Chapter 58

Ifeel him nipping at my heels, breathing down the back of my neck. I can hear his pounding footsteps rattling the ground.

My frantic heart almost punches free of my ribs.

Rounding the small hill smothered in vines that have made this glassy wonderland their own, I find the sheltered cave tucked behind a large, glass-veined boulder.

I dash into the somewhat shadowed interior that’s no bigger than my room in Stony Stem, clothed with a crunchy layer of dried leaves that must have blown in over the years. Jagged blades of sunshine cut through a handful of thin, translucent seams stretched across the ceiling, scribbling light across the ground.

I sweep my gaze around, spinning as darkness fills the entrance, like a broad shadow eclipsing the sun.

The moon.

Eclipsing my view of anything else.

The cavern packs full of his robust scent, almost bringing me to my knees, the hunger in his starkly shadowed eyes making my heart pound harder.

My needy arousal is a wet smear between my thighs, still high on the thrill of the chase. Feeding off the restless energy thumping through my veins despite the empty ache of my core.

He drops to a crouch, setting my necklace, our clothes, and my sheath on the ground. Holding my stare, he pushes to stand.

I raise a brow in a silent how did I do?

He begins to circle me in slow, stalking strides. “Perfect, Milaje.”

Pride fills my chest, but I don’t move. Don’t spin to keep his eye contact. Instead, I relish the way his gaze hungers over every inch of my naked body, smelting my bones.

“But we need to have a chat about giving your back to circling monsters.”

“But you’re my monster.” I smile as he crosses before me, and I swear his breath stills. “You don’t count.”

He’s behind me again, his attention dragging across the small of my back, and a tingle climbs my spine. “You wouldn’t think that if you could see inside my head.”

I think he’d be surprised.

He told me he’d rip the world apart if I tip my throat again, but I’d tip it to him in a heartbeat. Beg to be the sole benefactor of all that static energy rolling off him in waves.

Because I want to be caught.

Hungered over.

I want to be devoured so completely we’re tangled for eternity.

I want to do the same to him.

He rumbles low, circling tighter.

Tighter.

“You’re thinking very loud, Milaje …”

My skin prickles, his baritone filling the cavern as completely as I want him to fill me.

He stalks into my line of sight, almost close enough to reach out and touch, our gazes colliding like a clash of fire and ice.

I lift a brow. “Then why is there still space between us?”

He launches—hits. Tangles us in a crush of lips and moans and lashing tongues and hot, fervid flesh.

Of desperate, wanting need.

His arms band around me, and he lifts, backing me against the smooth wall with my legs curled around him, his hands supporting my thighs with effortless strength, my core swollen and exposed.

Empty.

Too empty.

He breaks our kiss, pushing his forehead against mine. I hear him swallow, nudging my entrance, and even with me bared like this—so open—I understand his concern …

He’s huge.

My core contracts, anticipating.

Wanting.

Hungering for him to drive up and fill the aching hollow.

I rock my hips, dragging myself back and forth across his thick, silky tip. Feeding off the friction, shivering through a surge of need.

“Look at me, Milaje.” I do, my heart a riot in my chest. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

Why would I ever want that?

“Of course.”

His deep, throaty rumble fills the cavern. He drops me slower than the setting sun, and I gasp as he eases past my wet, pulsing entrance.

“See,” I preen, restless around it, trying to shift my hips. “Told you I could manage.”

“I’ve got a long way to go,” he hisses out from between clenched teeth.

Oh …

“More, please,” I rasp, threading my hands across his taut arms and shoulders, up the strained tendons in his neck and through his dense beard.

His chest expands, then releases, and he gently lowers me, sliding me onto him in perfect, stretching increments. Every gluttonous inch knots me up and unravels me, sweat gathering on my brow, between my breasts.

“Almost there,” he rumbles, guiding me down until I’m brimming.

My upper gums throb as his thick, twitching length fills me so completely I’m straining at the seams. This primal sense of satisfaction swirls through my chest, warming my heart.

My soul.

“Are you okay?” he asks, brushing his lips against the sensitive skin just below my ear.

So much better than okay.

I nod through a groan and pull him close, tasting him with a deep, hungry kiss. Urging him to move with a shift of my hips.

He lifts me the slightest amount, then gently lowers me, and my entire body ignites. I moan into his hungry mouth, urging him with another slow curl of my spine.

He lifts me again—higher this time.

Drops me down slowly.

I melt around him, little by little. Breath by breath. Slow shift by slow, aching shift as our hearts continue to pound in rapid unison.

“You’re perfect,” I whisper, feathering the words against his lower lip.

“Perfectly yours.”

The words are accompanied by a low, rumbling growl that boils in his chest, vibrating through me. A smile steals across my face at the way it kindles my nerves. Makes me burn.

I plant a kiss upon his cheek.

His temple.

“I like it when you do that,” I breathe close to his ear. The tension eases from his taut shoulders, like I’m taming a rabid beast.

He makes that sound again, lifting me higher, pausing just before his tip is free of my clenching core … sliding me back down with a deep, sensual roll of his hips.

A guttural moan crawls up my throat, and I throw my head back, another plunging thrust almost severing the threads of my self-control.

I look at him from beneath heavy lids as he draws out, then drives in hard enough to make my breasts bounce, stoking that flame. Unblinking, he watches me—like he’s drinking from some well of life.

There’s an edge to that look that unleashes something inside me. A wildness I don’t want to tame.

This bludgeoning throb pounds to needy life in my gums, drilling into my canines, the roots of it stretching across the arch of my palate. Salivating, I swallow, tipping forward and flopping my head into his neck, feeling the tendons flex beneath my lips as he thrusts.

Thrusts.

Thrusts.

That ache turns to a sharp, splitting pain that has me crying out, buffering the sound by gently biting down on the taut stretch of his neck.

Something punches through my gums—

I’m suddenly empty, feet on the ground, pressed against the wall by his hand. He shoves back, and I crumple amongst the crunchy leaves—my gums still throbbing, twin fangs now dimpling my bottom lip.

Gasping for breath, I look up, seeing Rhordyn on the other side of the cavern, head down, fists bunched as he paces back and forth in heavy strides. Every muscle in his body pumped.

Beastly.

The sky rips the world apart outside, sheets of water visible through the archway to our darkening cavern.

He was so composed a second ago, so tame beneath my touch. Now he’s wild.

Unleashed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Put them away,” he snarls, still pacing, tattoos lit with an erratic pulse in sync with the booming blasts cleaving the silence. “Now.”

“Put what away?”

“Your canines,” he barks. “I need them gone.”

I frown.

How the hell am I supposed to do that?

I lift my hand, fingering the strange, sharp fangs still throbbing with the need to bite.Even pushing on them threads me full of moan-inducing pleasure.

He snarls again, shaking his head in jerky motions, refusing to look at me. Like he’s battling a shadow of his own.

I give them another hard push, but it only splits me apart with a sharper spear of pleasure that almost bursts me in the most carnal way.

“I can’t,” I admit, the words mangled with my clotting emotion. My confusion. “I don’t know how. This is the first time they’ve—”

“You can’t bite me, Orlaith. You can’t.”

Is he worried I’m going to hurt him? That wasn’t my intention. I wanted to taste him; wanted to feel his warmth gush across my tongue and slip down my throat.

Still do.

“I just— It felt right,” I say, swallowing thickly, pressing against the foreign things again to relieve some of the tension—shooting another zing of rapture straight to my core.

Stirring me up.

I whimper, wishing he’d look at me. Step close to me.

Touch me.

“I know,” he says, scrubbing his face with his hands.“It’s not your fault, Milaje. But we can’t do this. We have to stop.”

I realize he’s slipping away one prowled step at a time, and my heart dives.

I scramble up, moving forward.

His sharp snarl snaps through the space like the swing of a blade, and he moves so close to the wall he’s almost shouldering it—still pacing back and forth.

Back and forth.

Gaze nailed to the ground.

A thought crosses my mind, filling me with a seed of hope.

I pause …

“What if I’m not facing you?” I suggest, lowering to my knees.

His stare whips sideways, paralyzing me with that dusky perusal. Again, I catch sight of that deeper entity staring back at me and shiver all the way to my bones.

I dig my hands through the foliage until they meet the stone beneath, pushing forward.

Baringmyself.

He growls, and I watch from beneath my arm as he scents the air. Prowls around me, like some great beast circling his prey.

“Orlaith.”

“Rhordyn.”

“If I see you in this position before any other person, I’ll kill them,” he says, the words too soft to be so brutally honed—a chilling threat that lashes at my hot, throbbing core. “I’ll eat their fucking entrails. Do you understand?”

I try to hide a smile. “I understand.”

He begins rustling around in our pile of clothes. I think I hear the sound of my blade loosening before he crouches beside me. “Sit up.”

Frowning, I do, perching on my folded legs. “Don’t you like my idea?”

“I do, but watching your face is more than half the feast.”

Oh …

“I want that, too,” I whisper, settling into the realization that I’ll have to be patient. Wait until my teeth slide back.

He presses something into my hand.

I glance down at the empty leather sheath he gifted me for my birthday—now laid across my palm. “I’m going to need you to do something, Milaje.”

I tilt my head.

“What’s this for?” I ask, looking past tangled, iridescent waves into his fathomless eyes.

“Your mouth,” he says tenderly, and my heart thumps.

Hard.

My mouth …

“If we’re going to continue, I need you to bite the sheath so you won’t be tempted to bite me.”

I salivate over his words, my stare glazing his thick, corded neck, canines throbbing with a deep, heady want as understanding dawns.

Swallowing, I bore my attention into his eyes again. “Okay,” I whisper, handing it to him.

“Okay?”

I nod, opening my mouth.

Releasing a rumble, he brings the sheath to my lips, brushing it against my lower one before easing it between my teeth. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “Now, bite.”

Holding his eye contact, I clamp down, sinking my canines into the leather stained with the smell and taste of him—exhaling a muffled moan when a wash of relief thrums between my legs and turns my body to butter.

My lids flutter, spine arching.

“Better?”

I nod, then chew so deep the hardy material is cushioning my canines from all angles, another mangled moan rupturing past the leather.

So much better …

He produces a dense growl and plants a kiss on my head, then drops to his knees and lifts me. My legs wrap around the back of him as he braces my arched spine with his spread hand. “Set your feet on the ground and push yourself up.”

I do, looking past my heaving breasts, down the slope of my navel, watching him rub the swollen tip of his manhood against my entrance in a trance of luscious swirls.

My hips buck, and I gasp, rocking against him. Wanting.

Needing.

So exposed, open, sensitive.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and I’ve never felt more powerful.

Sexy.

Me.

Another slow swirl, and he aims at my entrance again, swallowing. “Bite harder as you take me,” he orders, voice raw.

I clamp down on the sheath, almost wailing in relief, giving in to the bend of my knees, bringing him inside myself one sliding inch at a time. I watch it all, relishing the stretch, hungering over the way he plunges up into me in devastating increments until I’m seated to the hilt—muscles tightening around his thick length.

My lashes sweep up, and I see that he’s watching me with an all-consuming intensity, his chest heaving, sweat gathering on his temples, plastering inky curls to his forehead.

His gaze kisses my blooms. Traces the tangles of my hair. Climbs the thorns of my ears.

Settles in my eyes again.

“So beautiful,” he rasps, his voice a crush of stone shards I swiftly steal.

Tuck away.

“You have no idea what you’re doing to me.” His words mimic my thoughts as he uses his hand on my spine to urge me closer, takes a healthy grip of my right hip, and presses his lips upon my forehead. “No idea.”

I thread my hands around his neck. Tangle my fingers through his hair.

Certain my heart’s about to burst.

My thighs burn as we move, soft and slow, then faster.

Harder.

I’m clay around him. Malleable.

His.

Absorbing each euphoric push and pull, I make raw, muffled sounds around the leather sheath. The strap slaps against us both, our bodies a synchronized tide of motion.

We move together.

Worktogether.

I arch my back, tilt my hips, exposing that tender bundle of nerves to our delicious friction, fanning my pleasure into a roaring flame.

Rhordyn pushes higher onto his knees and plants a hand on the ground behind me, draping me amongst the lush bed of crunchy leaves before he grips my thigh, lifting it the slightest amount.

Doused in the smell of nature, he drives our bodies together at such an angle that every thrust stokes a pallet of nerves deep inside my body. Plants hot bolts of pleasure in places I didn’t know existed.

My thighs begin to quake, and I mewl, crawling up onto my elbows. Devouring the sight of his olive skin mottled with sweat. Of his powerful, well-defined muscles that shift and swell, his head tipped as he looks at me from beneath dark lashes.

My legs are wrapped around his tapered waist, his thick, velvety shaft plunging into me, dragging out.

Driving back in.

Out again.

The vision is so raw and carnal that muffled grunts escape me, and I chew the leather, spawning a gush of pleasure, my insides fluttering against his surging might.

I have no idea where the line is between us anymore. No idea if I’ll ever feel whole again once he’s no longer in me.

Feeling his gaze blaze across my face, I look up.

A smile touches his lips, and I almost combust as my heart threatens to punch a hole in my ribs.

I steal the smile. Stow it away.

Mine.

“Yours, Milaje.”

His hand that was bracing my thigh spreads across my lower belly, a gentle pressure that takes each thrust to a blinding level of ecstasy. He thrums that sensitive nub between my legs with the pad of his thumb, and my entire body becomes a single exposed nerve—tightly wound and knotted to perfection.

Desperate to unravel.

Flaming.

His girth seems to swell inside me—becoming impossibly hard and heavy—and I whimper, spine arching, knowing I’m about to break.

Wanting him to break with me.

My arms buckle, and I fall back into the leaves as he surges forward, driving deep. Planting his forehead against mine. He threads his hand up into my hair, pouring treasured exhales upon my face—an intensity in his gaze that collects every one of my heartstrings and tugs.

“Bite for me, Milaje.” His stare plows deeper, until I’m certain he’s cradling my soul as he razes my body with claiming rolls of his hips. “Bite as hard as you fucking can.”

I clamp down, gorging on the taste of leather and the smell of him, a bolt of ecstasy flaring across my palate.

He tips my head, nuzzles my ear, and plows deep, rumbling a single shattering word …

“Come.”

My body locks, decadent waves of pleasure rippling through me, spearing down my spine and powering into my molten core. Fraying my nerves one by one until I’m a messy tangle of taut limbs and clamping muscles.

Bound over me in a knot of charging might, Rhordyn releases a thunderous roar—his thick length pulsing, painting my womb in hot spurts as he pounds into me hard and fast.

I’m blind and quaking from the inside out, toes curled, breath caught in the back of my throat. Half convinced I’ll never recover from the volcanic blows of euphoria coursing through my system.

I claw at him, coming apart at a cellular level.

Recrystallizing around him.

He strikes every ounce of ecstasy from my quivering body until I can breathe again.

Moveagain.

Thrusts slowing, his head drops down to my neck, and he plants a gentle, nudging kiss above my bandage, casting goosebumps across my shoulder.

My muscles melt, lids growing heavy, a sound of deeply seated relish blooming up my throat. My canines sink back up into my gums with an aching tug, and I remove the sheath, tossing it to the side.

I pull his face to mine and press our lips together, inhaling his tapering heaves.

He rocks onto his back, taking me with him, and we thump amongst the dried and crumpled foliage. I nuzzle his chest, still holding him inside my body as he brushes my hair aside and plants a kiss on the tip of my thorned ear. Another farther down.

Another.

My eyes sweep shut, lulled by his rumbling breaths and the delicate tingles ghosting down the side of my neck …

I want to be like this forever—with leaves in my hair, surrounded by nature, full of him. Smelling like both of us. So perfectly melded.

So right.

I feel warm and safe and whole in his arms, my throat thickening with a deep sense of belonging. Like our souls just collided in a burst of light and the blackness between stars, and we built our own sky to nestle amidst.

Fawning over buttery blooms of relief growing through my belly, my core, I drift—

He twitches inside me, his heavy manhood stiffening. Kindling me into a restless flame that rocks my hips despite my utter lack of energy.

He produces a throaty laugh, packed full of amusement, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. Swiftly stolen by my thieving hands and tucked somewhere safe.

I crush some of my lustrous beads and build a crystal chest beneath my ribs, then tuck his laugh in the hollow—along with the rest of my precious trinkets.

He blows a warm breath against one of my blooms, ruffling the swirl of petals, then nuzzles into my neck. “We can’t sleep like this, Milaje. I won’t be able to let you rest.”

He presses a kiss to my budding smile, and I nod dozily, then groan through my displeasure when he grips my hips with his strong hands and pulls from my raw, tender core. Hating the sudden emptiness.

But then he maneuvers my body so my head is planted atop his heart, and the hard thump of it pounding against my ear fills me just the same.

I bunch my legs up either side of him and thread my hands beneath his armpits, fingers curling around his barreling shoulders. The tips of his fingers paint secrets atop my flush of blooms as I drift into a balmy sleep …

Home.