Page 7 of Beast’s Temptation

His hands slid down from her hair, tracing the line of her neck, the curve of her shoulders. When his fingers reached the collar of her shirt, he paused, looking at her with something like wonder.

"May I?"

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He pulled her shirt free from her waistband and slid his hands beneath it, and the sound he made when his palms touched her bare skin was almost agonized. He spread his fingers wide, spanning her ribs, and she felt the careful retraction of his claws, the way he was holding himself back even now, even in the grip of need that had to be overwhelming.

"You're so soft," he breathed. "So warm. I've imagined this, but I didn't know. I couldn't have known."

His hands moved higher, and when they cupped her breasts through her bra, she gasped. He froze immediately, concern cutting through the hunger in his eyes.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No. God, no." She pressed into his touch, showing him she wanted more. "That felt good. Really good."

He made a sound low in his throat, something between a growl and a moan, and his thumbs brushed over her nipples through the thin fabric. The sensation was electric, and she arched into it, her hands fisting in his robes. He repeated the motion, watching her face with intense focus, cataloging every reaction like he was memorizing scripture.

"I want to see you." His voice had dropped to something guttural, barely recognizable. "I want to put my mouth on you. I want to taste your skin and find out if you're this soft everywhere."

Tamsin reached down and pulled her shirt over her head. Her bra followed a moment later, and then she was bare before him in the filtered light of the hidden garden, her skin prickling with goosebumps that had nothing to do with temperature.

Sorek stared at her like she was a revelation he couldn't comprehend. His hands hovered, trembling, and she had to take his wrists and guide them back to her body before he seemed to remember how to move.

"Beautiful," he whispered, almost to himself. "You're beautiful. I've seen the sacred flames of the inner sanctum, and they're nothing compared to this."

He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to the curve of her breast, and the sound she made echoed off the garden walls. His tongue was slightly rough, different from a human's, and the texture against her sensitive skin sent sparks of pleasure racing down her spine. He found her nipple and sucked, tentative at first, then harder when she grabbed his head and held him there.

Her hands found the fastenings of his robes and tugged. She needed to feel his skin, needed to know if he was as affected as she was. He helped her, shrugging out of the linen without ever taking his mouth off her body, and then he was bare from the waist up and she could finally see him.

He was magnificent. Lean muscle covered in tawny golden skin, the ridge of short fur running down his spine continuing down to disappear into his waistband. His ritual markings glowed faintly, shifting and pulsing with his arousal, and when she ran her hands over his chest, he shuddered so hard his knees seemed to buckle.

"No one has ever touched me." His voice was barely audible. "Not since I took my vows. Thirty years, and no one has ever..."

She kissed the center of his chest, right over his pounding heart, and felt the vibration of his purr intensify. "I've got you. Just feel."

She let her hands wander lower, tracing the defined muscles of his stomach, following the narrowing line of fur toward his waistband. When she reached for his fastenings, he caught her wrist.

"Wait. I need to... if you touch me there, I'll finish immediately." His face flushed with embarrassment. "I have no control. My body has been waiting for this for thirty years, and I don't want to disappoint you."

"You couldn't disappoint me." She meant it. The vulnerability in his confession, the way he was trying so hard to make this good for her despite having no framework for physical intimacy, made her chest ache with something deeper than desire. "And if you finish quickly, we'll go again. We have time."

His grip on her wrist loosened, and she took that as permission. She unfastened his robes and pushed them down his hips, and his cock sprang free, already hard and leaking.

He was beautiful there too. Tawny gold like the rest of him, with subtle ridges along the shaft that she knew instinctively would feel incredible inside her. The head was flushed darker, almost copper, and fluid wept steadily from the tip. He was proportional to his size, which meant he was large, but not intimidatingly so. Just enough to make her clench with anticipation.

She wrapped her hand around him, and he came apart.

The sound he made was somewhere between a roar and a sob. His whole body convulsed, his claws extending fully to score the tree bark behind her, his seed spilling over her fist in hot, luminescent pulses. She stroked him through it, marveling at the way his markings blazed bright and then faded, the way his face went slack with pleasure and then flooded with mortified disbelief.

"I'm sorry." He was shaking, his forehead pressed to her shoulder. "I tried to warn you. I'm sorry, I wanted to last longer, I wanted to please you⁠—"

"Shh." She kissed his temple, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. "That was perfect. You were perfect."

"I came in less than a minute." His voice was muffled against her skin. "Like an untrained adolescent. You must think I'm⁠—"

"I think you're incredible." She tilted his face up so he could see her eyes. "I think you've been denying yourself for thirty years, and your body has been waiting for permission to feel. There's no shame in that."

He looked at her like she'd offered him absolution. Like she'd given him something he didn't know he needed until that moment.