Page 228 of Feralheart

“You’re killing me,” I breathed.

He looked up the length of my body and made certain I was watching him. Down the bond came a pulse of dark, pure satisfaction. “Then we’re even, Feral.”

His mouth found me where I ached for him most.

A sound tore out of me that I’d never admit to in daylight. I latched onto the grass, his hair, anywhere I could hold, and he groaned against me as though the taste of me was the only thing he’d ever wanted. The bond turned molten. I felt what he did. My thighs trembling under his hands, my breath coming apart, the way I came alive under his tongue. All of it looped back through him and into me, doubling, until the world shrank to his mouth and the murmur of the river.

He gave the way he did everything. Patient. Relentless. Unwilling to settle for less than all of me. When my hips tried to chase him, he pinned them beneath one splayed hand and stayed exactly where I needed him, winding the ache tighter, tighter, until it drew to a single unbearable point.

Then it broke.

Pleasure tore through me, white and total, and I shattered under the open cavern sky with his name breaking on my tongue. Through the bond, his pleasure crested with mine, a groan dragged out of him as though he’d ridden every wave I did. He didn’t stop until the last tremor left me, gentling me down with his mouth until I lay wrung out and boneless in the grass.

Only then did he draw back up my body and kiss me. I tasted myself there, and the low, wrecked sound he made against my lips undid something in me all over again.

“You said we should sleep.” His grin came slow, wicked, warm as he settled beside me, his hand splaying over my bare hip. “Forgive me for not listening.”

I didn’t have a single clever thing left to say.

He righted my pants with gentle hands, drawing the laces closed, and pressed one last kiss below my navel.

When he finally let go, his fingers trailed across my waist.

I stood on unsteady legs. My skin still hummed where he’d touched me.

“Go to bed, Feral,” he whispered. “Dream of me.”

I didn’t look back as I walked to my tent. I counted steps to keep myself from turning around. Seven. Eight. Nine.

His awareness tracked me the entire way, the bond pulling tighter with every step of distance between us.

At the tent flap, I did finally peer back.

Fen sat where I’d left him, his hand still resting on the grass where I’d sat beside him.

I made myself duck inside before I crossed back to him.

I lay down and sleep dragged me under before I could fight it, and it sucked me into…

Stone bit into my knees.

In my dream, I knelt on a cliff edge, the drop beyond swallowing light. Bones scattered across the stone beneath me. Too many to count. Picked clean. Some still carried scraps of leather that might’ve been tack.

Pressure crushed my chest, grinding my ribs together. I couldn’t think past the weight of⁠—

A hand touched my shoulder.

I spun. Tolross stood there, whole and healthy, with color in his cheeks. Just like in the trial.

Relief flooded through me so fast my vision blurred. “You’re alright.”

“You chose him over me.” His voice came out deadened. “And now you’ll watch him die anyway.”

“I didn’t choose anyone over you.”

“Look.”

He pointed, and I turned.