Page 70 of Demon's Bane

If I only know one taste for the rest of my days, let it be my mate.

Her desire is hot and delicious on my tongue. A meal I could feast on for an eternity and never go hungry. It’s all of her—sharp spice and intoxicating sweetness, a vibrant thread of arousal that melts into the magick swirling between us.

It’s enough to obliterate any lingering hesitation or reserve. All those reasons I kept myself from carrying her to my bed the moment we stepped through the doorway, any whisper of reason or restraint, it all burns to ash.

Joan is just as ravenous as I am. She’s wild against me, pressing her hot, wet cunt into my greedy mouth and gripping my horns so tight it’s a wonder they don’t snap off in her hands.

Not that I would mind.

My fierce little mate could break any part of me and I’d likely thank her and ask if there’s anything else she’d like to claim as hers.

Anything. Everything. It all belongs to her.

I focus entirely on her pleasure, listening to the breathy, desperate sounds she’s making and chasing every snap of her hips. And when those sounds grow even more urgent, when her thighs begin to tremble where they’re in a vise grip on either sideof my head, I pull back a bare inch. She groans in protest, and I swallow my chuckle.

“Do you need more, little mate?”

I take her garbled, nonsensical reply and the way she tries to tug my face back to her core to meanyes, and revel in her gasp of pleasure when I wrap my lips around her clit and reach a hand between her legs.

I sink two fingers into her cunt, claws carefully sheathed. She clenches around me, bears down to take me deeper, and I can’t stop the satisfied growl that breaks from my chest.

Goddess, the feel of her.

So wet and warm. So tight.

I’ll have to work her up to taking my knot. Ease her open. Make it good for her. It will still be an effort for her, but I know she’ll be able to handle every inch of me. She’ll open for me so beautifully, draw me into the warm, slick depths of her…

Despite the painful ache in my cock at the thought, I make myself push the image aside.

The only thing that matters tonight is pleasing her, soothing whatever ache she needs soothed and learning exactly how she likes to be touched.

With each lick and suck against her heated flesh, each plunge of my fingers into her, each noise she makes and every desperate shift of her body, I learn more about my little mate. I tuck each detail away, crystallized and imprinted forever on my consciousness, hoarding them like a draken in some high mountain lair.

And when the first tremors of Joan’s climax break across my tongue, my fingers, I put every bit of that newly won knowledge to the test. I use it to draw out her pleasure for as long as I can, to keep her writhing and moaning until she relaxes into the furs, panting her pleasure.

The magick between us is heady and slow, languid and almost pleased, like the Goddess herself looks on in approval.

And maybe she does, because I can’t imagine anything more sacred than the sight of my mate sprawled out before me, well cared for and boneless with satisfaction.

I take my time working my way back up her body, trailing kisses over her hip, her soft stomach. Though I’m not sure I’ve ever beheld anything more gratifying than my mate wearing my clothing, I undo the shirt button by button and make a study of each new inch of exposed skin. I note each sensitive spot and each place that has her moaning and arching against me.

A nip at her ribs makes her cry out and squirm. A brush of lips just over her navel makes her belly flutter and a sigh escape her. When I cup her small, beautiful breasts in my hands and capture one dusky pink nipple between my lips, she groans and clutches at my horns again, pulling me tighter.

It takes everything in me not to thrust into her right here and now. With the flavor of her still clinging to my lips and the eager press of her body beneath me, I’m nearly undone.

A shift of my hand is all it would take. A loosening of the laces at the top of my trousers. A quick jerk of my cock to free it, and I could be inside my little mate in half a heartbeat.

By the way she’s grasping and demanding, all the delightful sounds she’s making, part of me can make myself believe she’d welcome me eagerly. Perhaps she’s as desperate for it as I am. Desperate to be filled, to lose herself to the magick pulsing between us, the power that demands fulfillment.

But the lines are already blurry enough tonight. Emotions too high and the future too uncertain. Until she’s clear-headed and free of all the stresses of this realm, until she’s had more time to come to terms with the bond between us and the irrevocable nature of it, I need to hold myself back.

So, like that night in her shop, I ignore the ache in my fangs and my painfully stiff cock. I reach to reclaim my restraint and drag myself the rest of the way up the bed and settle beside her.

“Fuck, Rhett,” Joan groans, immediately throwing herself on top of me and draping her loose-limbed, satisfied body across my chest.

It puts me in an awkward position, with my wings pinned beneath me in a decidedly unnatural posture, but it would take another mountain falling down around me to make me move.

Still, when I shift to get comfortable, Joan lets out a little squeak.

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