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“Devour fair maidens whole.” I ripped her free of the window and threw her onto the bed, letting her bounce a single time before my massive body followed, pinning her under me. I ground my cock against her thigh, teasing as I unlaced the simple neckline of her dress. In the thousand different visions of how this played out, I had always kept my cool. I had performed with skill and measure. But the more I touched her, the more I tasted the skin I had toyed with so many times and never licked, sucked, bitten, or tasted, the more I was driven insane with need.

Her pale, tarnished-gold nipples came free of the dress, and I fell upon them, pulling one into the scorching heat of my mouth, rolling it between my teeth as I suckled.

Gods, her skin tasted like magic felt. Every mouthful of her lit scattering fireworks across my tongue like lightning shooting through me. She was a tempest beneath me. Every moan, every twitch fed an unbridled storm gathering between us. I had watched her with Brittle Spear, twisted and rancorous with envy over his ability to touch her, but every moment of my bitterness was swallowed by awe over how she embraced every moment they touched. I expected it to be the same. I expected the tilt of her head as she groaned with delight, but I did not expect the way she danced with me, like we two made war against each other’s flesh. When I bit down on her nipple, she gasped and hooked her leg behind my hips, drawing me tight against her as she thrust her breast into me.

“Pants. Off. Now,” she grated out as her fingers buried themselves in my hair and her toes worked to strip my breeches from me. I let her struggle with them, loving the way her features twisted in frustration and the way her fingers flexed and pulled at my hair.

When she’d managed to get them to my knees, I took pity on her and rocked backwards to pull her atop me. The fine silk of her thighs grating against the coarse hair of mine felt like the heavenly promise her people talked about so much.

“Is this what you want, Raven?” she asked with a teasing smirk as she slowly pulled the mass of her skirts up her thighs to bare them.

I groaned, trying to reach for the damp glistening of flesh I yearned for. She cut me off by slamming her skirt down around my wrist capturing it and holding me hostage.

The lust-soaked sound of my own chuckle surprised even me in its depravity. My little bug drew a ravenousness from me that would never be sated nor stopped even by a dress.

I shifted magic to the sinews of my body and directed it into reflexes already honed by countless battles. My wrist flicked, caught the hem of her dress and ripped it up and over her head, imprisoning her arms in its cocoon behind her back.

“This is what I’ve wanted. My beautiful Sóna, bared before me and panting with need. I’ve missed the scent of your pussy dripping for me,” I whispered against her lips as I stole another scorching kiss from her. “You asked me to fuck you. Ask me again.”

“I’m not going to beg you to fuck me.” Weeks ago, I’d have mistaken that tone for excoriating rebuke but this had no edge to it, just the soft plush curves of pleasure.

“We will play begging and pleading games another day. I’m not telling you to beg. I’m asking you to tell me what you want. Clearly.” I ran my tongue down the line of bruises I had left before kissing each one. “So I’m not mistaken that you want me as much as I want you.”

The silence stretched out too long as I pressed heated kisses to her skin. I raised my head at the absence of an answer and watched the strangest emotions work themselves across her face. They flitted by like butterflies in a garden, first annoyance then sadness then anger then fear. There were too many to track. Too many to nail down, all fluttering across her mud-smeared beauty. I let go of her dress and gathered her up in my arms, drawing her into my chest where she could feel the warmth of my skin. It was a simple comfort, my thumb stroking her cheek. I didn’t say anything, I just let the dull grey of her eyes search mine.

“You’re real,” she finally murmured. I had heard a full rainbow of emotions from her, from rage to need to cleverness. I had never heard the fragile vulnerability that cracked her voice and made her seem like a tiny doll against my massiveness.

“I am.”

“And . . . you . . .” The girl in my arms was someone new, the same woman I had craved for so long but the walls she had erected ages ago to keep the riffraff like myself out were crumbling around her. Her need for assurance was something new I could provide for her.

“Yes,” I answered the unasked question, my thumb still stroking her cheek. Still want me? it asked.

“You shouldn’t,” she said with a wry smile before placing a delicate kiss on my lips. “Make love to me, Emrys.”

Her soft whisper drew shivers from the base of my spine all the way down to the very core of my essence. “Gladly.”

I shucked the dress from her captive arms and she rose up on her knees. Her eyes never left mine, saying volumes, interrogating me, but she said nothing as she slowly lowered herself down until the throbbing heat of her hovered above the aching tip of me. I settled my hands on her hips, making it clear I wouldn’t force the matter. This was her choice.

I had told her once I wanted her to choose me, I wanted her to know me and deem me worthy of her. This would be no different. The string that tethered us together may be gone, but the truer one that wound around my heart was still deeply lodged in place. Whatever magic allowed her to live and the bond to be severed could never change what I felt for her. I had expected it would. I had expected that a week or so would pass and without it the insistent urge to bury myself in her would ease. I had filled that time with the midnight love of the dark sister, biding my time until I could wake without the eviscerating emptiness she left. I imagined that something would give and the frenzy whenever I thought of her would ease.

It never did. It never would. The drugs just eased the biting edge, they never really took the pain away. Whatever tethered our souls together had known what it was about. She was perfect in her every imperfection, and the way her fingers combed through my disheveled hair as she eased the thick head of my cock into her impossibly wet depth only made that clearer.

“You’re so fucking big,” she whispered as she adjusted her knees to accommodate the stretch of me.

I gritted my teeth as pleasure washed through me and threatened to break the tenuous hold on my control. I was barely holding on as her heart beat next to mine and her soaked depths squeezed me so damned fucking tight. A strong breeze could gust through and my grip on the true monster under my skin would break, and I wouldn’t be able to hold back from ravaging her delicate flesh.

I snorted a grunting chuckle. “You can take it.”

“Oh, I know I can. Doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the way you split me apart.” She slid down another inch and groaned, her nails digging into my shoulders where she was holding on for dear life. “Fuck, just let . . . just let me savor it.”

My fingers gripped her hips in a vise; there would be dark marks on her beautiful golden skin in the morning. Something about that and the marks on her neck she wouldn’t be able to hide satisfied a deeply primal part of me, and I nearly shook with the urge to plunge myself to the root and take her hard and wild. “Sóna . . .”

My own voice sounded foreign. Deep. Dark. A warning that shattered any illusion that I was the chivalrous knight I wanted to be. I needed her to put me out of my misery. I needed her to swallow me whole and take me over the edge with her. Every beat of my heart that I was not buried home within her was blissful sweet agony shaking my straining muscles.

“Ssshhhh. Let me enjoy.” She slid down another inch, gasping into the sweet torture of it all.

My entire body was aching with hunger only she could sate, my fingers digging into her, and I was nearly breaking my jaw against my own teeth trying to hold back. “Sóna . . . fuck. Mercy. Please.”