Page 21 of Knotting Sleeping Beauty

His mouth on my belly slides lower. Lower. Taking his whole fucking time. I feel his breath, hot against my inner thigh, his stubble scraping my skin, his big hands gripping my hips to hold me steady because my legs are already shaking.

“Kael, please…”

“Please what, Omega?” he rumbles against me, and the vibration alone makes my knees buckle. He tightens his grip, holding me up and open.

Then his tongue drags through me, slow, and I make a wrecked sound.

He groans like I’m the best thing he’s ever tasted. And takes his time mouth-fucking me with long, slow licks, his tongue flat and hot, circling my clit, then pulling back before I can tip over. Teasing, building. His fingers digging into my hips hard enough to mark, and I fucking crave every bruise.

“Fuck, Kael, don’t stop…”

“Not stopping, baby. Not tonight. Not ever.”

He seals his mouth over my clit and sucks, and my hands fist in his hair so hard it has to hurt. He doesn’t even flinch. Just groans again, the sound raw, hungry, and pushes two thick fingers inside me. Curling. Finding the spot that makes me go fucking wild.

I’m shaking. Full body. My thighs clamping around his head, my back arching, my mouth open on sounds I can’t control.

I come calling his name, and he catches me when my legs give out… Then my king carries me to the bed and lays me down. I pull him over me, and when he sinks in, slow, so fucking slow, we’re both fucking shaking. His feral groans meeting my desperate moans.

He moves like he wants to feel every inch of me. Hips rolling into mine, deep. I wrap my legs around him, pulling him close, impossibly deeper, needing him in a way that has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with the fact that this man is my husband and I am his wife and we are in the room where he found me and everything about this moment is sacred.

“Look at me, Rosalind.” His voice is fucking wrecked.

His hazel eyes are burning, his jaw is tight, his arms trembling with the effort of going slow when I know he’s this fucking close to losing control.

“Don’t hold back,” I demand. “Fucking give it to me.”

That’s all it takes for Kael to fucking crack. His powerful hips snap forward, and I gasp, my nails biting into his shoulders. He growls into my neck, picking up his pace, and I meet him thrust for fucking thrust. The bed slams against the wall. The candles flicker. His hand slides between us, thumb finding my clit, circling, pressing, and I’m climbing again, already, so fast it fucking scares me.

“That’s it, baby,” he rasps in my ear. “Give me one more.”

“Kael, I can’t…”

“Fuck, yeah, you can…” He thrusts deep, his thumb pressing faster, teeth grazing my bond mark.

And I fucking explode. Clenching around him so hard he groans my name like a goddamn madman. His knot swells, stretching me, filling me, locking us together, and I feel his cum pour and fucking flood my body. Hot, deep, so fucking much…

His knot pulses inside me, and I sigh his name.

“I love you, my Rose.”

“And I you, my King.”

Outside the door, Brutus howls, making us laugh. And somewhere below, in a garden where cursed thorns used to grow, the first roses are beginning to bloom…

Fourteen

EPILOGUE - ROSE

Six Months Later

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Staring at me while I eat.”

My freaking husband, six months and the word still gives me a thrill, leans back in his chair, his big arms crossed over his massive chest, making absolutely no effort to look at his own plate. We’re sitting at a tiny table in a street-food market in Valdemar’s capital, surrounded by smoke and noise and the smell of a dozen different cuisines, and this man is watching me eat a lamb dish with an expression that is, frankly, indecent.