filtered by canopy and ward-light, turning the room a soft green-gold that makes everything feel older than it is. The hearth has burned down to a bed of coals. The air still smells faintly of smoke and rain-wet leaves, and somewhere beyond the walls the Wildspont keeps breathing, uneven, stubborn, alive.
Amelia is warm against me.
That fact lands in my awareness with a kind of stunned simplicity that I don’t know what to do with. She is curled into my side as though the shape of her belongs there, her cheek pressed to my chest, her arm thrown over my ribs in careless possession. Her hair spills across my skin in loose copper waves, and when she exhales it brushes the sensitive place just below my collarbone, making my body react as if I am still half in the heat of last night.
