Page 120 of Vow to Claim You

“You will.”

He pushes in another inch, then stops.

My fingers claw the sheets. A whimper climbs my throat, and I swallow it whole, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

Another inch and stop.

“Aric—” His name comes out strangled.

“That’s not begging.” His thumb strokes a maddening circle on my hip like he could stay here forever, feeding me fractions of himself while I come apart at the seams. “Try again.”

The bastard. The absolute, insufferable arsehole.

“Please.” The word rips out of me. “Please, Aric⁠—”

He thrusts into me, the force of it drives me forward, my arms giving out entirely, my face pressing into the mattress as my body absorbs the impact of him—every inch, every devastating thickness—sheathed inside me in one brutal stroke. The sheets muffle the cry that tears from my throat, and his hand tightens in my hair and pulls, arching my spine, lifting my face from the mattress until my sounds fill the room with nothing to absorb them.

“I said I wanted to hear you.” He withdraws slowly until I feel the ridge of him dragging against my walls, and then drives back in with a force that makes the headboard crack against the wall again.

I surrender completely, lose myself in this maddening feeling, scream and moan and don’t care. He has stripped me of every defense, every mask, every carefully constructed layer of composure I’ve worn since the day I was old enough to understand that princesses don’t scream, don’t beg, don’t fall apart at the hands of dangerous men.

I am doing all three, and I don’t want to stop.

His pace is relentless. Each thrust is measured, angled, deliberately aimed at the spot inside me that makes my vision white out, and he hits it with a precision that tells me this man knows exactly what he’s doing.

“You feel what you do to me?” He leans over me, his chest pressing against my back, his mouth at my ear, and the weight of him—the sheer, overwhelming size of him covering me—makes me feel simultaneously devoured and protected in a way I will never be able to explain to another living soul. “You feel how hard you make me? How fucking deep I need to be inside you?”

I moan and push back against him, meeting his next thrust with a roll of my hips that makes him growl a sound ripped straight from something that has nothing to do with the composed man I married and everything to do with the creature I’ve unleashed from beneath the ice.

His hand releases my hair and clamps around my throat instead, fingers curved around the column of my neck, thumb resting against my pulse point where my heartbeat hammers against his skin. He pulls me upright until my back is flush against his chest, and in this position—kneeling, impaled, held by the throat while he drives into me from behind—I am completely and utterly his.

“This is mine.” He thrusts deep, punctuating the claim. “All of it.” Another thrust, harder, his grip on my throat tightening just enough for the edges of my vision to soften. “Your body.” His teeth sink into the curve where my neck meets my shoulder, hard enough to bruise. “Your sounds.” Another thrust that punches a cry from my chest. “Every orgasm your body has left to give.” He releases my throat, grips my jaw instead, and turns my face toward his—our mouths almost touching, our breath the same shattered thing. “Mine. Do you understand?” he says against my lips in that ruined, gravelly voice, and it does something to me that should be criminal.

“Yes,” I gasp, and the word tastes like surrender, like freedom, like damnation and salvation all at once.

Heat detonates at the base of my spine and spreads through my belly, my thighs, my chest, building with a speed and intensity that overwhelms me.

He drives deeper, harder, his arm banding around my waist to hold me against him while his hips snap forward at a pace designed to shatter. “Come for me. Come on my cock like you were made for it because you were, Ayanna. You were fucking made for me.”

The orgasm tears through me, wave after wave after wave of convulsions so violent that my body locks rigid against his, every muscle seizing, a scream ripping from my throat. He holds me through it, and I feel him lose himself inside me at the same moment, his hips stuttering, a guttural sound tearing from his chest that I feel reverberate through my ribs, through my spine, through every wrecked and trembling cell.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Ayanna

The clock on the nightstand glows blue—5:52 a.m.—when I wake. The bed beside me is empty and cold. Like Aric’s been gone a while. Like he slipped away the moment I fell asleep.

I sit up slowly, the sheets pooling at my waist, and that’s when I see him.

Aric stands at the window, his bare back to me. He’s wearing only his trousers, slung low on his hips in a way that would be distracting under different circumstances, and he’s utterly still. Statue-still. Staring out at nothing. Or maybe at everything. At the snow falling soft over his frozen kingdom. At the ghosts that seem to live in every corner of this house. At the wreckage of whatever walls I tore down tonight, when I let him inside my body, and he let me inside something far more dangerous.

My chest tightens.

The smart thing would be to pretend I’m still asleep. Give him space. Let him brood in peace. Wait for morning, when we can both pretend this night was just desire, and nothing more.

Except I’ve never been particularly smart when it comes to Aric Vold.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cold beneath my feet. I wrap a robe around myself and cross the room and stop a few feet behind him. Close enough to touch, far enough to give him the illusion of space, because God knows this man hoards space like a dragon hoards gold.