Page 10 of Knotting Sleeping Beauty

“I’ve been asleep for fucking years waiting for you. You walked through cursed thorns to find me. You think I’m fucking worried?”

I bury myself deep and feel my knot swell to its full size, and the feeling of it locking inside her, stretching her, sealing us, binding us, is so intense that my vision fucking fractures.

Rose cries out. Her body clamps around me in rhythmic waves and I can feel her orgasm hit because our bond is already forming, the bridge building between us, and her pleasure floods into me like water through a crack.

I bite her at the junction of her neck and shoulder, right where her scent pools the strongest. My teeth break skin, and the taste of her blood floods my mouth. Shit, my entire being… The bond snaps into place all at once, in an explosion of connection so strong I can feel her fucking soul. Her heartbeat, her pleasure, shock. Her stubborn, bright, and blazing spirit.

Then she bites me back. Her teeth find my neck, she bites down hard, and the reciprocal bond locks so tight it steals every thought from my head. We’re connected now. Fucking fused. Permanently, irrevocably, completely.

I come so hard I see the other side of the universe.

For a long, suspended moment of eternity, we’re locked together. My knot pulsing inside her. Her body still clenching. The bond humming between us like a living thing. We’re both shaking. Fuck, the entire tower might be shaking at this point.

Then, against my neck, in a voice so quiet and dazed it barely registers, Rose asks, “Did you just… fucking claim me?”

A broken laugh shudders out of me. “You claimed me first, sweetheart.”

She pulls back just enough to look at me. The mark of my teeth on her neck, the beginning of a scar that will never fade, and the sight of it wakes something in me that’s all at once tender and fucking savage.

She stares at me. Then, slowly, a sound bubbles from her chest, bright, warm, slightly hysterical, and she starts to laugh.

It is, without a doubt, the best sound I have ever heard in my entire fucking life.

Better than the clash of victory, the silence after battle. Better than the word king attached to my name.

I pull my Rose into my chest and she curls into me like she was fucking made to fit exactly there. Her laughter fades into soft, hiccupping breaths. Her fingers trace the mark she left on my neck.

“I don’t even know your last name,” she murmurs.

“Voss. Kael Voss. King of Valdemar. Eldest of three brothers. Left-handed. I have a dog named Brutus who is going to fucking love you.” I press my lips to her hair. “Your turn.”

“Rosalind Elara Aldaine. Princess of Thornhaven. Only child. Right-handed.” She tilts her head up, her beautiful eyes shining. “I’m twenty-six and I’ve never been outside of this palace.”

“We’ll fix that.”

“I’ve never even been to the nearest village.”

My arm tightens around her. “Rose.”

“Yes, Kael.”

“I’m going to show you everything.”

Her chin wobbles. She presses her face into my chest and breathes, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Never.”

I feel the surge of her emotions through our bond. Hope, fear, fucking joy so fierce it hurts. And under, steady as a drumbeat: You’re mine.

She doesn’t say it aloud. She doesn’t need to. I feel it. It hums around us like a second pulse.

I press my face into her hair and breathe her in. Yeah, baby. I am.

Seven

ROSE

When his knot finally fucking releases, I become aware of several urgent realities.