He growled, the sound purely animal, and his pace changed. The slow, deep strokes became powerful, driving pistons. The table groaned in protest beneath them, the sturdy mahoganyshuddering under the force of his thrusts. She didn't care if the whole thing broke, all she cared about was the perfect heat building between them. She wrapped her legs higher around him, locking her ankles, meeting each desperate plunge with a roll of her hips.
"Let go," he commanded, his voice rough against her ear. "I want to feel you come apart for me."
It was both a demand and a gift. The permission she didn't know she needed.
The orgasm didn't crest—it detonated. It ripped through her body with seismic force, wringing a sobbing cry from her throat. Her back arched off the table, her inner muscles clenching and fluttering around him in violent, rhythmic pulses. The intensity was shattering, a pleasure so profound it blurred the line between pain and ecstasy.
Her convulsions tipped him over the edge. With one final, deep thrust that seemed to reach her soul, he buried himself inside her and groaned loudly. Heat flooded her, his release pulsing in time with the aftershocks still quaking through her. His big body shuddered above her before collapsing with a weight that was both crushing and comforting.
He buried his face against her neck, his breath hot and ragged on her skin. They lay tangled on the dining table, sweat-slicked and trembling, as the waves gradually receded.
Maple stared up at the ornate ceiling, her mind slowly piecing itself back together around one irrevocable truth.
There's no going back from this.
Maple's fingers traced lazy patterns across the broad expanse of Rune's back, her legs still wrapped around his hips as aftershocks rippled through her body. The mahogany table beneath her was warm now, heated by their passion, and she could feel his uneven breath against her throat as if he was trying to piece himself back together.
This is what I've been missing my entire life.
The thought drifted through her mind unbidden, followed by a bone-deep satisfaction that had nothing to do with physical release. This connection—this rightness—felt like coming home after decades of wandering in the wilderness.
But then his muscles went rigid beneath her touch.
The change was instant and jarring. One moment he was melting into her, his body still joined with hers in the most intimate way possible, and the next he was pulling back like she'd burned him. His eyes—those impossibly blue eyes that had been dark with desire seconds before—were wide with something that looked dangerously close to terror.
"What's wrong?" The words tumbled out, her voice still breathless and raw.
He pulled out of her with an abruptness that made her gasp, the loss of connection disorienting. Cool air rushed between them as he stepped back, his face a mask of barely controlled panic.
"I shouldn't have done that."
The words hit her like a slap. She watched in stunned silence as he grabbed his clothes from the floor, his movements sharp and jerky, nothing like the controlled predator she'd come to know.
"Rune, wait?—"
But he was already backing toward the dining room entrance, clutching his clothes against his chest like armor. The look he gave her was wild, desperate, the look of a man who'd just realized he'd walked into a trap of his own making.
"This was a mistake."
And then he was gone, leaving her naked and confused on his dining table, the echo of his footsteps disappearing down the corridor.
Maple stared at the empty doorway for a long moment, her mind struggling to process what had just happened. The man who'd just worshipped her body, who'd looked at her like she was his salvation, had fled like she was his damnation.
She sat up slowly, her body protesting the movement. Everything ached in the most delicious way, a reminder of how thoroughly he'd claimed her just moments before. But the physical satisfaction was rapidly being overshadowed by a cocktail of confusion and hurt that made her chest tight.
"God, Maple, what got into you?"
The words echoed in the empty dining room as she slid off the table, her legs unsteady. She caught sight of herself in the reflection of a silver serving tray—hair wild, lips swollen, skin flushed and marked by his hands—and felt heat flood her cheeks.
She'd just thrown herself at a man, a dragon shifter, she'd known for less than twenty-four hours. An Alpha who'd told her that they were fated mates, whatever that meant, and she'd responded by climbing him like a tree.
Her green sundress lay on the floor beside her lace panties, and she grabbed them with more force than necessary. The fabric was wrinkled, evidence of their desperate haste, and she pulled it over her body with fingers that trembled.
He's right. You shouldn't have done that.
But even as the logical part of her mind tried to reassert control, her body was already mourning the loss of his touch. The connection she'd felt—that bone-deep recognition—hadn't been imagination. It had been real, powerful, and undeniable.
And he'd run from it like it was poison.
