She was still trembling under him, her breath ragged, body fluttering from the last release he’d wrung from her. But when he began to ease out again, her hips lifted in a silent plea.
“More,” she whispered, broken and soft.
The last vestiges of his control, the lordly facade he wore, shattered. What remained was pure Alpha instinct—raw,territorial, and desperate. With a curse, he gathered her into his arms, her legs wrapping around his waist. Her breasts were against his chest, head falling back, luscious raven hair spilling along her spine. He sat back on his haunches and guided himself back inside her.
She cried out, thighs bracketing his waist as he filled her again. The angle was deeper this time, and he gritted his teeth as her walls clamped down around him.
“Fates,” he groaned. “Gods, JingYi?—”
He felt her clench to the sound of her name, her hands grasping at his shoulders, his hair, anything she could reach. He moved, slow at first. Powerful, grinding thrusts that drove her body upward with each stroke. Then faster, driven by the wild rhythm of her Heat, by the way she squirmed and gasped and sobbed against his throat. Her head barely reached his chin when he held her like this, legs dangling from his arms, toes brushing the furs. She folded into him like she was made for it. For him.
Her walls fluttered around him again—climax building, relentless. And the primal urge to sink his teeth into her neck, to claim and bond her forever, surged.
He couldn’t. Not like this. Not while her mind swam in Heat. If he did, it wouldn’t be a bond—it would be a theft.
He fought the urge, a guttural groan of denial vibrating against her skin. Instead, his teeth found the muscle of her shoulder, clamping down in a fierce, possessive bite that was a claiming of the moment, not the soul.
“Alexander—!” she cried, voice cracking.
That broken sound of his name on her lips nearly undid him.
Don’t break her. Don’t break her.
He was the one breaking.
His hips stuttered as her walls clamped down again, a helpless sob catching in her throat, trembling and flushed andutterly ruined against him. He couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop drinking her in—the way her head tipped back, throat arched. The way she moaned his name like it cost her everything to say it.
Mine.
It burned behind his eyes, carved itself into every breath.
Mine.
Her fingers curled into his hair, pulling him closer. He pressed in, hips grinding as her body milked him—hungry, insistent, pleading—and with a final, ragged thrust, he came.
A guttural sound tore from his chest as he emptied into her, hips jerking, muscles locked. Her legs stayed around him, and his arms caged her in, as if shielding her from the collapse still shaking through him.
His face buried in the curve of her neck, and for a long, broken moment, he didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He only breathed her in, heart pounding, body trembling with everything he hadn’t said.
Everything he still didn’t know how to say.
JingYi’s Heat lasted two days before it finally broke on the second night.
He stayed with her through it all, answering every shuddering reach, every half-conscious plea, until he no longer knew where one crest ended and the next began.
It felt like madness—if madness could feel thisright.
Each time she stirred beneath him, fevered and slick with need, he was already there, unable to stay away. He tried to slow them, to be gentle. To remember there was a body beneath the fever. When the worst of the Heat eased for a heartbeat,he coaxed water between her lips and fed her fruits and cured meats from the trays left outside his door three times a day, as if routine could anchor them in something resembling normalcy.
When the final wave broke, she arched beneath him, breath stuttering, fingers digging into his back as if she could keep him there by force. He followed with a hoarse groan against her throat, pressing in as far as he could, holding her as if the world might split open if he let go.
At last, she went still.
The storm of scent ebbed. The fever loosened its grip. Her breathing evened, her pulse steadied beneath his lips. The flush on her skin no longer burned with Heat, and her limbs had gone loose and heavy. He gathered her close, one arm cradling her head, the other locked low around her hips to keep her pressed along him.
There, Alexander lay a long while, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders, the way her breath puffed softly against his neck. Eventually, as the air cooled, he shifted carefully so she lay curled on her side, and he could fetch a blanket from the edge of the bed.
That was when he saw them.
