Page 94 of Demon's Bane

Rutting, that’s the only word for it. Graceless and primal, mindless and consuming.

There’s nothing but the push and pull of our sweat-slicked bodies, nothing but the hungry press of his lips on mine, nothing but the weight and the stretch of him, the magick humming between us.

He reaches a hand down, finding my clit. At the same time, the sharp press of fangs at my throat makes me moan.

“Will you take these, too, little mate?” Rhett rasps, breath warm against my skin. “Will you let me claim you here?”

Goddess, I shouldn’t want it as much as I do. The idea of it—of him biting me, marking me—shouldn’t ratchet up my pleasure even higher. It shouldn’t make me ache like this,needlike this.

“Is it going to hurt?”

Rhett chuckles, though the sound of it is a bit broken. “Only for a moment, then you’ll enjoy it.”

He presses his fangs down a little more firmly, stopping just this side of breaking the skin, before remembering himself and pulling back a bare inch.

“Do you trust me? Do you trust me to take care of you, to only give you as much as I know you can handle?”

I reach for a reason I shouldn’t, for any doubts that might still linger in the far-off, still-sane corners of my mind.

I find none.

“Yes.”

As soon as he has my permission, Rhett rocks back so he’s kneeling on the bed, sitting on his heels. He brings me with him, his knot still holding us together. When I settle with my thighs draped over his, the change in position makes me feel evenfuller. All I can do is groan helplessly, impaled on his cock and only upright by the support of his arms around me.

Rhett keeps me anchored with one arm banded around my lower back and his other hand buried in my hair. He tips my head back to expose my throat, and his wings flare behind him before wrapping forward to surround me.

“Look at me, Joan.” His voice is deep, graveled, so filled with need and tenderness that tears sting my eyes as I meet his gaze.

His lips brush mine, his hips shift, and the press of his knot sends sparks racing all the way through me. It’s obliterating, all this sensation, impossible to withstand.

“This is only for you, my mate,” he murmurs as his lips drop to my throat and his fangs ghost over my skin. “Only ever for you. In all the thirteen realms, there could never be anyone for me but you.”

He bites, and I gasp at the sudden shock of pain. Just like Rhett promised, though, the sting fades almost immediately. It’s replaced by a wave of heat—small, at first, smoldering, but burning more brightly with every passing heartbeat. In the space of a few moments, it’s an inferno, incandescent, threatening to leave me no more than embers in its wake.

After taking a few long draws from me, Rhett pulls back roughly from my neck, then leans in again so he can kiss me deep. And though some distant part of me registers I should probably be repulsed by the copper tang of my blood on his lips, I kiss him back for all I’m fucking worth.

“Here,” he rasps, taking me by the wrist and placing my hand on the curve of his wing where it meets his shoulder. “Touch me here.”

I do, and Rhett loses whatever scrap of restraint he was still holding on to.

He lunges forward, pressing me into the mattress. His mouth finds my neck and his fangs slide back into me.

It’s too much. All of it—the stretch of his knot and the feel of him drawing from me, his ragged groans and growls of pleasure, the heat and the power of him, all the magick burning between us—is too much.

Though it hardly seems possible, I come again in deep, soul-shattering waves of pleasure. It tips Rhett over the edge, too, and he spills into me with a shout, hips flush to mine, cock and knot pulsing inside me.

Things are a little hard to keep track of after that.

There’s Rhett, holding me close and whispering comfort to me as his knot slowly releases.

There’s a spill of warmth and cheek-heating dampness as it finally loosens enough for him to slide out of me.

There’s the whole world, sleepy and slow as Rhett tends to me, aching and unbearably tender when he crawls back into bed beside me and pulls me into him.

Neither of us have any more words. All we have are lazy touches and murmured pleasure, drifting off into oblivion together.

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