Page 108 of Vow to Claim You

An involuntary moan escapes me, and I feel the corner of his mouth lift against mine.

In one swift motion, and never breaking our heated entanglement, he rises to his feet, pulling me up with him, and places me on the piano lid.

Then his mouth is on my throat, and he sucks hard enough to leave a mark I’ll be hiding for a week, and a sound rolls up out of his chest that isn’t a word in any language. Low. Rough. Half a growl.

“Aric—”

“Don’t.” His fist closes in my hair and tips my head back, and he works his way down it—biting, kissing, biting again, trailing goose bumps on my skin.

“Do you have any idea,” he says against my neck, his voice vibrating against my skin, “how many nights I’ve lain in that bed next to you with my hands to myself? Behaving. Like a saint.” His mouth drags lower, teeth scraping my collarbone. “I’m finished behaving.”

His hand roams up my inner thigh, and when his fingers reach my soaked thong, he exhales against my throat like the feel of it tests the last of his restraint.

“Fuck.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him say the word, and from his mouth it sounds like a man losing a war.

He drags two fingers slowly across the wet fabric, watching my face come undone, and his mouth pulls into something dark and wolfish I have never once seen on him. His thumb finds the spot that makes my hips buck, and I can only whimper as his fingers trace the shape of me through the ruined lace.

Then he shoves the lace aside—no patience left, no finesse—and drags two fingers through my bare flesh.

“Christ.” The word comes out strangled.

He pushes one finger inside me, and I gasp, my hips jolting forward. He watches my face the entire time—watches me take him in, watches my mouth fall open, watches my eyes lose focus.

He adds a second finger, stretches me open, and starts to move. “Let me feel you. Let me see what I do to you.” His fingers curl inside me, finding that spot, and my back arches off the piano with a cry I couldn’t suppress if my life depended on it.

I whimper at the loss when he withdraws his fingers. Then he brings them to his lips and sucks them clean while I watch, his eyes locked on mine, dark and hungry and completely unhinged.

And he sinks to his knees.

Aric Vold, on his knees between my thighs.

He looks up at me, and his eyes aren’t cold anymore. They’re burning.

The sight of the most controlled man alive kneeling for me with his mouth a breath from where I’m aching nearly undoes me on its own.

“What are you⁠—”

“I spent my whole life refusing to kneel, and now I’m here because it’s you.”

Something inside me stumbles, and then he unravels me completely.

He fists my underwear and drags it down my legs, slow, deliberate, his eyes never leaving mine. “A king kneels only for his queen.” He plants a kiss on the inside of my knee. Then higher. Then higher still, his breath scorching against my inner thigh. “You’re mine.”

Then he buries his head between my thighs and his mouth is on me, and something in me detonates and surrenders all at once. A moan escapes me, and I plant my palms on the cool lacquer and let my head drop back.

He doesn’t ease into it. He devours me—his tongue pushing inside me, like he needs to taste every part, and then dragging up to my clit with a pressure that makes my spine arch off the piano.

The whole sky is laid out over me, green and violet and gold rippling across the black, the northern lights moving like something alive through the glass ceiling.

Long, deep drags of his tongue, then the soft, relentless pull of his mouth that makes my hips buckle, legs tremble on the sides of his head—and he bands his arm low across my belly, holding me in place.

“Stay still,” he groans against me like he’s the one being pleasured, the sound of it vibrating up through me and tearing a cry out of my throat.

His tongue circles my clit, then flattens against it, then flicks—learning me, reading every twitch and gasp, cataloging exactly what makes me fall apart.

“You taste,” he says between strokes of his tongue, “like everything I’ve ever wanted.” Another lick, slow and devastating. “Like something I’d kill for.” His lips close around my clit and suck gently, then release.

“Aric—” My voice is in pieces. “I can’t—I can’t⁠—”