Page 80 of Heartflame

“Do you want me to ask?” His voice had dropped into that low rumble that did unfair things to my whole body. His mouth was already trailing along my jaw, down to the spot beneath my ear that made my toes curl.

“No,” I admitted. “You don’t have to ask with me.”

He laughed against my skin, and the sound of it vibrated straight through me. His hands found the hem of my shirt, dragging it up and over my head with more efficiency than he had any right to possess. And then his mouth was on my chest, tongue flicking over one nipple until I arched up into him with a gasp.

“You’re overdressed,” I managed, tugging uselessly at the waistband of his sweatpants. He’d barely bothered to put anything on after his shower, and I was suddenly very grateful for that fact.

“Fix it, then,” he said, pulling back just far enough to let me shove the fabric down his hips. He kicked them off the rest of the way, and then he was bare against me, all those warm red scales and hard muscle, the faint shimmer of his scales catching the morning light spilling through the windows.

I ran my hands down his sides, feeling the way he shuddered under my touch, the way his composure cracked just slightly whenever I found those sensitive spots between his scales. He liked it there, I’d learned. And he liked it when I held his horns while I rode his cock.

“Red,” he said, and it came out strangled as I dragged my nails lightly down his spine. “If you keep doing that⁠—”

“What?” I asked, all faux innocence, even as my own cock throbbed insistently against the confines of my sweatpants. “Doing what?”

He answered by hooking his fingers into my waistband and yanking, hard enough that I laughed before the sound broke into a moan as his hand wrapped around my shaft, slow and deliberate, thumb swiping over the sensitive head until my hips jerked up against him without permission.

“Fuck…”

“If you insist,” he murmured, and then he was kissing me again, deep and consuming, his tongue sliding against mine while his hand kept working me with maddening patience. I fumbled between us, finding his thick cock at last. My fingers didn’t touch as I wrapped my hand around it, milking a large bead of pre-cum from the tip.

We moved together after that, a rhythm we’d learned over the past month, one that still managed to steal the breath from my lungs every single time. He reached for the small bottle we’d started keeping tucked into the couch cushions, because apparently we’d become the kind of couple who needed lube within arm’s reach in every room of the house, and slicked his fingers before trailing them down between my thighs.

“Ready?” he asked, always asking, even now, even after a month of this becoming as familiar as breathing.

“You know it,” I said, and spread my legs wider in invitation.

He worked me open with a patience that bordered on cruel, one finger becoming two, curling deep until I was writhing beneath him, chasing a pleasure that built low and insistent in my gut. By the time he finally settled between my thighs, pressing the blunt head of his cock against me, I was nearly incoherent, begging in a way that would have embarrassed me a month ago and now just felt like a normal Tuesday.

“Look at me,” he said as he pushed in, slow and steady, giving me time to adjust to the size of him. I did, meeting those golden eyes even as my back arched off the couch cushions, even as my whole body trembled with the effort of taking his massive cock.

“Fuck you’re beautiful like this,” he breathed, once he was fully seated, and once I’d relaxed enough around him that he could start to move. “I love you like this. Open for me. Trusting me.”

“Of course I trust you,” I gasped out, hooking my legs around his hips to pull him deeper. “Now fuck me or I swear I’ll⁠—”

His hips thrust forward, cutting me off.

The couch creaked beneath us with every snap of his hips, the newspaper forgotten entirely on the kitchen table, and the tea gone cold. The whole world narrowed down to the drag and slide of him inside me, the way he angled just right to hit my prostate so I could barely think. I raked my nails down his back, feeling the ridges of scale beneath my fingertips, and he growled low in his throat, the sound rumbling through his chest and into mine where we were pressed together.

“Aeron,” I chanted, half plea, half prayer, as the pleasure built and coiled tighter with every thrust. “I’m close, I’m so close⁠—”

“I’ve got you,” he said, reaching between us to wrap his hand around me again, stroking in time with his thrusts until I could resist it no longer. I came hard, spilling hot over his fist and my own stomach, my whole body clenching around him as I cried out his name.

He followed only seconds later, burying himself deep inside me with a groan that reverberated through the walls. His hips stuttered as he emptied himself inside me, his forehead dropping to rest against mine as we both shook through the aftershocks of our mutual orgasms.

For a long moment, neither of us moved, tangled together on a couch that had definitely not been designed for this kind of activity, sweat cooling on our skin, hearts slowly returning to something like a normal rhythm.

“Well,” I said finally, voice wrecked. “That’s one way to distract us from Council hearings.”

Aeron huffed out a laugh against my throat, pressing a lazy kiss there before lifting his head to grin down at me, golden eyes soft in a way that still made my chest ache with how much I loved him. “Works every time.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You love me anyway.”

I shook my head. “Of course I love you.”

We stayed there tangled together on the couch for a while longer, neither of us particularly eager to move. At least until there was a soft snap in the air and a folded letter appeared neatly on the coffee table. Aeron groaned like the sound had personally offended him.