With Varen's gentle touch to my back, a silent request, I turned to face him fully. Heat radiated from his body to warm my own. I watched him pluck at the gathered pleats of fabric on a shoulder, delighting at the slight tremble of his fingers as he pushed it aside before he leaned down to place an open-mouthed kiss on my shoulder blade. My heart stumbled at the feel of his warm lips, and my flesh broke out in a flourish of goosebumps.
The dress slipped down my figure in a shimmer of rose gold to pool around my feet. I stood before him in high heels, unashamedly naked.
Varen swallowed hard as he drank me in. Moonlight caressed my figure, the slope of my breasts, the stiff nipples, sliding down my curves to the intimate place between my thighs. His voice was low and husky and his gaze caressed me the same way as if he'd physically touched me. A sensual stroke on my clit that made my thighs squeeze together. "You're absolutely gorgeous," he breathed, reverence and awe lacing his tone.
Warmth and delight spilled through my veins like sweet, molten honey. I couldn't help how my eyelashes instantly cast downward, my heated cheeks rounding as I bit down on a small, pleased smile. It was still hard to accept compliments.
Varen crouched down slowly, raising a foot at a time to remove my high heels. Large roughened hands scraped against my calves, the backs of my knees and thighs as he rose to his full height, looming above. He stepped forward to crowd up against me. My breasts brushed up against his chest, and his swollen shaft nudged my lower belly, leaving a smear of wetness. A bolt of pleasure zinged down my spine in a rush of heat, flames of lust licking every single place we touched.
He grabbed hold of my butt and hoisted me up. My arms wound around his neck, my thighs wrapped around his hips, both of us shuddering at the exquisite contact, our foreheads sinking to each other on a breathy exhale, when my slick sex folded around the girth of his hot, throbbing length. He strode over to the bed, walked us across the water mattress on his knees, and lowered us to the bed. His hard body, packed with muscle, pushed me down and I sank into the soft layers of bedding, his delicious weight pinning me beneath him.
We hadn't looked away and it was unbearably intimate to stare deeply into each other's eyes. He remained perfectly still, allowing me to...what?
To lead.
To take control.
Arousal and feminine might coiled tightly within my desperate core, just as it had done at the willwips cavern when he'd knelt before me, his mouth and tongue taking me. But this was different, we were going to take this much further and I'd be branded forever by him. He'd be my first, my only, and I'd remember this moment for the rest of my life.
The tips of my fingers stroked across the angular cut of Varen's cheekbone, sweeping upward to curl a lock of damp hair around a finger. The coil sprang free when I released it to trail a path lazily along his sharp, scruffy jawline. He swallowed thickly, and the bob of his throat grazed the backs of my fingers as I glided my hand lower, over the swell of a hard pec that twitched beneath my touch. The ruined flesh of the wyrm was a rough pattern pressed against my palm when I rested it above his heart. A heart that thudded wildly, and mine matched it beat for wild beat. Varen stared back at me with infinite patience gleaming in dark eyes with a hunter-sheen of silver.
Using my elbow, I levered upward to press my lips to his collarbone. He shivered and the motion trembled against my mouth, making me smile against his skin. I inhaled his masculine scent and that distinctive anise that already had begun to muddle my mind. Glorious. A flick of my tongue to taste him. Delicious. The small smile on my mouth bloomed into a wide grin at the tension cording his muscles and how his head fell forward, the tousled mane of hair flopping across his forehead. His gritted exhale of "Oh gods," washed across the crown of my head.
I took advantage of his close proximity by tipping my face up and capturing his lips. A sweet, innocent kiss. A mere sweep of my mouth along his. He nudged back, his lips hot and hungry and voracious for more, yet he acquiesced to the chaste touches. I might have teased him a little bit, pulling back briefly, reveling in my power to deny him. He gave a gruff growl, his gaze narrowed and glinting with understanding, but he still let me clasp his brawny shoulder and kiss him with innocence.
One of his hands snaked around my back, fingertips digging gently into the line of my spine. "I need a..." he breathed, the words feathering my lips.
A condom, I was sure he was going to say, so I said, "I've taken a tonic." A pang of guilt twisted inside at having stolen a mouthful of contraceptive tonic. But I was thankful that I had, now that I was here with him, and I'd be protected from what we were about to do. "I...we'll be okay."
"Okay, okay," he murmured back. And then his voice grew darker. "Okay."
His control snapped magnificently, and he took over the kiss with astonishing precision.
How did I ever believe that I was the one in control? That I was the one that held the imbalance of power over him? It was an illusion he proved to me with the bite of sharp teeth on my tender lip. A carnal warning of the beast he was. Pain flared over the soft flesh and my shocked gasp was what he desired. He took possession of my mouth, his tongue rolling inward as he pushed me flat onto the bed, caging me with his strong limbs. Pure electricity seared through my bloodstream when he swiped my tongue with his own, curling and twisting and plundering. His kiss was demanding and ferocious. Filthy and wet. And I felt it all the way to my core, to the implacable length flexing against my lower stomach and stickily marking me as his.
Varen didn't kiss his way to my earlobe, he licked a hot path there, captured it between his teeth, and sucked. My hands clenched his biceps, my fingernails digging into his inked skin, raking along the wyrmflames of black and shadowed gray. The erotic feel of his scratchy jaw, the wet sucking sounds, and the low growl—heightened every torturous sensation. He breathed ragged breaths into my sensitive ear. Hissing about what he was going to do to me. All the things on his list. All the ways he was going to take me until I was writhing and panting beneath his hard body, recklessly grinding back, gasping, "Yes, please, yes."
Rough fingers grasped a fistful of my hair and a thrilling sting crackled across my skull as he yanked my head back, arching my throat for his pleasure. "I need to get you ready to take me. Make you slippery wet so I can fuck my way inside this gorgeous body," he said in that deep gravelly voice of his.
"Oh my..." Holy hells, that mouth of his.
It only drove up my arousal. The curiosity of what that would feel like pushed back against the faint shadow of fear that it was going to hurt.
The edge of Varen's teeth raked down my throat like an animal seizing its prey. He stilled at the fluttering pulse point to lave it with his tongue before his hands squeezed my breasts together. Black hair ruffled in the gloom of the bedroom when he bowed his head and his hot mouth clamped down hard.
"Oh gods." My spine bowed, heavy, aching breasts arching upward, and my mind shattered into fragments as he flicked and lashed the peaked tip of a nipple with his tongue, before claiming the other. He kissed a blazing path of heat down my body, devastating my nerves with dark sensuality. Broad hands slid down my back as he settled between my thighs. My knees were hooked over his shoulders, and he spread his fingers around my hips.
His husky voice wrapped around my body like silky threads of desire. "Soaked and sweet and mine," he purred, before leaning in to give a large lick right up my center, long and wide.
A throaty cry tore from my mouth as my entire body spasmed.
I was a contradiction of sensations, taut and molten, and he turned my body against me when he found that spot that had my mind bending to that swollen aching point. He nibbled around my clit, careful not to touch it, even though I yearned desperately for his touch. My fingers balled the silky folds of bedding and my toes curled as he took ownership of my body, spreading my sex wide with his fingers and dragging his tongue down once more to dip inside. He fucked me in slow spearing strokes. Thrusting in and out. A flutter of his tongue on the wall of the outer folds before plunging back inside. The climax began to build into a feverish inferno of desperation. My voice was unsteady and rough, almost unrecognizable as I moaned his name again and again.
"Yes, that's it, Tabitha." The words came out muffled because he wouldn't stop licking and sucking. The intensity of pleasure he wrung from my body rose to a crescendo. I lost myself in his strength, in his commanding touch. He shoved me to the edge of the cliff. I was swaying on the peak, about to freefall into oblivion. Just one more fluttering lick. Just a single touch on my swollen clit, eager for his tongue, and the climax strumming through my core would explode. "I'm going... I'm going to..."
All of a sudden Varen pulled back and stopped.
And the climax fizzled and fell away, leaving me disappointed and irritated.
Frustration knotted my body. I half-pushed up. "Varen," I hissed, slapping the bed with a hand.
What the freaking hells?!
A flash of white teeth in the darkness as he chuckled.
I bared my teeth back at him, shoving the errant strands of hair away from my face. I flumped back onto the bed, annoyed. His laugh only became louder and deeper. He crawled over the top of me, and I scowled up at him. "Patience, Miss Catt."
He'd arched his upper body over mine, a hand braced on either side of my head, staring smugly down at me as I glowered up.
Ooooo...
The only point of contact was his heavy cock resting at the apex of my thighs. And my entire focus suddenly was right there, every single part of me narrowed to that point, to the feel of it. He glided himself between my slick folds. His balls slapped up against my sex, spread wide as he slid forward, slipping through the silky wetness. Slowly, back and forth, the hot, veiny underside bobbed against my clit, enough to make my breathing hitch with every upward stroke. Again and again, he dipped the tip into the arousal pooling at my entrance, before skimming along my slit, back and forth, until his cock glistened and I was a messy tangle of tension and need. His violet eyes sharpened with hunger and I lost myself in their fevered depths. I reached for him, my fingers smoothing up his forearms, the sinewy veins skimming my palms. "Now, Varen, now, I can't take it anymore. I want you."
He stilled and something troubling and uneasy abruptly flared across his expression.
I didn't understand why he suddenly looked remorseful as if something was wrong. He closed his eyes as if he suddenly was unsure. "What's wrong?" I asked, brushing my fingers through the hair hanging over his forehead.
"I want..." he tried to say, but it croaked from his throat. He took a moment, but the words still rasped from him. "I know what I want to do, but not if I should."
"What do you want?"
His eyes flashed open and gleamed with dark intent. "I want to be selfish."
I wasn't sure if he meant he wanted to be selfish for his own pleasure only, and perhaps take me rough and hard and fast, or if something else entirely had made him pause. Some feral part of me didn't care if it was the former, I wanted him any way he chose. I wanted this too much to stop.
My fingers fisted hard and I gave a cruel tug on his hair. "Then be selfish."
He gasped, arching into the pain, exposing his throat. I let go and his head snapped forward. He fixed his gaze on mine and his eyes were wolf-bright.
Anticipation strummed along my bones, amplifying the suspense.
It was me who hooked my ankles around his back. I pulled him closer, tilting my pelvis, and notched him exactly where I wanted him. The tendons on his neck and shoulders corded into tight lines and he loosened a low hiss as the crown of his cock stretched my entrance wide. "Oh fuck."
He pushed in, in, in...
Slowly, carefully, like he'd promised me down in the hot pools with willwips floating around us.
I braced for the pain. Pain, I knew was coming. He was so large and most of the books I'd read revealed that the first time hurt, really freaking hurt. My body tensed, and my breath became shallow and sharp. His features strained, fingers biting into my hip, as he rocked back and forth gently, to nudge deeper inch by inch. Inside I felt the painful stretch, the burn of friction against intimate walls as he began to penetrate me. My body reacted instinctively, trying to push him out, and perhaps the feel of it caused him to squeeze his eyes briefly shut as his entire body shuddered on a shaky breath. He ran a soothing hand along my side. "Relax for me." But I couldn't, not with the unknown ahead of me. The fear of him tearing through my center crept all over my skin and made it hard to breathe. He stopped at the point of resistance. "You okay?" he asked.
I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded. "Do it," I urged, dread locking my entire being tight.