Ragged. Undone.
"I want… I want…" she murmured against his flesh.
She pulled back for a moment, her body instantly regretting the loss of his touch when she stood and stripped off the rest of her clothing. His gaze tracked her movements with the fixed, amber-gold attention of a predator watching something precious — not prey but treasure, something to guard rather than devour.
"Oh, November. Look at you."
She gave him a small smile and nodded at his remaining clothing.
His hands went to his own waistband and she watched the rest of him revealed in firelight.
She thought she was prepared. She was not prepared.
He was thick through the base, and a length that made her stomach tighten on contact with the thought of it. But it was not the size that stopped her breath. It was the rest.
The skin was a shade darker than the rest of him, warm golden-brown deepening to something dusky and flushed, the head broad and smooth. A row of ridges ran along the upper surface — graduated, smaller at the base and larger toward the crown, each one catching the firelight like the scale-lines along his sternum. They looked almost decorative. She knew, instinctually, that they were not.
At the base, something thicker. A fullness in the flesh that had not yet fully engaged. Her mouth went dry. A bead of clear fluid welled at the tip and slipped down the underside of the crown, slow, catching on the highest ridge.
"Oh," she said.
He made a small sound — not quite a laugh, something caught between embarrassment and want. His hands were loose at his sides like he was waiting to be told what she needed.
She sank to her knees. She settled between his legs and looked up. His pupils vertical, his chest rising fast, his hands twitching once before going still.
She brushed her fingertips along the underside, from base to tip, and felt the heat of him radiate into her palm. His stomach contracted. A harmonic rolled out of his chest, low enough that she felt it in her own sternum.
She traced one ridge with her thumb. Then the next. Each one firm and smooth and startlingly warm. His breath caught. His hands found her shoulders, not pushing, not pulling — just touching, grounding, asking permission to need her.
She pressed her thumb across the bead at the tip and smoothed it down then wrapped her hand around him.
He drew a breath like she had struck him. The harmonic in his chest dropped again, and this time she felt it travel down her own spine and settle low, a warm hum between. Her fingers could not quite close around him. She noted this and decided she did not mind.
She leaned down and drew her tongue along the underside, slow, tracing the path her thumb had taken.
"Ancestors — November —"
His hand found her hair, his palm cupping the back of her head, and she felt the tremor run through his fingers.
The taste of him was warm and clean and faintly salted. She closed her mouth around the crown and his whole body went rigid, a tremor chasing down his thighs where they framed her shoulders. The ridges caught against the flat of her tongue and she heard him make a sound she was going to think about for the rest of her life.
She took more of him. As much as she could. Her hand worked the rest, slow and firm, following the rhythm of her mouth. Each pass over the ridges drew another broken sound out of him — her name, fragments of Old Drakonian she could not translate, a low resonant note that rolled through her chest from the inside.
His hand in her hair tightened and released, tightened and released. She felt him fighting himself. Not to thrust. Not to take. He held himself still and let her have him and it was the most devastating restraint she had ever felt in her life.
She glanced up at him without stopping.
He was watching her. His pupils had gone to full slits, amber blown wide, his mouth open around breaths that were not working. The scales had spread down his chest now, catching firelight along his sternum. He looked wrecked. He lookedreverent. He looked like a man who had not believed this was something he was allowed to have and was discovering the opposite in real time.
She hummed around him, that low continuous warmth she did not know she made, and felt the vibration travel through him.
His knees buckled very slightly.
"November."
His hand cradled her jaw. Gentle. Asking.
She let him draw her off and he pulled her up along the length of his body, slow, until she was leaning against him. His mouth found hers before she had her balance, open and hungry, tasting himself on her tongue without flinching from it. His arm banded around her waist.
