“Yes.”
“Then let me do this.”
His fingers flexed once against my cheek. Then he let go.
I undid his belt, then the fly, then the fabric that had been keeping him contained. He was already hard. He had been hard since the corridor, I suspected. He had walked through the entire conversation with that as a baseline. Council law. Emergency recalls. Second bonds. Political containment.
Dominic Graves, suffering through all of it with excellent posture.
His breath broke when I took him into my hand. The sound he made was rough and broken and entirely new to me. I leaned in and took himinto my mouth. Dominic went still.
The first stroke was slow, and the second was slower because I felt exactly what it did to him. Through the bond, through his body, through the hand that closed hard over the arm of the chair.
He said my name. Quiet. Ragged at the edge. His hand came to the back of my head. He didn’t push. He didn’t direct. He only held there, fingers careful in my hair, as if touching me was the only thing keeping him inside himself.
I took him deeper. Pulled back. Took him again. His control shuddered.
And because I could feel the line he was holding, I did it again, slower this time, until his breath left him in pieces and heat climbed under my ribs hard enough to make my own pulse stumble.
The bond ran both ways. What he felt hit me as a hot pulse under my ribs. What I did to him reached back through his hand at my neck, the bite at my throat, every place we had become less separate than we should’ve been. His pleasure didn’t stay his. Mine didn’t stay mine. The bond took the difference between giving and taking and made it irrelevant.
His thigh went tight under my forearm. His breath shortened. “Little spy.”
I didn’t stop.
“Catalina, I am going to come.”
I hummed a small, pleased sound around him. The sound drove him over. He came in my mouth with a sound older than English, his hand fisted at the base of my skull, his other hand white-knuckled on the arm of the chair.
The bond reverberated with him. His release hit it hard enough that the echo broke through my own body, bright and violent. It ran through the mark and down my spine, and then I was coming with my hands braced on his thighs.
No touch where I needed it. No warning. No permission. Not even the courtesy of pretending I was in charge. The bond had carried him into me, or me into him. I wasn’t in a position to diagram the new physics. I was, however, going to need the vocabulary quickly.
I lifted my head and wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist.
Dominic watched the movement like it had marked him. “Little spy.”
“Yes.”
“Stand up.”
I stood.
His eyes came back up to mine. Every place I had touched him. Every place he hadn’t touched me yet. The attention made my pulse misbehave.
“Take the rest of it off.”
I obeyed. The dress first. Then the rest.
His chest moved unevenly. His eyes had gone dragon.
He was hard again. Dragon physiology. Both marks still ringing. Three weeks of discipline finally snapping its leash and turning to hunger.
He stood when he was finished watching.
Then he took my face in both hands and kissed me. He tasted himself in my mouth and didn’t flinch. A dark possessive current rolled under my skin, hotter now, and made my knees forget their job.
He carried me to the bed and put me down with careful hands and none of the softness that usually came with them.
