Page 155 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“Max,” she breathed—a request, a plea—and I had so missed the way she said my name. I had to pause, look down at her splayed out messily on the bed beneath me, lips swollen, skin bared, hair fanned out in tangles around her.

“Max…” she murmured again.

“I know.”

Fuck, did I know.

She started to unbutton my shirt, and I ripped it off over my head. She unbuttoned her pants and before she had even finished the motion, my hand was sliding down between her legs.

She whimpered, her hips bucking against me, and I groaned a curse. My trousers were painful.

She freed me from them, and I hissed another, more creative expletive as her grasp settled around my length.

I kissed her deeply, cupping her tipped-back chin as my tongue explored her mouth. “I need you now,” I growled into her lips. “I can’t wait.”

She breathed in Thereni, “Yes.”

We weren’t even completely on the bed, her backside barely resting against it, me still kneeling on the ground and leaning over her. She kicked down her trousers just enough to open her legs. She was so wet that even the first stroke was hard, deep, her hips rising to meet mine with equal force.

She said again, in Thereni, “Yes,” and I decided it was my new favorite word—decided it over and over as she moaned it again, as I drove into her again, again, again. One hand clutched a fistful of her hair—the other gripped the curve where her waist met her hip, bracing her.

I could fucking die here.

Like I said, I was weak.

This wasn’t sweet, slow lovemaking. Wasn’t a languid reunion. This was frantic, desperate, feral.

Her thighs tightened around me. Her teeth closed on my lip, hard enough to draw forth a spike of pain and the taste of iron. I felt her coiling, felt her muscles tightening.

I was greedy. I gripped her wrists above her head, stretching her beneath me so I could take her whole body, push myself deeper.

I’d almost forgotten how fucking beautiful she was when she climaxed. I had to stop kissing her just so I could watch her, control fully relinquished, her head thrown back, lips parted and muscles trembling as she contracted around me.

The sight pushed me to the edge. I thrust deeper into her and threw myself over it, burying my face against her neck, tasting her skin, teeth marking her as I groaned her name.

The intensity of it washed me away.

When the wave crashed and faded, I was face down in her hair. Her chest heaved under mine as she struggled to catch her breath.

Everything in the world was a little fuzzier and softer. I felt content. Not sated—yet—but content.

We lay in silence, not moving, the room soundless save for our serrated breaths.

Then I pushed myself to my elbows and turned to her.

“I’m fuckingfuriouswith you.”

CHAPTERFIFTY-NINE

TISAANAH

I’m fucking furious with you.

That cut through the post-sex contented haze. My eyes snapped open to see him leaning over me, lips thinned, stare sharp with anger.

“Do you know how close I came to not being here right now because of you, Tisaanah?”

Oh.

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