Page 26 of Monster Queen Rising

"I'm here."

"Almost—"

"Stay with me."

His pupils contract. His shoulders come down a fraction. He's back.

He doesn't say it. He bends and lifts me, slow, one arm under my butt and one at my back, lays me down, and steps back to look. Lines stark on his throat, canines out. He's holding himself on a hair trigger and I can see exactly what it's costing him — the whole of him coiled into not moving. And still he's two feet away, holding still, asking me with his eyes.

I push my pajama pants down and off. Bare in the low light, knees apart, and he's breathing through a clenched jaw.

"Come here," I tell him.

He's between my knees before I finish, and he doesn't take. He drops to the floor and puts his face against my stomach and breathes me in, slow, his nose at my skin, grounding himself inthe scent of me, his hands closing on my thighs, claws partway out, so careful they only dent the skin.

He goes still.

"I remember your taste," he says against me, and the word lands at a different pitch than anything else tonight. "The cell."

"I remember too."

"No name." His mouth moves on the words like they cost him. "Knew you."

I get a hand in his hair and hold him there.

"You did."

His hands tighten. Not the grip that means he's going under. The other kind. Want. Need. Then his mouth moves lower. He kisses the soft of my stomach. My hipbone, no teeth, just lips and breath. Lower. He pushes my thighs wide and looks up at me first.

"Yes," I say.

He puts his mouth on me.

The first stroke of his tongue is broad and flat and slow and my hips come off the bed. He growls into me and the sound rides up through my spine, and he does it again, long, deliberate, sure. The open line runs hot between us, my body telling his exactly where and how hard, and he takes it and gives it back better.

I'm wet and getting wetter and his tongue is working me in slow circles, then up, and the second I jerk he's there, staying on it. I pull his hair and he growls and presses in harder and flattens his tongue and sucks my clit.

My back bows off the bed. "Fen."

His eyes flick up. Black, the red and gold wild in it.

"Don't stop."

He stays. Every sound I make goes down the line into him and comes back as the next thing his mouth does — what makes me jerk, what makes me clench, what tears his name out of me ragged. He brings up his hand and I ride two fingers. The stretchmaking me clench. There's no technique to brace against, only him reading the truth of my body and answering it. When I break it's long and rolling, my thighs clamped around his head, my hand fisted in his hair, his name coming apart in my mouth.

He keeps his mouth on me through the aftershocks, soft now, and presses one kiss to the inside of my thigh that's close to reverent.

Then he stops. He rips his clothes off as he gets to his feet. Puts his fingers in his mouth and licks every bit of me off. Growling the entire time.

And the shift comes up all the way.

The dark lines flood down his throat and across his shoulders. His canines look long and sharp. His cock is hard and dark and wet at the tip and his whole body is strung tight with it. He steps back, crosses to the wall, plants both hands flat on the logs and drops his head.

"Jen." Wrecked.

"I'm here. Breathe."

"I'm—"