Page 106 of Flameborne: Fury
Then his smile grew wider. “That’s my girl. That’s my beautiful girl. I’m here. And I’ll always keep you safe. I promised—remember?”
“Y-yes."
“Don’t cry, beautiful.Smile.”
And then he waited until my buzzing, screaming head caught up and it occurred to me that hemeantit.
“Show them your smile, beautiful.”
“But…”
He shook his head, a flash of rage filling his gaze that was clearing of the glaze of lust and sharpening. I tensed—and tightened on his body so he groaned.
“That’s right. Fuck, Brenny. That’s it. That’s right. I’m here.” As he said the words he drew out of my body and panic flared in my chest. I babbled and grasped for him, but he shook his head and shushed me, not rolling off of me, still covering me, hushing my name and holding my chin until I met his eyes again.
“I’m here,” he said in that deep voice that I’d always loved. The one he saved for me. “I’m staying right here. I just brought some friends, that’s all. And I want to show you off—I’m so proud of you, Brenny. So. Fucking. Proud.”
The part of me that loved him lit up like the flare of a match, but I still blinked away tears.
“I… I don’t know them—”
“They’re Furyknights, Bren. Good men. They won’t tell anyone, I promise. We shareeverything.And we keep each other’s secrets. And they’ll make you feel so good! I promise.”
I stared at him, wanting to argue, but they were there, and they were Furyknights? Like him? The men he’d told me about?
He nodded like he’d heard the question in my mind. “Good men,” he repeated. “And I want to show them howperfectyou are.”
Then, before I could respond, he pushed away from me, kneeling between my thighs so that the cool air rushed against my damp skin.
I sucked in, panicked, and sat up, grabbing for him—and he opened his arms and pulled me into his chest, pulled me up, kissing me, urging me to get to my knees too, to kneel in front of him. When I was positioned the way he wanted, he put both hands on my face and lifted my chin, his face so close to mine I couldn’t see anything else.
“I love you, remember?”
I nodded dumbly, my vision tunneling so that I didn’t see the shadows moving around us. I only sawhim.My pulse thundering in my ears so that I didn’t hear the heavy footfalls, or the rustle of the hay, only his voice.
And then he instructed me how to showthem.
I didn’t want to. But I also didn’t want to lose him. And he stared down at me with so much admiration. Not just the hunger of need. Not only the blaze of want.Delighted awe.
He loves me,I reminded myself.He thinks I’m beautiful.
I can be beautiful. I can be brave.
I didn’t remember answering his question, but he groaned and kissed me open mouthed, shuddering as he tasted my tongue, keeping my face in his hands and whispering against my lips all the wonderful things we’d share as a calloused hand landed at the base of my spine, then slid up, up, up into my hair,the fingers tightening there so that I was pulled slightly away—but my lover didn’t stop talking in that low gravel.
It was his breath against my lips that reassured me, when someone else’s breath fluttered in my hair.
It was his eyes I locked on when strange hands reached around to knead my already sensitized breasts.
It was his shoulders I clung to, nails digging intohisskin, when I felt the strange, hard length between my legs.
And it was his voice, always his, rasping in my ear, and in my heart, and in mysoulevery time another voice spoke. Every time a strange sound echoed.
Beautiful, he said.
Amazing, he said.
Look at her.
