Page 13 of The Guarded Monster’s Truth

The growl that rips from his chest rolls through his ribcage into mine, so deep I feel it in my sternum, my hips, the soles of my feet. My fingers dig into his shoulders, and the muscle beneath them runs taut.

Then the purring starts.

Not the buried rumble from the other night at the desk. This one erupts, deep-chested and involuntary, rolling through his body in waves that travel through every point of contact between us. His chest flush to mine, his palms on my thighs, his hips pinning me to the wall.

I press my palm flat against his chest where the vibration runs.

His forehead drops to mine. His breathing comes ragged, his voice a half-step above a growl.

He carries me from the wall to the bed with one arm, the other sweeping my notebook to the floor. His shirt goes over his head and I get my first look at what his clothes hide. Broad chest tapering to a hard waist, dark skin stretched over muscle that flexes when he plants both palms on the mattress above me. A scar cuts across his left shoulder, pale against the dark. A second one runs along his ribs, thinner, older.

I pull my shirt off. His fingers land on my ribs, spanning from my waist to the underside of my breasts, and the restraint in it hits me harder than anything else he's done tonight. The constant check between what his body can do and what he lets it do.

"I'm not fragile. I don't break."

His grip tightens. The restraint vanishes.

He strips my shorts and underwear down my legs in one pull and his mouth follows, dragging across my hip, the crease of my thigh, the soft skin below my navel. The purring hasn't stopped. It pulses against my skin everywhere his lips land, turning every nerve into a live wire. My fingers twist the sheets and my back arches off the mattress as his palms pin my hips with a pressure that snaps my breath short.

His mouth reaches my pussy and I stop thinking in sentences.

His tongue drags through my folds, slow and flat and the rumble from his chest rolls against me at the same time. Fuck. My thighs clamp around his head and he pushes them wider, holding me open, and the growl that hums against my clit sends a sound out of me I've never heard before. He does it again, finding the angle that makes my spine curve and locks onto it, tongue circling my clit in tight strokes while he pushes two fingers inside me. I'm soaked. I hear it when his fingers curl deep and drag forward against the spot that makes my hips come off the bed. My hands find his horns.

He catches my wrist.

His head lifts. His breath comes hot against my thigh, his lips slick, my wrist pinned in his grip before I register him moving.

"Not those." His eyes hold mine from between my legs. "Not tonight. You touch my horns and I won't be able to stop what comes after. Trust me, you're not ready for that."

I don't know what comes after. I know his fingers are still inside me, and his mouth is wet, and whatever the horns mean to him lives in a place I haven't earned yet. I run my thumb across his lower lip. He bites the pad, enough pressure to pull a sound from my throat. I slide my hands into his hair and grip at the base of his skull, and the growl that rips loose when I pull makes my whole body tighten around his fingers. He drops back down, mouth sealing over my clit, his fingers driving into me in a rhythm that has my thighs shaking around his head and the wet sounds drowning out the scanner.

I come hard, my back arching off the mattress, my pussy gripping his fingers in waves that white my vision at the edges. His name tears from my throat—Benjamin, not Bruiser—and the purring doubles in intensity, shaking the bed frame.

He rises over me. His jeans hit the floor, I see his cock and my brain short-circuits. Thick and long, hard against his stomach, proportional to the rest of him, and proportional on a minotaur his size means I'm going to feel this tomorrow and the day after. I reach for him, wrapping my grip around him. He's hot and rigid in my fist, the girth enough that my fingers don't close all the way. The sound he makes when I stroke him rolls through the room, a groan mixed with a growl that makes my pussy clench around nothing.

"Are you on anything?" His voice comes low and rough.

"IUD."

"Good." He nudges my thighs wider with his knee and slides his fingers between my legs, pushing back inside me. Two, then a third, stretching me, working me open. My hips roll into his touch and his thumb presses my clit and the orgasm I had starts rebuilding before the last one finished. "Because I need to feel you. Nothing between us."

"Fuck me."

He positions his cock at my entrance and pushes in, slow, one inch at a time. My breath catches and my nails dig into his forearms because the stretch burns in a way that blurs the line between pain and pleasure. He stops. Reads my face. I pull at his arms.

"More. Keep going."

He pushes deeper, letting my body adjust, letting me feel every inch of him sliding in. I'm tight around him and wet enough that the slick sound of him filling me makes my cheeks burn. His palm grips my hip, angling me, and he sinks the rest of the way in. The muscles in his neck cord tight, his arms shake with the effort of holding back, and the groan that rips out of him when he bottoms out comes from so deep in his chest I feel it before I hear it. I've never felt this full. He stretches me in every direction at once and the pressure hits spots I didn't know I had.

I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him closer.

He moves. Slow at first, each thrust measured and deep, letting me feel the drag of his cock on the way out and the thick push back in. Then harder when I dig my nails into his back and tell him I can take it. The bed hits the wall. His hips drive into mine and the wet sound of us drowns the scanner's hum and my body arches to meet every stroke, I don't care who hears.

"Fuck, Ava." His voice drops to a growl against my throat. "You feel—" He doesn't finish. Just buries his face in my neck and fucks me harder.

He brings me over the edge again with his thumb grinding my clit and his cock buried deep, the purring so intense it runs through my ribcage like a second heartbeat. I come gripping his horns. I forget the boundary, my hands find them without thinking, and his reaction hits like a shockwave. His entire body seizes, a shudder rolling from his skull through his spine, and he buries himself as deep as my body will take and comes inside me with a sound caught between my name and a word from a language older than English.

We end up laying on the floor.