Page 40 of Chained to the Champion
He understood me perfectly.
He shifted, gentle, inhuman strength turning me, lowering my body until the stone of the sleeping platform met my spine and his weight caged me in. My battered dignity should havescreamed protest, but his weight felt like armor. His hands skimmed my sides, scaled, calloused, stopping at the hem of my tunic. He waited, asking permission in the tilt of his head.
My nod was shaky but real. He peeled the cloth away, every inch of drag broadcasting need, the thrill of exposure. When at last the fabric pooled at my arms and neck, his breath caught on a barely concealed invocation.
“You are …,” he managed, then faltered. His hands hovered as if he was afraid to dishonor, to presume.
“Different,” I finished for him, a shuddering laugh, half-mortified, half-exhilarated.
“Beautiful.” It landed like a hammer against the anvil of my fear. His mouth pressed to the hollow of my throat, tongue drawing a molten line to my collarbone, searing pleasure in its wake as he journeyed even lower.
His tongue, hotter than any human’s, shockingly agile, circled one nipple, the sensation a jolt straight between my legs. My gasp was needy, desperate, shame and want tangled together.
This wasn't supposed to happen. Not with a Drakarn. Not withhim.But nothing could make me stop. Not now.
Fumbling fingers found his tunic, wrestling clumsily with unfamiliar fastenings. He helped, until he was bare to the waist, scars crisscrossed his chest, glinting silver in the room’s half-light. I traced one along his ribs, felt him shiver at the featherlight touch.
I wanted to remember this, every mark, every story written in his flesh. His hands found the waistband of my pants, claws large, careful. “May I?” he asked, voice softer than the cell deserved.
I nodded, lifting my hips. The fabric scraped away inch by inch, dragging heat across skin. I swallowed, acutely aware ofmy thin underwear, of skin prickling where his gaze followed fabric’s retreat.
He was all slow burn, eyes feasting on the awkward expanse of pale human limb, the wild contrast of hips and breasts and shivering belly. “I have imagined,veshari,” he said, voice sharpened by awe and need. “But reality—Karys’s flame.”
There was that word again. I was beginning to know what it meant when a Drakarn called you something special, but I couldn't let myself think about that right now.
“Your turn,” I said.
He hesitated, his first true show of uncertainty. “My form is not—” he started.
“I want to see you.”
Dark amusement lurked behind his hunger. He slid his trousers down, unhurried, letting each inch of scale and muscle appear in the dim light. When at last he stood bare, I forgot language for a long second.
His cock emerged from a nest of dark red scales at the base, thick, too thick, impossibly so, glistening with translucent slick. Veins knotted under the surface, a tangle of vermillion and gray. The head … God. A flexible, ridged lip curled protectively over the glans, a living, quivering fringe that gleamed wetly. It wasn’t just a difference of shape; it was a new discipline—a lesson in evolutionary innovation.
“You stare.” There, a heartbeat of vulnerability, splintered through the rough growl.
“Just … um, wow,” I wheezed. “Alien cock, one. Vega, zero.”
A rare, genuine laugh burst out of him. He lowered himself back into reach, letting me trail my curious, shaking hand along the base, where the scales grew softer, heat pouring off him in savage waves. Higher—the flesh smoothed to living velvet, rigid beneath my thumb, that strange, suckling ridge at the tip curling like a sentient thing.
His hiss vibrated through the stone and up my arm, a threat or a warning, I wasn’t sure. “Almost too much.”
I worked my hand over his length, learning his architecture through touch—slick heat, impossible thickness, pulsing, quivering. The ridge at the tip curled against my thumb, living, questing. He bucked, claws gouging fresh canyons in the rock, restraint nearly atomized.
God, what would it feel like to have that thing in me?
“Feels good?” I tested, daring, and the sound he made was seismic, a deep, demonic groan, full of things older than words.
His tail, until now coiled, whipped violently against the bed. I might have been scared if it didn't make me shiver with want. I'd heard how Drakarn could use their tails. And right then, curiosity was killing me.
Bolder, I stroked him, finding a rhythm that felt obscene and perfect, wonder and power sparking through my arm. There was a heady pleasure in watching him shake, the baddest thing in the pit undone by the smallest of touches.
His hand closed around my wrist, gentle, but ironclad. “Veshari.” Voice cracking—edge of prayer and warning. “Stop now, or—” The rest was carved in fire between us.
I could have pushed, could have made him unravel, but his need was thick as honey in the air.
Then he moved, muscles rolling with the promise of violence, down my body, his heat blistering where thighs pressed on either side of my waist. I expected fingers. Instead, it was the tip of his tail, scaled, prehensile, impossibly sensitive, that ghosted over my thigh, drawing spiral patterns, promise and threat entwined.
