His other hand came to my hip and pulled me against him. The line of his body landed at every point. Chest to chest, hip to hip, him hard against my belly through two layers of fabric. I felt the shape of him exactly. I felt my body answer. Heat rose in me fast and deep.
My mouth softened under his as my body began yielding to the kiss.
Then he spoke against my lips.
“Mine.”
Announced for the room.
The half-second of want hardened into intent.
A claim.
A claim made for me, made of me, and made without asking and without warning.
His mouth dropped to the left of my throat and he bit.
His teeth sank into the curve where my neck met my shoulder. The skin gave. Pain and pleasure arrived in the same instant, both so sharp I couldn’t tell them apart. A wave broke from the point of contact so hard the room disappeared.
Him and his heat.
There was nothing else. No floor. No glass. No council. No cameras. No ambassador. There was heat at the bite and heat in my chest and his teeth in my skin, and the rest of the world fell away.
I felt his pulse arrive inside me.
The whole of him dropped into the space behind my sternum like a second gravity locking into place.
I felt the shape of his shoulders under my hands. I hadn’t noticed my hands moving.
I felt the line of his jaw against my temple as my face turned into him.
I felt his free hand at my hip. Hot. Steady.
I felt the heat between my thighs. Soaked. Soaking. My body had gone wet at the first scrape of his teeth and was still going wetter with every degree the wave climbed.
The wave finished climbing.
A white-hot pulse pulled tight through my body, all of it drawn to the place his teeth held me open. My breath broke. My fingers locked in his coat. My knees went loose, and his hand at my hip became the only reason I stayed upright.
His bite sent a blinding orgasm through me in front of a hundred and twenty people.
In the middle of a state dinner.
The orgasm took me with a force that didn’t feel like mine. It moved on his rhythm, not mine, pulled out of me by the bite and the heat and the impossible second heartbeat now pounding behind my sternum. I clenched around nothing and the wave doubled back on itself and pulled a second sound out of me, smaller, broken, a sound I would’ve given the rest of my life not to make in this room.
My body went forward into him.
Not a step.
I climbed.
Dominic’s mouth stayed on the mark. His jaw flexed against my skin. The sound I made was small and broken. It wasn’t quiet.
The whole room had gone silent. There was no privacy left to hide in. No shadow. No closed door. No merciful failure of memory. There was only his teeth in my neck, his pulse in my chest, my hands in his coat, and my body giving him everything.
Pleasure fell away in sharp, glittering pieces, and the word rose through what was left of me.
Claim.
