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As if he could hear those screaming thoughts, Kai answered, his arms snaking around her and pulling her back against his bare chest.Her gaze focused on the two of them in the glass, their crowns still glinting on their heads.
She bit down on a whine as he skimmed over her peaked nipple, his other hand dropping lower to her underwear that he didn’t bother sparing. He shredded through it before his gentle fingers grazed up her sensitive inner thigh. Coaxing, teasing, reaching not quite where she needed him.
“Do you remember the first time I got to hold you like this?” Kai’s voice was a deep rolling purr.
Isla’s mind reeled back. Every touch of his had been branded into her, every embrace an imprint on her soul, but this position. The way their bodies molded. The way his thumb skimmed just beneath her breast, how his fingers traced her hips.
She whispered, “When we touched for the first time.”
A maddening accident after everything they’d done to stay apart.
Maybe her being pushed into him in the chaos was another one of Fate’s cruel games.
Kai hummed, his fingers climbing higher and his head dipping lower into the crook of her neck. Unlike yesterday in the ballroom’s antechamber, this time, she wouldn’t stop him.
Isla reached up, wrapping her arm around him and twisting her fingers in his hair. She braced her feet further apart and stretched out to give him more access. He heeded the hint and took advantage, hands mapping a greedy path over her skin. She felt him smile against her neck and made eye contact with him in the glass case’s surface.
“I damn near lost my mind,” he said, his touch ghosting over where she ached for him most. “I still don’t think I’ve recovered from it. Not being able to touch you, taste you, the woman who ravaged, ruined, and saved me with just one look, a few words.” Isla gasped as he finally pressed his fingers to her clit, moving in lazy circles that sent pleasure zapping through her. Her toes curled, and she rolled her hips, breathing his name. “After that night in the gardens, you became every dream. Every waking thought.”
Eyes sliding closed, she lolled against his shoulder, baring her neck entirely to him as he worked between her thighs. His circles grew tighter,faster, with just enough pressure to have her straining and digging her nails into him. Her lower belly knotted; her muscles burned.
“You became mine,” she exhaled before a whimper fell from her lips. “And I—I hated you for it.” His muscular arm held her closer as her legs shook, as he crept her nearer to bliss.
Kai’s chuckle rumbled down her spine, igniting every nerve. “I never hated you, you know. Just the fact I couldn’t have you. Because I knewthis…” Tighter and tighter. Faster. Relentless. Isla was like a bowstring pulled taut, completely prepared to fall apart. “Getting to watch and feel you come undone would be something I’d never get to experience, and that itself was a tragedy—becauselook at you.”
There was enough command in Kai’s voice that Isla opened her eyes. In the reflection of the glass, she took in their embrace, the way he held her, and how her body responded to him. Her slip may as well have disappeared; the silken fabric was hiked up her hips and pulled down below her chest.
“You’re a goddess,”he hushed over her ear, and it was a herculean effort for her to not fold entirely. “One I plan to worship for a very,verylong time.”
It was difficult to oppose that. “But the—the party.”
“Can wait.” He scraped his teeth over her mark, and Isla felt the bond lock up, thrum from that deep chasm ofthemthey’d unearthed during the coronation. “So, do you want to come now, or do you want to play?”
Isla bit her lip so hard it nearly bled, watching as Kai touched her, worshiped her. She was so close that thunder rumbled in the distance, a precursor to the streak of lightning that threatened to strike through her. But—
“S—stop.”
Kai immediately ceased his movements but still held her tight as Isla sucked down air, trembling legs rubbing together in her tumble away from oblivion. A unique form of torture, but the ecstasy that awaited when she climbed that mountain again and finally fell would be worth it. Especially if she had him buried inside her.
Suddenly, Kai gripped her hips and whipped her around. Her back collided with the wall; her head protected by his hand that beat it there. He corralled her as he held her stare, dark and lustful and dangerous. “Mark me.”
“What?”
Kai’s eyes narrowed. The eyes of an alpha, a king, but also her mate, her equal. Commanding, yet something submissive lay beneath them. Just for her. “Markme.”
Isla’s brows furrowed. “I…I can’t.” If she couldn’t shift, couldn’t even draw her claws, she certainly wouldn’t be able to draw her teeth.
“Yes, you can,” Kai said. “I can feel you in there.”
Isla shook her head. “I just tried, and I couldn’t.”
“There was too much noise. Now it’s just you and me.” He leaned in closer, enough that she had to crane her neck to look at him. “I didn’t think you were someone who backed down from a challenge.”
“I’m not.”
“Sounds like you are to me.” Isla growled low in her throat, and Kai’s grin was handsomely feral. Each one of his following words, though easy and languid, hit hard and burrowed deep. “Show the world how much I belong to you. My mate, my wife, my warrior, my queen. Every breath, every beat of my fucking heart is yours. It has been since the night I met you.” He moved even closer, his lips barely brushing hers. “So, take me, use me,claimme. I’m at your mercy until the end of time. That is my vow to you.”
Isla had never welcomed this carnal possessiveness so readily. Ancient, claiming, and cruel, it tore viciously through her blood. She honed on the dark red simmer behind the storms of Kai’s eyes, the way his lumerosi glowed. From where it nested within him, his wolf howled out for hers. For the piece that had been missing for far too long. Isla could feel her own attempt to rise again in response.
