Page 54 of Bite Bonded Bride

I am wet. Embarrassingly, thoroughly, entirely wet, arousal a thrumming pulse everywhere he has touched, pooling insistent and aching at my core, and when his hand slides between us and his fingers find me, he lets out a low groan against my collarbone that I feel in my spine.

"Cybele."

He drops his mouth to my throat and nips, each press of his mouth a fraction more deliberate than the last, his fangs grazing the skin with exquisite, torturous care, never quite breaking through.

He is hungry. The blood loss from the battle, the wounds still knitting slowly across his ribs. He needs to feed, and he has been quietly, stubbornly refusing to take from me.

"You need to drink," I breathe.

"No." The word is gravel. A leash on himself. "I won't be able to stop."

I take his face in both hands and make him look at me. His eyes are blown nearly black with want, that crimson slit-pupil gaze unsteady as I have never seen on him before. He looks wrecked. He looks terrified.

"I'm not asking you to stop," I say. "I'm asking you to start."

His breath shudders.

"You don't know what the full bond does⁠—"

"I know exactly what it does, and I want it. I want you. All of it." I tilt my head slowly, deliberately, baring the line of my throat. "Take me."

The sound that tears out of him is not human.

He lines himself up against me and bites down at the exact same moment he thrusts home.

I scream.

The twin-strike of his fangs pierce the curve of my neck and the thick, unyielding fill of him drives inside of me in one deep, claiming thrust simultaneously. My nervous system cannot separate them.

The bite blooms outward in a rush of dark, slithering pleasure, electric and intimate and terrifyingly deep. Inside of me, I feel every inch of him stretching me open, the fullness of it so complete that my vision whites at the edges and my hands scrabble uselessly at his shoulders.

The bond ignites in my chest, and I feel his pleasure hit me like a second body, real and distinct and his, the sensation of being buried inside me layering over my own fullness until I can't tell where I end and he begins.

We are not two things in this moment.

We are one.

He drinks from me, one long, deep gulp that I feel everywhere at once, pleasure lancing outward from the bite in molten waves down my spine, my thighs, the soles of my feet. The guttural, animal groan he lets out against my neck vibrates through his chest and into mine, and then his hips drag back to the very tip of him and slam back in.

I whimper. My mind empties of everything except the thick, throbbing presence of him, the impossible depth of that thrust, the way I feel it settle somewhere behind my navel like a physical claim.

He does not slow down.

His pace is not mercy. It is not gentle. It is fast and hard and claiming, every thrust rolling his hips to drive as deep as he can go, the slap of his body against mine echoing off the carved walls of the Heart Chamber. He draws blood from my neck, drinking, groaning against my skin, his whole body shuddering at the taste of me.

I feel his wounds seal beneath my hands as I grip his back, torn skin knitting closed, old bruises fading, the blood running through him and remaking him.

I arch off the stone and it doesn't feel like floor anymore. It feels like floating.

My legs curl up over his back on instinct, heels pressing into him, urging him deeper though there is nowhere left to go. My hands are jello-limp around his neck. My mind has one word left in it and it says Zareth, Zareth, Zareth in rhythm with each thrust.

The metallic tang of the Wildspont fills the air around us. The stone vibrates in long, building waves beneath the discarded cloth we lie on, and I feel the mountain's distress the way you feel a thunderstorm. In my chest, in my blood. But beneath that, between each roll of the tremors, there is a new sound beginning. Not screaming.

Breathing.

With every slow drag of him pulling back, the mechanism behind us seems to inhale, carved grooves flickering with the faintest thread of amber light. With every deep, mind-erasing thrust back in, it exhales. Light pulsing stronger, steadier, reaching further along the ancient channels in the stone.

"Zareth." My voice breaks on his name.