Page 9 of Knotting Sleeping Beauty

“I’ll say it after, too.” I take his face in my hands. His jaw is scratchy with a five-o’clock shadow, his skin hot. His eyes, this close, are definitely hazel, gold and green with flecks of brown, and they’re looking at me like I’m something amazing. “I’ve been asleep for decades, Kael. Fucking years. I have an entire life I haven’t lived. And right now, in this moment, the only thing I want to do with my time is this. So stop being noble and fuck me.”

Something snaps behind his eyes. Whatever little was left of his kingly composure. I watch it fucking shatter, and what’s left under is raw, unfiltered ALPHA. His pupils swallow his irises; his scent surges, thicker, darker, heavier, fucking flooding the room. His muscles bulge and tighten, his strong jaw sets, and the male looking down at me is no longer a man. He’s a fucking predator. And I’m not even a little bit afraid.

The clink of his belt resonates, then the rustle of fabric, and he positions himself against me, hot, hard, impossibly thick, and I feel every nerve in my body zero in on our touching skins.

“Look at me, Rosalind.”

I do. I couldn’t look away if the tower collapsed.

And he fucking pushes in.

Slow. Agonizingly so. Inch by thick fucking inch, his mesmerizing eyes locked on mine, reading every flicker of sensation that crosses my face. There’s a stretch, a burn, a fullness that rides the edge between too much and fucking perfect. Tears sting my eyes, and they’re not from pain. No, they’re from the fucking rightness of it all. The overwhelming, bone-deep, terrifying rightness that floods through me as King Kael fills me, claiming my body that was always, always meant to be his.

There you are. My omega says. Not my brain. Something deeper, fucking ancient. I’ve been waiting for you.

When he bottoms out, fully, completely, impossibly inside me, he drops his face to my neck and makes a sound that’s something raw and reverent.

“Fuck, Rose.” He sounds fucking broken, wrecked.

I wrap my arms over his shoulders, my legs around his waist. Every inch of me clinging to every inch of him I can reach.

Then he starts moving.

Six

KAEL

Nothing. Nothing in thirty-five years of living has prepared me for this.

Not battle, not the crown, not any woman who came before. There have not been many, but enough to know that whatever I thought sex was, I was wrong. This isn’t sex. It’s the universe rearranging itself around the two of us, and everything else fucking falling away.

She’s so tight around me, I can barely breathe. With every thrust, her body grips me like it’s trying to keep me inside forever, and the sounds she makes, God, the sounds. Broken, escalating moans that she keeps trying to stifle and I keep coaxing out.

“Louder, Princess.”

“The whole kingdom can probably, ah!”

“Good. Let them,” I fucking growl.

Rose moans against my shoulder, and then she bites me. Her teeth sinking into the muscle between my neck and shoulder, sharp and desperate. My hips snap forward hard enough to make the ancient bed frame crack.

I do it again, then again. Harder. Her hips rise to meet mine as we find our rhythm. Her nails scoring my back, ankles locked behind me, pulling me fucking deeper.

Her heat fuels my rut, and my rut drives her heat higher, each thrust pushing us both toward something enormous, something I can feel building at the base of my spine.

My knot is swelling,thickening at the base of my cock, catching at her entrance with each thrust, and she gasps the first time she feels it.

“What…”

“My knot. It’s going to lock us together.” I force the words through clenched teeth.

“I know what a knot is, Kael. I was sheltered, not stupid.”

Even now, mid-fuck, she’s fucking sassy. I want to fucking marry this omega fucking immediately.

My knot catches again, stretching her, and we both groan. “You’re mine, I’m yours, and there’s no undoing that shit. Ever.”

Her hands frame my face. She’s flushed, destroyed, fucking beautiful beyond anything I ever imagined.