Page 34

"So responsive," I breathed against her skin, my lips brushing the curve of her jaw. "I love how you respond to me"

She mumbled something incoherent that ended on a deep moan.

Her answer was a broken sound that went straight to my cock. I was so hard it hurt, my body demanding I take her properly, claim her completely, but this wasn't about my need. This was about watching her come apart under my hands, about proving to both of us that what we had was real and undeniable.

"Look at me," I said, my voice low and rough. When her eyes opened they were dark and unfocused, the green almost entirely eclipsed by her pupils. "I want to watch you. Every second of this. Every reaction you give me."

She held my gaze, and that undid me more thoroughly than anything else. The fact that she let me see everything, that she trusted me with her vulnerability even as I pushed her higher. Her lips were parted, her breathing ragged, and I could see the exact moment pleasure crested higher inside her.

I added another finger, stretching her, and her whole body jerked against mine. The sound she made was desperate and needy, and I felt it like a physical touch.

"You're mine," I said, and it wasn't a question. It was a statement of absolute fact, spoken against her trembling skin. "Say it."

"I'm yours," she whispered, and the words nearly broke me.

I increased the pressure and the rhythm, my thumb finding the sensitive bundle of nerves that made her cry out. Her inner walls clenched around my fingers, hot and tight, and I groaned at the feel of it. At the knowledge that soon, very soon, I'd be inside her properly. That I'd feel this heat wrapped around my cock instead of my hand.

Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Her fingers dug into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks, and I wanted those marks. Wanted everyone to know she was mine. Wanted her scent on my skin and my scent on hers until there was no question who she belonged to.

"That's it," I urged, my voice dark and possessive. I could feel her getting close, could feel the tension coiling tighter in her body. "Come for me. Let me feel it. Let me have all of you."

It didn't take long after that. Her whole body went taut against mine, one sharp indrawn breath, and then she came apart with my name torn from her throat like a prayer. Her inner walls clamped down on my fingers in rhythmic pulses that I felt all the way through my body. Her fingers twisted in my hair, her pulse hammering against my palm, her entire body trembling as waves of pleasure moved through her. I felt it everywhere. The trembling. The heat. The way she clung to me like I was the only solid thing in a world that had gone liquid and soft.

I worked her through it, drawing out every last tremor, every last gasp, until she sagged against me boneless and spent. Only then did I slowly withdraw my hand, bringing my fingers to my mouth to taste her.

The flavor of her exploded across my tongue, sweet and musky and entirely hers, and my dragon roared its approval.

I held her against my chest as she came down, pressing my mouth to her temple, breathing in the scent of her hair and skin. What moved through me had nothing to do with possession and nothing to do with Marion's ghost. It was quieter than that. More absolute. Just the particular weight of her body against mine, the knowledge that whatever had been driving me half out of my mind for the past week had never been about anyone but her.

That's when the guilt hit.

It moved through me cold and sudden and suffocating. What the hell was I doing? I'd believed Marion was my blood singer, had carried her memory for seven hundred and fifty years, and here I was pleasuring another female in a shadowed alcove like she'd never existed.

I pulled away from Leila so fast she stumbled. I had to catch her elbow to keep her from falling. She looked up at me with confusion and hurt in her eyes, her lips swollen from my kisses, her breathing uneven.

"Kavan?" she said, and I heard the question in her voice. The vulnerability.

"Go back to the castle," I said. The words came out harsher than I'd intended. Cold. Distant. Everything I'd been trying not to be with her. "I'll talk to you later."

"What?" She was refastening her pants with shaking hands, and I could see the moment understanding dawned in her eyes. The moment she realized I was rejecting her. Again. "Are you serious right now?"

"I shouldn't have done that," I said. I couldn't look at her. Couldn't stand to see the hurt I was causing. "It was a mistake."

"A mistake," she repeated, her voice gone flat. Empty. "Right. Of course it was."

"Leila—"

"No." She cut me off, and there was enough steel in it to stop me cold. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to kiss me and touch me like that, and then call it a mistake. Either you want me or you don't. I'm done with the back and forth."

She pushed past me and out of the alcove before I could respond, and I let her go. I watched her walk away with her spine straight and her head high, and I hated myself with a thoroughness I hadn't felt in a long time.

But what was I supposed to say? Every time I touched her, the guilt followed like a blade between the ribs. My dragon was insisting that Leila was ours, that her blood sang to us in ways Marion's never had. And still I stood there alone in the shadows, unable to reconcile any of it.

I stayed in the alcove for a long time after she left. Tried to get my cock under control. Tried to ignore the fact that I could still smell her on my skin, could still feel the warmth of her against my palm. Eventually I forced myself to move.

The sun was lower in the sky now, painting the eastern courtyard in amber. The evening breeze carried cooking smoke from the village below. It should've helped clear my head.

It didn't.