Chapter 25

Samara

D esire is like thick smoke in the cave, heating up the cramped space, swirling around me. It's a fever that claws through my veins and makes my blood run hot, makes it pump in heavy demanding pulses between my legs, under the skin of my breasts, in my lips, tender from the onslaught of sensation.

My pussy throbs around emptiness, and the masculine taste of him on my tongue only drives my need higher.

How he'd looked when I was blowing him… God.

I had wished that I could capture the moment and remember every single detail forever, the need in his eyes as he watched me, the shock in his features when I'd first pulled him between my lips, the way his hands had gripped the furs like he was fighting not to come the whole time.

And Thorn's cock, just as big and commanding as the rest of him, the head the same dusky pink of his lips.

I could've kept sucking him forever. I wanted him to come down my throat with every cell in my body. I wanted him to fuck my mouth so hard that tears streaked down my cheeks and he bruised the back of my throat, like a little imprint of his passion that I could carry with me forever.

Even the taste of him - I sweep my tongue over my lips now - earthy and masculine, but far from unpleasant.

Thorn is a broad expanse of muscle beneath my hands, his face a mask of possessive desire, his eyes black from arousal, his tousled auburn hair drying in carefree waves around his temple.

He looks like Alexander the Great, seconds before the conquer, his skin bronzed from the fire and his eyes glowing with hunger and power.

He's the most beautiful man I've ever seen, and the need to have him claws through me like I'm possessed by it.

I kiss him now, slanting my mouth over his and seeking out the taste of him, just as fresh and piney as his smell, just as addictive. Even from below me, his lips command mine, dominate mine, and his tongue thrusts deep and powerful.

If it was possible to make a woman climax just from kissing, Thorn would be the one to figure it out.

All the while, his hands are all over me, racing up my sides, cupping my breasts, squeezing my bottom. With my eyes closed, I never know where he'll devote his attention next, and the thrill of it is making me mad, dizzy with need.

"I'm yours, my little healer," he tells me again, his words murmured against my mouth.

It's like he can read my mind, like he senses I'm close to my breaking point.

I pull back, breaking off the kiss even though it nearly pains me to do so. I crawl backwards over him, so that I'm straddling his strong hips again, and his dick is pressing, hot and hardening already, against my core. I gasp at the sensation, the delicious friction of rubbing against him.

"Bring that wet little cunt here," Thorn says, the words ragged. "Let me taste you, too."

The idea is so appealing, but I can't wait any longer, not when each thrust of my hips has him rubbing against right where I need him, right where I'm starved, desperate for him.

I moan, "I can't wait. I need you… too badly."

"I am yours," he soothes, like I'm sick and he's comforting me, like he's giving me what I need to survive.

It's not too far from the truth. I don't feel like myself right now. I'm not aware of the cave, or the forest, or the expanding wilderness beyond us. Everything in my body, every single cell, is trained on the lengthening, thickening cock under me.

I think I'll die if I have to wait any longer.

Thorn's dark eyes hold promises that make a shiver run through me. "Take what is yours."

A sound shakes out of me, high-pitched, mewling, a sound I've never made before in my life, as I listen to his command. I grasp him by the base, and he's already so hard again that he strains in my hands, flexing with the pounding blood that rushes through his cock.

Hard like steel, and so, so thick.

I have a moment of worry, a fleeting, racing thought in my mind, that he might be too big for me and it might hurt. But it's been so long, two long months of fiercely wanting him, of starving for his touch, and two hundred and fifty years, give or take, since my last partner. If it hurts, it won't be enough to deter me.

Holding him in place, I slowly sink down.

My breath is held in my tight throat as his head spreads the lips of my pussy apart and presses between them, and I sink into the sensation, the burn of the stretch, the heat of him, the broadness of his tip.

Below me, Thorn makes a sound like a whimper, soft and breathy and vulnerable. It has to be the best thing I've ever heard in my life, and I'm desperate to make him do it more.

His hands slam down on my thighs, guiding me, fingers biting into my flesh. His beautiful face is strained, contorted with bliss and need, and I know that he's holding himself back from fucking right up into me.

I don't torture either of us, but I don't force my body to adjust either. I work my hips down in slow, breathtaking increments, working Thorn's heavy cock up into myself until I finally, finally , sink down to the end.

A moan shudders out of me, long and strained.

He fills me completely, reaching deeper than anyone, stretching wider than anything. The combined heat and size of him is so exquisite that I take another second just to bask in it, to feel him anchor me and rip me open.

Thorn penetrates everything, blocks out everything, like his incredible body replaces the air around us and the ground and furs beneath my knees and the gentle breeze over my shoulders.

"God," I gasp, my legs shaking with the strain of impaling myself on him. "You feel-… so good…"

His chest heaves beneath my fingers, where my nails dig in hard enough to leave little crescent moon scratches.

Thorn gasps, his tone reverent, "Your cunt is perfect... So perfect-"

His words are lost on a groan when I roll my hips forward, and feel him reach even deeper, feel the base of him slam into my clit. We breathe together, hard and fast. That one movement made my head spin with the onslaught of sensation, it's almost like-

"Like you were made for me," Thorn finishes the thought before I can even voice it, the sheer fevered pleasure of his cock inside of me, like the connection between us reaches far beyond our bodies and extends even to our minds. "Look down, little female…L-look at the way you grip me so tightly…"

I lean back, putting my stomach and my breasts on display, and gaze down to where our bodies connect, at the obscene picture we make right now, his dick fully inside of me, my swollen, slick lips spread around his piercing invasion.

A shiver races down my back, and I'm taken by the need to move, the need to work myself up and down his length.

It's so overpowering that all thought flees my mind, that sweat breaks out over my skin, that I'm helpless but to obey. I rock my hips against his, thrusting our bodies together, and the gripping, clawing, divine pleasure tears me apart from the inside out.

I grip his chest again, above his injuries, my fingers digging into the muscles of his pecks, and pull myself against him harder, faster, so that the base of him slams into my clit again.

"Fuck," I chant, "Fuck, fuck… Thorn-…"

I'm beyond words. I'm beyond thought.

Everything I have is spread open for him, everything inside of me is speared by his steel-hard dick and the heat of his gaze on me. I'm the one on top, I'm the one in control, but I'm coming completely undone against him.

How had I held back for so long? How- or why had I denied us this for so long? Now I don't think I can live without it. Now I can't imagine not being with him, in this way, with our bodies rolling together like one long wave of burning, molten pleasure.

"Like that, female," he groans, harsh and so rough that his voice is like nails scraping over my skin, like another sensation added to the dizzying torrent. "Use me…U-use my cock…Take your pleasure from your male."

"Thorn!" I cry out, his words driving my pleasure higher.

I feel like I'm losing touch with reality, with the world around us, and it's like Thorn can read my mind because he grips my thighs hard and keeps talking, keeps spilling delicious filth from his mouth and grounding me to him, to the moment.

"I could spill just watching you now," he growls below me, and his hips begin to rise to meet mine, like he can't help but join me in the storm. "Beautiful, needy female…I am all yours…Fierce Samara…brave- ah, brave Samara-"

I find Thorn's eyes with my own and tumble into the moss forest of his irises, the dark bottomless lake, as my body hurls towards orgasm. There's something in his gaze that refuses to let me go, that grips me as hard as his fingers in my thighs, pleasure bordering on pain.

Thorn is demanding and dominant, even from below me, he seems to command my body in a way that no one else ever has, like the very thickness of his cock inside me forces me to yield, to surrender to our body's needs.

So, it makes perfect sense that when he snarls, "Come, little female - come for me," I do, the waves of pleasure dragging me over a blissful peak and then cascading back down through endless ecstasy, drowning in the sensations.

I can't breathe, my vision blacks out for a second, my body tight as a bow against Thorn, my nails maybe even drawing blood from his firm chest. The tightness of my clenching, throbbing pussy around his dick just draws out the aftershocks.

The cave echoes with my scream, with my gasps of his name like I need to say it more than the panted breaths I hungrily pull in.

I'm held suspended in the sensation until I collapse over him in a mess of wet hair, slick skin, and shaking limbs.

I'm undone by my release, remade in Thorn's arms, and come back into my body held by his warmth, his strength, his tenderness.

I cling to him, and it dawns on me what people mean by saying they belong to each other, what Thorn means when he says I'm his and he's mine.

I am his.

I'm completely and utterly tied to him, connected to him, hungry for him, in a way that was never as clear to me as it is now.

Not when I watched him around the camp, gazing at his mouthwatering build from afar. Not when I came apart around his hand and felt like he held the very stars in his reverent gaze. Not even when I clung to him, infection decimating his body, promising that if he died, I would surely soon follow, even if it was only in spirit.

No.

It is now when I realize just how in tune we are, just how perfectly we come together. It's like I was made for him, and he for me, like every cell and atom inside of us has a counterpart in the other.

"How did you find me?" I find myself asking with shuddering breaths. "Across all that time? Across two hundred and fifty years?"

Thorn huffs out a laugh, and his cheeks are red when I search his face for an answer.

His words are achingly earnest, "You are the one who found me, little healer. My female. My Samara. My salvation. My heart." With each of these, he presses a kiss to my face, tender lips over my eyelids, my nose, my cheekbone, anywhere he can reach.

I want to cry with relief that this is real, that he's still here and I managed to keep him alive and that he's all around me and in me, like oxygen or like the firelight or like my very soul.

As if in reminder, Thorn throbs inside of me, hard and hot and wanting. I'm reminded that I'm not even done with him, not even close.

I place my hands on either side of his head and begin to rock back into him, shaking and gasping with the sensitivity of it after a climax that could've almost made me faint, that seemed to change the very structure of my being.

I roll my hips over his, each thrust pulling him deeper within me.

My orgasm soaks my flesh, slicks the long length of him, and the cave fills with lewd, obscene noises. I can't get enough of it, enough of him, of the way we fuck raw and primal and needy, like a language between our bodies alone.

Thorn reaches back and grips my ass while I roll my body over his, his broad, big hands spreading over my cheeks and pressing hard enough that even with my darker skin, I'm certain I'll see bruises form.

He uses his strength to move me harder, faster, and when I'm lifting with each thrust, bouncing on him more than rubbing, his eyes nearly roll back into his head.

"So beautiful," Thorn begins to say again, his voice choppy and harsh from our movements, from need, "Your cunt is…s-so tight…I will not…last."

"Thorn-" I groan, pressing my sweat-slicked forehead to his. I reach for his mouth, needing to feel the power and force of his kiss. Thorn fists a hand in my hair, securing me to him, and sucks on my tongue and my lips until I'm panting high and needy, and the immense wave of pleasure threatens to pull me under again. "Fuck, I'm so close, I'm-"

I tighten my grip on the furs under us, and I'm slamming my hips back, throwing my weight into the movement so that the head of him is practically bruising my insides, so that he's pounding up into me hard enough that the rough slap of it drowns out the sounds of my desperate moaning.

"Samara-" Thorn's words are lost as he tosses back his head and shouts out, his body lifting up under me and his hips slamming so hard into mine that my teeth chatter with each thrust.

And then I can feel him, filling me up, coating my insides with his cum, flooding my channel with it until it begins to trickle out between my legs and spill to my thighs.

The wet heat of it is incredible.

It stops my heart, stops my breathing, floods out every bit of awareness in me.

God…

I had no idea how good it could feel, how fucking incredible it would be to have Thorn spurt his seed into me.

Catching my breath, I slow my rhythm and straighten to get off of him, but Thorn's hands slam back over my hips like a vice, and his eyes are brilliant, a sea of emerald trees devoured by a raging forest fire.

I freeze under the heat, the command, of that gaze.

"Not yet," He snarls, half beast and half man. "Not until you come again."

He works me against him, his face tight with agonizing pleasure, with the too-sensitive feel of me still around him so soon after his own orgasm, but he won't release me.

And his rough movements, his commanding growl, steal away any thought of stopping for his benefit.

Thorn sweeps one hand down between my legs, and his thumb finds my pulsing clit and grinds it mercilessly, until shocks of pleasure short circuit my brain. He fucks up into me, still impossibly hard, and it doesn't take long before I'm coming again, crying out against his mouth as my pussy milks his cock, milks all of the seed he just spilled in me, clenches around him hard enough that his moans match mine.

It's only then that he releases me, tumbling me onto my side and gathering me up against him.

His skin is hot, his body everywhere my sensitive flesh can feel, his smell warm and familiar. I feel like I'm floating above myself, but Thorn grounds me, massaging my body with gentle presses of his hands over my arms and legs, my tender breasts, my neck.

My eyes close, and I bury my face into his chest, where the hair tickles my chin, and I can feel his rapid heartbeat against my forehead.

Thorn continues touching me, almost like he can't help himself, like it would be agony to be parted for even the second of time it would take to wash off or pull our clothes back on.

I have to side with him.

I'm not particularly interested in moving either. My body is pliant, my muscles melting beneath his firm hands. A moan slips between my parted lips, scratchy over my well-used throat, and I hear a replying chuckle from Thorn, deep and low, vibrating against my cheek.

"Fierce female," he praises me. "You will never be rid of me now. It would take another animal, twice as strong, to separate me from you."

I smother a giggle into the hollow of his neck. "The animals will have to go through me, next time. Do you think I'll be willing to give up the greatest sex of my life?"

Thorn laughs again, the sound seeming to heal, to smooth, some deep part of me that's all rough edges and sharp corners. I think that, given enough time, he'll soften all the things that stick into me from within, all the old wounds that never healed right, the loneliness, the fear, the distance, even the ones he inflicted by lying and by almost getting himself killed.

"My Samara." He parts my hair and pushes back the still drying waves, and we make adoring eye contact in the dying light. He hasn't fed the fire since we got to the cave, and it's only embers now, drawing us into the intimacy of darkness. "My little healer. You heal parts of me that I did not even know were wounded."

I trace a finger over his hard jawline, now relaxed for perhaps the first time instead of grinding away with frustration, stubbornness, and pride. My path takes me along the angular lines of his face, the broad chin, the high cheekbones, and the full bottom lip that is completely at odds with the rest.

"Promise that there'll be no more getting wounded," I tell him, even though in an hour, outside of the quiet bliss of our little impenetrable cave, I'll know that there's no promising something like that. I add, my voice dropping with sincerity, "You have me now. There's no one else for me, there's no other tribe or other life. I'll be here, beside you."

Thorn captures my hand against his mouth, nibbling on the inside of my palm and on the tip of my thumb.

His smile is easy, playful. But his eyes are vulnerable, an opened window that I can see perfectly inside of.

He needs this, he needs me to tell him again and again how we're a team now, how we're partners, how I'll stick by him even if one tribe tries to kill him, and another might be furious about his lies. I'll be here.

"Ah, female," his says raggedly. "I have belonged to you since I first saw you walk into my camp, filthy and frightened yet challenging me like the force of nature you are. I will always be at your side."

I release a tense laugh when the frailty of all this threatens to shatter me. It's held at bay by Thorn's arms around me and his gentle hands stroking my back and my hair, but it's there, hovering, waiting for the chance to send me spiraling into panic. My eyes shutter closed to avoid it, to float in this blissful space forever.

The same words I whispered to his lifeless, sick body return now, from some internal fountain, "I know that I can do this without you, but the truth is that I don't want to. I don't want to be alone. And now that… Someday we might have children, I'll need you even more then."

Thorn releases a hard breath and flattens a hand over my stomach, his fingers nearly spanning from my pubic hair up to my breasts. His voice is reverent, whispered, like his hope is a secret just for my ears, "I wonder if you did become pregnant tonight. If our child is growing in you even now."

His idea of conception is a bit outdated, but there's an adoring awe in his tone that I don't want to ruin. So I place my hand over his and wonder the same.

I never thought about having a family, or about children or even about the future. My job at the hospital had been everything to me, and it had taken up too much time to think about what I wanted down the road.

But in this time, when everything feels so precious and fleeting, I think that maybe I might be able to have everything I want.

My job, taking care of the tribe as their healer, travelling even to the northern tribe and teaching them how to administer the medicine to each other. A man that I love, a man just as single-minded and strong-willed as me, at my side.

And a family, those children with his stubborn chin and my dark curls, piling into our furs and learning this landscape, this life, alongside me.