Page 8 of Beast’s Temptation

"I want to please you." His hands moved to her waist, tentative but purposeful. "I want to learn what makes you feel the way you just made me feel. Will you teach me?"

In answer, she took his hand and guided it between her thighs, pressing his fingers against her through the fabric of her pants. His eyes went wide.

"You're wet." The wonder in his voice made her shiver. "I can feel it through the cloth. This is because of me? Because of what we're doing?"

"Because of you." She rocked against his hand, showing him how to move. "Only you."

His fingers fumbled with her fastenings, but he managed to work them open, and then his hand was sliding beneath the fabric, exploring the slick heat of her with trembling reverence. She guided him, showing him where to press, how to stroke. He was a devoted student, adjusting based on her sounds, her movements, the way her breath caught when he found particularly sensitive spots.

When his finger slipped inside her, they both moaned. He was so focused on her face that he nearly stopped moving, transfixed by her expression.

"More," she gasped. "Add another finger. Just like that."

He obeyed, and the stretch was exquisite, his long fingers reaching places that made her see stars. He curled them experimentally, found the spot that made her cry out, and returned to it with single-minded determination.

"I'm going to taste you now." His voice had dropped to something primal, and she realized he was hard again, his cock pressing insistently against her hip. "I need to know if you taste as good as you smell."

He dropped to his knees in the garden, pulling her pants down with him, and buried his face between her thighs.

He was clumsy at first, unsure of where to focus, but he listened to her body like it was speaking a language he desperately wanted to learn. When she gasped, he repeated whatever he'd done. When she moaned, he intensified it. His tongue was rougher than a human's, almost textured, and the sensation against her most sensitive flesh was unlike anything she'd experienced.

The orgasm built slowly, then crested all at once, pulling her under like a wave. She came with his name on her lips, her hands fisted in his mane, her whole body shaking with the force of release.

He held her through the aftershocks, his arms wrapped around her thighs, his face pressed against her stomach. When she finally stopped trembling, he looked up at her with something like awe.

"That was the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed." His voice was rough with emotion. "The way you looked, the sounds you made... I would spend eternity on my knees if it meant seeing you like that again."

Tamsin sank down to the ground with him, pulling him into her arms. They held each other in the hidden garden, half-dressed and breathing hard, and she knew this was only the beginning. She knew what came next, what they would have to face, what he would lose if they continued down this path.

But right now, with his heart pounding against hers and his purr vibrating through both their bodies, she couldn't bring herself to regret any of it.

"The shuttle comes tomorrow morning," she said softly. "To take me to the next research site."

His arms tightened around her. "Don't board it."

"If I stay, you'll lose everything."

"If you leave, I'll lose the only thing that matters." He pulled back to look at her face, and his eyes were clear despite the fear swimming beneath the surface. "Stay. Please. Let me figure out how to be both what I was and what you're making me. I know it's selfish, I know I have no right to ask⁠—"

She kissed him, cutting off the words.

"I'll stay," she said against his mouth. "I'll stay, and we'll figure it out together."

The shuttle came at dawn. Tamsin watched it land from her window, watched it wait the requisite hour for passengers who weren't coming, watched it lift off again and disappear into the brightening sky.

She didn't board it.

She chose him instead.

4

SOREK

Sorek understood, now, why warriors burned empires for their mates.

He had woken with Tamsin in his arms, her body curled against his in the narrow confines of his sleeping pallet. She'd insisted on staying with him after what had happened in the garden, had followed him back to his chambers despite his protests about propriety and discovery. "I'm not leaving you alone tonight," she'd said, and the certainty in her voice had made his heart crack open in ways he didn't know it could.

He had never shared sleep with another being. Even as a child, before his training began, he'd kept to himself, more comfortable with solitude than companionship. But lying there in the darkness with her warmth pressed against him, her scent filling every breath, her heartbeat slow and steady beneath his palm... he had nearly wept with the rightness of it.