Page 68
One second he’s sitting next to me; the next he’s on his knees between my legs, every inch of him coiled heat and sharpened intent. The leaf pouch rocks on my lap, a few blackberry seeds scattering across the blanket, but I don’t have time to care. The bond flares rich and hungry, and his breath leaves him in a low exhale that warms my skin.
“Onyx,” I gasp.
He slides his hands up the back of my calves, folding the blanket out of his way as he goes. The pulse of want hums through the bond, swelling hard enough to make me dizzy, but it’s mellow compared to last night.
He noses against the inside of my thigh and inhales. Need you, he sends, having already decided that breakfast had a natural endpoint, and that endpoint was me.
“W-wait—”
Fed you, now I need to feed.
I swallow and my heart races as I watch him from between my legs; long black hair falling over one shoulder and blue eyes fixed on me with that steady, bottomless hunger that still feels careful. “You can’t just say shit like that before noon.”
His eyes flick up to mine, amusement threading through hunger. Sun position does not change the truth.
“Of course it doesn’t,” I mutter, since this is what my life is now. I’m arguing with my cryptid mate about whether morning is too early for him to look at me like he’s about to eat me.
His hands climb higher, slow enough to make it worse, palms sliding over the tops of my thighs and then back down, learning me again even though he had me shaking under him for half the night. There’s no rush in him now, which somehow makes the heat worse.
My body aches in all the places he taught it to open, my shoulder is tender where his mark sits warm beneath the skin, and the bond is quiet enough that I can feel what is mine and what is his without everything turning into a storm.
He lowers his face to my thigh and kisses me there—just one soft press of his mouth—and my breath comes out broken. I watch him close his eyes, and I feel through the bond how much he likes my reactions.
“I’m sticky and dirty, Onyx,” I say, and he runs his tongue up the length of my thigh, making me moan. “That was not an invitation.”
Everything you are becomes an invitation when you want me, he sends, his broad hand sliding up my stomach. Touch me if you need.
Those words undo me more than anything filthy would have. I let go of the furs and slide one hand into his hair, still being careful with him. Some part of me still treats him like I might do the wrong thing and insult an ancient forest creature during foreplay—which is not a sentence I ever expected to be relevant to my life.
His satisfaction is immediate, and he turns his face into my palm. I run my thumb along the side of his face, over the faint ridge across his cheekbone. I remember how he flickered between shapes under the force of everything we did, the claws in the furs, and the blue-white light of his lantern flickering from nowhere.
I remember breaking open under him as he whispered words in a different language, and I remember him holding the pieces of me. “Are you okay?” I ask.
I know he feels the meaning beneath the question; there’s no hiding the layers. I’m asking about his control and the strain of holding human form.
Onyx’s hand stills on my stomach, but he doesn’t answer for a second. Then he leans forward and presses his forehead against the inside of my thigh. The gesture is so intimate that my fingers tighten in his hair.
I am full of you, he sends, and I feel his breath over my skin. It is difficult to be still.
That does something mean to my heart and something worse to my body. “Onyx, you really need to—”
Stop worshipping my mate? He asks, nipping at my skin. Never.
I feel the exact moment his restraint shifts. He pushes me so I’m lying flat on my back and spreads me wider with a care that makes my hips want to fight him and obey him at the same time. The mark pulses once, and his eyes flick up to it immediately.
Can he feel that?
Onyx drags his tongue over the place where thigh meets hip, and every thought I have falls into the dark and dies. He hums—not quite a sound, more of a vibration that rolls from his chest into my skin—and my hips jerk before I can stop them.
The first touch of his tongue on my cock steals the air out of me. I make a sound that would be embarrassing, if embarrassment could survive pleasure this direct. His tongue is still mostly human-shaped at first, wet and warm as he licks over the head of my cock, catching the precum forming there.
My hand tightens in his hair, and he glances up at me through dark lashes, blue eyes bright with amusement and hunger.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say, already losing the fight with my own voice. He takes me into his mouth in answer, and my head falls back against the furs. “Fuck—!”
It’s different from last night—everything is different from last night. I can feel every second cleanly, and how he’s enjoying me losing my mind. Not just wanting me, but enjoying the taste and weight of me on his tongue.
“Onyx,” I moan when he swallows me deeper, slow enough to make my stomach tighten. For a seven-foot nightmare, he’s way too fucking good at this.
