28. Stella

28

STELLA

I pant. Swollen heat beats through my body as I surface from a dream of tangled bodies and teasing fangs. I don’t know what time it is, but it’s still dark. I blow out a breath, still half asleep and trying to push against the covers, but they don’t move.

Other details come into focus.

A heavy forearm rests against the skin of my stomach, my sleep shirt pushed up, and a clawed hand grips my bare breast. There’s a furnace against my back that gives an unguarded masculine sigh. It’s an oddly reassuring position if a little warm for my tastes except for the bare cock rocking against my ass.

The skin of his thighs brushes mine, the kilt he wears is bunched at my lower back. My shorts are damp, and his sticky precum smooths each glide of his hardness against the thin fabric.

There must be something weak in my biology for this gargoyle because even in sleep, I’m primed. Every point of contact makes me needy in a way that I’ve been trying to avoid with him.

He wants me to beg. He wants my surrender, but I didn’t think he’d try to get it this way.

“S-Stoneheart?” I ask softly.

My husband’s mouth opens against my neck, his tongue sliding as his lips suck over the mating mark he left on me. The sensuous glide has my lashes falling, and I shudder on an inhale.

If I were any more awake, I’d castigate myself for rolling my hips back to get more contact. In the dark of morning, I can forget that he’ll never give into the part of him that is just as entranced with me as I am with him.

I can forget that the boundaries in his heart are clear in the sand.

His movements are uncoordinated, and his chest rumbles in pleasure as he grinds himself against my body. That’s odd. He’s usually so exacting with each touch and?—

My eyes pop open.

He’s asleep.

“ Fuck ,” I whisper, torn between waking his grumpy ass up or just waiting for whatever dream he’s having to end and falling back asleep to avoid the awkwardness.

I squirm in his hold. Maybe if I try to escape, he’ll wake up enough to roll over, but the strategy proves to be flawed when his cock slips up one of the loose leg holes of my shorts and brushes my pussy.

I freeze. A little horrified but a lot turned on. The fucker isn’t even awake, and I’m already halfway to orgasm.

“So sweet,” he mumbles.

Stella Elderflower, you will wake this gargoyle up right now! I try to lecture myself, but my body doesn’t respond. My brain can say that there are rules concerning this gargoyle, but my bones want him. Our battle of wills has left me bruised and needy. Greedy even though he’d gifted Ben the intimacy of fucking me the other night.

And I’m so wet. Like the ripest peach just brimming over with juice. On his next rock, the head of him breaks through my folds, hitting against my swollen clit. I breathe a moan, and his hand squeezes my breast harder before the rocking of his hips halts.

He stops sucking on my skin and kisses it instead.

“Wife,” he says. His voice is deep and gruff and suddenly very awake.

I swallow, and my cheeks burn in humiliation, but I don’t try and pretend I’m asleep. I suspect he’d know I was lying, and I’m not a coward. “Husband.”

He sighs and inhales against my neck. “Apologies. Your scent is acting like a magnet to me.”

I frown even as my lashes flutter at the brush of his breath against the fine hairs there. “Really?”

It can’t be a terribly strong magnet since I sure haven’t experienced waking up with him like this before. Maybe it’s because we’ve been far more intimate than at the beginning?

“You’re fertile. My instincts are sensitive to you,” he says.

I stiffen. Fertile. The thoughts of creating an heir that have circulated in my mind, and I assumed had quieted, come fighting to the surface. Instead of delving more into that, I stick to facts. “But I have a charm to prevent pregnancy.”

“Your body goes through the same cycle even as the charm keeps you from conceiving.”

He’s right. I do have periods. It makes sense that I would have times of being extra enticing to go along with them.

He hasn’t yet pulled away. His cock rests against me, collecting my essence, and waiting for the moment to slide inside.

“For being sorry, you haven’t stopped,” I say.

“Do you want me to stop, firefly?” Stoneheart doesn’t move with any hurry as the pads of his fingers skim over the mound of my breast. His nose tickles the back of my ear.

I swallow, making sure to stay still even as everything inside me craves to push back, to ask for more. My wetness is a goddamn mess, seeping and soaking his ruddy cock. My core trembles in need.

Do I want him to stop?

I distract myself with snark. “I’ve been meaning to ask who inspired that nickname first. Me or the building?”

Stoneheart makes a disgruntled sound and starts to pull away.

“Don’t stop!” I say, unable to bear the thought of being left like this.

His satisfaction echoes in his chest. “Then beg me for it.”

My exhale is sharp and my curse silent. Fuck this guy.

I arch my back to slide his cock inside of me, but he’s too quick and draws his hips away, and I whimper. He releases my breast in the same breath, gripping my hip instead.

“Don’t make me deny you, wife,” he growls, and the wave of arousal at the sound threatens to pull me under. “This game is what we both need.”

It doesn’t feel like a game. It feels like pulling away now would be the same as having strips of skin taken from me, or chunks of heart.

Submission is such a small price in comparison.

“Please, Remy.” My voice breaks along with my will. “I need you.”

Something whiplike but strong wraps around my shorts and pulls them down. His tail. My thoughts stutter when his skin presses against mine, and the crown of him slides though my folds. I only have time to gasp before he goes from teasing me to adjusting his position to thrust inside me.

I moan. There’s so much of my arousal smeared between my thighs, but the stretch is sharp before giving way to the thundering swell of being full . He slides slightly from me to allow my body to slicken him some before driving forward again.

“ Fuck ,” I whisper for the second time this night. He feels giant entering me like this. His cock is sizable, but with his grip on my hips and the angle I can only accept him.

“You take me so well,” he growls.

“More,” I demand and yelp when he smacks my ass.

“All in good time. Take the fucking I give you like the good wife you are.”

I stiffen, wanting to fight him, but when he rolls his hips against me, the slow stretch devours my defiance. Without that shield, I’m naked, the part of me that aches to give Stoneheart everything left bare.

I give in.

Stoneheart makes a rough sound in triumph as my body relaxes. Each thrust of his body goes deeper, hits the spot inside my body better until the flare of his knot kisses my pussy lips.

I whimper as the contact wakes something necessary in me. I work to ease my body more, to accept that part of him, but he pulls back and thrusts, smacking his knot against me. I cry out and tighten around him.

“Our demon is right. You feel like heaven,” Stoneheart groans into my ear.

I would have assumed that my mind would barely be able to grasp the thought of Ben right now, but the sentiment stays, spreading through my veins with the deceptive comfort of warm alcohol and searing reality of electricity. What would he do if he were here? Would he be jealous? Or would he be as turned on as I had been when I watched Stoneheart order Ben around with a vicious kiss?

The warm and sizzle of pleasure ebbs higher and higher like cresting waves. I want to be filled by this gargoyle. I need to discard everything until he can reside so deep in my soul and body neither of us can fight the draw.

“Your knot.” I gasp. “I need it.”

My words say one thing, but my body does another. I’m clawing away from him as if to escape. His cock slips from me making a mess of the sheets as instincts have me fleeing.

“Think you can handle that, firefly?” He shifts and grips my hips hard. I splay out on my stomach as his weight pins me down from behind. His conquering cock thrusts back into me as he snarls.

I cry out, but don’t stop trying to move, wanting to rock back to take more and forward to force him to claim me like an animal would his mate at the same time.

“Being filled to the brim with me?” he hisses.

He tightens the grip on my hips as if he’s going to hold me in place while sinking forward. I stretch around the hardness of his knot, and that’s all it takes to break me. I clench the sheets and cry out in release, expecting the stretch to rocket me higher, for that thickness of his to push me past capacity and lock inside of me.

Pleasure rips through me like a wildfire, quick but starting to die off, searching for the next grove to devour. But there’s no greater swell. He doesn’t sink deeper. Instead, I lose the pressure of his knot only for it to be replaced with his fist squeezing around it.

He grunts and heat fills my body.

We gasp together, his chest warm against my back is a comfort, but doesn’t quiet the sudden dissonance of the moment. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

He massages the place on my hip where he probably left bruises, the stroke of his hand on my skin helps. The trembling of my body quiets even as confusion roars.

I barely have my bearings before he slides from my body, leaving me sopping and empty. I turn, and the bed creaks as he sits up and throws his legs over the opposite edge of the bed. The glow of a phone screen is harsh in the dark.

“You didn’t knot me,” I say. My words are like fingers trying to claw into this gargoyle who swings from someone my soul recognizes into a stranger in the span of a breath. Disappointment that I can barely understand holds tight around my heart.

“A knot comes with more than just my seed filling your pretty cunt,” he says facing away from me. “It has the power to influence emotions.”

“And you don’t want those types of emotions for me,” I say. I idly wonder if the sinking sensation in my stomach will ever bottom out or if it will always feel like it’s falling into the abyss between us.

Stoneheart doesn’t reply to that. He stands, and in the low light I watch him straightening his kilt until it falls the way it should.

“You’re leaving?” I ask. Turns out my stomach can sink lower.

He grunts in affirmation. “I have a lead I need to follow up on.”

I sit up and blink at my lap, not knowing what I want to do or ask. It gets even more awkward when his cum starts seeping out of me. He really did fill me to the brim, just not the way I thought he was going to.

When I swallow enough to speak again, he’s come over to my side of the bed like he’s going to kiss me goodbye. I tilt my face up, and his talons comb through my hair before he pulls away, sighing.

“Sleep, Stella. It’s early.”

And somehow, even with how full I am, I’ve never felt emptier.