Page 30 of Beast of Blood and Ash
When his mouth found me, truly found me, I bucked, a strangled gasp tearing from my throat. He licked me open,his mouth hot and wet, his tongue working in slow, deliberate strokes. He was infinitely careful, reading every twitch and gasp, flooding me with warmth and the sharp scorch-pain of wanting more.
I couldn’t see him. I could only feel. His mouth, his tongue, the strange, careful pressure as he worshipped me, mapping every inch with a devotion that felt like hunger. His breath came hot against my skin. His hands bracketed my hips, holding me steady but never trapping me.
The pleasure built slow, then faster, wound tight as a wire ready to snap. I let myself want, letting the pleasure unfurl in waves, trembling through me, knocking loose memories I’d locked away. Pain and humiliation, but also the faint ghost of being chosen.
Tears prickled behind my eyes, hot and unshed.
You are not broken,I repeated, my makeshift mantra.You are not broken.But maybe I was. Maybe that was all right.
He found a rhythm that drove me wild, his tongue flicking, his mouth sucking, closing around me. I let go, hips canting up, a sob torn loose by pure sensation.
My orgasm hit with the force of a landslide, overwhelming, blinding, cathartic. It was a flood of feeling that wrenched a scream from my lips. I shook, nerves sparking, my hands clutching at his hair like an anchor. For a second, I was lost, adrift in pleasure tangled with old pain. Everything tilted and broke and reformed.
Omvar held me through it, his arms bracketing my body, his mouth gentling as I rode out the aftershocks. He murmured something I didn’t understand, words rough and calming, his voice a steady drum in the storm. I let myself collapse, spent and shaking, into his embrace, too wrung out to move or speak.
I floated, tucked against his chest, caught between satisfaction and confusion. The air was heavy with his scent,with the ghost of honey on my tongue and the copper of old blood. My body thrummed, every muscle slack, every nerve alive.
I fixated on the strangeness of my own craving, the terror and want tangled too deep to unpick. Was this healing? Or was it just another surrender to something bigger than me, something that might own me if I let it?
Clinging to him in the silence, the question burned inside me. I didn't know if safety was a lie. I only knew I wanted to stay.
12
OMVAR
My mate smelledof honey and my own release.
The scent clung to me. Her sweetness mingled with the musk of what we had done, soaking into the nest of blankets until I was sure it marked me as deeply as any scar. It was an impossible claim, and it seeped into every breath I took.
I watched her sleep, a tangle of bare limbs and shadowed hair, her body pressed close to where I sprawled on my side. In the hush of my quarters, with only the pulse of the heat crystal breaking the dark, a deep, possessive satisfaction settled hot and heavy in my gut.
This night wasn’t something I ever believed I’d have. Not truly.
Even now, with her heartbeat a steady thrum against my ribs and her scent a brand on my skin, I half expected to wake and find the world unchanged. Her curled away from me, my own desperation a hungry, unspent thing, the city’s suspicions a poison thickening in the air. But she was here. She chose this. For a few hours, there was no one else. The taste of her was still a ghost on my tongue, and I was a different male for it.
One taste would never be enough.
Lying beside her was its own kind of torture. She curled in close, trusting in her sleep, her thigh thrown over mine and her cheek pressed against my shoulder, as if she believed I could keep her nightmares at bay just by existing. I ran a careful hand down the fragile arch of her spine, memorizing the specific heat of her skin, the small shivers in her muscles as she drifted deeper into dreams.
I wanted more. Always more. It was a hunger that never quit gnawing at me, an animal need to protect, to claim, to make her body answer to mine until I could finally believe this was real.
The city was silent on the other side of the stone, but my nerves were scraped raw, twitching. My mind scoured every shadow for threats, even as I tried to drown myself in her warmth. Every patch of darkness felt too deep. Every whisper of movement beyond these walls was a claw scraping against my instincts.
Thravena. She was mine. Mine to guard. Mine to keep safe.
Her breath hitched, that soft sigh that nearly undid me. My hand stilled on her back, not daring to break the spell. But the world outside pressed in, and the need to hunt, to eliminate what would hurt her, spiked until my muscles burned with it. I couldn’t rest. Couldn’t close my eyes and pretend the threat was gone just because she was in my arms. Ignarath’s tendrils were out there, slithering through the city’s veins, watching and waiting.
I pulled myself away, the movement slow, careful not to wake her. The blankets shifted, and for a single, sharp heartbeat, I just breathed her in. The honeyed sweetness, the ghost of fear, the echo of pleasure.
I had to let it go.
Easing out of the bed, my claws made only the faintest scrape on the stone. She mumbled something, rolling into the hollow I left behind, the loss of my heat making her curl tighter. I pulled ablanket higher over her shoulder, a useless gesture that couldn’t shield her from anything. Only I could do that now.
The moment the door sealed behind me, the comfort of her presence flickered out, replaced by the oppressive stillness of Scalvaris before dawn. I moved through the tunnels with the practiced silence of a predator, my senses honed to a razor’s edge. The city breathed with a slow, suffocating rhythm, the air thick with tension. Cool stone underfoot was slick with the ever-present dampness of this place. In the walls, heat crystals bled a dim, yellow light that cast monstrous, dancing shadows at every turn.
These corridors sprawled, labyrinthine, their silence a trap. I prowled a familiar patrol route where every corner was mapped in my muscle memory, every alcove a place where an enemy could lurk. A place where a scent might cling. Where Ignarath infiltrators might slip in and vanish. My nostrils flared, dragging in the city’s thick, acrid air, searching for a hint of foreign scales or the sharp, metallic tang of blood.
Nothing.
