Page 58 of Beast of Blood and Ash
When I’d first brought her there, she’d eyed the door like an injured animal, ready to bolt at the smallest opening. Now she moved with unthinking ownership, leaving traces of herself scattered everywhere: the slight indentation where she’d set her satchel, a smear of honey on the rim of the mug, the fresh herbal scent that had replaced the iron tang of blood.
I almost wanted to thank my enemies for threatening her, for forcing her into my care, for giving me this: her, alive in my space, not running. It was a savage, twisted debt, but I felt it all the same. Gratitude coiled through me, hot and brief as lightning.
She turned. Looked at me. Her eyes were full of heat. Full of want.
She walked toward me and didn’t stop until she stood directly between my knees.
“Your scars,” she whispered, her voice a little rough. “I want to see them.”
The words hit deeper than any blade ever had. She didn’t ask to see the clean lines of victory or the old wounds faded with time. She wanted the whole truth, what I was, what I had survived, what I could not, or would not, hide.
She reached out and brushed against the fabric of my tunic. The touch was nothing, a whisper through worn cloth, but I felt the sensation straight down to my cock. My breath hitched, a punch of need tightening every muscle.
I went still. My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t show my scars to anyone. They were a map of my shame, of every failure, every life I’d taken, every piece of myself I’d sold to survive Ignarath.
But Reika was mine.
And she owned every part of me.
Slowly, I shrugged out of my tunic. The air of the room, usually warm, felt cold against my bare scales. I felt exposed, stripped of more than just cloth.
She drank in the sight of me, eyes roaming from my throat to the ridges below my ribs, lingering at the jagged silver scars and sickly pearls where scales had been torn and healed, where talon and blade had sought to kill what refused to die. My shoulders locked, naked and open under her gaze. I held myself completely still. If she wanted the ugly truth, I wouldn’t shield it.
Reika’s hands lifted, trembling slightly, and her fingers traced the jagged, silvered line of an old blade wound across my chest. Her touch was featherlight, reverent. It didn’t feel like judgment. It felt like acceptance.
“You’re beautiful,” she breathed.
The words shattered something inside me. A wall I hadn’t even known was there crumbled to dust.
All the old voices, the ones that whispered monster, beast, killer, fell silent under the touch of her skin, under the weightof her worship. I felt seen—not weighed and found wanting, but counted and claimed.
She pressed her mouth to the scar, a soft kiss that sent fire through my veins. And then her hands were on me, undressing me, her movements no longer hesitant but filled with a fierce, driving need.
The fabric slipped away. My skin prickled in the rush of air, nerves raw and newly bared. She took her time, exploring my body, kissing each scar as if to erase the memory of the pain that had caused it. Every brush of her lips, every graze of her fingers, was a benediction, a slow, deliberate rewriting of every ugly memory.
She moved lower, mouth trailing the seam of flesh along my ribs, hands dancing along the map of pain and survival. A low sound escaped me, half-groan, half-plea. I was stripped—not just of clothes, but of every layer of armor I’d ever grown. All my power, all my violence, gone. Only her worship remained.
She got on her knees. My breath stuttered into silence. I reached out, put my hand on her shoulder to stop her, the urge to shield her still so strong.
“I don’t require that,thravena.”
Her eyes were dark with want. The hunger in them was not desperation, not pity, but promise.
“I do.”
There was no room for argument. She undid my pants and stroked my cock before taking me into her mouth.
The sensation was white-hot, a surge of pleasure so sharp it bordered on agony. Her lips were soft, her tongue exploring, the heat of her mouth drawing the blood down, making me throb. Nothing in Ignarath had prepared me for this: not the pit, not the pain, not the mate-bond’s relentless, insistent ache. This was worship and surrender, the kind that made every muscle in my body tense with gratitude.
She tasted me, slow at first, then with a boldness that left my thoughts scattered. The slick movement of her tongue, the gentle scrape of teeth, the way her mouth stretched to take me in, inch by aching inch. My hand gripped the edge of the platform, claws digging furrows that would scar the stone.
Her palm slid up my thigh, nails trailing, setting fire along a path of nerves. Her other hand cupped my balls, rolling them with a tenderness that made my tail twitch, desperate to wrap her up, to keep her close. The urge to thrust, to take, roared through me, but I held back, let her set the pace, the rhythm, the depth.
I looked down at her and saw her eyes on me. The question was there, unspoken.
Can I trust you?
Will you break me?
